I’d like you to meet the man who led me to Jesus.
In 1983 I left the ministry (and Jesus) in the dust, deciding I was better off being the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. By 2004, after 21 years of ignoring God and convincing myself He didn’t exist, I found myself thinking about Him again and wondering if I was a fool to live like an atheist.
To continue my search for truth, I decided to read a book by C.S. Lewis entitled Mere Christianity. Perhaps you’ve heard of Lewis. He is best known for a series of delightful children’s books (which grown-ups love, too) called The Chronicles of Narnia. He was also a brilliant scholar, a prolific author, and a former atheist turned devout Christian.
I didn’t just read Mere Christianity, I devoured it.
For me, the climax of this book begins on page 40, where he explains the essence of Christianity: this man named Jesus.
Let me now quote directly from Mere Christianity:
“There suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time.”
The four sentences in that paragraph hit me like a ton of bricks.
Lewis is summarizing what are known as “The Claims of Christ.” Who did Jesus claim to be? Who did He say He was? And having studied the New Testament many years earlier, I couldn’t erase from my brain these incredible statements. Jesus was many things to many people – a great teacher, a dynamic preacher, a miracle worker and healer beyond compare. But when it came to what Jesus said about Himself, I could not deny it: this man Jesus claimed to be God.
Back to Lewis:
“And when you have grasped that (the claim of Jesus to be God), you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.”
Now I want you to think about that for just a moment, because when I read Lewis’ book and saw those words on the page, I couldn’t stop thinking about it – a man claims to be God. I could not disagree with Lewis’ point – that has to be the craziest thing anyone has ever said.
If you are a committed Christian, the deity of Christ may be “old news.” Maybe you even take it for granted. I had heard this claim countless times, and as a young man, thought I believed it. But now, it was like I was hearing it for the first time. And I was mesmerized by its profound simplicity – a man claiming to be God in a human body.
Back to Lewis, as he continues to discuss the significance of Christ’s claim to be God. “No part of the claim tends to slip past us unnoticed because we have heard it so often that we no longer see what it amounts to. I mean the claim to forgive sins: any sins. Now unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.
“We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself. You tread on my toe and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should I make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct.
“Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.
“In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history.”
Are you following his logic here? I sure was.
And then came the main point of the whole book:
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘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 demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
I was spellbound by the logic of this presentation. In my mind, it was irrefutable. I knew what I had to do. I knew what God was saying to me as plain as the clear blue sky: “You must make your choice.” I knew I had to answer this question for myself: Who is Jesus? Is He who He said He was? Is He God? Is He a lunatic? Or is He the biggest fraud who ever walked the planet?
I was home alone, lying on my bed, when I read these words. When I got to the last section and was confronted with the haunting words, “You must make your choice,” I finished reading and sat up. Then I got out of bed and stood up. I had to do something. I was ready to make that choice. I became overwhelmed with the reality of the claim of Christ to be God, and I knelt down next to my bed and began to cry and pray.
I can’t really remember how long I stayed in that position. I do remember crying like I’ve never cried before. And I remember telling God that I was ready to accept the claims of Christ. I acknowledged Jesus as the only God of the universe, the only One who could forgive my sin of 21 years of rebellious defiance. I begged God to take me back and never let me go. I no longer wanted to be my own God. I wanted Jesus to be my Lord and my God.
I thank God every day for C.S. Lewis, for Mere Christianity, and that God brought me to Himself through His Son and my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is my story of the irresistible grace of God, poured out on a rebel like me. God did for me what only He can do: He drew me to Jesus like a magnet, for the Son of Man said that “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). I chose Him because eons ago, God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4).
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