A message for Akron Alliance Fellowship Church, Akron OH, September 21, 2025.
For the “Live in Church” audio of this message, select here.
My lovely bride and I will be traveling soon from our friendly-neighborhood Akron-Canton Airport. We’ve learned over the years of flying to now consciously fly to only one destination (no more running through airports to catch a connecting flight), travel as lightly as possible (because we never check luggage), and ensure that we have our iPhones, iPads and driver’s licenses. One of the recent changes that the TSA required was for every traveler to carry a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or passport to fly domestically within the United States.1 REAL ID licenses have a star on the upper right-hand corner of the license with a photo headshot, and it has characteristics that minimize the possibility of counterfeiting or alteration.
A photo ID provides superficial recognition in matters like those described above, but in order for someone to really get to know you, it requires sharing a lot more than just a driver’s license. You will need to let a person know who you are and what you’re all about. That’s how you develop friendships and even deeper personal relationships. For example, if you are dating intentionally for the purpose of marriage (this applies to both men and women), you would purposely engage in lengthy conversations with the other person. Perhaps some of us can point to those two- and three-hour meetings and phone calls from your past. That is what had to take place before taking that next step.
In the same way, how do you get to know Jesus more intimately? You need to spend time with Him. He will provide you with godly wisdom and knowledge. You will get to know Him up close and personally.
Of course, Jesus never had a photo ID. He didn’t need one. He was introduced to the world with a glorious, heavenly fanfare.
Luke 2:8-15 NIV
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
This spectacle in the night sky was only witnessed by a group of shepherds, but each one of them could give an account of who the Messiah was, and they found him where the angels said he would be. This was merely the beginning of an ongoing effort by Jesus to identify Himself. He was already introduced to Mary, his mother, through Gabriel’s words about nine months before this:
Luke 1:26-38 ESV
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
Mary believed the words of Gabriel. She still had to learn about who this child would be, but the words would stay on her heart and mind for her entire life. May I point out the words uttered by Gabriel that reflect the nature of God for all of us to note: “Nothing will be impossible with God.” A virgin birth, just as foretold by Scripture, and Elizabeth now being pregnant in her old age with John the Baptist after never having children.
When we think of the ways of God, do we always take into account that all things are truly possible with Him? If we don’t believe this, I’m challenging you right now to consider that he wants us to stretch our faith and believe His words. My prayer is that you develop a hunger and thirst for the Word of God:
John 6:35 NIV
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Notice that these words are the REAL ID of Jesus. He is showing you who He truly is.
When Jesus was ready to begin His ministry, John the Baptist witnessed the presence of the Holy Spirit while hearing the voice of God during Jesus’s baptism:
Matthew 3:13-17 ESV
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
The fulfillment of righteousness that Jesus reveals here, according to J. Vernon McGee, is that He is “identifying Himself completely with sinful mankind.”2 This was also a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy:
Isaiah 53:12 NLT
I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier,
because he exposed himself to death.
He was counted among the rebels.
He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels.
John was permitted to baptize Jesus because it was a way for Jesus to be identified in that moment. It was not to set an example for us because Jesus was holy and lived without sin. He did it to be identified with you and me. Our salvation has everything to do with Jesus identifying with us. If you believe in Jesus, it is your acknowledgment that you identify with Him as Lord and Savior of your life.
2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT
For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
We are made righteous with God because Christ gave of Himself for us!
The Father and the Holy Spirit bear witness to who Jesus is just as He is beginning His ministry. He is the Son of God who lives in accord with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and He will reiterate this testimony before the Jewish leaders (and ultimately all of us).
We’ll spend some time in the book of John and look at additional identifiers as to the person and deity of Jesus Christ, but I want you to take some time as we go through these passages and reflect upon how Jesus Christ shares who He is to you and what it means for your life.
God reveals Himself to us throughout the Bible. I’m encouraging you, in this moment in time, to open a Bible and get more acquainted with who God is and especially focus on the words of Jesus in the New Testament. He is giving us everything that we need (right here) to help you identify who He is and what it means to you.
