C.S. Lewis and Jesus the Great Divider

Transcript

Modern people have found a very safe place to put Jesus. They call Him a great moral teacher. They admire His compassion. They quote the sermon on the Mount. They like the Jesus who blesses children, forgive sinners, and tells us to love our enemies. But they quietly refuse to let Him be Lord.

C.S. Lewis saw that this middle position does not really hold.

In mere Christianity, Lewis warns us not to say the one thing people often say about Jesus, that He was only a great human teacher. Lewis says that option is not open to us.

Because a man who was merely a man, and who said the sort of things Jesus said, would not be a great moral teacher. He would be something else entirely.

That is the force of the old trilema, Lord, liar, or lunatic.

If Jesus knew His claims were false, then He was not good. He was deceiving souls in the name of God.

If Jesus sincerely believed those claims while being wrong, then He was not merely wise. He was tragically mistaken at the very center of His identity.

But if Jesus is who He says He is, then He is not simply a teacher to be admired. He is the Lord to be obeyed.

And this is where Lewis's argument meets one of the hardest sayings of Jesus. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus says, Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

That sounds strange because Christians call Him the Prince of Peace. But Jesus is not contradicting Himself. He is rejecting a false peace.

He refuses the kind of peace that comes from pretending truth does not matter. He refuses the peace of polite silence while the soul is dying. He refuses the peace of keeping everyone comfortable by asking nothing of anyone.

Christ does bring peace. But His peace begins on the far side of conversion. Before that peace arrives, He divides.

He divides truth from falsehood. He divides worship from idolatry. He divides repentance from excuse. He divides the living God from every harmless little substitute we would rather keep.

That is why Jesus cannot be safely admired from a distance. A philosopher can be admired. A poet can be admired. A moral example can be admired. But Jesus does not leave us there. He forgives sins. He claims authority over the Sabbath. He speaks as the Son who knows the Father. He says that to see Him is to see the Father. He tells men and women to follow Him. Lose their lives for Him and build everything on His words. That kind of man does not remain a harmless teacher. He becomes the great divider. Not because He loves conflict. Not because He wants families wounded or nations torn apart. But because reality itself divides when Christ enters the room. Light divides a dark room. A diagnosis divides sickness from health. A sword divides what is living from what must be cut away. The division Christ brings is not cruelty. It is mercy with the lights on. This is why the modern sentimental Jesus is so misleading. A Jesus who only affirms us can never save us. A Jesus who never judges can never forgive. A Jesus who never commands can never be Lord.

A mascot suggests a Lord commands. A mascot decorates our values. A Lord converts them. Lose understood the danger of trying to keep Jesus as a mascot for our own civilization, politics, therapy, or private spirituality. Once Jesus has made the claims He makes, the question cannot remain. Do I find Him inspiring? The question becomes, who is He? Lord, liar, lunatic. Lose was not trying to reduce faith to a clever argument. He was trying to take away our favorite hiding place. Because the safest lie about Jesus is not that He never existed. The safest lie is that He can be admired without being followed.

But the Jesus of the Gospel will not stay in that category. He divides every comfortable compromise. He divides admiration from discipleship. He divides curiosity from surrender. And then after He has divided what is false from what is true, He gives the peace no false Jesus could ever give. Not the peace of being left alone. The peace of belonging to the Lord.