According to C.S.
Lewis, the famous author and theologian, to say that Jesus Christ was simply a good
moral teacher but nothing else is patronizing nonsense.
Perhaps you or someone you know has said that Jesus Christ was a good man who
taught some good things, but that's it.
In other words, you reject his claims to be God.
You reject his claims to be the Savior of the world.
You would say that he was simply a good man who taught some good things.
But here's the problem with that.
Good moral teachers don't make the kinds of claims about themselves that Jesus made
about himself.
In his famous book, Mere Christianity, C.S.
Lewis wrote this, I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish
thing that people often say about him.
I am 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 that Jesus said would not
be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic, on the level with the man who says he's 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.
In other words, if Jesus is not God, then he either lied about it, or he's
stark raving mad.
But the one thing he's not is a good person who taught good moral things.
Why?
Well because, again, good people who teach good moral things don't make the kinds of
claims about themselves that Jesus made about himself.
Jesus claimed to be God.
Good people don't claim to be God.
I mean, if I told you that I was God, you probably wouldn't say that I was a
good person.
It's more likely that you would say I was a nutjob.
Not only that, but Jesus allowed himself to be worshipped as God.
Now that's just not something a good person would do.
And how about all those other claims he made about himself?
He said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through me.
He said, I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me will live even though he dies.
He said, I am the bread of life.
He who comes to me will not hunger and he who believes in me will not thirst.
And the list goes on and on and on, but these are not the kinds of things that
a good person teaching good moral things would say about himself.
If I said to you that the only way you could go to the Father is by believing in
me, or that by believing in me you would have eternal life, or if I said I am the
bread that came down from heaven, you most certainly wouldn't say that I was
a good person.
You would call me a liar or you would call me insane, but you wouldn't say that I was
a good person teaching some good things.
And the same thing is true for Jesus.
If Jesus is not God, then he's not simply a good man teaching some good things.
That's not an option.
C.S.
Lewis called that patronizing nonsense.
Now it seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend,
and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem,
I have to accept the view that he was and is God.
Lewis concluded that Jesus is who he claimed to be, God.
And that is exactly who Jesus Christ is, God in human flesh.
He is Emmanuel, God with us.
He is the great I Am.
He is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity.
He is, as Thomas declared, my Lord and my God.
But the question is, who do you say that he is?