IS JESUS GOD? (2) or great moral teacher?

                                            IS JESUS GOD?

                                                                                                                   part two        

           (copied from 
            Y-Jesus.com)

              GREAT MORAL                                 TEACHER?




Even those from other religions acknowledge that Jesus was a great moral teacher.

Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, spoke highly of Jesus righteous life and profound words.  Likewise Jewish scholar Joseph Klausner, wrote "It is universally admitted .... that Christ taught the purest and sublimest ethics... which throws the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade.

Jesus' sermon on the mount has been called the most superlative teaching of human ethics ever uttered by an individual. In fact, much of what we know today as "equal rights" actually is the result of Jesus' teaching. Historian Will Durant, a non-Christian, said of Jesus that "He lived  and struggled unremittingly for 'equal rights,'  " in modern times He would have been sent to Siberia.  " He that is greatest among you, let him be your servant" - this is the inversion of all political wisdom of all sanity.

Many, like Ghandi, have tried to separate Jesus' teaching on ethics from His claims about Himself, believing that He was simply a great man who taught lofty  moral principles. This was the approach of one of America's Founding Fathers.  President Thomas Jefferson, who cut and pasted a copy of the New Testament, removing sections he thought referred to Jesus' deity, while leaving in other passages regarding Jesus' ethical and moral teaching.

                                       


 Jefferson carried around      his cut and pasted New        Testament with him,              revering Jesus as perhaps    the greatest moral  teacher of all time.




In fact, Jefferson's memorable words in the Declaration of  Independence  were rooted in Jesus' teaching that each person is of immense and equal importance to God, regardless of sex, race, or social status. The famous document sets forth "We hold these truths to be self evident , that all men are created equal, that they are endowed  by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. ..."

But one thing Jefferson didn't answer.  If Jesus falsely claimed to be God, He couldn't have been a good moral teacher.

But did Jesus really claim deity?  Before we look at what Jesus claimed, we need to examine the possibility that He was simply a great religious leader.

next post   22nd February