The claims that Jesus Christ made about himself
Sceptics say that Jesus never claimed to be God, that others made that up. However, Jesus did not come to a culture or people that were ignorant about God. He came to the Jewish people, His chosen people who believed in the existence of one God only. Jesus did and said things that clearly alluded to His deity which was not missed by the religious leaders He interacted with. Here are four examples of this:
He claimed to have the authority to forgive sin, and the religious leaders thought to themselves that He was blaspheming (Mark 2:5-7).
He called God His Father and equated His work with the Father’s, and they tried all the harder to kill Him (John 5:17-18).
He said that He and the Father are One, and they picked up stones to kill Him because they said He was blaspheming (John 10:30-33).
He said that He would sit at the right hand of the Mighty One and come on the clouds of heaven. They said He was blaspheming, and they condemned Him to death (Mark 14:61-64).
The above scriptures are just four of several examples proving that Jesus did not leave it open to debate as to who He is. After all Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
C. S. Lewis the Narnia author and Christian apologist put it like this [1]
‘ I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him (Jesus): “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 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.’
People today may think that every belief system is equally valid, acting like everything is okay until someone else’s beliefs contradict their own.
[1] C S Lewis Mere Christianity
In Part 3 we consider the key differences between Christianity and other major religions.