Merry Christmas everyone. With today being the day set aside to recognize the birth of Jesus into our world, I think it is worth pausing to reflect on a few things. In the old testament, Isaiah 7:14 prophesied how Jesus would be immaculately conceived and born, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." It is generally thought the book of Isaiah was written between 500-700 years before Christ. In Matthew's Gospel in the new testament, after describing the circumstances surrounding Christ's conception and birth, he made this connection to Isaiah in Matthew 1:22-23: "All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”)." The bible is very clear about who Jesus is, he is the son of God born into our world as a human being, fully God and fully human, born to save humanity from it's sin and brokenness. The well known verse John 3:16 summarizes this well, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
My question for us to ponder is, who do we believe that Jesus is? In my opinion, the question is not whether Jesus actually existed, but who do we accept him to be, based on the claims that he made? Outside of the bible, there are historical records of Jesus being a man that existed. In an article by History . com, they said "Within a few decades of his lifetime, Jesus was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians in passages that corroborate portions of the New Testament that describe the life and death of Jesus." In my opinion, to deny that Jesus was a real person who actually lived would be a pretty ignorant viewpoint to carry given biblical and non-biblical sources we have that help to validate his existence.
So given that Jesus was a person and a historical figure, what do we do with his claims, and how does that impact our lives? Given that Jesus was a real person, I think it follows that it is worth considering what the bible has to say about him. Jesus brought claims and teachings that would completely change the world. He is arguably the most influential person that ever walked upon the Earth. Many have set out to discredit or persecute Jesus, only to have their lives radically changed when they actually experience him and his teachings firsthand. Jesus did not beat around the bush about who he was and what he came to do. In John 14:6 Jesus stated: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." He made an exclusive claim that he was the only way to God, which is one of the main reasons the religious leaders of his time hated him and plotted to kill him. A person who made the claims that Jesus did should not be dismissed easily. He is either telling the truth (and if that is the case then this has eternal consequences for every one of us), or lying in a way that no normal person would.
CS Lewis once said in his book Mere Christianity: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him [that is, 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 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.”
So what do you think about Jesus, who do you accept him to be? Do you base your opinions only on things you have heard about him, or perhaps based on what you have seen in people who have represented him poorly? There is simply too much at stake here to not do the research ourselves. People are flawed by nature, no one except Jesus is perfect and even the best of us will get it wrong from time to time. Looking at people is not the same as "...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith," (Hebrews 12:2). As Christians, we are called to "...let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven," (Matthew 5:16), but we screw up and paint the wrong picture of who Jesus is sometimes. If you've never actually looked at Jesus himself before, I encourage you to do your own investigation and look at the evidence. If you don't think he is who he said he was, look deeper and ask yourself why? Ravi Zacharias once said, "A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God." This is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:3 that "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Those who are humble and low in spirit, those whom this world has left broken, poor and destitute, it is they who know they have nothing to offer God and see in themselves their complete need for him as their savior. Christmas is the designated time of year where we reflect on the fact that God has provided us with that gift already, but the choice is ours if we will accept it.
