THE SHOCKING ALTERNATIVE
John
10:19-21 At these words the Jews were again divided.
Many of them said, "He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to
him?" But others said, "These are not the sayings of a man possessed
by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?"
Among
these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was
God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is
coming to judge the world at the end of time.
One part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed… I
mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this
is really so preposterous as to be comic. We can all understand how a man
forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you
steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man… who
announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing
other men’s money? Asinine…is the kindest description we should give of his conduct.
Yet this is what Jesus did…He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party
chiefly …offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was God.
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 a 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: ore 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.
Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis, pg. 40-41.