I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (58 page)

He requested prayer in his name: “And I will do whatever you ask in my name. . . . You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:13-14); “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you” (John 15:7).

Despite the fact that both the Old and New Testaments forbid worshiping anyone other than God (Ex. 20:1-4; Deut. 5:6-9; Acts 14:15; Rev. 22:8-9), Jesus accepted worship on at least nine occasions. These include worship from:

1. a healed leper (Matt. 8:2)

2. a ruler whose son Jesus had healed (Matt. 9:18)

3. the disciples after a storm (Matt. 14:33)

4. a Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:25)

5. the mother of James and John (Matt. 20:20)

6. a Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:6)

7. a healed blind man (John 9:38)

8. all the disciples (Matt. 28:17)

9. Thomas, who said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28)

All of these people worshiped Jesus without one word of rebuke from him. Not only did Jesus accept this worship, he even commended those who acknowledged his deity (John 20:29; Matt. 16:17). This could only be done by a person who seriously considered himself to be God.

Now let’s put all of this into perspective. No one did that better than C. S. Lewis, who wrote:

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. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
⁹

Imagine your neighbor making these kinds of claims: “I am the first and the last—the self-existing One. Do you need your sins forgiven? I can do it. Do you want to know how to live? I am the light of the world—whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Do you want to know whom you can trust? All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Do you have any wor- ries or requests? Pray in my name. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. Do you need access to God the Father? No one comes to the Father except through me. The Father and I are one.”

What would you think about your neighbor if he seriously said those things? You certainly wouldn’t say, “Gee, I think he’s a great moral teacher!” No, you’d say this guy is nuts, because he’s definitely claiming to be God. Again, no one has articulated this point better than C. S. Lewis, who wrote:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish things 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 rather 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 with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
¹⁰

Lewis is absolutely right. Since Jesus clearly claimed to be God, he couldn’t be just a great moral teacher. Great moral teachers don’t deceive people by falsely claiming to be God. Since Jesus claimed to be God, one of only three possibilities could be true: he was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.

Liar
doesn’t fit the facts. Jesus lived and taught the highest standard of ethics. And it’s unlikely he would have laid down his life unless he really thought he was telling the truth.

If Jesus thought he was God but really wasn’t, then he would have been a
lunatic.
But lunatic doesn’t fit either. Jesus uttered some of the most profound sayings ever recorded. And everyone—even his enemies—claimed that Jesus was a man of integrity who taught the truth (Mark 12:14).

That leaves us with
Lord.
Peter Kreeft puts the argument very simply:

There are only two possible interpretations: Jesus is God, or Jesus is not God. The argument in its simplest form looks like this: Jesus was either (1) God, if his claim about himself was true, or (2) a bad man, if what he said was not true, for good men do not claim to be God. But he was not a bad man. (If anyone in history was not a bad man, Jesus was not a bad man.) Therefore, he was (and is) God.
¹¹

This seems logical. But is
Lord
really the right conclusion? After all, it’s one thing to claim to be God—anyone can do that—but it’s another thing to prove it.

Proofs That Jesus Is God

As we have seen, Jesus clearly claimed to be God and often acted the part. But he didn’t just claim it or act it, he proved it! He did so with three unparalleled proofs:

1. He fulfilled numerous messianic prophecies written hundreds of years in advance.

2. He lived a sinless life and performed miraculous deeds.

3. He predicted and then accomplished his own resurrection from the dead.

We’ve already given evidence regarding the messianic prophecies, Jesus’ miracles, and his resurrection. But what about this idea of Jesus being sinless? Jesus himself said, “Which one of you convicts Me of sin” (John 8:46, NASB)? Moreover, his disciples, who spent
three years
with him day and night, claimed that Jesus was sinless:

Peter characterized Jesus as an “unblemished and spotless” lamb (1 Pet. 1:19, NASB) “who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22, NASB).

John said of Christ, “in Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5, NASB).

Paul wrote that Jesus “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21, NASB).

The writer of Hebrews made the same point by claiming that Jesus was “without sin” (Heb. 4:15, NASB).

Now, you try spending three
days
with any human being—much less three
years
—and you definitely will find faults. The New Testament writers said Jesus had none.

But it wasn’t just his friends who affirmed his supreme character. Christ’s enemies couldn’t find fault with him either. The Pharisees, who were actively searching for dirt on Jesus, could find none (Mark 14:55). They even admitted that Jesus taught “the way of God in accordance with the truth” (Mark 12:14). Even after all the efforts of the Pharisees to pin some charge on Jesus, Pilate found him innocent of any wrongdoing (Luke 23:22).

But proof of Christ’s deity does not depend on his sinlessness. The fulfilled prophecies, his miracles, and his resurrection are more than enough to prove that Jesus was God. Yet there are a few objections we need to address before concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus was (and is) the one true God.