Why is Jesus God? He Claimed to Be
He Made Himself God’s Equal
The third reason we believe Jesus is God and one of the most dramatic differences between Jesus and any other religious founder, is that Jesus said He was God. That’s right. The thirty-something carpenter’s son from a small town in Nazareth said he was the Eternal Creator of the Universe. He actually said, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (thus giving himself the name of the eternal, all-powerful creator of everything visible and invisible). This is the main reason the Jewish leaders wanted to Jesus put to death: “He made himself God’s equal.” John 5:18
Now what can you do with that? First of all, that’s radically unlike what any religious founder would have said. CS Lewis imagines what other religious founders would have said if you’d asked them, “Are you the creator of the universe?” Socrates would have laughed at you. Buddha would have urged you to seek enlightenment. Confucius would have said something like, “Jokes which are in bad taste should not be made.” And Mohammed would have cut off your head for blasphemy.
You Must Make Your Choice
I once talked to a nonbeliever who said that Jesus was a good guy, had some good insights, but was a little neurotic. But calling yourself the creator of the universe doesn’t qualify you as neurotic: it means you’re a full-blown psychotic. If somebody says “I’m the eternal, all-powerful creator of the universe,” you don’t say, “Well, I disagree with you about that. But I’d still like to hear your views on marriage, family, social justice, and morality in general.” Somebody who thinks they’re God (with a capital G!) is not someone who’s going to give you good moral insights. But everyone agrees that Jesus had some of the most beautiful moral insights the world has ever known.
Which means He isn’t a psychotic (and remember, thinking you’re God isn’t the sort of honest mistake a sane person can make). But if He’s not psychotic, then when He says that He’s God, He must be speaking truthfully. Which means He really is God.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity writes: “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 patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
12 Deceptions of the Anti-Christ
To give in to the lie that Jesus was a great moral leader but not God is the key to the deception of the Anti-Christ. Here are the 12 deceptions of the Anti-Christ according to Venerable Fulton Sheen:
1) He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk of peace and prosperity, not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves.
2) He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live.
3) He will induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for our sins.
4) He will explain guilt away psychologically as repressed sex, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal.
5) He will identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong.
6) He will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital for happiness.”
7) He will increase love for love and decrease love for persons.
8) He will invoke religion to destroy religion.
9) He will even speak of Christ and say that he was the greatest man who ever lived.
10) The mission of Christ, he will say, will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism, which he will never define.
11) In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God. And because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God, he will deceive even the elect.
12) He will set up a counter-Church, which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God…In desperate need for God, he will induce modern man, in his loneliness and frustration, to hunger more and more for membership in his community that will give man purpose, without any need of personal amendment and without the admission of personal guilt. These are days in which the devil has been given a particularly long rope.
True God, True Man
The Apostles John proclaims the fact that Jesus, the Word, is God: John chapter 1
In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower…The Word was the true light that enlightens all men; and he was coming into the world. He was in the world that had its being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him. But to all who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to all who believe in the name of him who was born not out of human stock or urge of the flesh or will of man but of God himself. The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
I Surrender to You
Why is it so important that Jesus is God? Because you and I are weak; so weak we cannot fix the world, other people or even ourselves. But Jesus can and will IF you turn your life and will over to the care of the Good Shepherd. When you fall, simply say, Lord, I am weak, you are God, I surrender to you, take care of everything!