Study Questions
Chapter 2
The claims of Christ
We have seen that we need to seek in order to find. But where are we to begin our search? The Christian answer is that we need to start with Jesus of Nazareth. The distinctively Christian claim about God is that he has spoken and acted fully and finally in Jesus Christ. So the crucial question is this: was this Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, the Son of God or not?
There are two main reasons why our investigation into Christianity should begin with the person of Christ. The first is that, in essence, Christianity is Christ. Who Christ is and what he has done are the rock upon which the Christian religion is built. If he was not who he said he was, and if he did not do what he said he had come to do, then the foundation is undermined and the whole thing will collapse. Take Christ from Christianity, and you remove the heart from it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the centre of Christianity; everything else is peripheral. We are not concerned primarily with the effect he has had on the world, important though that is. Our concern is basically with the man himself. Who was he?
Take Christ from Christianity, and you remove the heart from it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the centre of Christianity; everything else is peripheral
Secondly, once we accept that Jesus Christ is a uniquely divine person, many of the knots we get into with religion begin to untangle. For one thing, the divinity of Jesus helps us sort out questions about who God really is and what he is like. But it doesn’t stop there. For if it’s true that Jesus is divine, then it follows that what he taught must be true. And that sheds light on all sorts of important issues to do with Christian faith – such as (as we shall see) the purpose of life, what happens after death, the place of the Old Testament and the significance of the death of Jesus on the cross.
Our investigation must therefore begin with Jesus Christ, and to study him properly we must turn to the Gospels in the New Testament. We don’t need at this point to go along with the Christian view and accept them as the inspired Word of God. All we need to do is take them seriously as the undeniably historical documents that they are. This isn’t the place to consider detailed questions about their literary origin. It is sufficient just to emphasize that their authors were all Christians, that there’s no reason to believe that Christians are any less honest than anyone else, and that what they say at least appears to be objective and to include the recollections of eyewitnesses. So for the time being, let me invite you to think of them simply as a substantially accurate record of the life and teaching of Jesus. In doing so, we’re not going to rely on a few obscure and isolated proof texts. Instead we shall concentrate on what is clear and straightforward.
Our purpose is to bring together the main evidence which demonstrates that Jesus was the Son of God. It won’t be enough to reach the conclusion that he simply exhibited a few divine characteristics. The truth to establish is his undeniable deity. Christians believe that Jesus has an eternal and essential relation to God that no-one else has or has ever had. We don’t think of him as God in human disguise or as someone who simply displayed divine qualities to an impressive degree, but as the God-man. We are persuaded that Jesus was a historical person who possessed two distinct and perfect natures, one divine and one human, and that this makes him absolutely and for ever unique. In short, we believe him to be worthy not just of our admiration, but also of our worship.
The evidence is at least threefold. It concerns the claims he made, the character he displayed and his resurrection from the dead. No single argument is conclusive by itself. But these three strands weave together and point clearly to the same conclusion.
The first witness, then, is what Christ said about himself. In the words of Archbishop William Temple, ‘It is now recognized that the one Christ for whose existence there is any evidence at all is a miraculous Figure making stupendous claims.’ It is of course true that claims do not in themselves constitute evidence. But the claims that Jesus made are remarkable and demand some sort of an explanation. For the sake of clarity, we shall need to distinguish between four different kinds of claim.
His self-centred teaching
The most striking feature of the teaching of Jesus is that he was constantly talking about himself. It is true that he said a great deal about the fatherhood of God and the kingdom of God. But then he added that he is the Father’s ‘Son’, and that he himself had come to launch the kingdom. Entry into the kingdom depends on how people respond to him personally. He even went so far as to call the kingdom of God ‘my kingdom’.
This self-centredness of the teaching of Jesus immediately sets him apart from the other great religious teachers of the world. They tend to be self-effacing. He is self-advancing. They point people away from themselves, saying, ‘That is the truth, so far as I understand it; follow that.’ Jesus says, ‘I am the truth; follow me.’ No other religious founder who dared to say such a thing would be taken seriously. The personal pronoun forces itself repeatedly on our attention as we read his words. For example:
I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.
I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me...
The great question to which the first phase of his teaching leads is, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ He refers back to figures from the distant past and makes the astonishing claim that Abraham rejoiced to see his day, that Moses wrote about him, that the Scriptures point to him, and that indeed in the three great divisions of the Old Testament – the Law, the Prophets and the Writings – there are things ‘concerning himself’.
Luke describes in some detail the dramatic visit which Jesus pays to the synagogue of his home village, Nazareth. He was given a scroll of the Old Testament Scriptures and he stood up to read. The passage is from the book of the prophet Isaiah 61:1–2:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.
He closed the book, returned it to the synagogue attendant and sat down, while the eyes of all the congregation were fastened on him. He then broke the silence with the amazing words, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ In other words, ‘Isaiah was writing about me.’
With such an opinion of himself, it comes as no surprise that he called people to himself. Indeed, he did more than offer a polite invitation; he issued a firm command. ‘Come to me,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’ If people would only come to him, he promised to lift the burdens of the weary, to satisfy the hungry, and to quench the longing of the thirsty soul. More than that, his followers were to obey him and to make no secret of their allegiance to him. His disciples came to recognize the right of Jesus to make these wholesale claims, and in their letters Paul, Peter, James and Jude delight to describe themselves as his ‘slaves’.
Furthermore, he offered himself to his contemporaries as someone in whom they should put their faith and to whom they should offer their love. People are supposed to believe in God – yet Jesus urged people to believe in himself. ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’ ‘Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.’ If to believe in him is our first duty, not to believe in him is our chief sin.
Again, the first and greatest commandment is for us to love God with all that we are – heart and soul and mind. Yet Jesus audaciously claimed the supreme place for himself. Anyone who loves father, mother, son or daughter more than him is not worthy of him, he said. Indeed, resorting to the vivid Hebrew use of contrast to convey comparison, he added: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even life itself – such a person cannot be my disciple.’
So convinced was he of his central place in the purpose of God that he promised to send someone to take his place after he returned to heaven. This is the Holy Spirit. Christ’s favourite name for him is translated in John’s Gospel as the Advocate, the ‘One who comes alongside to help’. It is a legal term, denoting a barrister, a counsel for the defence. It would be the Holy Spirit’s task to carry forward the cause of Jesus. ‘He will testify about me,’ said Jesus. Again, ‘He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.’ So the Holy Spirit’s role, both within the Christian community and in the wider world, would be to focus on Jesus Christ.
In one more flash of breathtaking egocentricity, Jesus predicted: ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He knew that the cross would be like a moral magnet which people would find most intriguing. But his understanding was that this attraction would bring them, first and foremost, not to God or the church, not to truth or to righteousness, but to himself. Indeed, it’s only by being brought to him that people would come to embrace these other realities as well.
But the most remarkable feature of all this self-centred teaching is that it stemmed from one who insisted on humility in others. He rebuked his disciples for their self-seeking attitudes and was wearied by their desire to be great. But hold on a moment! Did he not practise what he preached? After all, he placed a little child before them and said that he was to be their model. Did he have a different standard for himself?
His direct claims
Jesus clearly believed himself to be the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament. He came to establish what he called ‘the kingdom of God’, the coming of which had been foretold by generations of prophets.
It is significant that his first recorded words in the public arena were about the fulfilment of these ancient promises: ‘The time has come; the kingdom of God has come near.’ He assumed the title ‘Son of Man’, which is an accepted messianic title derived originally from one of the prophet Daniel’s visions. He accepted the description ‘Son of God’ when challenged by the high priest at his trial, which is another messianic title taken particularly from Psalm 2:7. He also interpreted his mission in the light of the portrayal of the suffering servant of the Lord in the latter part of the book of Isaiah. The first stage in his instruction of the core group of his disciples led up to an incident at Caesarea Philippi when Simon Peter declared his faith in Jesus as the Christ. Others might think of him as one of the prophets; but Simon has come to recognize him as the One to whom the prophets pointed. He is not just another signpost, but the destination to which the signposts have led.
