And
he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and
saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. And he charged them that they
should tell no man of him.
//While the Messianic Secret is
a theme from all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and
Luke, it is most prominent in the first of the three to be
written--Mark's Gospel. Jesus states very plainly that he does not want
anybody to know he is the Christ. "Christ" merely means "Messiah," and
Jesus doesn't want to be known as the Messiah. That revelation would
have to wait until after his death. Matthew, who loves to quote
scripture, explains this by referring back to Isaiah's Messianic
prophecy: "He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his
voice in the streets."
There
are a number of contradictions between the Synoptic story of Jesus and
the story presented in John, but many are minor, of little theological
significance. Not so, the "messianic secret." In John's Gospel, Jesus
plainly presents himself as not only the Messiah, but as God himself,
and the Jews have no trouble recognizing his claims. Here are a couple of examples:
John 4:25-26, The
woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called
Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto
her, I that speak unto thee am he.
John 9:35-37, [Jesus]
said unto [a man whom Jesus healed], Dost thou believe on the Son of
God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him?
And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that
talketh with thee.
It
may be, however, that both traditions share the truth. In John, Jesus
is just as clear as in the Synoptics that he doesn't want to be made
into a king, or thought of as a warrior who will save his people by
might. Jesus may therefore have objected to the traditional image of
Christ/Messiah, but embraced John's more gentle, nonmilitary version.
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