Conclusion

Once we begin to seriously consider whether or not Jesus might be God, we are faced with another uncomfortable dilemma. C. S. Lewis, in God in the Dock, put it like this:

What are we to make of Jesus Christ? This is a question which has in a sense, a frantically comic side. For the real question is not what are we to make of Christ, but what is he to make of us. The picture of a fly sitting deciding what it is going to make of an elephant has comic elements about it.

It is not only what he thinks of me that becomes the important issue. If it is true, as the New Testament repeatedly affirms, that the main purpose of his coming was to die for our sins and reconcile us to God, then we must decide whether we want to be reconciled. William Barclay, Bible translator and popular writer, reminds us:

Either what Jesus said about himself is false, in which case he is guilty of such blasphemy as no man dared ever to utter; or what he said about himself is true, in which case he is what he claimed to be and can be described in no other terms than the Son of God. Jesus leaves us with a definite choice - we must either accept him fully or reject him absolutely. That is precisely why every person has to decide for or against Jesus Christ.

I suggest that there is only one logical response. It could hardly be put better than it was by a man of whom Billy Graham tells in an article in the Readers Digest:

I shall never forget the glow on the face of a man who came to see me some time ago. "All my life," he said, "I'd felt that God was high and holy - and unreachable. It's hard to understand a God like that, let alone love him. But then you showed me Jesus and quoted his words: 'He that has seen me has seen the Father.'And like a flash it came to me that if God is like him who walked the common ways of man, loved and served the weakest of his creatures, and whose great heart burst on the cross to redeem us from our sins, then he can have my life, my soul, my all. I made that gift, and I've never taken it back."

Jesus invites us all to make that response and to receive his gift of eternal life. He said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10).

If you would like to meet with this God, who has made himself known supremely through the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and if you would like to receive all that he has to offer - his forgiveness, his love, his transforming presence, his strength for daily living, assurance of a place in his kingdom, and more - then you may find the following prayer a helpful guide: