The Uniqueness of JesusWhat makes Jesus so special?

What makes Jesus unique?• His Virgin Birth• Prophecies concerning His life• Miracles He preformed• Message He communicated• Life He lived• Death He died• His resurrection • His identity claim

“Almost everyone who has heard of Jesus has developed an opinion about Him. That is to be expected, for He is not only the most famous person in world

history, but also the most controversial.”

- Christian author Tim LaHaye

The Investigation

“The writers of Scripture invite us to examine this person Jesus for ourselves and to conclude for ourselves His significance. But we cannot focus the investigation just on His teaching or works. First and foremost we must focus the investigation on His identity.”

- Apologist Josh McDowell

Lawyer Irwin Linton

“Unique among criminal trials is this one in which not the actions but the identity of the accused in the issue. The criminal charge laid against Christ…the interrogation by the Roman governor and the inscription and proclamation on His cross at the time of execution all are concerned with the one question of Christ’s real identity…”

Jesus’ Claim -

“I and the Father are one.”

- John 10:30

Religious Leaders Response

“For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy; and

because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God.”

-- John 10:33

Thomas the Disciple

Thomas answered and said to Jesus,

“My Lord and my God!”

Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He was not only breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. - John 5:17-18

Jesus claimed to be GodTrue

LORD

False

He knew it! He didn’t know it!

LIARcrazy & deranged

LUNATIC

seriously deluded deliberate misrepresentation

He was a hypocrite

He was evil

He was a fool

Reject Accept

A measure of your insanity is the size of the gap between what you think you are and what you really are. If I think I am the greatest philosopher in America, I am only an arrogant fool; if I think I am Napoleon, I am probably over the edge; if I think I am a butterfly, I am fully embarked from the sunny shores of sanity. But if I think I am God, I am even more insane because the gap between anything finite and the infinite God is even greater than the gap between any two finite things, even a man and a butterfly.

-- Philosopher Peter Kreeft

“On the lips of anyone else the claims of Jesus would appear to be evidence of gross egomania, for Jesus clearly implies that the entire world revolves around himself and that the fate of all men is dependent on their acceptance or rejection of him….There seems to be only two possible ways of interpretating the totalitarian nature of the claims of Jesus. Either we must assume that Jesus was deluded and unstable with unusual delusions of grandeur, or we are faced with the realization that Jesus is truly One who speaks with divine authority…and whose rejection or acceptance determines the fate of men.” -- Christian Theologian Robert Stein

Napoleon Bonaparte

I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man….Everything in Christ astonishes me. His spirit overawes me, and His will confounds me. Between Him and whoever else in the world, there is no possible term of comparison. He is truly a being by Himself….I search in vain in history to find a similar to Jesus Christ…

John Stuart Mill - British Philosopher and Skeptic

About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight in the very first rank of men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavour to live so that Christ would approve of our life.

William Channing – 19th Century Unitarian

The charge of an extravagant, self-deluding enthusiasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. Where do we find the traces of it in His history? Do we detect them in the calm authority of His precepts? In the mild, practical and beneficent spirit of His religion; in the unlabored simplicity of the language with which He unfolds His high powers and the sublime truths of religion; or in the good sense, the knowledge of human nature, which He always discovers in His estimate and treatment of the different classes of men with whom He acted?

Former Skeptic C. S. Lewis“I am trying here to prevent anyone from 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 things we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level of 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.”

C. S Lewis – Christian Author & Former Skeptic

The historical difficulty of giving for the life, sayings and influence of Jesus any explanation that is not harder than the Christian explanation is very great. The discrepancy between the depth and sanity and (let me add) shrewdness of His moral teaching and the rampant megalomania which must lie behind His theological teaching unless He is indeed God, has never been satisfactorily got over. Hence the non-Christian hypotheses succeed one another with the restless fertility of bewilderment.

True

LORD

False

He knew it! He didn’t know it!

LIARcrazy & deranged

LUNATIC

seriously deluded

He was evil

He was a fool

Reject Accept

Jesus claimed to be God

Deliberate misrepresentation

He was a hypocrite

Philip Schaff – Historian

Is such an intellect – clear as the sky, bracing as the mountain air, sharp and penetrating

as a sword, thoroughly healthy and vigorous, always ready and always self-possessed –

liable to a radical and most serious delusion concerning His own character and mission?

Preposterous imagination!

Jesus declared, “I am the way and the truth and

the life, no one comes to the Father but through

Me.”

Luke – Gospel Writer

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved. -- Acts 4:12

The Apostle Paul

“Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” -Titus 2:13-14

“The Historical Jesus” by Gary Habermas

“He Walked Among Us” by Josh McDowell

“Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity” by Josh McDowell

“Reinventing Jesus” by Daniel Wallace

Websites: Ravi Zacharias www.rzim.comGreg Koukl www.str.orgCRU www.leaderu.com www.everystudent.com

JonRit@sbcglobal.net