The whole account of what Jesus said and did is shaped by this sense of fulfilment. ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see,’ he once said privately to his disciples. ‘For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.’
But the direct claims which concern us here refer not just to his being the Messiah, but to his deity. His claim to be the Son of God is more than messianic; it describes his unique and eternal relationship with God. Let’s explore three examples of this greater claim.
First, there is the way he constantly referred to the close association he had with God as his ‘Father’. Even as a boy of twelve he astonished his human parents with an uncompromising enthusiasm for his heavenly Father’s business. And then he went on to say things like this:
My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.
I and the Father are one.
I am in the Father and the Father is in me.
It is true that he taught his disciples to address God as ‘Father’ as well, but the way in which he is the Son of God is so different from the way in which anyone else is a child of God that he has to distinguish between them. To him God is uniquely ‘my Father’. This is why, when talking with Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, he said, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father.’ It just wouldn’t have been appropriate for him to say, ‘I ascend to our Father.’
These verses are all taken from John’s Gospel, but the same unique relationship with God is claimed by Jesus in Matthew 11:27 where he says, ‘All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
That Jesus did in fact claim this very close relationship with God is further confirmed by the indignation which he aroused in the religious leaders who opposed him. He ‘claimed to be the Son of God’, they said. His identification with God was so close that it was natural for him to equate the attitude people had to him with the attitude they had to God. In short:
to know him is to know God;
to see him is to see God;
to believe in him is to believe in God;
to receive him is to receive God;
to hate him is to hate God;
to honour him is to honour God.
These are some of the general claims which Jesus made about his unique relationship to God. He also made two more direct claims. The first is recorded at the end of the eighth chapter of John’s Gospel. In an argument with some of the Jewish leaders he said: ‘Very truly I tell you, whoever obeys my word will never see death’ (TNIV). This was too much for his critics. ‘Abraham died’, they expostulated, ‘and so did the prophets...Are you greater than our father Abraham?...Who do you think you are?’
‘Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day,’ Jesus replied.
They were yet more puzzled. ‘You are not yet fifty years old...and you have seen Abraham!’
And Jesus responded with one of the most far-reaching claims he ever made: ‘Very truly I tell you...before Abraham was born, I am!’ (TNIV)
Then they picked up stones to throw at him.
According to the law of Moses, stoning was the penalty for blasphemy. At first sight, we might wonder what they saw as blasphemous in what Jesus said. Of course there is the claim to have lived before Abraham. This was a claim he often made. He had ‘come down’ from heaven and ‘been sent’ by the Father, for example. But this claim was innocent enough. We must look further. The clue comes from the fact that he didn’t say ‘Before Abraham was, I was’, but ‘Before Abraham was, I am’. Jesus was claiming that he had existed eternally before Abraham. But even that is not all. For ‘I am’ implies a claim not only to eternity, but also to deity. ‘I am’ is the divine Name by which God had revealed himself to Moses, when he was travelling through the desert and encountered God at the burning bush. ‘I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.” ’ It is this divine title that Jesus quietly used of himself. This is what led the religious leaders to pick up stones in order to punish what they saw as the blasphemy of Jesus.
The second example of a direct claim to deity took place after the resurrection (assuming for the moment that the resurrection took place). John reports (20:26–29) that on the Sunday following Easter Day, doubting Thomas (who had missed the appearance of Jesus a week earlier) was with the other disciples in the upper room when Jesus appeared. He invited Thomas to touch his wounds, and Thomas, overwhelmed with wonder, cried out, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus calmly accepted this description of himself. He rebuked Thomas, yes – but for his unbelief, not for his worship.
His indirect claims
It isn’t only the things which Jesus said directly that support his claim to deity. There are also the indirect ways in which he made it clear that this is how he saw himself. The implications of what he was doing were as eloquent an indication of who he is as were his plain statements. On many occasions he did things which only God should do. We’ll look at four of them.
