In Luke 9:20, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” He was alone with them, praying with them (perhaps praying for them), when he turned to present the question and receive their reply.
Let me set the context. By this time in their journey with Him, He’d already revealed a lot about who He was. The first eight chapters of Luke’s Gospel leading up to this moment provide so many explanations and implications about the full identity of Jesus.
The Identity of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel
- The stunning announcement of His coming (chapter 1)
- The supernatural nature of His birth (chapter 2)
- The confirmation of His deity, the Son of God (chapter 3)
- The way He thwarted the enemy’s attempt at derailing His mission (chapter 4)
- The miracles that authenticated His messiahship (chapter 5)
- The noticeable depth and difference of His teaching (chapter 6)
- The startling display of His compassion for sinners (chapter 7)
- The power of His command over creation and over evil (chapter 8)
And these are just the high points. This whole section of Scripture cements the identity of Jesus, replete with convincing and comprehensive evidence declaring Him to be exactly who He claimed to be.
He was not just a newborn baby. He existed before time began, the Creator of His own mother.
He was not just an average kid wandering around the temple. He was at home in His Father’s house, tending to “My Father’s business” (Luke 2:49 NKJV).
He was not just a man being baptized in the Jordan. He was the one upon whom “the Holy Spirit descended,” whose Father called out to Him from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased” (Luke 3:22).
He was not just another religious leader—a mere teacher—seeking to explain the law, and He was certainly not there to use His knowledge of the sacred for self-righteous ends, as so many did. No, He was the “Lord of the Sabbath” (Luke 6:5), the fulfillment of the law Himself, declaring to everyone who would listen that the kingdom of God could be theirs.
So when He asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” in Luke 9, they had already witnessed many startling proofs of the identity of Jesus in chapters 1–8. Then Jesus asked. And their response formed the bedrock upon which the whole issue of their discipleship rested.
Who is Jesus?
Only when we have a comprehensive and accurate view of the identity of Jesus—His deity, His holiness, His authority, His distinctiveness—only then are we willing, even eager, to fully surrender to Him. If our view of Him is distorted or diminished—if we think less of Him than He truly is—we will withhold from Him the devotion that rightfully belongs to Him. We will seek a better alternative when we’ve been hurt by the church, or disappointed by one of its leaders, or when we’re grappling with issues of faith amid life’s difficult moments. We’ll think we are our best alternative, that only we can be trusted to look out for our own well-being.
If, to us, Jesus is a narrow, one-dimensional religious caricature that we’ve relegated to the “Sunday school” part of our lives, it makes sense that we’d hold ourselves back from Him. Why would anyone choose to tether their lives to someone they don’t fully trust? Why would anyone surrender their future to someone they don’t have confidence in? Why would anyone relinquish the reins of control to a God they don’t truly believe to be sovereign, omniscient, all-powerful, and all-good? If in our opinion He is less than what we need our Lord to be, then He doesn’t have the credibility to command our full attention, to be worth risking our lives on.
What I’m saying is this: if you and I are struggling to surrender our all to Jesus, it most likely has something to do with our estimation of the identity of Jesus. We’re not seeing Him as He truly is. We’re confining Him to church or to Christmas or to spiritual words we’re supposed to say.
If we’re only giving Him the parts we think we can spare, it’s because we’ve relegated Him to a one-dimensional existence.
We’ve limited Him to the few places where we think He belongs.
We’ve made Him too small for us to follow, too small for our complete surrender.
Because who would turn their lives over to someone who is just “a good teacher”?
During Jesus’s earthly ministry, most people never thought of following Him the way the twelve disciples did. That’s because most people, for the most part, could never get past thinking of Him mainly as a teacher, an elevated version of “John the Baptist” or “Elijah” or “one of the ancient prophets” come to life (Luke 9:19).
If Jesus had been only that—merely a good teacher— being mentioned alongside these greats could’ve been viewed as a high-end accolade. But the comparison of Jesus to even these illustrious men of the cloth was nothing short of an insult. He was not a man on par with the esteemed prophets of the past. He hadn’t come just to teach about the kingdom of heaven but to inaugurate it, to fulfill it, to be our sovereign Redeemer, the living and dying Son of God. The multitudes may have respected Him. They may have been fascinated by Him. But their watered-down view of the identity of Jesus would always keep them from walking in close fellowship and proximity with Jesus. In contrast, Peter and the other disciples knew Him to be who He truly said He was—the fully divine, holy Deity, unable to be compared and without counterpart.
The result? They followed Him.
Even as I write this, the piercing yet gentle conviction of the Holy Spirit falls fresh on me. I’ve been through many seasons of life where, looking back on them now, I can see I viewed the Lord wrongly. I saw Him as small, fragile, distant, and limited. I’d never have admitted it, largely because I didn’t realize it. But the hesitancy with which I trusted Him revealed this truth. Whenever I was slow in laying something down—a pleasure I wanted, a position I insisted on holding—whenever I resisted going a certain way or shifting my attitude or perspective as His Word and Spirit directed me, my reluctance to obey Him, to surrender my all to Him, shined a spotlight on something else. Something more. I didn’t think He was sovereign enough to trust with the outcome of my future fulfillment.
Can you relate? Every dogged commitment we make to our own paths and ambitions, to our own choices, to our own deeply held desires for personal autonomy and independence, says we think more highly of ourselves than we do of Him. We trust ourselves more. We trust our ideas more. We trust in our efforts and achievements more. Perhaps we trust another person more. But Jesus? Can we trust Him? He may be a lot, but He’s not quite enough, not if we’ve watered Him down to a Teacher we listen to but not a Master we fully submit to.
Excerpted with permission from I Surrender All by Priscilla Shirer. Copyright 2024, B&H Publishing.
All to Him I Freely Give
From Priscilla Shirer comes this fervent appeal and invitation to surrender everything to Jesus. To follow Him not just as your Savior but as your priority, your first love, your Lord. To move beyond being a believer to becoming His disciple.
Because there is a difference.
Salvation is a gift of God. It’s free. It’s grace. It’s the cross. Discipleship comes at a high cost. It’s surrender. It’s effort. It’s a daily choice to lay down your life and follow His. Few believers choose this route, but the ones who do will experience the abundance that only the surrendered life can offer. It’s the one choice standing between you and the life of freedom and fulfillment, of peace and purpose you’ve always wanted. I Surrender All is all about making that choice.
The choice that changes everything.
This book will be impossible to simply read because it beckons you to make a decision about the kind of Christian you will be. Prepare to engage, to write, to pray, and be called into a surrendered life. An abundant life. A disciple’s life.
For more from Priscilla Shirer, listen to a special message from her about Going Beyond Live.
