May 16

May 16

The people said, "Now we know you are possessed by a demon. Even Abraham and the prophets died, but you say, 'Anyone who obeys my teaching will never die!' Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?" Jesus answered, "If I want glory for myself, it doesn't count. But it is my Father who will glorify me. You say, 'He is our God,' but you don't even know him. I know him. If I said otherwise, I would be as great a liar as you! But I do know him and obey him. Your father Abraham rejoiced as he looked forward to my coming. He saw it and was glad." The people said, "You aren't even fifty years old. How can you say you have seen Abraham? " Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I AM! " At that point they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden from them and left the Temple. (John 8:52-59 NLT)

A lot of people trying to argue against the divinity of Christ will use the argument that Jesus never claimed to be God. Actually, there are even books written about how Jesus never made that claim. The Jews that Jesus was talking to evidently understood exactly what he was claiming, and what he was saying was the truth, for they picked up stones to kill him when they heard him describe himself as "I AM." This is the name that God himself gave to Moses when Moses asked Him His name at the burning bush. (Ex 3:14) It is a name that the Israelite people knew, and knew well. And this passage in John 8 is not the only example in the Bible that the people, the teachers and religious elite of Israel, tried to kill Jesus for this exact "blasphemy." In John 10, Jesus says the words, "I and the Father are one." These people were the most learned people in all of Israel. They studied God, and Jewish history, and they knew what Jesus' claim that "I AM" meant. C.S. Lewis says this in his book Mere Christianity: "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. ... 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." So the conclusion that Lewis came up with, if we believe the Bible as truth, should be the same conclusion that we come up with. Jesus was not a mere moral teacher, He Himself claimed that He was God. I AM.

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