The first is the claim to forgive sins. On two separate occasions, Jesus is recorded as forgiving sinners. The first time, the friends of a paralysed man brought him to Jesus by letting him down through the roof on the mat he was using as a bed. Jesus recognized that his need was basically spiritual and surprised the crowd by saying to him, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven,’ before going on to heal his physical problem as well.
The second declaration of forgiveness was made to a woman known to be living an immoral life, who came to see Jesus while he was having a meal at the home of a religious leader. She came up behind him while he was reclining at the table and washed his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. And Jesus said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’
On both occasions the onlookers raise their eyebrows and ask, ‘Who is this? What blasphemy is this? Who but God can forgive sins?’ They’re quite right to be concerned. We may forgive the injuries which others do to us; but the sins we commit against God can surely only be forgiven by God himself.
Christ’s second indirect claim is to give life. He described himself as ‘the bread of life’, ‘the life’ and ‘the resurrection and the life’. He likened his followers’ dependence on him to the sustenance derived from the vine by its branches. He offered a woman from Samaria ‘living water’ and promised eternal life to a rich young man if he will come and follow him. He called himself the Good Shepherd who will not only give his life for the sheep, but give life to them. He stated that God has granted him authority over all people that he might give life to as many as God gives him, and declared, ‘The Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.’
So definite is this claim that his disciples clearly recognized the truth of it. It made leaving him impossible. ‘To whom shall we go?’ asked Peter. ‘You have the words of eternal life.’
Life is an enigma. Whether we’re talking about physical life or spiritual life, its nature is as baffling as its origin. We can neither define what it is, nor state where it comes from. We can only call it a gift from God. It is this gift which Jesus claims to give.
Christ’s third indirect claim is to teach the truth. It is not so much the truths which he taught as the direct and dogmatic manner in which he taught them which attracts our attention. His contemporaries were deeply impressed by his wisdom.
Where did this man get these things?...What’s this wisdom that has been given to him?...Isn’t this the carpenter?
How did this man get such learning without having been taught?
But they were even more impressed by his authority.
No-one ever spoke the way this man does.
His words had authority.
When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.
His authority was unlike that of the experts in religious law, who never taught without quoting from the authorities which backed them up. Neither was it like the authority of the prophets. They spoke with the authority of God, but Jesus claimed an authority all of his own. His formula was not ‘This is what God says’, but ‘This is what I say’. It is true that he said that his ideas were not his own, but came from the Father who sent him. Even so, he knew himself to be such a clear source of divine revelation that he was able to speak with enormous personal confidence. He never hesitated or apologized. He had no need to contradict, withdraw or modify anything he said. He spoke the unequivocal words of God: ‘He whom God has sent utters the words of God.’ He predicted the future with complete conviction. He issued absolute moral commands like ‘Love your enemies’, ‘Do not worry about your life’, ‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged’. He made promises with no doubt that they would be honoured: ‘Ask and it will be given to you.’ He asserted that, even though heaven and earth pass away, his words will never go the same way. He warned those who heard him that their destiny depended on how they chose to respond to his teaching – just as, in Old Testament times, the destiny of the people of Israel had depended on their response to God’s Word.
Christ’s fourth indirect claim is to judge the world. This is perhaps the most extraordinary of all his statements. Several of his parables imply that he personally will come back at the end of the world, and that the final day of reckoning will not take place until then. He will himself wake up the dead, and the whole world will be gathered before him. He will sit on the throne of his glory, and the judgment will be entrusted to him by the Father. He will then separate people from one another as a shepherd separates his sheep from his goats. Some will be invited to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them since the creation of the world. Others will hear the dreadful words, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’
Not only will Jesus be the Judge, but the basis of judgment will be people’s attitude to him as shown in their treatment of his ‘brothers and sisters’ or their response to his word. He will acknowledge before his Father in heaven those who have publicly acknowledged him; he will disown those who have publicly disowned him. Indeed, to be excluded from heaven on the last day, it will be enough for Jesus to say to them, quite simply, ‘I never knew you.’
