Although Jesus did show remarkable love and compassion to all who were willing to receive it, his mystique results more from the question of his identity than from his historical impact. People who heard and saw him kept trying to understand what he meant by his radical claims.
As Jesus traveled around the rocky hills of Galilee, huge crowds gathered to hear his words and his apparent power over nature. As his followers witnessed his amazing words and deeds, Jesus would make statements like, “I am the light of the world,” or, “I am the only way to God,” or, “I am the resurrection and the life.”5
What are we to make of such radical claims? Former skeptic and Oxford professor, C. S. Lewis, originally considered the entire account of Jesus a myth, similar to pagan gods in Greek and Roman religions. However, one day he had a lengthy discussion with a known atheist on campus who had examined the evidence. He told Lewis that there appeared to be significant evidence supporting the New Testament accounts.
Lewis was stunned! He decided to examine the evidence for himself. After his search to discover the real Jesus, Lewis concluded that Jesus both existed, and was the greatest man who ever lived. However, because of Jesus’ radical claims, Lewis concluded that Jesus couldn’t have been simply a great moral teacher.
According to Lewis, Jesus was either telling the truth, which meant (to him) that he is God, or Jesus was wrong, making him either a liar or a lunatic. for a summary of Lewis’ argument). The hinge pin on which the identity of Jesus Christ stands falls is the claim that he rose from the dead. His disciples were so convinced that he had risen that they went everywhere proclaiming him alive, even at the cost of their own lives. What convinced them?
So who was the baby in the manger? The answer to that question, as Larry King inferred, is the most important one in all history. For if Jesus was not who he claimed to be, his promise of eternal peace is empty. But if Jesus was who he claimed to be, then our lives can have no meaning without him.
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