Who do you say I am?

       Well, now that I have focused on a central truth claim, I must look at Jesus' truth claims. One of the biggest issues people have with Jesus, has to do with his identity. Was he a Rabbi? Was he the leader of a dangerous cult? Whenever I bring Jesus up in discussion most people get very uncomfortable. I always found this to be odd, as nobody gets uncomfortable when I talk about Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi or Buddha, and surely most people believe Jesus is a good guy. One of the most common claims people have about Jesus goes something like this, "Jesus was a great moral teacher, but certainly not God." It got me thinking, if Jesus was just a moral teacher then where did we ever get the idea of him being the Son of God. If Jesus was just a moral teacher, then why do people get so uncomfortable. I started reading lots of books about Jesus to find out who he really was. Eventually I decided to look at the Gospel of John to see what He said about himself.

Here is what I found:

“I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” John 8:58

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me, is greater than all, no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE”. John 10: 27-30

“Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does, but if I do it [miracles] even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” John 10: 37-39

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” John 14:6,7

When being questioned by Pilate about his ‘kingship’, Jesus asserted: “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” John 18: 37

Read any of the Gospels, and you will find Jesus claiming over and over again to be the Messiah, The son of God and One with God the Father. 

       I began wondering why God, would have to come down from heaven in the flesh. What was the point? Philip Yancey made a great suggestion: “I learned about incarnation when I kept a salt-water aquarium… I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content. I pumped in vitamins and antibiotics and sulfa drugs…You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that  my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank they dove for cover into the nearest shell. The showed me one ‘emotion’ only: fear. Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern. To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction. To change their perceptions, I began to see, would require a form of incarnation. I would have to become a fish and ‘speak’ to them in a language they could understand.” 

       Well, after reading some of Jesus’ statements about himself it is impossible not to come to a verdict. Lewis words it much more gracefully than I can: “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 a 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 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, who do you say that He is?


-Rachel S.