Luke 9 presents us with a narrative about the identity of Jesus Christ. The plot unfolds in four acts. Each act has its main protagonist, communicating from a specific point of view.
The first character we meet is Herod Antipas, the tetrarch. He speaks from the perspective of the empire, of royalty and the ruling class. Next we meet the crowd following Jesus. The crowd speaks from the general population and offers us insights into the consensus about Jesus among the common people. In the third act, the main protagonists are Jesus’s disciples, those who walked closest to him and watched his mission unfold firsthand. Finally, in the fourth act we find the person of God. God speaks from his divine perspective. Luke seems determined to record God himself as an active subject in Jesus’s ministry and an authorized source for revealing his identity.
What I see in Luke 9 are different layers of perception organized by the evangelist. The clear intent is to show how the identity and mission of Jesus reached all the layers of society that mattered to his intended readers. We know the recipient of Luke’s Gospel was Theophilus, a Gentile ruler converted to the gospel. What I find interesting is that Luke does not seem concerned to include the opinion of the Jewish religious authorities, though later in his Gospel Luke records the identity and authority of Christ as a point of contention between Jesus and the Pharisees (Luke 20:2).
Given this script, let us look at each act and gather opinions to form an accurate picture of the identity and mission of Jesus.
Herod Antipas, the tetrarch
Luke 9 opens with Jesus appointing his twelve apostles as ambassadors of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom whose Messiah was Jesus himself. The apostles are then sent through Galilee to declare the arrival of this new Kingdom, which seems to catch the attention of the ruling class. We read that the tetrarch Herod heard about all that was going on, and he was perplexed (Luke 9:7). Herod’s inquiry about Jesus appears in verse 9: “I beheaded John. Who, then, is this I hear such things about?” Perhaps another way to put it would be: “I beheaded the greatest prophet in the country who dared to speak against me. Who is this new dissident now?”
The messianic mission of Jesus seems unknown to the ruling class at this point in his ministry. But when Jesus appoints the Twelve and sends them out, he positions himself in opposition to the empire. To understand why Herod’s inquiry was important, we first need to understand who he was. Herod Antipas was the son of Herod the Great, an infamous king who reigned when Jesus was born. We know from the Gospels themselves that Herod the Great had ordered the massacre of all boys under the age of three when he learned that a new king of the Jews had been born.
Herod the Great ruled with an iron fist. His authority was unquestionable. He had been appointed king of the Jews by the Roman senate itself, and after a series of brutal battles, established his own dynasty with the full backing of the Roman Empire. Herod was truly brutal. Historians describe him as a madman who killed members of his own family and many rabbis, the evil genius of the Jewish nation, and someone prepared to commit any crime necessary to gratify his boundless ambition.
Herod Antipas, the tetrarch, would have grown up inside this environment. Like his father, his mission was to protect and perpetuate his dynasty against any threat. The messianic ministry of Jesus would have placed him in the category of political dissident. Like his father, Herod Antipas would later want to kill Jesus (Luke 13:31), which explains why he “tried to see him” (Luke 9:9).
What I find interesting in this act is that the identity and ministry of Jesus were extremely public. His movement, which began in Galilee, had become influential. We see that the focus of this act’s protagonist, Herod, was protecting the status quo. He wanted freedom from any threat that could weaken his reign. The “little” Herod was just like the great Herod who came before him: he had a dynasty to protect. In this way, he was aware of his past and acted according to the governmental style his own father had instituted.
The crowd
The second act in this drama about Jesus’s identity takes place among the general population. The evangelist devotes a considerable amount of ink to recording the crowds that followed Jesus. In Luke 9, Jesus had already built a reputation among the people as a prophet, teacher, and miracle worker. The Kingdom had come to the destitute, and the crowds drew near to be healed (Luke 9:11) and even fed (Luke 9:13).
Luke 9 represents a seismic shift, where Jesus points the apostles toward the people as their shepherds. The apostles’ mission was centrifugal, but also centripetal. Jesus not only sent them to enter cities and homes with the gospel of the Kingdom (Luke 9:1-4), but also commissioned them to care for the crowds that followed the movement (Luke 9:13). The apostles were to be among the people, caring for them and feeding them like shepherds of the flock. This closeness to the crowds gave them a sharp insight into what the people thought about Jesus.
To the crowds, Jesus was John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets of long ago (Luke 9:19). In other words, Jesus was a prophet “in the old style.” The crowd’s perspective made sense. Before the emergence of John the Baptist, there had been almost no prophetic activity in Israel. Protestant scholars generally refer to this period as the “400 Years of Silence.” This “silence of God” is the main characteristic of the intertestamental period, running from Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, to the emergence of John the Baptist. Events during this period would have ripened a prophetic expectation in Israel. After a long period of silence, Jesus suddenly appears as the hope to change the people’s present reality. He performed miracles, healed, and promoted justice. The Year of Jubilee had come. Jesus was, therefore, a prophet in the old style, like the others who ran through the history of the Jewish people.
