As the divine Son of God, Jesus knows everything. He knows where the fish are (Luke 5:4–11). He knows every time one of his people is persecuted (Acts 9:4–5). He even knows what people are thinking before they speak (Matt. 9:4). But if this is the case, isn’t it curious that Jesus still asks questions? Why does he ask if he knows all the answers?
We’re so accustomed to using questions to elicit information that we think Jesus must be doing the same—or at least going through the motions for our sake. But everything Jesus does, everything God does, is done with poetic intentionality.
My favorites are when Jesus asks the obvious questions. He asks two blind men, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Matt. 20:32). He asks a lame man, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). He asks Philip where they’re going to buy bread right before he multiplies the loaves and feeds five thousand (John 6:5). He asks a weeping Mary at his own tomb, “Whom are you seeking?” (John 20:15). Again, why does he do this?
The short answer: Jesus’s questions aren’t for him; they’re for us. Do you ever notice the effect these questions have on us? While Jesus’s questions do many things in specific contexts, one of the broader trends we find in his questions—and in many of God’s—is that they help us to do two things: notice and confess.
Notice
First, God’s questions help us notice where we are and how God’s love meets us. God’s question to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:9—“Where are you?”—revealed just how far they had gone, not in distance but in depravity. Adam and Eve thought they could hide from the ever-present God. Could they be any further from the truth? God’s question was meant for them, not for him. His question drew their gaze to their fallen situation. But it also drew their gaze to grace and love. God didn’t destroy them for rebelling. In fact, he would eventually give himself for them to make things right. And that is the most beautiful thing no human could imagine.
The same could be said of Jesus’s questions to the blind man, to the lame man, to Philip, to Mary. Each question highlighted the need for God, the need for Christ, the need for redemption, for grace and love. These needs allow the hearers to notice where they are in relation to God and how God’s love meets them. It’s only when we’ve noticed where we are that we can see where we need to go. And we always need to go with God, into the beauty of communion.
It’s only when we’ve noticed where we are that we can see where we need to go.
The healing of a man possessed by demons led that man to beg for one thing: that he might be with Jesus (Luke 8:39). That’s what we always want and need—to be with God. Geerhardus Vos said that the image of God in us is our being “disposed for communion” with him in every area of life. We’re always drawn to the divine with. Elsewhere he wrote,
To be a Christian is to live one’s life, not merely in obedience to God, nor merely in dependence on God, not even merely for the sake of God; it is to stand in conscious, reciprocal fellowship with God, to be identified with him in thought and purpose and work, to receive from him and give back to him in the ceaseless interplay of spiritual forces.
To be in Christ is to realize with full hope that we always want to be with God. Jesus’s questions helped people notice where they were and what they needed most: the presence of God, the most beautiful and kingly shepherd.
And here’s the jewel in all this: that very thing—noticing our desire and need for God’s presence—draws up the light of Christ inside us (Eph. 5:8). Jesus knew that only this would satisfy us. Our covenantal, communion-seeking, always-reacting self needed God’s light. And Jesus’s ministry is the message that while all of us need to come to God, God has actually come to us. Jesus reveals our need and offers the gift at the same time. This is the beauty of the gospel, the beauty of Christ. He shows us where we are while assuring us that he is here (Matt. 28:20).
Confess
Second, God’s questions help us confess. Confession seems simple and short. We pass over its glory in search of the “real” work of repentance. But confession is real work.
As the poet David Whyte once wrote,
Confession is a stripping away of protection, the telling of a truth which might once have seemed like a humiliation, become suddenly a gateway, an entrance to solid ground; even a first step home. To confess is to free oneself, not only by admitting a sin or an omission but to profess a deeper allegiance, a greater dedication to something beyond the mere threat of immediate punishment or the desolation of being shunned. To confess is to declare oneself ready for a more courageous road, one in which a previously defended identity might not only be shorn away, but be seen to be irrelevant, a distraction, a working delusion that kept us busy over the years and held us unaccountable to the real question.
“The real question.” What is that? In most cases, I’d say it’s fairly straight forward with Jesus: Do you believe in me?How will blind men receive their sight? How will a lame man walk? How will thousands find food in the wilderness? How will Mary’s broken heart be made whole again? Belief in Jesus. Jesus isn’t just asking us about our belief in him with a direct question, as he did with Peter (Matt. 16:15). He’s always asking, always looking for our confession. Jesus’s whole purpose for coming is summarized in what he calls “the work of God.” What is this work? “That you believe in him whom [the Father] has sent” (John 6:29). Belief in Jesus is the deepest confession waiting for us behind his questions. And our confession of belief in every circumstance is that profession of deeper allegiance Whyte mentions, our greater dedication to the one beyond us. It’s also the more courageous road. In a thousand ways, we need to keep confessing the truth about who Jesus is.
Belief in Jesus is the deepest confession waiting for us behind his questions.
While God asks questions for many reasons, one of the broader patterns we see displayed in Jesus’s questions is the dual need of noticing and confessing. Jesus always asks questions for our sake. And he’s always bringing us to confess his Lordship and notice our need.
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