Equal to God
John’s gospel records that Jesus was preforming miracles on the Sabbath. Which was considered work by the religious leaders of his day and thus by their way of thinking wrong. John then notes this incident in which Jesus clearly states He is God’s Son. John states,
“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.
Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”
For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. John 5:16-19
Jesus never shied away from the fact that He was the Son of God. The fact that Jesus is the Son of God is the corner stone of Christian belief.
For Jesus to say He was the Son of God was to take his life in his hands. C.S. Lewis points out in his book Mere Christianity
“I am trying here 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 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 with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
All who are presented with Jesus must make up their own mind as to who Jesus is. There is no middle ground with Jesus.
Henry Ward Beecher said of Jesus,
“If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.” Henry Ward Beecher.
Thus the question becomes, Who do you think Jesus is?
Please think about it.
John’s gospel records that Jesus was preforming miracles on the Sabbath. Which was considered work by the religious leaders of his day and thus by their way of thinking wrong. John then notes this incident in which Jesus clearly states He is God’s Son. John states,
“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.
Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”
For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. John 5:16-19
Jesus never shied away from the fact that He was the Son of God. The fact that Jesus is the Son of God is the corner stone of Christian belief.
For Jesus to say He was the Son of God was to take his life in his hands. C.S. Lewis points out in his book Mere Christianity
“I am trying here 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 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 with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
All who are presented with Jesus must make up their own mind as to who Jesus is. There is no middle ground with Jesus.
Henry Ward Beecher said of Jesus,
“If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.” Henry Ward Beecher.
Thus the question becomes, Who do you think Jesus is?
Please think about it.
