November 5

The Radical Claims of Jesus

Here is a list of some of the radical claims we read today:

I am the light of the world.
I stand with the Father, who sent me.
I am not of this world.
I have been in the Father’s presence.
Before Abraham was born “I am!” This is the eternal name of God in the Old Testament.
I am the good shepherd.
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

These claims of Jesus absolutely scandalize our post-modern world. These claims mean that Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius and Joseph Smith were frauds. The mantra of our day is “tolerance” but there is no tolerance in these claims. These words make people squirm and chafe inside. Yet I believe Jesus was telling the truth when he uttered these word. He said these words not out of arrogance but out of great compassion. When we understand the life of Jesus these statements make perfect sense. Only in Jesus can we find the door to a changed life and a secure eternal destiny.

What Jesus has not allowed us to do is to describe these claims as the words of a good moral teacher.

Here is an excerpt from C.S. Lewis's 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. ... 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."The Jews who heard Jesus make these claims knew exactly what he was saying. That is why they wanted to kill him on the spot. He was claiming to be God. They made the wrong choice. What is your choice regarding the claims of Jesus? Is he Lord, liar or lunatic?

Today is accountability day... we have 56 days to the end of the journey. Let me know what day you are on.