Watch on YouTube

John 1:14 New International Version: “14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”In a world that has over 4000 recognized religions, choosing which path to take towards spiritual enlightenment can be confusing. Many of these belief systems are practiced by their followers without much controversy. In fact if you made a public proclamation that you have given your life and your will over to the flying green jelly bean monster, most people would be ok with that.

Why then is there so much controversy surrounding the name of Jesus? Why do so many unbelievers get angry or frustrated at His name? I Googled Jesus today and got more than 3.5 billion results. There have been countless books written about Him.

Some people don’t believe and some people want to call Jesus a good moral teacher or a prophet who brought wisdom into the world. The truth though, is that Jesus claimed to be God and we have a decision to make about that claim. We either believe Him or we don’t believe Him. There really are no other choices.

C.S. Lewis has said the following: “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.”

There are only two options. His revelation of Himself as God must be either true or false. There are no other choices. So what do you believe? Have you thought about it? This is the single most important decision you will ever make.

Photo: Peter Miller on flickr

Let’s explore the possible alternatives and decide what we believe based on the evidence. The three possibilities are that He was lying and knew He was lying; He was crazy and therefore He didn’t realize He was lying; or He is God.

The first possibility is that Jesus was lying and knew it. .

What if Jesus was a liar? If He knew he was not God then He was lying and betraying the trust of His followers. He taught others to be honest whatever the cost so lying and betraying others would mean that He was a fraud. He instructed people to trust Him as the only way to heaven and many people did but if He was lying then this would make Him a monster. If He was lying or deceiving His followers with claims or promises He couldn’t keep then He was evil.

If this was the case and Jesus was knowingly lying about who He was then He was nothing more than a complete failure. His claim led to His crucifixion, an extremely painful experience that could have been stopped at any time by admitting He was lying.

Those who say that He was a good moral teacher must explain how that could be if He was intentionally lying to people about who He was. A lying Jesus isn’t compatible with what we know about Him, the way He lived or the things He said.

If you examine the lives’ of the people who knew Him in the bible as well as the people who know Him today the results are amazing. So what happens to these people? Alcoholics become sober; cowards become courageous; the hateful learn to love; selfish people become generous; sinners learn to repent and the list goes on.

It just wouldn’t make sense for Him to be a liar. Someone who lived the perfect life that He lived,