“Are you the one who is to come?”

Read Luke 7:18-23

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John the Baptist had recognised Jesus as the promised Messiah (Jn.1:32-34) but things weren’t unfolding as he’d expected. John had thought the Messiah would come with a message of judgement (Lk.3:16-17). Now that he was in prison the news he received about Jesus’s popularity made him wonder if he might have misunderstood (18-19; Mt.11:2-3).

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So he sent disciples to ask Jesus directly whether or not he was the Messiah (20). Jesus replied to John’s doubts by pointing to the many miracles he was doing as evidence that his work was the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecies (21-22; Mt.11:4-5; Is.35:5-6; 61:1). NB The second of these quotations is from the same passage that Jesus had used to announce his mission (Lk.4:18).

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This important incident therefore shows that Jesus understood the meaning of Messiahship in terms of the servant of the Lord spoken about by Isaiah, and that the miracles which he did were intended to point both to the fact that he is indeed the Messiah and also to the kind of Messiah he is. Those looking for a different kind of Messiah will be disappointed but there is blessing for any who will accept him as the servant who has come to save (23; Mk.10:45).