 |
 |
Devotions Archive
Archive:
1999
|
2000
|
2001
|
2002
|
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
2014
|
2015
|
2016
|
2017
|
2018
|
2019
|
2020
|
2021
|
2022
|
2023
|
2024
What do I know?Friday, March 14, 2008
John 10:31-42 The Jews answered him, "We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God." ... Jesus said, "If I perform the works of my Father, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father."
Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.
He rejected those who saw him only as a human teacher. C.S. Lewis wrote in 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 patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (pp 40-41) Lewis writes elsewhere* of his own intense intellectual struggle, more like a war within himself, as he resisted the belief that Jesus is God. I know of my own battle, which was resolved in 1979, deep in a forest on a snowy afternoon. Do I believe what Jesus said about himself? Going into the woods, I didn't. Coming out, I did. I do remember asking the question as clearly and honestly as I could. I asked it over and over. I really wasn't satisfied with any "answer" I heard. I'm still not satisfied with most of what people say; my assurance of Jesus' identity rests on the experience of that afternoon many years ago, and the fruit I've seen in my life. God meets us; I think he's always looking for a way to get to where we are rather than insisting we get to where He is. Most evangelistic methods settled for by the world's religions are not so personal or so informed by compassion and generosity. So I'm grateful Jesus was determined to speak truth, and that he was determined I hear it. And that he is patient with me while I wind my own way closer to him. You are the potter, Lord. Let me be satisfied to be the clay. *Especially in Surprised by Joy. For a summary of this book, check out: |
Jesus wouldn't give it up. He kept himself in the center of decisions about God. He insisted on asking, over and over, "Will you believe what I tell you about my relationship with the Father?"