Letter Five: Wasn't Jesus Just a Good Teacher?

Letters to an Honest Skeptic

Dear friend,

Most people I talk with about Jesus respect Him. They may not believe in God, and they certainly do not trust the church, but they think well of Jesus. He taught people to love their enemies. He was kind to outcasts. He stood up to religious hypocrites. If He were alive today, they suspect, He would be embarrassed by what His followers have turned Him into.

The view usually goes like this: Jesus was a wise and good teacher, and decades after His death the church promoted Him to God.

I understand why that view appeals to people. It lets a person keep everything admirable about Jesus without the uncomfortable parts. It sounds reasonable, and it sounds fair to Him. Therefore it deserves to be tested rather than dismissed, and I want to test it with you against the record itself.

What "God" means here

First, a word about terms, because a great deal of confusion starts here. When Christians say Jesus claimed to be God, we do not mean He claimed to be the Father. The Bible teaches that there is one God, and that this one God exists eternally as three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You may find that strange. I will admit freely that no human mind can take it in completely, and I would be suspicious of a God small enough to fit inside my head. But it is what the Bible teaches, and it matters for what follows. The question is not whether Jesus claimed to be the Father. The question is whether He claimed to be the eternal Son, sharing fully in the nature of God.

Test one: His enemies

If Jesus never claimed to be God, it is difficult to explain why people who heard Him in person tried to kill Him for claiming it.

On one occasion He told a hostile crowd, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am" (John 8:58). That was not bad grammar. "I AM" is the name God gave Himself when He spoke to Moses at the burning bush. The crowd picked up stones to throw at Him. The Law of Moses prescribed stoning for blasphemy, and they understood exactly what He had said.

On another occasion He said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). The crowd picked up stones again. When He asked them why, they told Him plainly: "For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God" (John 10:33).

That charge was not made by the church decades later. It was made by His opponents, to His face, during His lifetime.

Test two: the earliest source

Some will answer that John's Gospel was written late, and so its account cannot be trusted on this point. Then go to Mark, which most scholars, including skeptical ones, date as the earliest of the four Gospels.

In Mark's second chapter, a paralyzed man is lowered through a roof to Jesus, and Jesus says to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven." The religious scholars in the room object at once: "Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?" (Mark 2:7). Jesus then heals the man in front of everyone, "so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10).

In Mark's account of the trial, the high priest asks Jesus directly whether He is the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One. Jesus answers, "I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of heaven" (Mark 14:62). The high priest tears his robes, calls it blasphemy, and the council condemns Him to death.

Therefore the claim is not a late addition. It is in the earliest Gospel, from the second chapter to the trial.

"But He said He sits at God's right hand"

You may have heard that last verse used the other way. If Jesus sits at the right hand of God, the argument goes, then He is next to God, not God Himself.

That would be a strong objection if Christians claimed Jesus was the Father. We do not. The Son is distinct from the Father, which is why He can be at the Father's right hand. More to the point, Jesus was quoting Psalm 110, where David writes, "The LORD says to my Lord: 'Sit at My right hand.'" In that world, the right hand of a king was the seat of shared rule, not a chair for an assistant. Jesus also joined that psalm to a passage in Daniel about one who comes "with the clouds of heaven," and in the Hebrew Scriptures, riding on the clouds is something God does. That is why the high priest tore his robes. No one would have called it blasphemy if Jesus had claimed to be God's helper.

Test three: what a good teacher would say

Here is a simple illustration of the problem. Suppose a man steals your neighbor's truck, and a few days later you tell the thief, "I forgive you." Your neighbor would rightly ask what business you have forgiving a wrong done to him. A person can forgive what is done to him. He cannot forgive what is done to someone else.

Jesus forgave a stranger's sins, all of them, as though every one had been committed against Him. A merely good teacher does not do that. A merely good teacher also does not accept worship. When a man named Cornelius fell at the apostle Peter's feet, Peter pulled him up and said, "Stand up; I too am just a man" (Acts 10:26). Jesus, by contrast, accepted worship more than once. When the disciple Thomas, who had refused to believe without evidence, finally saw Him and said, "My Lord and my God!", Jesus did not correct him (John 20:28-29).

Three options

The writer C. S. Lewis pointed out that this leaves us with three choices, and "good teacher" is not one of them.

If Jesus knew His claims were false, He was a liar, and a good teacher does not deceive people into worshiping him. If He believed His claims and was wrong, He was badly deluded, and the sober, searching wisdom of His teaching is very hard to square with a man who believed he was the eternal God when he was not. If He believed His claims and was right, then He is Lord.

There is a fourth possibility, that the whole thing is legend. My previous letter dealt with that. The records were written while eyewitnesses were still alive, and the claims are tied to the reactions of His enemies, which is not how legends usually work.

An honest admission

I want to be fair with you. This argument does not force anyone to believe. Plenty of people looked at the same evidence two thousand years ago, saw His works with their own eyes, and still picked up stones. What the argument does is remove the middle position. It takes away the option of admiring Jesus from a comfortable distance.

I think that is why the "good teacher" view is so popular. A good teacher can be quoted and admired, and then set aside. A Lord has to be answered.

One question

So here is my question for you this time. Based on what you have read of Him in His own words, not what you have heard about Him from others, which of the three fits the man in the record? Liar, lunatic, or Lord? And if your honest answer is "none of them," then I would gently ask what you would do with the stones in John 10, the torn robes of the high priest, and the words of Thomas.

Jesus once asked His own disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" (Mark 8:29). He has been asking it of everyone since.

Next letter, we come to the claim on which everything else depends: did He really rise from the dead?

Come, let us reason together.

Your friend,

Mark

Walshville Christian Church, Walshville, Illinois. These letters accompany a series our church is walking through together. You are welcome any Sunday, questions and all.