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The more we read the Bible especially the Gospels and the Epistles and meditate on them the more we become familiar with Jesus Christ. The more we become more familiar with Jesus, the more we get to know Him. And the more we know Him the more our love for Him grows.
Jesus Christ is touted as superhuman. Yes, Jesus is superior to Moses, Elijah, Mohammed and the other prophets the world has ever known. He is also greater than David, Solomon and the other kings who lived before and after Him.
Several things distinguish and set Christ Jesus apart and above every human being. They project Him as a superior Man. One of them concerns the divine authority of His words. Christ walked the earth as a man and spoke as a man, but the power of His words is extraordinary.
Jewish men who closely followed Him and heard Him speak could not resist testifying about the matchlessness of the potency of His words. We shall consider the testimony of His own disciples and that of Jewish leaders who opposed Him.
One day, Jesus rose from sleep and spoke to the winds and the sea, and they heard His voice and obeyed Him. They became quiet as if they were humans or animals that could respond to orders.
“…Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”(Matthew 8:27)
Startled by the power of the words of Jesus leading to the calmness of the hitherto roaring winds and the sea, Christ’s own disciples who were men could not shut their mouths but marvel, saying, “What sort of man is this”?
Carefully, consider the context of the expression, “What sort of man is this”? First, it means what particular kind of man is this? Contextually, the disciples viewed Christ Jesus as a superior man, superhuman, extraordinary and peerless. They saw Him as a different man in His own class.
They knew about the works of Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Jonah and the other prophets, but they put Christ Jesus in a different category. It is no wonder Peter identified Him as the Christ, Son of God who was and is God (Matthew 16:16). Thus, He did what ordinary men could not do.
Similarly, some Jewish officers made a profound and remarkable observation about the words of the Lord. They heard Him speak to cast out demons, heal the sick and teach on several occasions. So surprised were those officers at the words of Jesus that they could not give direct answer to their leaders.
The Pharisee leadership had asked the officers to go and arrest the Lord. But when they asked them why they could not arrest Jesus, they had no direct answer to give except to testify about the deepest, powerful and authoritative words of the Lord.
“The officers answered, ‘No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46).
Like the disciples, some of the Jewish people who opposed Jesus could not hide their bewilderment of His potent words. Ordinary men could not speak like that. Hs words were not like the words of the religious leaders of the time. They carried undeniable divine authority and truth to the hypocrites and forced demons out of the afflicted.
Now if the disciples wondered what sort of man Jesus was and the Jewish religious leaders said no man ever spoke like Him, then we ought not doubt the superiority and deity of our Saviour. He was God/man.
By James Quansah
