Friday, March 18, 2011

Lessons From Mere Christianity: Jesus

This is a post from my topic called Lessons From Mere Christianity.

CS Lewis talks a lot about Jesus in Mere Christianity, as you would imagine based on the book's title and topic (it would be strange to have a Christian book and not talk about Jesus). Included is one of the most oft-quoted literary passages about Jesus, which talks about how me must view Jesus, or, how we cannot view Jesus.

"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.' This 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 be either a lunatic - on a level of a 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." (52)

This, of course, is often cited as the liar/lunatic/Lord theory.

Next, I am sure the question has been asked many times, if Jesus is the Son of God, why did he have to die? The human race was suffering and in need of saving, but why did God choose this manner of saving us, as opposed to any other manner (as he is omnipotent). Lewis tackles this topic.

"But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die." (57-58)

Lewis goes on to say that we need God's help more than ever, but in God's normal nature and state of being, how can He show us? Because we are with sin and He is not, it is very unnatural for Him.

"But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can only do it if He becomes man." (58)

God became man to show us the way to Him. By being fully God and fully man, He is able to experience all of the temptation that we face, but He is able to show us how to resist them, by placing full trust and surrending to God's will.

Of course, this will lead some people to wonder if Jesus is really any help to us. Since he is God, is He really a model that we can legitimately follow?

"The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher; and only because it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself (and so had no 'unfair' advantage), it would not get on very quickly." (58-59)

Jesus, I Trust In You

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