Do you have any questions for Jesus? What would you want to ask Him? Maybe even more interesting, why would you want to ask Jesus the questions that you have?
When Jesus lived on the earth, lots of people asked Him questions for various reasons. Some of the questions that people asked Jesus include:
- What must I do to inherit eternal life? This was asked by a Jewish lawyer, trying to trap Jesus.
- Who is my neighbor? This was a follow up question from a Jewish lawyer, trying to justify himself.
- How can a man be born when he is old? Nicodemus asked this when he came to Jesus at night.
- Don’t You care that my sister has left me to do all the work? This was asked by Martha when Mary was sitting at Jesus’ feet to listen to Him.
- Are you the Christ or should we look for another? John the Baptist asked this when he was in prison.
- What do You say that we should do? This question came from Jewish leaders pertaining to the woman caught in adultery.
These are just a few examples of various questions that people asked Jesus when He walked on the earth. From these questions, we can see that people had a variety of questions for Him from very diverse motives. Sometimes, people were trying to trick or trap Jesus. Sometimes, people were wanting Him to do something for them. And sometimes, people had genuine curiosity and questions for Him, seeking to get answers for various dilemmas and struggles.
Thankfully, Jesus entertained a plethora of questions during His human existence. Maybe more importantly, He understood the motives behind various questions. To this end, He was willing to dialogue with people even when their questions had duplicitous motives, that included accusation, hostility, arrogance and even conniving traps to lure Him into deadly outcomes.
So what would we ask Jesus today? And maybe more importantly, why would we ask these questions of Him? What are the motives behind our questions? Truth be told, I don’t think that our motives for the questions that we have for Jesus are much different than the motives that He navigated when He lived on the planet. There are still lots of people who want to trick, trap or use Jesus to validate their opinions or outlook on life. There are also plenty of people who want to use Jesus as a weapon to manipulate and beat people into conformity with their world view. There are also lots of people who have sincere questions about why various things have happened and what is Jesus’ perspective on various challenges in our world.
With these possibilities, maybe it would be helpful to think not only about the questions that we would ask Jesus. Maybe it’s more important to think about our motives behind our questions. To be sure, the people who had duplicitous and devious motives for their questions to Jesus were never recorded to have deep fellowship nor intimacy with Him. And the people who were honest about their needs and curiosity had better conversations and fellowship with Jesus than those who had sketchy motives.
As I finish this blog, I don’t think it’s bad nor wrong to ask Jesus questions. At the same time, we would be wise to think about the motives for our questions so that our dialogue with Jesus can be authentic and constructive!