3 January 2024 John 1:29-34
John the Baptist did not make modest claims about Jesus. “I have seen and testify that He is the Son of God.”
It doesn’t get a whole lot bolder than that.
Jesus did not make modest claims about himself either. He claimed authority on earth to forgive sins – not just the sins that others might commit against him, but the sins that others committed against others. He claimed to be the One who would appear at the end of time to judge the universe. He claimed to be the one who had kept on sending wise men and prophets to Jerusalem, and still “his” people (!) rejected them. He said, “Before Abraham was, I Am,” And he said it to a bunch of people who already knew that “I Am” is the Hebrew name of God.
No other leader of any other world religious tradition made anything like such exalted claims. C.S. Lewis observed, “If you had gone to Buddha and asked him, ‘Are you the Son of Bramah?’, he would have said, ‘My son, you are still in the vale of illusion.’ If you had gone to Socrates and asked, ‘Are you Zeus?’, he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, ‘Are you Allah?’ he would first have rent his clothes and then cut your head off. If you had asked Confucius, ‘Are you heaven?’ I think he would have probably replied, ‘Remarks which are not in accord with Nature are in bad taste.’ The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God, or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man…. We may note in passing that [Jesus] was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that kind of effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects – hatred, terror, adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”
How odd it is, then, that “mild approval” is all we seem to get from so many priests, pastors, pew sitters, podcasters and assorted pulpiteers.
Odder still when you consider that many of those in our time who are on the outside looking in with the kind of longing we haven’t seen in a while, hoping that maybe we are still telling the kind of story that is still capable of out-thinking, out-fighting, out-living and out-dying a once great society that has lost its way, actually want us to be making bold claims for Jesus, with Jesus. Journalist Douglas Murray, best-selling author of several books on contemporary politics and culture, describes himself as a “disappointed non-adherent,” having left the church of his youth and now more than half hoping that he has made a terrible mistake: “My fear is the church is not doing what so many of us on the outside would like it to do – which is to be preaching its gospel, to be asserting its truths and its claims. When one sees it falling into all of the latest tropes, one just thinks, ‘Well, that’s another thing gone.’ It’s like absolutely everything else in this boring, monotone, ill-thought out and shallow dialectic.”
John the Baptist did not make modest claims about Jesus. “I have seen and testify that He is the Son of God.”
It doesn’t get a whole lot bolder than that.
Mild approval of Jesus doesn’t even move us believers. There is no reason to expect it would move anyone else.
Wild approval, on the other hand…
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