Messiah

Joy Behar was almost almost right. Sort of.

Joy Behar: “Jesus himself did not run around saying, ‘I’m the Messiah, I’m the Messiah.’”

Alyssa Farah Griffin: “Ehhhhh.”

Sara Haines: “That’s exactly what Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah!’”

Joy Behar: “No, he did not! Jesus was more modest than that. Listen I knew Jesus,… pic.twitter.com/FNTIiczhRC

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) April 14, 2026

Texas senator Ted Cruz responded to Joy Behar's remarks with "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Entirely correct; also, off-point.  Behar argued "Jesus himself did not run around saying 'I'm the Messiah, I'm the Messiah.'"

That's accurate. Jesus did not run or run around; he walked. He did claim to be the Messiah, though less often his than equality with God. In John, chapter 4 while on his way from Judea to Galilee, Jesus stopped at a pool in Samaria and struck up a conversation with a woman who came by for water. When he mentioned that she had had five "husbands," the woman identified him as a prophet and Jew and (as recounted in verses 21-26).

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

 In Mark 14: 61b-62a, Jesus was asked "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One" and responded "I am..."

By comparison, Jesus claimed divinity on several occasions Perhaps most famously was the reference Senator Cruz made, from John 14:6. Also

Mark 16:42: after claiming to be the Messiah, Jesus stated "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

John 5:22: "Moreover, the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son."

John 11:25- 26: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live and whomever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Mark 2:28: "So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

And simultaneously asserting divinity and pre-existence, the latter a triumph of eloquence and decisiveness over proper grammar:

John 17:5: "And now, Father glorify me in your ownpresence with the glory that I had with you before the word existed."

John 8:58: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."

There also were instances in which other individual(s) contended, or that Jesus implied, that Christ was divine. Those contrasted, at least in degree, with those occasions in which he himself was definitive.

Behar can't believe that Jesus called himself the Messiah because he "was more modest than that." Well, for the rest of us, even Donald Trump, it would be extraordinarily immodest and boastful. Of course, the rest of us are only mortal, did not exist at the creation, do not miraculously heal the sick, and will not be executed and raised from the dead.

Pretty impressive resume. Or as Walt Whitman is thought to have said, "if you done it, it ain't bragging."

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