Who Do You Say That I Am...

“…but who do you say that I am?”

—Jesus

I can’t help but think this is one of the most important questions, if not the most important question Jesus asked His disciples.

Don’t let the gravity of Jesus’ question elude you.

Jesus knew who He was, and ultimately, what that should mean to mankind. But He also knew something else. He knew the “on earth as it is in heaven” effect His kingdom was meant to have on your life is a direct reflection of your answer to this question—both now and for all eternity.

In his work Mere Christianity, writer C.S. Lewis says, “I am trying here to prevent anyone from 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 a 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 up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Lewis’ “trilemma” asserts that Jesus was “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord.”

Real talk.

You can write off a liar. You can write off a lunatic. But you cannot simply write off—Lord.

“Lord” means something.

“Lord” requires a response.

A response we may not be entirely comfortable with.

A response not of our own invention, any more than our right to create a god in our own image.

I charge you to get brutally honest with yourself in answer to Jesus’ question.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?