Fact Check, 71

~ A Great Teacher ~

People Think  ~  “Jesus was a great moral teacher (but not God).”

The Bible Says  ~  Jesus is a great teacher.  “So when Jesus had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?  You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.  Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him.  If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them’” (John 13:12-17).

Jesus is also God—who came to earth in the form of a man—God with us!  “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14-15).  “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:22-23).

The Significance  ~  Consider this well-known quote from C.S. Lewis of Cambridge University—a man who was an agnostic before becoming a Christian: “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: 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to.” 

Additional Quote  ~  “It is not His teachings which make Jesus so remarkable, although these would be enough to give Him distinction.  It is a combination of the teachings with the man Himself.  The two cannot be separated.” (Kenneth Scott Latourette, Yale University).

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

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