Where Herod Antipas looked to the past, the crowds looked only at their present reality. As a prophet of old, Jesus had power to bring freedom from present needs. The narratives in the Gospels involving the crowds are almost always filled with a present urgency. They usually follow this rhythm: Jesus comes here, Jesus goes there, Jesus does this and does that. Healings, deliverances, and other miracles happen in the present tense, usually as the result of an immediate petition. As a prophet, Jesus intervenes in the natural, but he is kept there in the crowd’s perspective. The crowd maintained an interaction with Jesus based on natural needs, almost never allowing a fruitful relationship to blossom. This explains the confusion about the person of Jesus, whether he was John the Baptist, Elijah, or some other, but it also shows a consensus about the benefits of following a prophet.
The disciples
Luke continues to strip away the layers of Jesus’s identity as he addresses the perspective of his closest followers. At this point, I see a significant shift in the narrative’s tone, represented by the use of the conjunction “but”: “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” (Luke 9:20). The conjunction here is clearly used to create a contrast between the earlier perspectives and a new one being revealed.
Peter then answers: “God’s Messiah” (Luke 9:20). From this moment, Jesus was not only a prophet fulfilling the prophetic expectation of the people, but he was God’s Messiah, the Christ, fulfilling the messianic hope of Israel. It is easy for us modern readers to interpret this passage “from above.” That is, we read it in light of the other books of the New Testament and from our own theology. But to understand the disciples’ perspective, we need to read it “from below,” gathering clues within Luke’s own narrative to understand what Peter meant.
A comprehensive reading of the Gospels shows us that the disciples understood Jesus’s messianic role through a strong political connotation. We know the disciples sought prestige in the new Kingdom (Mark 10:37), and even after the resurrection, they expected Christ to restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). This meant defeating the Roman Empire.
This position was to be expected. Peter and other followers of Jesus were Zealots, a party that sought to expel the foreign occupation from Israel. Jesus had also begun his ministry in Galilee, a key region for resistance against the Roman Empire. Many rebellions against the Empire had begun in Galilee, where Caesarea was also located, a city built by the Romans to establish Caesar’s reign over that region. By declaring the arrival of a new Kingdom in the region, it was as if the disciples were reconquering lost territory (Luke 9:4).
Jesus seemed to fit the Zealots’ ideological target. Just as Herod Antipas looked to the past to secure freedom from threats and maintain his dynasty, and just as the crowds looked to the present to obtain freedom from their immediate needs, some disciples looked to the future to secure ideological freedom, and the future was promising. The disciples’ messianic hope was about to be realized. They had received authority (Luke 9:1) and tasted success (Luke 9:6, 16), the kingdom was near (Luke 9:27), and they were even debating who was the greatest in the kingdom (Luke 9:46).
Jesus was the Christ, but not according to the disciples’ ideology. How could he be the Messiah if he himself predicted his own death? (Luke 9:22) They had tasted the divine power that could benefit the resistance, but they did not understand why their ideological leader had to surrender to the enemy (Luke 9:43-45). Jesus would not be merely a piece in the Zealots’ sociopolitical machine. Jesus would not be merely a comrade who identified with the disciples’ ideological struggle. The Son of Man was also the Son of God.
The Godhead
In the final act of this drama, we see that Luke does not leave us with Peter, but takes us deeper into the divine perspective on Jesus. Luke then removes the last layer and brings us to the core of Christ’s identity. At this point, an unexpected character enters the plot. The narrative that began with Herod asking “Who is this Jesus?” now ends with God himself answering: “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35)
God enters time and space, spanning all reality to affirm the identity of Jesus. Saint Augustine in the fifth century captures the complexity of this exchange. In his Enchiridion (ch. 35) he writes: “Proinde Christus Iesus, Dei Filius, est et Deus et homo: Deus ante omnia saecula, homo in nostro saeculo. Cum enim esset unicus Dei Filius non gratia sed natura, ut esset etiam plenus gratia, factus est et hominis filius” — “Wherefore Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is both God and man; God before all worlds; man in our world. For when He was the only Son of God, not by grace, but by nature, that He might be also full of grace, He became the Son of man.” The implication of this act is the sonship of Christ. Christ is the subject of God’s mission, not the object of earthly ideologies. It is important to note that the only other time we read of God’s voice coming from heaven is at Jesus’s baptism (Luke 3:22). There too God declares, “You are my Son, whom I love.” This declaration comes before Jesus begins his ministry, before he performs any miracle; meaning that his identity was not based on what he would do, but on his eternal position.
If Jesus is the subject, the object of God’s mission is God’s own glory. Peter himself defends his experience as “eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16-19). The act of Christ’s transfiguration corresponds to the glory of God, his “Majestic Glory” (2 Peter 1:17) revealed on the holy mountain. Like Moses, who climbed God’s holy mountain where he asked to see his glory and then mediated the covenant (Exodus 33), Jesus receives a greater testimony. Christ himself was transfigured in full divine glory (Luke 9:29), the incarnate God of whom Moses and Elijah are servants (Luke 9:31), and became the Mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6).
Jesus, the Son of God, the exact representation of divine glory, brings freedom from the temporal realities that seek to define our identity. He spans all existence, that Christ may be all, and in all (Colossians 3:11). Jesus becomes the mediator of a covenant based on grace, which molds everyone according to the new nature based on the image of the Creator. Sonship leads us to freedom. For “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).
