In Lesson 5, we observed the tendency among liberal theologians to de-supernaturalize Jesus into a Jewish Confucius. They sought to keep a Jesus-as-teacher figure without having to commit to a Jesus as God-Man-Savior figure. This is serious heresy. Christianity rises or falls with Jesus. Christianity is not a philosophy, but a Person. There can be no Christianity without Christ. “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.... If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17).
Whatever he was, Jesus was definitelyNOT just a good moral teacher !#?@!!! People seem to want to be nice to Jesus, but don't want to have to give their lives to Jesus. So they say silly things like this...
“I think Jesus was a great guy and all, but I wouldn't say he was the Son of God or anything like that.”
Jesus went out of his way to make sure that NO ONE would be able to get away with this kind of statement. Jesus claimed to be a lot more than a good guy or a moral teacher. He claimed to be the Son of God. We have a record of this claim in numerous different biblical books, each written by a different author. Steve Kumar observes how Jesus claimed:
The Jewish leaders who lobbied to kill Jesus also acknowledge that he claimed to be the Son of God. That's why they wanted him dead. Religious fanatics don't kill you for telling people to love each other. They kill you for major heresy, like claiming to be the Son of God, making yourself an equal to God. And remember, in Jewish custom, the firstborn son is equal to his father and receives everything that belongs to the father. The claim to be God’s only begotten son was a claim to be equal to God himself. The Jewish Babylonian Talmud even confirms that Jesus performed miracles, though it implies that he did them through the power of Satan.... Jesus was a lying “sorcerer” who sought to lead the people into idolatry. 2. There are only three options
C.S. Lewis set forth for his readers the simple trilemma by which Jesus confronts us all. You see, once Jesus claimed to be God’s Son, only three options remained: Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.
When
we look at the record of Jesus’ life, do we see the life of a liar? Do we see
a lunatic?
A
LIAR? Was deception at the core of a man condemned for showing mercy
to those despised by the ruling religious authorities? And if Jesus was lying,
could he have hidden it from his closest companions, or were they in on it too?
It has been said that three men can keep a secret so long as two of them are
dead. Yet Jesus’ disciples never admitted he was lying, if he was. Indeed,
early tradition holds that ten of the Eleven died martyrs deaths. Would all
these men die for a lie? A
LUNATIC? If Jesus was crazy, no one noticed it at the time, not even
the men he traveled with for three years. His enemies didn’t
claim he was crazy, but wicked and demonic. Do crazy people claim to be God?
Sometimes. But only one man could back up his claim with miracles, fulfilled
prophecy, and a resurrection from the dead. And we should remember that insanity
in a leader is usually characterized by violence. But Jesus—if crazy—was one
of the few who could hold together lunacy and power in a perfect bond of peace.
What would the world be like if Jesus had never been born?
No single figure in human history has had a greater positive impact upon world
civilization than Jesus of Nazareth. Consider...
Jesus'
impact on the status and dignity of women. An old rabbinic saying
stated, “It is better to teach your dog than a woman.” Jesus rejected
this attitude, affirming instead the Old Testament principle that man and
woman were equally created in God’s image. Indeed, one of the most common
criticisms of Jesus was that he spent time teaching women. Though not
pastors (presbyters, or elders), women were active leaders in the early
church, and it was only after the Roman emperor Constantine converted to
Christianity that he repealed ancient Roman laws forbidding women from
choosing to remain single. It could be said that modern feminism (despite
its often anti-Christian rhetoric) could only have arisen in a culture
heavily influenced by the followers of Jesus Christ. Feminism could not have
arisen in Hindu India, where widows were encouraged to throw themselves upon
their husbands’ funeral pyres so as to burn to death. Nor could it have
arisen in the Moslem world, where women have traditionally been in practice
the property first of their fathers and then of their husbands. The dignity
of women was championed first by Jesus and his people. Jesus'
impact on the value of human life. Again, it was the followers of
Jesus who insisted that every human life be protected equally by law. Again
one finds that Jesus’ followers were the ones who stepped in to love those
who were not wanted. Pagan Rome had viewed babies (inside the womb or
outside) as the property of their parents, to be disposed of at will. Both
abortion and infant exposure were common practices in ancient Rome. Yet
Christians risked arrest to rescue exposed infants, and some (like Basil)
even opened homes for unwed mothers. It was largely through pressure from
Christians that Rome outlawed both abortion and infanticide in the third
century—even though Christianity was still not a legal religion. It has
only been with the return of pagan values in the late modern era that
Western society has again begun to discard the lives of the infants
(especially through abortion) it deems unwanted.
Jesus'
impact on the poor and oppressed. This struck me when I first moved
to St. Louis. I was coming from a very new city (most of the Washington,
D.C. area had been built since World War II), and much of St. Louis was
older. As I drove to my first apartment, I passed Deaconess Hospital, then
Missouri Baptist Hospital, then St. John’s Mercy Hospital, then the
Protestant Children’s Home. What was the deal here? Jesus had taught us to
love our neighbor as ourselves, and his people had evidently done that a
century ago when these institutions were founded. Then I thought of World
Vision, and the Salvation Army, and the thousands of charitable Christian
ministries. Why don’t these people just spend more time caring about
themselves? How could one man’s life have made so big a difference? Jesus'
impact on the emergence of civil liberties. Why is it that democracy
and civil liberties seem to flow from those nations most affected by
biblical Christianity to those least so? This is the pattern of history.
Sure, there have been Inquisitions and Crusades (terrible sins which God
will judge, really), but these events are so noticeable precisely because
they seem to go so strongly against the thrust of Jesus’ ministry. Look at
a map. Those nations most affected by Bible-based, Reformation Christianity
during the Protestant Reformation are the same nations (England, Scotland,
the Scandinavian states, Switzerland, Holland) in which civil liberty became
cherished most. The American Revolution (whatever you think of it) was even
called the “Presbyterian Rebellion” by many in England, because it was
seen as an outgrowth of the respect for civil liberty cultivated among the
Reformed churches here. Jesus'
impact on the rise of science. Again, look at the scientific
revolution. It only arose as Christians began questioning the influence of
Greek philosophy in medieval learning (Aristotle had caused the most trouble
here) and gained a renewed vision for the biblical truth that God created
the world good and gave man dominion over it. The world was therefore
worthy of study, just like God had invited Adam to participate in creation
by naming the animals. Modern science did not emerge in India, but in those
areas most affected by the teachings of Jesus. Jesus'
impact on the arts and music. Most of the art and music produced in
Europe for over 1,000 years was inspired on some level by Jesus. And even
the rise of “secular” art in Europe in the sixteenth century was
preceded by a Protestant Reformation that stressed the biblical principle of
bringing all of under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Any topic for art could
honor God, these biblical Christians insisted, so the still life and the
landscape flowed out of biblically-saturated Reformation Holland. Jesus'
impact on education. Remember that those Christians who sought most
strongly to be faithful to Jesus were the ones who most valued
education—they needed education in order to read the Bible. Most of the
colleges and universities in Europe and North America were founded by
Christian churches. Schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton were founded to
train pastors in the Bible and theology—as well as other subjects, since
truth was what mattered most to the Christians. One of Protestant reformer
Martin Luther’s biggest social programs was the establishment of public
schools throughout Germany, and his Luther Bible is credited with
first unifying the German language. And still today, the best schools in
much of the third world are the ones established and staffed free of charge
by Christian missionaries. If
you judge a tree by the fruit it bears, then the only possible conclusion one
can come to is that Jesus was not a liar and was not a lunatic, but was telling
the truth. Jesus is in fact the Son of God who continues to impact the world to
this day.
3. What if Jesus had never been born?