Thought of The Week

Who Was Jesus?

In Mark --, Jesus asks his disciples the question "Who do you say that I am?" The same question can be put to us today - who do we say that Jesus is? Was he the humble son of a carpenter? A Jewish revolutionary? A wild eyed prophet? One of the world's greatest moral teachers, but still merely human? Or was he the Son of God, sent to us so that our sins would be forgiven and we would be restored to a relationship with our Creator? Here's what C.S. Lewis had to say:

" 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 won'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 with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Mere Christianity, pg. 56).

This is one of the truly amazing things about the God we worship - not some lofty God high in the heavens, who occasionally takes the time to look down and issue a few Commandments, but a God who cares about us enough to become one of us, to experience pain and tempation and sorrow, just as we do. Hebrews 4:15 says: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin."

These are some of the Bible verses that speak of Jesus as the Son of God or being "One with the Father":

• Mathew 11:27
• Mark 12:6, 13:32, 14:61-62
• Luke 10:22, 22:70
• John 10:30, 12:45, 14:8-10

Take the time to read some of them and get to know this God who has come to be with us.

Past Thoughts of the Week: