Is Jesus REALLY the One We Are Waiting For?

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3)

That was John the Baptist’s question to Jesus, and it’s a good question for us too. Is Jesus really the one we are waiting for?

At this time of year, I think a lot more of us are waiting for Santa. Others are waiting for office parties, family gatherings, and holiday breaks. And then there’s the coming of the post-Christmas credit card bill that nobody is waiting for.

In secular Australia, Jesus is rarely the focus of our waiting, but even in first‑century Judea, it’s not obvious that Jesus was the one everybody was waiting for. Yes, the people longed for a saviour—someone who would liberate them from Rome—but even John the Baptist, the fiery prophet who prepared the way, wasn’t entirely sure Jesus was that saviour.

This should unsettle us because John’s opinion matters. “Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John”—and that’s not my line. That’s Jesus (Matthew 11:11). Yes, even John doubted. And who can blame him?  If we were living in Gaza today, we’d be praying and waiting for a saviour too, yet if someone arrived who went about healing and speaking truth yet did NOTHING to stop the violence, we too would ask, “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for, or do we wait for someone else?”

We come to God with our needs. We want safety, we want health, we want a better living environment for our children, we want money, we want control, we want to meet that lovely girl who lives down the road, we want the pain to stop. We want so many things, and we bring all these things to God, and God responds with … Jesus. Is Jesus really the one we were waiting for, or should we keep waiting?

When John asked this question, Jesus didn’t respond directly:

“Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”” (Matthew 11:4-6)

Ok. Jesus is doing good things, but is He doing the things we really need Him to do?

I’m reminded of my one an only trip to Manila (in the Philippines) back in the 1980s. I was looking at the possibility of working in the slum areas there and was engaging with missionary couples living in those areas, and I was exposed to the most confronting scenes of poverty and desperation I had ever seen up to that point.

The missionaries I was meeting there were wonderful people, yet I found it hard to understand why some of them were so excited about the healings that were taking place at their mission gatherings. Of course, healings are great, but it didn’t make sense to me that the Spirit of God would be moving through those slum areas and healing illnesses while not doing anything about the grinding poverty, the starvation, the rampant child prostitution and the violence that was going on all around us!

Is that just the way God works in our world – healing individual illnesses but leaving the rest alone because it’s too political and therefore not a spiritual issue? Is that what Jesus was telling John? I don’t think so.

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with a skin disease are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 11:4-5)

Jesus is quoting Scripture. Indeed, He’s weaving together the prophet Isaiah’s visions of the coming kingdom:

• “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” (Isaiah 35:5–6)
• “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me… he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the broken-hearted…” (Isaiah 61:1)
• “Your dead shall live; their corpses shall rise.” (Isaiah 26:19)

Jesus wasn’t performing random miracles. He was performing signs of the greater Kingdom coming – that new world where ‘the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Isaiah 11:9). It’s a world without illness and disability, and it’s also a world without violence and oppression. It’s a world without the Roman Occupation of Israel and without the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. It’s a world without any other form of despotism or domination. It’s a world where death itself has been defeated, and It’s coming! It’s just that we still have to wait a bit.

We often treat prayer like a divine vending machine: insert request, push the button and out comes the solution. Yes, we want what we want, and we want it now, but both the Scriptures and experience teach us that God doesn’t always work like that. We get some good things now, but there are other things we must wait for, and that wait can be painful.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”” (Matthew 11:2-3)

John’s question is our question: “Are you the one, or should we wait for another?”

Jesus is the one we were waiting for, and yet, paradoxically, we are still waiting. His first coming showed us signs of things to come, and His return will bring it all to its completion, but … we’re still waiting for that.

I do believe that that day will come when every injustice will be undone, every wound healed, and every tear wiped away—when God’s Kingdom comes—and I’m sure it will have been worth the wait.