How, in the name of logic, common sense,
and experience, could an impostor -- that is a deceitful, selfish,
depraved man -- have invented and consistently maintained from the
beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history
with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could He have
conceived and successfully carried out a plan of unparalleled
beneficence, moral magnitude, and sublimity, and sacrificed His own
life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of His people and
age? (Philip Schaff, The Person of Christ. New York: American Tract
Society, 1913, 94-95)
C.S. Lewis, one-time atheist and author of The Chronicles of
Narnia, put the dilemma this way:
A man who was merely a man and said the
sort of things Jesus said [about Himself] would not be a great moral
teacher. He would either 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 away with any
patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not
left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity)
Jesus would have to have been lying or insane (not the
qualities of a good moral teacher) to call Himself the Son of God and
the Savior of mankind if it weren’t true.
Therefore, to separate what is comfortable about Jesus – His
kindness, His message of unconditional love, His healing of the sick –
from that which is less comfortable (He was born of a virgin, He
claimed to be God, He rose from the dead) isn’t really possible.
There are four options open to a person dealing with Jesus.
You may consider Him: a legend, a liar, a lunatic, or Lord and God. If
He existed, then He's not a legend. If He's a liar, that goes against
everything else we know about His character. If He's a lunatic, how to
explain the consistency in His message, the constancy of His love? If
those options are removed, where does that leave you?
This is one reason some Jews of Jesus’ time could not believe
He was their Savior – He didn’t deliver them from the oppression of
their Roman occupiers. He never actually intended to. The deliverance
Christ offered and still offers today is of a spiritual nature,
reconciling mankind to God (Matthew 11:27). The peace this Messiah
brings is internal. His hope is for each human to be restored to a
relationship with God, which sin has broken.