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Tuesday 24 March 2009

"Wasn't Jesus just a good moral teacher?"




Upon my arrival home i realised i had never rummaged properly through my parents vast book collection, so i decided to look! I found various books which have now been added to my "to read" list, but i managed to read one of them already (it's only like a small booklet) It's called For Your Joy by John Piper and it was a good little read. It was the intro that struck me the most as it addresses that common phrase people say when they're asked who they thought Jesus was i.e. "oh wasn't he just a good moral teacher." Piper quotes a C.S Lewis who deals with the issue rather bluntly.

I am trying 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 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.

I guess all that you can ask after reading that is, who do i say Jesus was if he can't simply be a 'good moral teacher'

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