Who Is This
Jesus Christ Anyway?
by Josh McDowell
Jesus considered who men believed Him to be of
fundamental importance. C.S. Lewis, who was a professor at Cambridge University and once
an agnostic, wrote: "I am trying here to prevent anyone from 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 one thing that 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 a man who said he was 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."1
C.S. Lewis added that: "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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a
great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."2
In the words of Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great
historian of Christianity at Yale University: "It is not His teachings which make
Jesus so remarkable, although these would be enough to give Him distinction. It is a
combination of the teachings with the man Himself. The two cannot be separated ...3
Is Jesus Christ God?
Jesus claimed to be God. He did not leave any other
options. His claim to be God must either be true or false, and is something that should be
given serious consideration. Jesus' question to His disciples, "But who do you say
that I am?" (Mark 8:29) is also being asked of us today.
Jesus' claim to be God must either be true or false.
If Jesus' claims are true, then He is the Lord and we must either accept or reject His
lordship. First, let us suppose that His claim to be God was false. If it was false, then
we have two and only two alternatives. He either knew it was false or He did not know it
was false. We will consider each one separately and examine the evidence.
Was He a Liar?
If, when Jesus made His claims, He knew that He was
not God, then He was lying. But, if He was a liar, then He was also a hypocrite because He
told others to be honest, whatever the cost, while He Himself taught and lived a colossal
lie. And, more than that, He was a demon, because He told others to trust Him for their
eternal destiny. If He could not back up His claims, and knew it, then He was unspeakably
evil.
Philip Schaff, the Christian historian, said:
"This testimony, if not true, must be downright blasphemy or madness. The former
hypothesis cannot stand a moment before the moral purity and dignity of Jesus, revealed in
His every word and work, and acknowledged by universal consent. Self-deception in a matter
so momentous, and with an intellect in all respects so clear and so sound, is equally out
of the question.
"How could He be an enthusiast or a madman who
never lost the even balance of His mind, who sailed serenely over all the troubles and
persecutions, as the sun above the clouds, who always returned the wisest answer to
tempting questions, who calmly and deliberately predicted His death on the cross, His
resurrection on the third day, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the founding of His
church, the destruction of Jerusalem - predictions which have been literally fulfilled?
"A character so original, so complete, so
uniformly consistent, so perfect, so human, and yet so high above all human greatness, can
neither be a fraud nor a fiction. The poet, as has been well said, would in this case be
greater than the hero. It would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus."4
In another book by Schaff, he probes further:
"How, in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an imposter - that is
a deceitful, selfish, depraved man - have invented, and consistently maintained from the
beginning to the end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most
perfect air of truth and reality? How could He have conceived and successfully carried out
a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed His own
life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of His people?"5
Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as He
taught, and died as He died could not have been a liar. What other alternatives are there?
Was He a Lunatic?
If it is inconceivable for Jesus to be a liar, then
could not He actually have thought Himself to be God, but been mistaken? After all, it is
possible to be both sincere and wrong.
But we must remember that for someone to think that
He is God, especially in a culture that is fiercely monotheistic, and then to tell others
that their eternal destiny depends on believing in Him, is no slight flight of fantasy ...
surely they are the thoughts of a lunatic in the fullest sense. Was Jesus Christ such a
person?
The French leader Napoleon Bonaparte once said this:
"I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man. Superficial minds see a
resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, and the gods of other religions.
That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and other religions the
distance of infinity ...
"Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit
overawes me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world, there
is no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by Himself. His ideas and
sentiments, the truth which He announces, His manner of convincing, are not explained
either by human organization or by the nature of things ...
"His religion is a revelation from an
intelligence which certainly is not that of man ... one can find absolutely nowhere, but
in Him alone, the imitation of the example of His life ... I search in vain in history to
find the similar to Jesus Christ, or anything which can approach the gospel. Neither
history, nor humanity, nor the ages, nor nature, offer me anything with which I am able to
compare it or to explain it. Here everything is extraordinary."6
Historian Schaff said this: "Is such an
intellect - clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating as a
sword, thoroughly healthy and vigorous, always ready and always self-possessed - liable to
a radical and most serious delusion concerning His own character and mission? Preposterous
imagination!"7
Whom you decide Jesus Christ is must not be an idle,
intellectual exercise. You cannot put Him on the shelf as a great moral teacher. That is
not a valid option. He is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. You must make a choice.
"But," as the Apostle John wrote, "these have been written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," and more important, "that
believing, you might have life in His name" (John 20:31).
The evidence is clearly in favor of Jesus as Lord.
However, some people reject the clear evidence because of moral implications involved.
There needs to be a moral honesty in the above consideration of Jesus as either liar,
lunatic, or Lord and God.
1 C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
(New York: MacMillan and
Company. 1952)., pp. 40-41.
2 Ibid.
3 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity,
(York: Harper & Row, 1953), p.
44.
4 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 8 Vols.
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962), p. 109.
5 Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ,
(New York: American Tract Society, 1913), pp.
94-95.
6 Vernon C. Grounds, The Reason for Our Hope,
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1954), p. 37.
7 Schaff, The Person of Christ, pp. 97-98.
Taken from Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh
McDowell,
© 1972 by Campus Crusade for Christ, San Bernardino, CA
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