We don’t have time to go over all of the things that Jesus did in the form of healings and other miracles. These things were certainly important as a way of identifying who Jesus was, but I want you to hear Jesus’s words to Thomas, one of his disciples, who was with Jesus day and night for three years. Thomas deserves credit for coining the phrase “seeing is believing,” but Jesus wants us to go much further than this:
John 20:24-29 NIV
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
And this, my friends, is for all of us to contemplate. We have not seen the physical body of Jesus, and we have not personally seen all of his miraculous moves, but Jesus reminds us that you are blessed if you believe in spite of never seeing these things. You are blessed because you identify with Him in faith. You understand that the words you read on the pages of the Bible are filled with truth and nothing but the truth. When you know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Jesus lived on earth, died for all sinners in our place, and rose from the dead to conquer death for all of us, you are blessed if you believe in Him.
Believing in Jesus is even more possible when you understand who He is. Let’s move over to John chapter 5 and pick up where the Jewish leaders began to give Jesus a hard time because He had the audacity to heal a man on the Sabbath from his 38-year illness where he could not walk (John 5:8-10). Jesus answered the leaders about the healing with the comment that “my Father is always working, and so am I” (v. 17). That really riled the leaders up because He was declaring, truthfully, that He and God were equals. Jesus clarifies why that comment was made as He continues to identify Himself:
John 5:19-20 NLT
19 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing. In fact, the Father will show him how to do even greater works than healing this man. Then you will truly be astonished.
1. Jesus asserts His deity. He is in harmony with God the Father, and as they are One and the same, they act in accordance with one another. Jesus forgives sins just as God the Father forgives sins. That’s why Jesus made the statement to the man he healed not to sin anymore or he would be worse off (v. 14). You don’t say those words if you can’t back them up. This means that everything Jesus said or did was in complete agreement with His Father.
John 5:21 NLT
For just as the Father gives life to those he raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone he wants.
2. Jesus asserts His power over life and death. He reveals that He gives life as He pleases, and so does His Father. He gave this same ability very briefly to his apostles Peter and Paul, but their ability to do so came directly from Jesus. Both apostles readily gave credit for their ability to heal and bring someone back from the dead directly to Jesus. This is also an additional identifier as to His deity.
John 5:22-23 NLT
22 In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge, 23 so that everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him.
3. Jesus asserts His authority as judge over all men. God has given each one of us a life of consciousness, and what we do with it will bear out consequences. Jesus will judge all men because his Father gives him the authority to do it. When he first came to earth, He was preaching to the Israelites to just believe and trust in Him, and He then diverted His gospel message to the Gentiles to believe in Him, as well.
Romans 14:10-12 NIV
10 You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will acknowledge God.’”
12 So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
All of us will face judgment in the end, whether we know Jesus in faith or if we choose not to do so. Believers will stand before Jesus at the Bema seat. ‘Bema seat’ is derived from a Greek word that represents a raised platform that the Greek judges used to use to give out athletic awards or to make rulings.3 In Romans 14:10, ‘God’s judgment seat’ is the bema seat.
The lost will face judgment before Jesus at the Great White Throne.
Revelation 20:11 NLT
And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide.
Even before we get to the section where the books were opened to review the lives of the unbeliever, this is an ominous, frightening place to be. You don’t want to be there.
At some point in time, Jesus will indeed be acknowledged as Lord by every person who ever lived.
And this takes us to the gospel message in John 5:24:
John 5:24 NLT
“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.”
Jesus alone has the authority to make this statement. He has the deity, the power of life over death, and the credential of judge over all people to make this promise of eternal life for those who believe in Him.
Do you recognize the identity of Jesus?
Jesus is God. (John 5:19)
He raises the dead. (John 5:21)
He is our final judge. (John 5:22)
Your life is truly in His hands. If you have not accepted the identity of Christ in your life, please pray to Jesus right now and trust in Him.
Copyright © 2025 Melvin Gaines.
1 Real ID “your ‘ready for takeoff’ self” | transportation security administration. tsa.gov. (n.d.). https://www.tsa.gov/videos/real-id-your-ready-for-takeoff-self
2 McGee, J. V. (n.d.). Bible gateway passage: Matthew 3:14-15 Commentary. Bible Gateway – Through the Bible. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3&version=NLT
3 Houdmann, S Michael (Ed.). (2003, October 28). Home. GotQuestions.org. https://www.gotquestions.org/judgment-seat-Christ.html
Melvin Gaines 