Jesus
Christ is God
The eminent British professor and scholar C. S. Lewis wrote 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 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 and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call
Him Lord and God. But let us not come away with any patronizing nonsense about His being a
great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Jesus Christ is Lord because He is God.
While on the earth Jesus did exactly what was apparently the
impossible thing He said He would do. He taught on numerous occasions that He would be
killed, buried for three days, and would rise from the dead. Obviously, if Jesus did not
rise from the dead what He said was a lie and He was justly crucified for blasphemy.
However, since He was raised from the dead what He declared was not
blasphemy because He truly was God. He was claiming that He was Yahweh, the LORD God,
Jehovah, and the great I AM.
In John 8:56-58 Jesus said to a group of hostile listeners,
“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing My day; he saw it and was
glad.” The aggressive religious leaders replied, “You are not yet fifty years
old, and you have seen Abraham?” Obviously, they misunderstood. You will recall that
Abraham lived 2000 years before Christ came in the flesh. These Jewish leaders asked a
relevant question! Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was
born, I AM” (v. 58).
Jesus is the absolute, timeless existence, eternal, independent,
self-sustained, eternally present, eternally pre-existent One. "Before Abraham was, I
am." The Word of God was, is, and ever will be. Jesus is truly eternal. He is God.
His listeners knew what He was saying and they picked up stones to
kill Him.
These words of Jesus have eternal significance for us today. Jesus
said, “I am from above; you are of this world; I am not of this world. I said
therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I AM, you
shall die in your sins” (Jn.8:24).
Those are serious words. Where you spend eternity depends upon how
you respond to what Christ is saying. Again, Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of
Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak
these things as the Father taught Me” (v. 28).
Jesus demands a positive response on our part, “If you abide in
my word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free” (vv. 31-32).
Do you want to be free? “Free” in this passage is a synonym
for salvation and eternal life.
This is why the apostle Peter stated the only option: “There is
salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given
among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Jesus is the only way to heaven; He is the truth of God; He is the
very embodiment of God’s kind of life. “No one comes to the Father, but through
Me” (Jn. 4:6). There is no other way to get to heaven and spend eternity with the
LORD God.
The Lord Jesus Christ claimed to be God. It is imperative that we
take Him seriously. The only adequate response to Him is to “fall at His feet and
call Him Lord and God.”
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.”
Selah!
Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006
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