So Jesus Claimed to Be God. What’s the Problem?
As mentioned in our last post, if Jesus claimed to be God, we have a sticky situation on our hands. We could call it a dilemma. Or perhaps more accurately, a “trilemma.”
The problem is that a lot of people who deny that Jesus was God will say that he was still a remarkable person of history. They may even say that he was a great moral teacher, and a good man.
But you can’t say those things if you don’t believe Jesus was God. Jesus himself made sure of that.
In the words of British scholar C.S. Lewis, here’s why that doesn’t work:
“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 a 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. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[1]
Jesus claimed to be God. If that isn’t true, then he was either insane or a liar. Either way, he wasn’t a good man, and certainly not a great moral teacher.
And thus we have C. S. Lewis’s famous “trilemma.” Liar, lunatic, or Lord. Which was he? Pick one.
Everyone should make a decision as to what to believe about Jesus. Why? Because the stakes are so high. If he was right, then everything he said and taught is true, because God can not lie. It means, for one thing, that life after death is real, and he tells us the way. Wouldn’t everyone want to know that?
The great thing is that Jesus didn’t expect us to believe with a blind faith. He gave us proof. He said that on the third day after his death and burial, he would be resurrected back to life. And the evidence that this actually happened is so powerful, even to this day, as to be, quite honestly, conclusive.
The Resurrection claim is at the heart of Christianity. We actually believe it happened-—it’s why we believe the entire Christian worldview. In next week’s post, we’ll look at how Jesus told of his coming resurrection. Then we’ll start looking at the evidence that it really happened.
[1]C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, NY: McMillan, 1952), 55-56.
This is so good Greg! I like C.S. Lewis’ writings too. can’t wait for the next post.
and I love hearing your voice!
Mom