It is hard to exaggerate the enormity of this claim. Imagine a minister addressing his congregation in these terms today: ‘Listen carefully to my words. Your eternal destiny depends on it. I am going to return at the end of the world to judge you, and your fate will be settled according to whether or not you obey me.’ Such a preacher would soon be under psychiatric care!
His dramatized claims
It remains for us to consider the recorded miracles of Jesus. A helpful way of approaching these is to see them as his dramatized claims.
This is no place for a thorough discussion of whether or not miracles can happen or what they are for. All we need do here is to make the point that the value of Christ’s miracles comes not so much from their supernatural character as from their spiritual significance. They were ‘signs’ as well as ‘wonders’. They were never performed selfishly or senselessly. Their purpose was not to show off or to force people into submission. They were not so much demonstrations of special power as illustrations of moral authority. They are in fact the acted parables of Jesus. They demonstrate his claims visually. The things he does dramatize the things he says.
John understood this very clearly. He constructs his Gospel around six or seven selected ‘signs’ (see 20:30–31), and associates them with the great ‘I am’ declarations which Jesus made in his preaching and teaching. The first sign was the changing of water into wine at a wedding reception in Cana of Galilee. The event itself doesn’t really tell us very much. Its significance lies more beneath the surface. John tells us that the stone water jars stood ready ‘for ceremonial washing’. What we might pass over as merely an incidental reference turns out to be the clue we are seeking. The water stood for the old religion. The wine stood for the religion of Jesus. Just as he changed the water into wine, so his gospel would supersede the law. The sign backed up the claim that Jesus was the one who would bring in this new order. He was the Messiah. As he was soon to say to the Samaritan woman, ‘I am he.’
Similarly, his feeding of the five thousand illustrated his claim to satisfy the hunger of the human heart. ‘I am the bread of life,’ he said. A little later, he opened the eyes of a man born blind, having earlier stated, ‘I am the light of the world.’ If he could restore sight to the blind, he can open people’s eyes to see and to know God. Finally, he brought back to life a man called Lazarus who had been dead for four days, and claimed, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ He had resuscitated a dead man. Again, it was a sign. The life of the body symbolizes the life of the soul. Christ could be the life of the believer before death and will be the resurrection of the believer after death. All these miracles are parables, illustrating the truth that as human beings we are spiritually hungry, blind and dead, and that only Christ can satisfy our hunger, restore our sight and raise us to a new life.
Conclusion
It just isn’t possible to eliminate these claims from the teaching of the carpenter of Nazareth. We can’t say that they were invented by the evangelists, nor even that they were unconsciously exaggerated. They are widely and evenly distributed in the different Gospels and sources of the Gospels, and the portrait is too consistent and too balanced to have been dreamed up by the writers.
The claims are there. It is of course true that they do not in themselves constitute evidence of deity. After all, claims can be false. But some explanation of them must be found. We simply can’t go on treating Jesus as a great teacher if he was completely mistaken in one of the chief subjects of his teaching – himself. As many scholars have recognized, there is a certain disturbing ‘megalomania’ about Jesus.
These claims in a mere man would be egoism carried even to imperial megalomania.
The discrepancy between the depth and sanity, and (let me add) shrewdness, of his moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind his theological teaching unless he is indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over.
Was he then a deliberate impostor? Did he attempt to persuade people to accept his views by assuming a divine authority he did not possess? This is very difficult to believe. Jesus comes across as being entirely straightforward in his dealings with people. He hated hypocrisy in others and was transparently sincere himself.
Was he then sincerely mistaken? Did he have a fixed delusion about himself? This possibility has its supporters, but leaves one feeling that their delusion is greater than his. Jesus does not give the impression of the sort of abnormality which one expects to find in those who are deluded. His claims appear to be supported by his character, which is what we shall look at next.