EXPLAIN THIS: A Man Who Says These Things About Himself …
Who is Jesus? Ask most people these days and they are likely to say Jesus was a great moral teacher in ancient times, or perhaps one of a series of claimants to be the messiah who would defeat the Romans and restore Israel to its former glory.
Others of a more skeptical bent call Jesus a nutcase, a magician, an invention of conspiring disciples, or nothing more than the central character in an elaborate fable that developed over hundreds of years in an extended game of Telephone.
But what did Jesus say about Himself? In the Gospel of John, there are seven instances in which Jesus explicitly and without question claimed to be the Messiah and God by referring to Himself as “I AM,” the same way God the Father did with Moses at Exodus 3:14-15.
Consider just the first four of these seven instances:
In His conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, their discussion of a drink of water reaches its apogee in this exchange after Jesus tells her she will never thirst again if she drinks His water:
“The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ). When He comes, He will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.'”
The day before, Jesus had fed 5,000 from only a couple of fish and a few loaves of bread, but then, when they demand another sign from Him, He explains: “I am the Bread of Life; whoever comes shall not hunger and shall never thirst.”
Jesus tells the Scribes and Pharisees, who wanted to stone a young engaged woman (but not her male companion) caught in adultery, that “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness.”
Here, Jesus tells the Scribes and Pharisees questioning His authority for restoring a blind man’s sight that “I am the door of the sheep … I am the door, if anyone enters by me, he will be saved …”
Finally, in these two verses, Jesus further explains to the Scribes and Pharisees that “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep,” and “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me …”
Screenshot from Amazon.
Now, what kind of man would describe himself in such terms? Before you answer, consider this observation by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:
“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. 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.”
So, what will your answer be?
“Lazarus, come forth!” So Jesus himself performed a miraculous resurrection, yet suffered his own “mere mortal” end: The Son of God,, thereby the kind-and-gentle brother of us all. As a critical precursor to the Cross, Lazarus is a theological conundrum… and yet, no Buddha, pagan idol, Hindu avatar or Prophet Mohammed ever channeled such divinity.
For our part, great Truths transcend rational deduction, Aristotle’s syllogistic Proof. Christ’s truth is, “Let there be Light, for Love abides..” Why, and in what manner, this Creature of God manifested as a mortal spark in Palestine millennia ago is a great mystery. But manifest He did; and if Good and Evil, Life and Death, Light and Dark, bear on this world’s pilgrimage, surely it is Jesus Christ who shows The Way.
Are you suggesting Jesus is a mere “creature of God,” rather than, as He made clear on multiple occasions, I AM THAT I AM”?