QUESTION 3

Do you believe in Jesus as God’s Son?

While some have claimed that Jesus never existed, history has proven that statement wrong. For example, the Roman historian Tacitus (56 – 120 AD), described “Christus” (a misspelling of Christ), who was put to death by Pontius Pilate.¹ Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger wrote that early Christians were singing hymns to Christ “as to a god.” ² Another Roman author, Suetonius, recorded “Chrestus” (another way to spell Christus) who had influenced followers to the point that they were expelled from Rome.³ The Jewish historian Josephus stated that Jesus “was a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man,” and he described the crucifixion and the Christian’s belief Jesus rose from the dead.⁴ While that passage is contested, it is one of many historical indicators that Jesus really walked the earth.

Some might point to self-proclaimed “Messiahs” in recent years, who have been under the impression they were divine, only for others to determine they had mental issues. They would say that Jesus was delusional. Yet the teachings of Jesus in scripture display wisdom and thoughtfulness. As philosopher Peter Kreeft put it, “Jesus has in abundance precisely those three qualities that liars and lunatics most conspicuously lack: (1) his practical wisdom, his ability to read human hearts; (2) his deep and winning love, his passionate compassion, his ability to attract people and make them feel at home and forgiven, his authority, “not as the scribes”; (3) his ability to astonish, his unpredictability, his creativity. Liars and lunatics are all so dull and predictable! No one who knows both the Gospels and human beings can seriously entertain the possibility that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic, a bad man.” Many today describe Jesus as merely a “good teacher.” Yet, in John 14:6, Jesus stated,

“I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus clearly described Himself as THE way to God. If Jesus was a good teacher, wouldn’t He have told the truth? And if He told the truth, how will I respond to His claim?

Consider this quote by C.S. Lewis:

“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 a 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.”