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“I’m sure
Jesus existed, that he was a great man and a force for good. But Jesus never
said he was God.”
This is a common way for people to talk about Jesus today and it is
true that Jesus did not go around directly saying the words "I am
God". But if we look at his teachings and the things he did say about
himself, it is clear that he was aware of being a man whose identity was God.
One of his most famous quotes is in John 14:6: "I am the way and the truth
and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew
me, you would know my Father as well.”
But we also read in Mark 14:
61 that Jesus was asked whether he was the Christ, to which he replied "I
am". When Thomas, one of his disciples, called Jesus "my lord and my
God" (John 20: 28), Jesus didn't say to him not to use the word God. On the contrary, he
replied: "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those
who have not seen and yet have believed."
Statements such as these
cannot easily be ignored. Lots of people claim to be someone that they are not.
There are many people, some in psychiatric hospitals, who say they are Napoleon
or the Pope. We know they are not but how can we test Jesus’ claims? There are
three logical possibilities.
1) The claims were untrue -
Jesus knew this and was an impostor (an evil one too).
2) The claims were untrue and
Jesus was deluded; indeed, he was mad.
3) The claims were true.
C. S. Lewis summed up the
situation in this way: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things
Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -
on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the
Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son
of God; or else a madman or something worse… But let us not come up with any
patronising nonsense about him being a great human teacher. He has not left
that open to us. He did not intend to.”
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