Who Is Jesus?

This week, Nicky Gumbel introduced us to the evidence about Jesus both within and outside the New Testament. There are tens (if not hundreds) of additional sources that mention Jesus, a fact that is new to many of us. Jesus' existence can proved from the variety of evidence; the difficulty for us is not necessarily agreeing with his existence, but agreeing with what he said and who he is. Can we really be sure?

 

Nicky said there are three realistic possibilities of who Jesus is:

     1) Lord (He said who he said he was)

     2) Liar (He lied about everything)

     3) Lunatic (He was insane, a madman)

 

We had a long discussion on who we think Jesus is to us. We even tried to put ourselves in Jesus' time, how would we react to him? Is it possible for Jesus to just have been a moral teacher? Could he have been a lunatic? If so, what does that mean for us today? Is believing Jesus is Lord a leap of faith or is there evidence for his claims? These are certainly not easy questions to answer, and I encourage you to read the Bible yourself to make your own judgment.

 

 

Nicky would say that there is sufficient evidence to support Jesus' claims:

1) His teaching (read the Sermon on the Mount - Matthew 5-7)

2) His works (the miracles Jesus performed)

3) His character (the way he lived and acted toward others)

4) His fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies (hundreds fulfilled; 29 fulfilled in 1 day!)

5) His conquest of death (we will explore this further next week)

 

In our discussion, we explored which of these evidences were the least and most convincing. For many of us, we agreed that the resurrection and empty tomb were the most difficult to comprehend and understand. Both Christians and non-Christians would agree that the resurrection is very mind-boggling! Next week's topic "Why Did Jesus Die" may answer some of the questions we have about this!

 

Feel free to comment or ask questions in the comment box or during next week's session.

Looking forward to seeing you all again on Sunday!

 

Image Credit: http://link.adventistconnect.org/discovery/TJ-new/TJ_Lesson1_View.html