I And The Father Are One - Neither Is An Egg

I know a person who walks through life in some kind of dreamy, fluffy, stumble. It's almost like nothing is real to her until everything collapses down around her head. You know the type, they get all of their information from the 5:00 PM hyperventilation that passes for news, panic over what they're told to panic over, buy what they're told to buy, and ignore what they're ordered to ignore. I've witnessed to this person and her only response was "Nah, I don't think it's like that." Her responses made me a firm believer in Calvinism.

No matter what you say, her views on our Lord and Savior are "He was a nice guy, a smart man, a 'great moral teacher' and he lived a long time ago." At first I thought her views on Jesus were unique to her, but after talking to more people it seems her views are almost mainstream. To me (at least) it sounds like a lot of people believe in Jesus the man who was a nice Jewish rabbi that dispensed a lot of good advice along with loaves and fish. 

A lot of good advice - sure, but he also said a lot of things that got him executed by a bunch pharisees. Of course this woman I know has bought into that old adage that was making the rounds a few decades ago "Jesus never claimed to be the son of God" - it was really popular with people that never read the bible (and Catholics, but I repeat myself)

I and the Father are one. (John 10:30)

Ooooops - ok, maybe once...

Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. (John 14:10)

Or maybe twice...

⁶³ But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, “I adjure You [charge you under oath] by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ [the Messiah], the Son of God.” ⁶⁴ Jesus *said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 26:63-64)

and again...

⁵⁶ Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” ⁵⁷ So the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am.” (John 8:56-58)

Give this one to your agnostic friends and watch their heads implode. First, in verse 56 Jesus speaks like he was there when Abraham discovered that the messiah would be one of his own descendants. so in verse 57 the Jews said "Hey, you're not even 50 and you're telling us You saw Abraham? REALLY?" and Jesus replied with "Truly truly" which at the time was the way to emphasize that you're not lying or exaggerating in any way. but then he said "before Abraham was born, I Am" not "I Was" but "I AM" - I Am is God's name. 

¹³ Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” ¹⁴ God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:13:14)

This was not lost on the Jews, in fact it caused them to freak out and try to kill Jesus because he just said he was God. I Am becomes YHWH pronounced today as Yahweh. (The original pronunciation is long lost because ancient Hebrew was written in consonants only, no vowels)

So now you have a choice, here you have a Jewish rabbi wandering around who is what He says He is - God and the son of God, or that you buy into the modern myth that He is a "great moral teacher". However C. S. Lewis has the greatest answer for this conundrum

“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.”