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Over time, it’s easy for historical figures to be seen as caricatures. We’re not so concerned with the details of their lives so much as what we think they stood for. As a result, we can treat them as mascots for our cause, rather than hearing them on their own terms. That seems to have happened with Jesus in a number of different ways. Some people believe in Jesus, the moral teacher. Others esteem Jesus as a prophet. Some see Jesus as a champion of social justice. And still others see Him as an ally for conservative politics. What Jesus do you believe in? And more importantly, who do the Scriptures reveal Him to be?
Jesus’ Detractors Understood His claims to be God
The most basic aspect of Jesus’ identity that we need to come to terms with is His claim to be God. Early on in His ministry, the religious authorities began to plot His death because it says, “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). On another occasion when He was mocked for His words about Abraham, Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). The crowd who heard Him recognized this as a claim to be eternal and so they prepared to stone Him as a result. Jesus narrowly escaped. Another time, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” and the crowd again responded by picking up stones, saying, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33).
Jesus’ Followers Understood His claims to be God
Someone might object that these are just examples of confused crowds misunderstanding Jesus. But His followers understood His claims in the same way. Thomas famously said to Him, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Paul called Jesus “the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever” (Romans 9:5). The author of Hebrews wrote, “But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Hebrews 1:8). And John, calling Jesus “the Word” opened His gospel with the phrase, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The clear message of the New Testament is that Jesus claimed to be God and both His detractors and His followers understood that claim.
Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord
C. S. Lewis has helped many people to consider the implications of Jesus’ claim. He proposed the trilemma that Jesus must be understood as either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. As others have said, Jesus was either bad, mad, or God. Lewis put it like this:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. 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 the level with the 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.”
He’s saying that if Jesus knew that He wasn’t God but told people that He was, then He was fundamentally deceptive and should be rejected as evil and dangerous. This is hard to reconcile, however, with His great acts of love, kindness, and virtue. On the other hand, if Jesus told people that He was God because He genuinely – but falsely – believed that He was, we would have to say that He was mentally unstable and suffered delusions of grandeur. The wisdom of His teachings and the discernment of His character make this hard to believe, though. If Jesus wasn’t falsely deceiving people or delusional in His belief regarding His divinity, then we need to accept His claim to be God as His earliest followers did.
To just ignore His claim to divinity and make Him into a mere prophet or religious teacher is to turn Jesus into a caricature and deny who He claimed to be.
What Jesus do you believe in? If Jesus is God, He deserves our trust, worship, and obedience.
In awe of Him,
Paul
