When I read these chapters recently I couldn’t get over how bizarre they were. There are many things Jesus says and does that are unexplainable unless he was who he said he was: the divine Son of God, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, and Savior of the world. More than the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), John’s gospel captures Jesus saying things that are especially difficult for the skeptic who tries to explain away Jesus as just some kind of good moral teacher. That is not an option. Yet for hundreds of years that is exactly what non-Christians of every stripe have declared Jesus to be. Rejecting the Jesus of the gospels, however, and replacing him with some other Jesus has been going on a lot longer than that.
Even though they reject him as Lord and Savior, everyone wants a piece of Jesus. We can go as far back as Mohammed in the 7th century rejecting the Triune God and turning Jesus into a great prophet. At some point Eastern religions embraced him as some wise moral shaman. When the Enlightenment came on the scene in the 17th century the divine nature of Scripture was rejected, so Jesus had to be explained as something other than what the New Testament declares him to be. Yeah, let’s go with a good moral teacher, that’s it! There was no explaining away the historical person, so they had to get rid of him in some other way.
When we talk about Jesus, we must go back to one of the most effective arguments for his divinity, the classic trilemma. Either Jesus was Lord, God incarnate in human flesh, or he was a lunatic or a liar. There is no Jesus as a good moral teacher option. Good moral teachers do not say the things he said. Scottish minister John Duncan (1796-1870) seems to have been the first to apply the term “trilemma” to this argument when he observed: “Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or he was himself deluded and self-deceived, or he was divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.” As often phrased, Jesus is either Lord, lunatic, or liar. As you develop your apologetics skills this is an indispensable one to have in your tool belt. When you use examples from the gospels it’s impossible for anyone to counter. Some people may contend Jesus didn’t say such things, but rather, those who wrote the gospels put these strange sayings in Jesus’ mouth. That’s even more impossible to believe than Jesus having actually said them. Who makes up stuff like this? And where did they get these ideas? What he says sounds strange to us now, but to first century Jews they were not only inconceivable but blasphemous. It’s far easier to believe Jesus was who he said he was, Lord God and Savior of the world.
The Bizarre Jesus
Of any person in recorded history, Jesus would be the most difficult to invent, by far, specifically because what he said was so bizarre. Nobody expected Israel’s long-awaited Messiah would say such outlandish things. Israel’s Messiah would be an exalted, anointed king like David, not Jesus. We could pick almost any chapter in John, but chapters 5 and 6 are especially strange. The gospels are primarily Jesus picking fights with the Jewish religious leaders and using those encounters to teach the world who he is and what he came to do. He says things that are so scandalous he consistently infuriates them. Eventually it gets him killed. In John 5, Jesus is in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals, and he’s giving the Jewish leaders fits, specifically because he’s healing on the Sabbath, a no-no. And as John says, “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” Let’s look at some of the assertions Jesus makes about himself, and remember the Trilemma as you read.
“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.
28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.
All those who want the good moral teacher Jesus, or like Muslims, want the great prophet Jesus, have to ignore entire passages like this. Think about what he is saying here. This carpenter from Galilee (to Hillary Clinton he would be a “deplorable”) is claiming to be the Living God, Yahweh, Israel’s covenant Almighty God. No wonder he confused everyone he encountered. Then he goes and gets killed on a Roman cross, end of story—he was both a lunatic and a liar! Jews could come to no other conclusion. Then he rose from the dead. Over time the first Christians realized, because Jesus told them (Luke 24), that the entire Old Testament was about him, and then in due course it all made perfect sense.
The Bread of Life
To ratchet up the bizarreness, In John 6, Jesus says some things that are even more strange. He tells his disciples, and anyone else who would listen, that he is bread and wine, and they are supposed to eat and drink him! On the bizarre scale that’s about ten million. And just to emphasize the strangeness, he says his flesh is “real food.” So Jesus is promoting cannibalism? Imagine, someone doesn’t know anything about the Bible, never read any of it, and only vaguely that Christianity is a religion. Let’s say you give them this passage to read. Try to further imagine what they would think as they read it.
I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
Which is it? Lord, lunatic, or liar? Does a good moral teacher say things like this? We cannot ask that question enough.
Those who want a piece of Jesus completely ignore passages like John 5 and 6. For that matter, they ignore the entire gospel of John. It is the most in your face Jesus-is-God gospel, by far. When we come to it, we have to make a choice, and if we’re honest we will—for non-Christians it is inevitably the trilemma.
Jesus put the question of his identity to his followers. We read this in Matthew 16, Mark 8, and Luke 9. In the Matthew passage Jesus askes his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Then after they give him some answers, he asks the most important question in the history of the world: “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Everything in life and history, and eternity, turns on this question, and the answer to it.
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