Gospel Journey

Is He a liar, a lunatic, or Lord?

Welcome to the GOSPEL JOURNEY. This week we'll be working through the sentence: Everyone who trusts in Jesus alone will have eternal life. These posts are to help you engage with the central message of the Bible. Comment. Question. Agree. Disagree. Either way, let us know what you think.

Is He a liar, a lunatic, or Lord?

This statement was first posed by CS Lewis. As a counter to people who want to acknowledge Jesus as just a good person, a prophet, or good teacher, Lewis stated Jesus claimed to be so much more. Look at our posts about Jesus being fully divine and fully human. Just looking at those two things together (and those posts are hardly exhaustive), establishes that Jesus claimed to be God.

What do we do with such a claim? Well Lewis offers that we have three options:

Liar. Jesus was aware that He was not God, yet He told He was to gain a following. He deceived people in an attempt to get them to follow Him. There are some people who will claim this to be the case. Yet some of those people say that Jesus said He was God (even though He knew better), and yet was a good moral teacher. How can you be a pathological liar and yet be a moral teacher? If you deny He is God, you must deny He was a good teacher as well. You can not hold to both. (Incidently, He could not be just a prophet either, for how could He be speaking words from the Lord if He was a blasphemer?)
Lunatic. Maybe Jesus was not God, but He wasn't intentionally deceiving others. Perhaps Jesus truly thought He was divine? We have a name for people like that; crazy. If you deny that Jesus is God, yet you do not believe Him to be a liar, then He must have been mistaken about His identity. A person who thinks they are God but isn't is considered crazy. Could Jesus be a good teacher, prophet or moral leader if He was insane? What does that say about His followers? How could you consider it noble to follow His teachings if He was a madman?
[Legend. Though this wasn't an arguement used by Lewis, some have added this option to the list. They claim that Jesus never said He was God and that it was just legend that has grown over time. However, there are a couple of things to consider (and I'm being quite brief here). The New Testament was written in a time when eye witnesses could refute the claims it made if they were not true. Therefore, if the New Testament claimed that Jesus was divine, even though He never did, witness could have disputed that right away. We find no such disputes. Some argue then that these things were added over time. However, there is a process called the bibliographic standard (ask me about it if you are not familiar with this) that is a scientific process that validates that our Bible is the same as the Bibles of the first century. The Bible is indisputably the most accurate ancient document of all time...by far. The legend claim has no leg to stand on, and is therefore left out of many people's arguements.]
Lord. If He wasn't lying, crazy or it wasn't made up, then that only leaves one option: Jesus is God and therefore is Lord. He is capable of paying the man's penalty to God because He is God. He is capable for paying it for humanity because He is humanity. He is capable of giving us eternal life because He is the Resurrection and the Life. And therefore, we should surrender our lives to Him because He deserves it!

posted by danny2 @ 8:41 PM