Jesus the Son of God - 1

 C.S. Lewis formulated a so-called trilemma:

“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 a man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (Excerpt from Mere Christianity)

How did Lewis come to that conclusion? Being the scholar that he was, his persuasion came from reading the gospels. He regarded them as reliable records of the words and deeds of Jesus. Most Westerners find it very hard to believe the accounts of the miracles. But millions, even of those who don't identify as Christians, claim to base their ethics on the Sermon on the Mount. To get a good grip on the meaning of the sermon it is enlightening to consider the context in which it was presented. It should be enough to convince the reader of Jesus' intentions.

To the Jews the Law of Moses, the Torah as it was known, were the most sacred writings in existence. In his commentary on it Jesus started off by saying he did not come to do away with the Law (Matthew 5:17). "As if he could", may very well be what went through the mind of a sceptic. But he followed that up by saying he came to fulfil the Law! He was going to explain and model for all how the Law was to be applied in everyday life. In other words, if the Law gave a description of a perfect human being, he was that person. The "holy men" of the day spread the belief that there would be a resurrection of righteous believers and that they would "obtain eternal life" which is the same as to "enter the Kingdom of Heaven". To secure a place in the "book of life" a person had to follow the Law in minute detail. But Jesus said their kind of righteousness was not good enough to allow them into the Kingdom (Matthew 5:20).

Throughout the sermon Jesus used the phrase "You have heard ... but I say to you ...". He was referring to the interpretations of the Law by their learned men, the Pharisees and scribes, maybe also to popular opinion. As an illustration we can use the interpretation of the instruction in the Law as it pertained to divorce. Two famous rabbis Hillel and Shammai had different ideas of how it should be applied. The local synagogue teacher might have thought he was clever if he could quote both, and maybe give his reason for agreeing with one or the other. Jesus did no such thing. He simply said that anyone who "puts away" his wife for any reason other than fornication (porneia in Greek), causes her to commit adultery. And a man who marries her would also be committing adultery.

Jesus did not beat about the bush when it came to his opinion of the Pharisees and scribes. They were "role players" (hupocrites is the Greek word for actor). They would not inherit the eternal life which they hoped for. The crowd who heard the sermon concluded that Jesus taught "with authority" (Matthew 7:29). He did not speculate on the meaning of the instructions in the Law. In the spirit of C.S. Lewis, he was either the most arrogant person who ever lived, or indeed the One who gave the law to Moses in the first place.