The discussion surrounding the person of Jesus Christ, specifically what he was by nature, has been debated for centuries. Beliefs have varied from lowering him to nothing more than a historical character skilled in moral reasoning to claiming him to be the very Son of God. However, the one glaring realization that continuously surfaces in these conversations is the fact that Jesus could not be both a mere man and a good man. J. Oswald Sanders writes,
If Jesus is not God, then there is no Christianity, and we who worship Him are nothing more than idolaters. Conversely, if He is God, those who say He was merely a good man, or even the best of men, are blasphemers. More serious still, if He is not God, then He is a blasphemer in the fullest sense of the word. If He is not God, He is not even good.
With this awareness comes the necessary conclusion that Jesus, if only a man, was not one who should have impacted the world as he did, should not be hailed as the creator of the most excellent moral code, and certainly should not be worshipped.
But is this really the best explanation for the facts? Could a mere man falsely make those claims and have the impact Jesus had on the world? Because whatever we believe, we must acknowledge that this world has never offered any other example or explanation for such superhuman morality and supernatural acts and effects.
Despite the debates of man, Jesus himself claims to be the Son of God. In John 10:30-36 we read:
I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken— do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
Christ claims to possess the power of God. And if he did not make good on his claims, he was a liar. However, the gospels, the New Testament letters, and centuries of historical implications points to the fact that he did all he said he would do, that he truly was the divine Son of God on mission for his Father.
What are some of these evidences echoing throughout history validating the divine claims of Jesus?
First, there is also the unlikely affection Jesus drew from his followers. Their conviction that he was indeed Lord, as they called him even before his resurrection, initiated a devotion and inducement that would change the world forever. They were so affected by his ministry, miracles, and teaching that they not only retold their personal experience of these things but joined in the claim that Christ was Lord and that his work on this earth was supernatural.
Second, to believe that twelve unassociated and ordinary men, with little education, status, or authority between them, could create such a standard of morality and character of divine power, would make them even greater than their creation. Their convictions and teachings should not have been successful. And yet, their teaching defied every status-quo on religion, culture, and authority. It survived and flourished despite opposition, persecution and prejudice. Their accomplishment cannot have been the mere work of human invention but must be attributed to a supernatural source able to overcome the very nature of humanity.
“There is nothing humanly speaking to account for this victory. Surely the grandest miracle is the existence of Christianity itself.” – L.F. March Phillipps, Lectures on the Cumulative Evidence’s of Divine Revelation
Third, throughout all of history we have seen the limits of mankind. Without exception, men know what we are capable of and also what we are not capable of. And we see these undebatable limits surpassed in all that Jesus taught and lived. C.A. Row writes in his book, A Manual of Christian Evidences,
Yet out of a state of society of this description emerged one catholic man, out of extreme narrowness, He Who had not a single trait of narrowness in Him, out of a state of religious feeling of the most extreme ritualism, He Who proclaimed that the only acceptable worship was a worship rendered in spirit and in truth and out of the intensest nationalism, He alone who bears on Him no trait of peculiarities of race or nation.
Fourth, there is no one to compare with Jesus Christ’s influence on the world. We must ask, why has there never been another to match his effect on all nations, geographies, status, and eras? Why has there not been one man or movement that has overcome every kind of ritual, prejudice and disposition. Based on the rest of the history of the world, his accomplishment proves impossible.
If not superhuman, to what can we attribute such an influence? In the course of history, there has never been a moral revolution to compare. No other teachings or religions have spanned both centuries and geography like his. The remarkable influence and outcome of Jesus’s ministry can be claimed as nothing short of supernatural.
Jesus’s unique ministry and life can only be described as other-worldly. For he not only deeply affected those who saw him face-to-face, but would continue to do so for all the human race that followed. The undeniable influence that immediately followed his short-lived ministry is like nothing we have seen before or since. The conclusion is that he did indeed possess a superhuman power which enabled him to accomplish what is impossible for any other man in all of history.