Seeing Jesus for Who He Really Is

I am preaching on who Jesus is over the next several months in our church and this thought occurs to me today: Would all those who claim to be Christians now have liked Jesus if they had been alive 2000 years ago? I understand that the Holy Spirit works to reveal Christ and draw people to God and we can't really explain how all of that works, but it just seems like a lot of people did not like Jesus very much when he walked the earth. People were constantly wanting to kill him. That is pretty extreme. I don't often want to kill people.
I'm asking because I think that we tend to like the version of Jesus that we have in our heads more than the real Jesus. Does our Jesus basically support our lifestyle and interests or does He turn things upside down? Do I ever get angry, confused, or skeptical about things he says? Do I ever struggle with my faith and desire to obey? Am I at all aware of a conflict within me regarding who Jesus is and who I am, or does my Jesus pretty much reinforce my own views?
I have written about this before and Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost talk about this a great deal in ReJesus. But, today I was thinking about the Apostles after Jesus' resurrection and I was wondering if anyone had a problem with it. Did they ever get their feelings hurt by Jesus? Did any of them ever feel slighted because he spent more time with Peter, James, and John? Was it hard for them to worship Jesus as the King of the Universe if they misunderstood him? Of course, the Holy Spirit revealed Jesus to them, but from a human level there were likely issues. The gospels talk repeatedly about the disciples arguing over who was the greatest. I imagine that some of their debates were pretty strong.
My point is that after 3 years of hanging out with Jesus, there was likely some disillusionment. Maybe that is why all the disciples except John abandoned him. How do you come back from that relationally?
Repentance was necessary. At whatever point the disciples saw things the wrong way, they had to reorient. When the Holy Spirit showed them who
Christ really was, they had to lay their old views down and accept what God was saying. In all of those misunderstandings, THEY had been wrong, not Jesus. Seeing Him raised from the dead had a huge affect, no doubt, but they still had to lay down false beliefs to conform their thinking to who Jesus actually is. Once they did, everything changed.
What if we laid down our false beliefs about Jesus and embraced who He really is? What would happen to us? How would we see things differently? We find Jesus in the Gospels. Let us meet with Him there. Let's find out who He is.
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Comments

[Bob Cleveland]

Tradition seems to indicate that the Apostles all died in the faith, and all but one died FOR their faith. This tells me that the Holy Spirit revealed the truth about man's need, Jesus' sufficiency, and how He was truly the Son of God.

You know, the Spiritual stuff they'd couldn't have seen while still "natural man", without the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Today, we can see it when we meet Him in faith, even in the very beginning of our faith walk.

[Alan Cross]

Bob, I fully agree with you that the Holy Spirit revealed Christ to them. That is why I wanted to make sure that I pointed to the Holy Spirit several times in my post. My point was to look at the human response of the Apostles and think about what their emotions might have been since they knew Jesus in the flesh. I have no doubt that they fully integrated their prior thoughts about Jesus with the reality revealed to them after they witnessed the Resurrection. I am just looking at the human side of the equation a bit.