A Great Moral Teacher

Recently I have been confronted with an argument that is so prevalent in so-called New Age literature. These self-help or self-actualization books just about always quote Jesus directly from the Bible. These self-appointed gurus often also place Jesus in the category of a great moral teacher who actually lived. They deny, of course, that He is the Son of God and indeed that He rose from the dead. I have spoken with individuals who believe this modern theory. This morning I would like to deal with this mistaken idea that Jesus was a great but very mortal teacher philosopher. After my last conversation on this matter, the words of C.S. Lewis, the greatest Christian writer of the 20th Century, came too late into my mind. He was a much respected scholar and an avowed atheist who was converted to Christianity after much study and soul searching. C.S. Lewis writes a very solid argument in his book “Mere Christianity”

On page 52 he writes, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God”. Lewis goes on to say that anyone who said the things that Jesus said as a mortal teacher would have to be (his word) a lunatic “on the level of man who says he is a poached egg” or alternatively he would have to be the devil. If we stop here and consider just three of the myriad things that Jesus said, we realize that Lewis is correct. Jesus told us that He was the Son of God, that He could forgive sins because he was God and that he would die and rise from the grave in three days time. Just try making those statements in this modern day. You won’t be crucified, but if you persist, you may well be hospitalized. Jesus said many other things that would lead us to believe that he was a demon or mentally ill provided we see Him as a mortal man who simply lived on this earth two thousand years ago.

Lewis tells us that we must make a choice. Either Jesus was, and is, as He claimed to be, the Son of God, or indeed He was a madman or something worse. He tells us “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”. He calls any attempt to call Jesus a great human teacher, in view of this very convincing argument, “patronizing nonsense”.

One of the things that personally bothers me about any attempt to categorize Jesus as a great teacher, who indeed was mortal and is now dead in the grave and has been for most of two thousand years, is the fame and notoriety that he garnered in thirty-three short years in a society that didn’t even have a printing press. There are countless historical figures who indeed we know about to some extent. Can anyone deny that Jesus Christ is the name that is best known world-wide? Why is His name the one that is spoken daily by so very many, usually as part of an oath or swearing? Do we hear Plato’s or Socrates’ names take in vain? How did a poverty stricken uneducated man who lived only in the first thirty-three years of the first century become the most quoted, sometimes hated and famous man in history? He did so because He was who he said He was, the Son of God who came to this earth to die for our sins.

I have made my choice. It took me forty-eight years to carefully and even reluctantly come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Son of God and I am at His feet now and for all eternity. There can be no other conclusion.

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