Keeping Our Eyes on the Savior

Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Jesus is traveling with His disciples, and He asks them a question: “Who do you say that I am?” He had already asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” And people had all sorts of answers. “He’s John the Baptist, resurrected.” “No, no—He’s Elijah, the one who preaches the Christ to come.” “Oh no—He’s a prophet.” There were many answers.

Our world gives answers like that too. If we ask people today, we will hear more: He is a king. He is a liar. He is a figment of imagination. He was just a man—a good teacher—whom others took out of context and turned into a religion.

Then Jesus puts the question directly to the disciples: “But who do you say that I am?” Out of all the options, out of everything people said then and everything people say now—who do you say that I am?

And Peter answers, “You are the Christ—the Messiah, the Anointed One—the One promised in the Old Testament to come and save the people.”

We know from the other Gospels that Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” And then Jesus begins to teach them what it means that He came to save the people: that He came to be rejected, that He came to suffer, that He came to be crucified.

Peter is scandalized by this. He grabs Jesus by the arm, pulls Him aside, and says, “Knock this off.” The Messiah came to rescue the people—not to die for them. And Jesus rebukes him sharply: “Get behind Me, Satan.”

Imagine if Christ the Lord said that to you. I do not know about you, but I am hoping for, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Jesus explains: “For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Peter was hoping for a political, earthly ruler—one to drive out the Romans, one to establish the kingdom of Judea forever, the kingdom of Israel forever. But Christ did not come to save the people from earthly princes. He did not come to save them from godless Romans. He came to save the world from its sin.

He came to save you and me from that which is killing us. He came to save us from the grave, from Satan, and from the sin that resides in our hearts.

This is what it means when we confess that Jesus is the Christ: that He is more than a prophet, more than a priest, more than a king. He is God Himself, sent for us. And upon this confession, the world changed.

We live in Western civilization, and Western civilization is built upon Christianity. I know my humanities professors from college are already objecting: “You have Plato, Aristotle, Socrates—they all shaped Western civilization.” And they did. Do not misunderstand me. But if you go back and read Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, or Homer, you will find things that are lionized and celebrated which we reject—not just as Americans, but at a fundamental moral level.

For Aristotle, women are barely human. For Plato, some people are simply born to be slaves. Christianity proclaimed something radically different: that Christ is Lord, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He came for everyone—man and woman, free and slave, Jew and Greek.

And that confession changed how we do things. It changed how we view people. Slavery would eventually be overturned in the Western world. Hospitals were built—something that did not previously exist. Convalescent homes and nursing homes were established. Public education and public schools developed. Christians did that.

Nearly everything you consider good and moral in society traces its roots back to Christian values. So much so that Richard Dawkins—one of the most prominent atheists of our time—wrote The God Delusion about twenty years ago. He has since said that we need at least a cultural Christianity.

Why? Because when you look at secularism and atheism in non-Western contexts, the values we take for granted—human rights, caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked—do not exist in the same way. Dawkins himself has argued that without cultural Christianity, society becomes barbaric, and the very things he values about the world would disappear.

“You are the Christ” changed the world—but it did more than that. It changed individuals.

It took your sin away from you. It gave you everlasting life. It called you to a higher purpose, a higher calling, as Peter lays out in his second epistle. You have escaped corruption.

You have been given virtue. You have been given self-control. You have been given knowledge, steadfastness, and godliness. These are not things you must go out and acquire on your own. The Holy Spirit has given them to you.

So when Christians say, “It’s just so hard to tame my tongue,” the answer is: go back and read your Bible. You have been given what you need. Yes, we still sin. We continue to sin. But we do not give a pass to our sins. We do not say, “Oh, that’s okay.” We repent of them—because Jesus is the Christ, and He saved me from my sin. He saved you from your sin. He took upon Himself the sins of the whole world.

So we keep our minds on the things of God. We do not make Jesus into something He is not. We need Jesus to be Jesus. We need Him to be our Savior. We need Him to be the Anointed One of God.

Through faith, we confess that our sins are traded for His righteousness, that His death is traded for ours, and that His empty tomb is also our empty tomb.

Christ did not come to make a perfect world—not yet. The good news is that the Church does make the world better, both corporately and individually. But there will not be a perfect world until Christ returns. Sin still reigns in our hearts and in the world, and it continues to mar what God created.

That does not mean we give up. We live according to our higher calling. We keep our minds on the things of God. We love our neighbors as ourselves. We proclaim the Law when it must be proclaimed. We call evil what it is. We proclaim the Gospel where it must be proclaimed. We forgive sins. We call good, good.

There is much good in the world, and there is much evil. We live in a culture shaped by Christianity, but not all cultures share that heritage. Even so, wherever the Church exists, those places are made better.

But the world will not be truly good again until Christ returns and sin is removed entirely.

We do not aim to create a utopia on this side of eternity. We receive the utopia when Christ comes again.

It can be difficult. It will be difficult. The world is a frightening place, filled with evil.

Peter once walked on water. He took a few steps out of the boat toward Jesus in the middle of the storm. Then he noticed the wind and the waves—and he began to sink. How fast do you sink in water? Not long at all.

Christ immediately grabs him, pulls him out, and corrects him. The lesson is clear: our focus remains on Christ. Even in the midst of evil, our focus remains on Christ.

For He is the One whose name has been placed upon us in Baptism. He is the One who feeds us His body and blood in the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar. He is the Savior of the world, who makes us better—not in the ways we imagine, but by using what the world calls foolishness and weakness.

He is better. He is good. And He is for you.

So today we confess with Peter that Jesus is the Christ. We place our sins upon Him, and He gives us everlasting life. And we go out from this place doing our best—truly doing our best—to keep our eyes on the Author and Perfecter of our faith, and to point others to Him.

In Christ’s name. Amen.