Year 6, Day 186: Matthew 12

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

What is Jesus’ identity?  Of course, those who are familiar with Jesus should know the answer.  He is the Son of God.  He is the sacrifice God sent to allow us to know His redemption.  He is the one who came to invite us back into genuine relationship with the Father.

That really is the question of this chapter.  The religious leaders question His identity.  They accuse him of casting out demons with Satan’s power.  Naturally, of course, they do this because they are opposed to Jesus.  This gives us a very important lesson to learn.  When we are looking at identity of someone else, so we take into account whether we like them or not?  After all, if I allow my personal human emotions to influence where I think their identity is rooted, I’m likely to get the whole decision wrong.  As Jesus teaches here in this passage, we will get a better clue about a person’s identity when I look at fruit, not my personal opinion about them.

We also get a sense of identity in the people who come and ask Jesus for a sign.  I can understand this moment.  More than once I have asked God to prove His existence.  I’ve hinted with Him that if He was going to pick a moment to demonstrate His power that now would be a good time.  But those moments say more about me and my identity than they say about Him and His identity.  God isn’t great because He does what we want.  God is great, period.  We believe in Him because He is great, not because He does incredible things.  When we ask God to prove His power, it shows that we are not truly getting our identity from Him as we should.

Finally, we get a very interesting story about His family.  They come to see Him.  But Jesus turns to the crowd around Him and tells them that His family are the people around Him.  I think this is one of my favorite identity stories.  Jesus doesn’t define family according to biology.  Jesus defines family according to spirituality.  His identity doesn’t come from His mom and dad and their character.  His identity comes from the Father and those around Him whose identity also comes from the Father.

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