Is Jesus God?

You're in a conversation and someone says, "Jesus was a good teacher, but he wasn't God."

What would you say?

Many people instinctively like Jesus, but they’re not ready to call him God. They want him to be another Moses, Confucius, or Buddha. They want him to be just a wise human teacher. Here’s the problem: Jesus didn’t leave that option open to us. He unambiguously and repeatedly claimed deity, and no one who lied in that way could ever be a good moral teacher. So, the next time someone says “Jesus was a good teacher, but he wasn’t God,” here are three things to remember.

1: Jesus claimed to be God again and again.

There are the obvious places in which this happened: In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” and “Before Abraham was, I am.” But there are also more subtle examples. In Mark 2, Jesus pardons sins in his own name, and the Scribes call this blasphemy, insisting that “only God can forgive sins.” In all four gospels, Jesus claims the title, “Son of God”—which we’re told in John 5:18 is the same as declaring himself equal with God. And Jesus constantly applies prophecies about Israel’s God to himself. The point wasn’t lost on his enemies, who took this as blasphemy and sought to kill him.

2: If we can’t trust the gospels on Jesus’ claims to be God, we can’t trust them on his moral teaching, either.

Many people who claim that Jesus was just a good human teacher have this idea of him as a meek and mild promoter of peace. “I like this guy,” they say. The problem is that the same Jesus who preached peace and forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount predicted violent judgment, called people sons of the Devil, described the way of salvation as “narrow,” and claimed again and again to be God. Thomas Jefferson famously clipped stuff like this out of the gospels, but that’s not an honest way to read the account. We can’t cherry-pick the Jesus we like. We have to accept or reject him as he actually is.

3: If Jesus wasn’t God, he couldn’t have said the things he said and still be considered a good teacher.

Jesus was either outright lying, certifiably crazy, or actually God. This is C. S. Lewis’ famous “trilemma” from the book “Mere Christianity.” In his words:  "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 ... Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse." Jesus’ claims to be God, to forgive sins, to have power over nature and authority over the Sabbath, the Scriptures, the Temple, and death itself are claims that only a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord of heaven and earth could make. Yet he made these claims, and we must make our choice. The option of viewing Jesus as nothing but a good human teacher is one Jesus himself doesn’t allow. The religious leaders of his day knew this. That’s why they killed him. But guys who are only good teachers don’t come back from the dead three days later.

So, the next time someone says, "Jesus was a good teacher, but he wasn't God.,” here are three things to remember:

1: Jesus claimed to be God again and again.

2: If we can’t trust the gospels on Jesus’ claims to be God, we can’t trust them on his moral teaching, either.

3: If Jesus wasn’t God, he couldn’t have said the things he said and still be considered a good teacher.