Earlier today, one of buddies Scott Sewell and I went around campus with a camcorder and microphone and interviewed students about what they thought about the person of Jesus, among other questions related to matters of faith. The responses we collected were phenomenally insightful and truly indicative of how our culture generally perceives Christianity’s central figure.
Most answers were pretty much the same: when asked, “who is Jesus Christ, who is he to you, etc?”, most replied with the following:
“He is a really good moral teacher”
“His life is an important emblem of sacrifice and love for society”
“He represents good morals for us all to adopt”
“He’s a really good person—not sure if he is God—but at the very least, a really good person”
“Just a great moral teacher, taught us many good things about loving one another and turning the other cheek”
There’s two main points that initially come to mind when I think on these responses:
- I wonder if the Jesus they are familiar with is the one that society has long-presented, and not the one the Bible portrays. Society’s Jesus is accepting, loving, and one to never really step on people’s’ toes. He’s seen only as a moral teacher, a societal leader, and respected law-giver who taught others to love one another, be sacrificial, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and etc. Society says if you don’t want to follow his ways, that’s fine. Maybe Buddha or Mohammad or Gandhi is the moral teacher you follow because of the way you were raised. Essentially, all these leaders say the same thing anyways, so as long as you’re a good person who uses their good moral compasses, you’re good to go.Society’s Jesus is—quite frankly—a pushover: he never talks about absolute truth, caters to ‘whatever is good or right’ for the individual’s personal preference of happiness, is viewed as a moral genie of sorts, and definitely never asks you to humble yourself, admit your sinfulness, and follow a better Lord other than yourself. And he certainly never commands you to abstain from sex before marriage. This is the kind of Jesus we like—and maybe that’s because he’s just a spiritualized projection of our wants anyways.Truly, the Bible portrays Jesus much differently–and quite oppositely. The Jesus of the Bible is loving and accepting, yes, but he certainly wasn’t afraid to do controversial things or step on people’s toes for the sake of what is truly right. In fact, Jesus did many other things that would be viewed as major social crimes—both in biblical times and in our day and age—such as claiming ultimate Godship and talking about hell more than any other figure in the Bible. That doesn’t seem like the type of thing I would see the Jesus on TV with the purple beauty sash, brown flowing hair, and flawless skin do. It’s almost as if the general public treat Jesus like a nice guy on a Dove commercial who advertises clean living and that’s it.
Let’s don’t treat Jesus as a buffet line, picking and choosing only what we personally find pleasant and palatable. The Bible describes Jesus as God incarnate, full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14-18). He’s either a moral teacher or not. He can’t be a moral teacher some of the time (i.e., when he doesn’t claim Godship or talk about hell or rebuke people or the like). It’s all or nothing here.
- Is Jesus the only person in history where people say, “he’s just a moral teacher”, even though he himself claimed to be God?Everyone else in the history of the world who has claimed to be God (but clearly isn’t) has never been coined and followed as a renowned, excellent moral teacher. Certainly, someone can’t really be “an impressive moral teacher” if he makes such a preposterous claim to be God, and wasn’t.“Yeah, the guy I follow has great moral codes, but struggled with a fatal ego problem of incredibly narcissistic proportions…”
…No, of course not.
Anyone who claims to be God is not a good moral teacher…unless, of course, it’s true. Plain and simple. Therefore, you can’t just call Jesus only a good moral teacher. He’s either God and THE moral teacher, like he says he is, or he’s a psychopath who thinks he’s God and a legitimate moral teacher. There’s not an option for him to be just a moral teacher.
Overall, I encourage you to wrestle with this idea. Is Jesus who he claims to be or not? He’s either God with righteous morals, or he’s a delusional teacher who thinks he does.
Logically, you cannot believe that Jesus is just a moral teacher. There’s simply no room for that.
“Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or lord” –CS Lewis
One Massive Implication:
If Jesus was only a moral teacher, then that means how well you follow him determines whether or not you can save yourself. Meaning, if Jesus is only a moral teacher, then my saving depends on how well I can follow his teaching. Essentially, I am my own savior and my salvation lies in my ability to keep the law. And this same principle goes with any system of religion whose salvation is based on good deeds. This means my boast will never be in my religious system’s principles, but only in my ability to keep them—which will inevitably produce either self-righteous pride (if I succeed) or self-loathing despair (if I fail)—both of which will not carry me into heaven’s pearly gates. Either way, I won’t be getting in; it’s a dead end! But if I am saved by Another, then my boast could ever only be in Him—producing only humility and gratefulness—qualities of the pearly gates above.
Diggin’ a Little Deeper:
Furthermore, if Jesus is Lord, as he says he is, then this means that what he says about morality is of paramount importance. So what does he preach? A moral code? A moral formula? Ironically enough, Jesus never preached a moral formula so much as he preached a moral person, namely himself. Yes, all throughout the Bible we can see Jesus preaching the law, teaching the law, heightening the law—but he was showing how all of the law was fundamentally pointing to himself (Luke 24:27). In light of God’s perfect holiness, the law was given to show us that the only thing able to bring us into right standing with God is perfect righteousness, which makes clear we will never accomplish or measure up to. We need a perfect righteousness to set us right with God, but that means it could only come from God; and it was graciously given to us by God—Jesus. And that’s exactly what Jesus preached: himself as the embodiment of perfect morality who would take our sins upon himself and give us his righteousness as a gift.
Don’t bother: you can’t fix your position of alienation with God with good deeds nor can you achieve right standing with God by your righteous living to the law; if you could, Jesus would not have had to die (Gal. 2:20). It’s not our practice of sin against God that we need redeeming so much as our position of sin before God. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin, all of humanity is born into spiritual enmity with God. It’s like being born into the United States—you can’t help the fact that you’re an American. Same with sin. No one had to teach us to be selfish; it’s part of the sin-broken world we were born into. But on the cross, Christ takes the penalty of our rebellion against God, so we could take his position of right standing with God.
Jesus, unlike all other major moral teachers in history, didn’t come to bring good advice as much as he came to bring good news (which, from that foundation, comes the greatest advice). HE is the good news. And instead of telling us “what to do to be saved”, he tells us “it has been done”, now trust and believe. Jesus never bid us to come and follow a formula; he bid us to follow himself.
