Jesus Converted Skeptics

What Did Jesus Do?

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
John 1.46

I don't know about you, but I have always held this rather idyllic image of the Nazareth where Jesus grew up. It's pretty silly, isn't it, but I've always thought of Nazareth during Christ's childhood as kind of the Mayberry of Israel. Innocent, safe, full of likable, if simple and down to earth, folks. But, as I read again the comment of Nathaniel, I wonder what kind of run down, corrupt, no good place must Nazareth have been for someone to be skeptical of anything good ever coming from the town? The Nazareth Chamber of Commerce must have had a real P.R. problem! Let's face it, bad reps are hard to overcome, and skeptics are difficult to convert. But that's what Jesus did.

There is not a lot that we know from the New Testament about Nathaniel the Apostle beyond his skepticism. Mentioned a scant two times in John (though many biblical scholars identify Nathaniel with Bartholomew of the Synoptic gospels), Nathaniel's only other appearance in Scripture is as a member of the fishing party of apostles who, in John 21, encounter the risen Lord after a frustrating night on the Sea of Tiberias (Galilee). So, there is not much to say about Nathaniel beyond his low opinion of Nazareth and its citizens.

While for Thomas seeing was believing (see John 20.24-29), for Nathaniel it was being seen that led to his believing. I would suggest that Nathaniel experienced something akin to the thoughts and feelings of the woman who Jesus encountered at the well in Samaria (John 4). Both were moved by examples of the omniscience the Son shared with the Father. Consider the woman's exhortation to her neighbors, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4.29), and Nathaniel's declaration, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1.49). In both cases Jesus overcame considerable skepticism. In the case of the woman, the Lord overcame her less than exemplary history of five husbands and a sixth man who was not her husband, which, combined with the tension between Samaritans and Jews, caused the woman to have very low expectations of Israel's Messiah. For Nathaniel, who apparently held high Messianic hopes, it was his abysmally low opinion of Nazareth and Nazarenes in general which Jesus had to be surmounted. Both times, it was the Lord's insight into people who were complete strangers, who they were and what they did, that convinced the Samaritan woman and Nathaniel that they were in the presence of God's Anointed One.

You see, the truth is, the Son knows us better than we know ourselves, just as the Father does. God has a complete and perfect view of not only our actions, but of our every thought and feeling. And I believe that what converts most skeptics to this day is not God's omniscience, but that, knowing us so well, including the full record of our iniquities and our transgressions, the Father yet loved us so much that he sent the Son to die for us. It's not omniscience so much as God's caring and compassion, his grace and forgiveness, his mercy and love that overcome the doubters and the skeptics.

God invites us, as Michael Card wrote in his song God's Own Fool, to let go of the skepticism that is in all of us and “believe the unbelievable,” and follow Jesus. There is nothing more unbelievable than this: while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5.8) The love of the Father for us in and through the Son is the most powerful force in the cosmos. It is the power of the Lord to convert skeptical sinners like us into believing disciples like Nathaniel. That's what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4