At the center of biblical Christianity we find, not ideas and instructions, but
a person and events. Jesus is the person and the events are His doing,
dying and rising again. Christ, unlike other religious leaders, didn’t
come here merely to tell us how to live, but as the God/Man he came to
actually live, die and rise again in our place.
Throughout
the ages, apart from Jesus, there have been three principal religious
teachers, Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed. These men either taught on how
we could improve ourselves or instructed us on what to do to find God.
But Jesus wasn’t part of their club. In fact He can’t even be compared
with any of them. When comparing these world religions the issue is not
whether Buddha out-taught Jesus or whether Jesus had better things to
say than Confucius. The issue is this, Jesus claimed to be God. Buddha
didn’t do that, nor did Mohammed nor did any of the other founders of
the world’s great religions. Jesus, therefore, stands apart from them
all.
So was Jesus
mistaken about Himself? Was He out of His depth? Was he simply nuts
when he claimed that He would be the great end time Judge (Matt
25:31-46)? Was He lying when He said that if we have seen Him we have
seen the Father (Jn 14:9). Was he deluded when He allowed Thomas to fall
down before Him and address Him as, “My Lord and My God?”(Jn 20:28).
Although
Jesus had many revolutionary things to say about ethics and outclassed
all other teachers in this department, at the heart of His message He
taught, not on self-improvement, but about Himself. He Himself was the
message and at the heart of this message was His claim to being the man
who was God. Indeed, so angered were the Jewish leaders by these
frequent claims that they made plans to kill him (See John 5 and John
10:33). Keep Reading >>>
No comments:
Post a Comment