Anyone vaguely familiar with the life of Christ knows that he did not shy away from asking his listeners questions. These questions played a pedagogical function, causing his listeners to reflect on what he had been teaching them. For instance, when he wanted to get his listeners to reflect on God’s care for his sheep, the Lord asked them –

“What do you think?”1

And when he wanted to get his listeners to reflect on who it is that does or not does do the will of God, the Lord Christ asked them –

“What do you think?”2

When he wanted Peter to reflect on what taxing Christ and his disciples implied, Jesus asked him –

“What do you think, Simon?”3

Jesus, knowing the Pharisees’ position on the identity of the Messiah as being merely the son of David, got his listeners to think about what the Scriptures explicitly and implicitly teach about the Son of David by asking them –

“What do you say about the Christ? Whose son is he?”4

And upon receiving their answer, went on to ask –

“How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord…?5

“If David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”6

Unlike many people today, Christ encouraged men to think for themselves about what they were being told, as well as about the implications of their words. Although he is to be trusted immediately, without question, Christ nevertheless encouraged men to think about his teaching, to mull it over, and to think about whether or not they were willing to follow him. For instance, in the Gospel of Luke we read –

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.7

Note that thinking is directly tied to not merely decisions respecting the here and now, but to eternity as well. We find Christ doing something similar in John 6, where after he declared that only those who eat his flesh and drink his blood have life in them, asked the disgruntled disciples –

“Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”8

Christ was getting the disciples to reflect on the nature of their relationship to him. He was getting them to think about the most important information they would ever receive, and to do so without the aid of the experts of their time – viz. the Pharisees.

In the next part of this article series, we will delve into the Scriptures respecting this matter.

[Continued in Pt. 2]

1 Matt 18:12.

2 Matt 21:28.

3 Matt 17:25.

4 Matt 22:41.

5 Matt 22:43.

6 Matt 22:45.

7 Luke 14:25-33. (emphasis added)

8 John 6:61b-62.