Today, Monday November 8
Jesus, Either a Lunatic, Liar or the Son of God
Jude 1:8-11 “Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" But these speak evil of whatever they do not know; and whatever they know naturally, like brute beasts, in these things they corrupt themselves. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.”
Jude is giving us a description of the “dreamers”, the apostates who are living in an unreal world. The course of their rebellion was clearly described by Jude. The consequence of their rebellion is seen in their own ruin: "they corrupt, [destroy] themselves" (Jude 10). The condemnation of the false teachers is given in Jude 11: "Woe unto them!" Jude cited three examples from the Old Testament to illustrate the enormity of their sins, three men who rebelled against God's authority and who suffered for it.
Cain rebelled against God's way of salvation (Gen. 4; 1 John 3:11-12). The "way of Cain" is the way of religion without faith, righteousness based on character and good works. The "way of Cain" is the way of pride, a man establishing his own righteousness and rejecting the righteousness of God that comes through faith in Christ.
I remind you that Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man can come to the Father but by Me!” (John 14:6) God’s Way of salvation is a person and His name is Jesus!
In 1936, Watchman Nee made this observation in his book, Normal Christian Faith:
“A person who claims to be God must belong to one of three categories:
First, if he claims to be God and yet in fact is not, he has to be a madman or a lunatic.
Second, if he is neither God nor a lunatic, he has to be a liar, deceiving others by his lie.
Third, if he is neither of these, he must be God.
You can only choose one of the three possibilities. If you do not believe that he is God, you have to consider him a madman. If you cannot take him for either of the two, you have to take him for a liar. There is no need for us to prove if Jesus of Nazareth is God or not. All we have to do is find out if He is a lunatic or a liar. If He is neither, He must be the Son of God.”
C. S. Lewis, speaking in 1942 (and published in Mere Christianity in 1952), said it this way:
“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. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.” (Mere Christianity, 55-56)
Today, what do you believe about Jesus? Please don’t go the way of Cain!
God bless!