WHO IS JESUS CHRIST?

Jesus Christ has a good press these days. Even non-Christians admire him. Celebrities like Madonna appeal to him when declaring their positions on contemporary social issues. College students still line up to take courses about him and to debate his impact.

Yet often the cultural understanding of Jesus is a mile wide and an inch deep. Like so many other things, we use Jesus to baptize our positions and decisions instead of asking the a priori question, "What did Jesus say about Himself, His values, and the work He came into the world to do?"

In Colossians we read: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the first born from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." (Ephesians 1.15-20)

CS Lewis once famously stated in his book MERE CHRISTIANITY that, "“I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [Jesus Christ]: '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 a level with 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 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

This Sunday at the Church of God of Landisville during both the 8.15 and 10.45 worship services, I will be answering that question, "Who Is Jesus Christ?" I hope you will consider joining us.