7-8-19<\/p>\n
Many well-meaning agnostics, and ill-intentioned atheists, and clueless friends who think they are being \u201cwelcoming,\u201d showing they can meet Christians half-way, will intone that they regard Jesus as a \u201cgreat man,\u201d surely a \u201cgreat teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Close on the heels of such specious arguments often come the \u201copen-minded\u201d assertions that every religious tradition has great teachers\u2026 that all of these teachers must lead to god (whatever they think god is)\u2026 that all the teachers all preached peace. And taught how to get along. Didn\u2019t they?<\/p>\n
Regarding the chief attributes of Jesus as being a good man and a great teacher: these are worse insults than outright denial that He was God incarnate. Blasphemy. (Blasphemy, by the way, is the one \u201cunforgivable\u201d sin spoken of in the Bible.)<\/p>\n
An incomplete God is not God at all.<\/p>\n
A \u201cshadow God\u201d is one or the other, not both. Jesus casts<\/em> shadows. He is the Light Of the World. He is \u201cthe image of the One True God; the first-born of all Creation.\u201d<\/p>\n Other \u201cteachers\u201d of other religions did not claim to be more than teachers or prophets; does everyone know that? Jesus, however, claimed to be the Messiah \u2013 \u201cI and the Father are One\u201d \u2013 literally, God-with-us.<\/p>\n Other religious leaders died. Alone of them all, Jesus rose from the dead, and physically ascended to Heaven.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I respect Him as a great man, a wise teacher.\u201d Your friends who say that to you are in effect calling Him a liar \u2013 funny thing for a Holy Man to be! \u2013 because Jesus was the Son of God who taught; yes. But He also healed. He read minds and convicted people of their sins. He raised others from the dead. He performed a multitude of miracles, recorded not only in the Bible but in contemporary accounts. Miracles.<\/p>\n He taught<\/em> love, yes. But, more, He was<\/em> love.<\/p>\n Can mere teachers transform lives; heal families and their pain; redeem the desperate among us? Can a mere teacher have turned my own heart from inclinations toward sin to seeking forgiveness, redemption, and holiness? Teachers can try \u2013 religious and secular teachers both \u2013 but only Jesus, come to earth for these missions, can do these things, be these things.<\/p>\n You say Jesus was a good man, a great teacher? Let me say in love: shut up \u2013 I have got some life-changing details to share with you. Good man, great teacher\u2026 are the first two of uncountable check-boxes in the list that describes my Savior and Friend, Jesus.<\/p>\n + + +<\/p>\n