“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,” said C.S. Lewis in what is sometimes described as his “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord,” argument. [1]
God had promised a Messiah would come, Immanuel, “God with us.” Was Jesus of Nazareth the One? Some have said Jesus never claimed He was God. They haven’t read the Scriptures. The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees understood His claims for they took up stones to kill Him, the penalty for blasphemy.
Jesus claimed that He and the Father were one (John 10:30-31).
“Before Abraham was, I am,” Jesus said, identifying Himself with the name God had revealed to Moses at the burning bush (John 8:58-59; Exodus 3:14). “Declaring His name to be I AM, [Jesus] meant by such that He possessed and could exercise divine prerogatives and functions, and could be to us what the Jehovah of the Old Testament proposed to be to His ancient people.” [2]
The high priest asked directly, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us [including the scribes and Pharisees present] if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.”
Jesus replied, “You have said so.” Then He added, “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:62-65, Daniel 7:13-14).
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked His disciples.
Join us as we prepare to celebrate Easter with a series which examines seven names Jesus used to identify Himself in the New Testament book of John with the words, “I AM”:
I AM the Bread of Life (John 6:48-51)
I AM the Light of the World (John 8:12)
I AM the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7-9)
I AM the Good Shepherd (John 10:14-16)
I AM the True Vine (John 15:5)
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)
I AM the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25-26)
I AM the First and the Last (Revelation 1:17)
Sources:
[1] Lewis, C.S., Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, 56 [2] Herbert Lockyer, All the Divine Names and Titles in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,1975), 172