Quick story: Jesus was somewhere near Caesarea Philippi, a popular city of his time about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee and at the base of Mt. Hermon. He was just hanging out with his boys when he asked them, in essence, what folks were calling him. They threw out a few answers. Mostly, it seemed, people said he was a new version of one of the Tanakh prophets. "But what about you?" Jesus asked them. "Who do you say I am?"
If you've never made a serious effort at answering that question, my parting prayer for you is that, beginning today, you'll do so. Whatever answer you come up with, at least you'll own it. It won't be your parents' answer or the culture's answer or your 11th grade teacher's answer or my answer. It will be yours.
C.S. Lewis believed there were three possible conclusions: Jesus was a fraud, he was a lunatic or he was, as he claimed, God in human form. There’s also the choice of dismissing the question. But even if we ignore the question, to paraphrase Neil Peart, we've no doubt made a choice.
I'll leave Lewis with the final words:
"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 the 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 a 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.” – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.
