Saturday, October 19, 2013

What Some Say About Jesus.


Continued from the previous post...

Jesus, If Not Good - Not God.

For two thousand years the world, without a dissenting voice, has borne witness that Jesus is the one man who came into the earth and walked through it superlatively good.

Among the voices in the common consent of the world that Jesus Christ was a good man, there are those who with equal insistence deny he was Almighty God.

They agree that he had the spirit of God; that he had it in measure such as no other man before or since. They announce their belief that he is the mightiest advance on humanity ever known; that all other religious teachers pale before him as the stars before the sun. They speak of his spotless life with fervent admiration, and draw special attention to his discourses as models of exhortation to righteousness and truth. The them the sermon on the mount is a chef d' oeuvre. Out of that sermon they take the maxim about doing unto others as you would they should do unto you. They take that maxim and frame it and make it the "Golden Rule" of human life. They exalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shall govern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, we shall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. In fact, if we seek to praise the humanity of Christ; if we desire to see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity put beyond compare with the sons of men - we must to to the Socinian, the Arian and the Unitarian - those who deny the deity of Christ. But this exaltation of the human Christ is simply setting up a man of straw that with one blow of deific discount he may be knocked down again. He is set up as a man that he may be cast down as God.

They will not accept him as God.
God Almighty, we are told, cannot be confined or shut up in any one man. Man as man and, therefore, every individual man in his part, is the avatar of God. Each man is in some sense the incarnation of God. God is more or less enthroned in all men. God is to be found in all men as he is to be found in all nature.

A good man - call Jesus a good man - set him up as high as you please, build as lofty a pedestal for him as you will, but Almighty God - Never!

To be continued...


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