Daily Devotions
Jesus of Nazareth: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord
Reading for November 12th: John 16-18
Weekly reading for November 8-14: John 6-10
There was again a division among the Jews because of these words. Many of them said, "He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?" Others said, "These are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
John 10:19-21
C. S. Lewis, the atheist turned Christian apologist, made famous this argument that based on his claims, Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. He wrote:
"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 patronising 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." (Mere Christianity, pg 54-56)
Some would say there is a fourth alternative, and that is that Jesus' claims to be the Son of God were legendary and did not actually come from his lips. The problem with that theory is that you can easily date the gospel of John to the first century. We even have a fragment of John's gospel from 125 A.D.! (wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52)
So, really there are only three choices we are left with: Jesus of Nazareth was either a liar, a lunatic, or he is the Lord God!
Father, open our minds and hearts to the truth of who Jesus claimed to be so that we might submit to him and worship him as the Son of God!
