Was Jesus really God?

Is Jesus really God? How can Christians be so certain about something that is so unbelieveable?

The knowledge that Jesus is God is probably the most key belief of the Christian faith. It is through Jesus that Christians have their salvation, so if it could be proved that Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, and that he was just a regular guy who managed to spin a wild story then the whole of the Christian faith falls flat on its face.

In this post we’ll take a look at one of the different ways that Christians back up this important claim.

C.S. Lewis, an atheist who became a Christian after reading the Bible, originally put this argument forward and it argues from logic that because of Jesus claim to be God we can assume that he is one of three things. He could be mad, and his claims to divinity were delusions. He could be bad, a compulsive liar who fooled thousands of people; or he was God, and he was telling the truth all along.

Lets start with bad. Remember we’re talking here about a horribly evil liar who sends people to their death by guaranteeing them heaven. Jesus encouraged his followers to be martyred if that’s what it took, but if he knew he couldn’t deliver paradise, that makes him a monster! And if he was a liar, then he really was taking the mick, because first of all he deceived the world into thinking he was the holiest man ever, and he taught people to live as pure as the driven snow. What’s more, he really pushed the boat out when he claimed to be sinless. But Jesus-the-liar pulled it off. Surrounded by his bitterest enemies, he challenged them to name a single sin he’d committed, and none of them could.

Also, if he was a liar, what are we supposed to make of his love for lepers, prostitutes and the poor? He spent most of his time with the outcasts of society. But the clincher for me is his avoidable death. He gets killed for claiming to be God, remember? What’s to be gained by dying for something you know isn’t true? Why go through with the pretence? And even when he’s on the cross, when they’re literally killing him and he’s got only minutes left to live, what comes out of him? Pure love. He prays for his murderers: “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

So it seems unlikely after all that Jesus was a sadistic liar, maybe then he was crazy? Maybe he was under a false impression that he was God and it was just sad that no one realised before he got hurt. Unfortunately there are a few holes in this argument as well seeing as no psychiatrist will sign up for it. Jesus shows no signs of being mentally ill. Quite the opposite. You’d expect that anyone who was as egocentric and egotistic as Jesus – I mean constantly talking about himself as the answer to everything – anyone who spoke like that would come over as unstable and unbearably arrogant. Yet there’s no doubt Jesus was thought by everyone to be the most humble person imaginable. Besides, are we really going to say that our entire legal system and the last 2,000 years of European history have all been founded on the sayings of a lunatic? No one’s improved on Jesus’ teaching. I dare anyone to read Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount and then say he was a lunatic. If Jesus was mad, then strike me down with insanity! Another issue is that this argument doesn’t take into account all the miracles Jesus performed. They’re going to take a lot of explaining away. Remember, even Jesus’ opponents agreed that he worked wonders. They’re even recorded outside the Bible. Not to mention the prophecies. Jesus fulfilled 322 prophecies that were written down at least 400 years before his birth! Many of them are minutely specific things which he would have had no control over.75 I suppose a lunatic could have got lucky and fulfilled a few prophecies, or a liar might have been able to arrange a few deliberately. But I challenge anyone to read all 322 Old Testament prophecies and say that any liar or lunatic could possibly have pulled off more than a handful. Yet Jesus fulfilled 29 of them on the day he died alone. Many others were about the time and place of his birth, another factor which Jesus wouldn’t have been able to factor in if he was merely a madman.

The belief that one man could also be God may still be too big a truth for you to swallow but after eliminating the only alternatives there’s nowhere else to turn. And besides, if God did come to earth as a man, you’d expect that man to be the most famous man who ever lived. You’d expect his birthday to split history in two. You’d expect his teaching, his miracles and his character to smash a hole in the history of the planet so big that billions of people would push their way through it to follow him. You’d expect a God-man to make the sort of impact that Jesus of Nazareth did.