The Person of Jesus: Who Is He?
30 min read
You cannot understand what Jesus said and did without understanding the world he said and did it in. Context is not optional background — it is the key to meaning.
"In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world." — Luke 2:1
1. Jesus was born into a world under occupation.
Rome controlled Judea by force. Taxes flowed to Caesar. A devout Jew who prayed "your kingdom come" was praying something politically dangerous. When Jesus announced "the kingdom of God is at hand," people heard it against this backdrop. It was not a metaphor about personal spirituality. It was a claim about authority.
2. First-century Judaism was not monolithic.
By the time of Jesus, Jewish society had fractured into incompatible groups: the Pharisees pursued holiness through Torah observance, the Sadducees controlled the temple and cooperated with Rome, the Essenes withdrew to the desert, and the Zealots prepared for armed revolt. Jesus fit none of these categories — which is one reason all of them eventually opposed him.
3. The temple was the center of everything.
For first-century Jews, the Jerusalem temple was not merely a church building. It was the place where heaven and earth intersected — where God's presence dwelt, where sins were atoned through sacrifice. When Jesus overturned tables there Mark 11:15-17 and predicted its destruction Mark 13:2, he was not making a minor protest. He was declaring the old order finished.
4. Messianic expectation was intense and politically charged.
Israel had been waiting for the Messiah — the anointed Davidic king — for centuries. Most Jews expected someone who would defeat Rome and restore David's kingdom. Jesus' kind of messiahship — arriving on a donkey, serving rather than ruling, dying rather than conquering — was exactly backward. His resurrection was the vindication that reinterpreted the whole story.
5. Jesus was thoroughly Jewish.
He read Torah, kept feasts, debated Scripture, taught in synagogues, and addressed God in Aramaic. Stripping Jesus of his Jewishness destroys the meaning of almost everything he said. His use of "kingdom," his role as the "Son of Man" from Daniel 7, his interpretation of the Passover at the Last Supper — all of it requires Jewish soil to make sense.
6. Geography shaped his ministry.
Galilee was ethnically mixed and politically volatile. Nazareth was a village of a few hundred people. The contrast between his origin and his claims is itself part of the message: God chose a construction worker from an obscure village rather than a priest from Jerusalem.
Reading the Gospels as if they were written about a modern Western person. Every anachronism costs you meaning.
A Bible study group read the parable of the Good Samaritan as a general story about helping people. When they learned that Jews and Samaritans considered each other religiously contaminated enemies, the story cracked open. The hero of the story was the one the audience would have found most offensive. Jesus was not illustrating general kindness. He was dismantling a specific prejudice. Context changed everything.
Read Mark 11:1-19. Write a paragraph on what the triumphal entry and temple clearing would have meant to a first-century observer.
Submit your paragraph on Mark 11 and one thing that changed in your reading because of historical context.
A: Because his identity, teachings, and mission are inseparable from Israel's story, covenant, and Scripture.
A: That Judea was under Roman occupation and Messianic expectation was urgent and politically charged.
Lord, help me read your story on its own terms, not on mine. Give me the humility to learn what I do not know. Amen.