Have You Met The Real Jesus?

There are presently little figurines of Jesus advertised on the Internet. I even saw one placed in my bank. It is extremely popular. The purpose is to call attention to Jesus, which is a good thing. However, there are so many distorted views about who Jesus is. Some are so weird that one has to wonder how in the world could any person come up with such a belief.

To really know the real Jesus one must know about His miracles, the power to forgive sin, His transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-8), His perfect life, His resurrection (at the end of each of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), His fulfillment of prophecies, and the claims He made about Himself.

Here are several verses referencing the claims He made about Himself:

• I am the bread of life (John 6:35).
• I am the light of the world (John 8:12).
• I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
• I am the resurrection and the life ( John 11:25).

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 a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a mad man or something worse.  You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (1)

Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies. Nicky Gumbel wrote, “I suppose it could be suggested that Jesus was a clever con man who deliberately set out to fulfill these prophecies in order to show that he was the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. The problem with that suggestion is, first, that the sheer number of them would have made it extremely difficult. Secondly, humanly speaking He had no control over many of the events.” (2)

It is clear from all of the above that Jesus was not a mere mortal. One’s acceptance of Him as the Savior, or rejection of Him, seals their eternal fate. If you are in a religion that does not believe that Jesus is God, get out of it! Salvation is only through the grace of God and belief in the real Jesus, who died for your sins and rose from the dead. He is the one and only Savior in history who has done this. He is the only mediator between God and humanity (I Timothy 2:5), and there is no other name by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

His Holy Spirit living within a person‘s heart will transform their character, which will in turn diminish much of the evil caused by hatred we are seeing in the world. Jesus will bring you into His spiritual and eternal family which can break down the walls of prejudice, race, culture, and social standing. It is not a religion, but rather a relationship that can give you hope, peace and purpose in this troubled world.

Have you met the real Jesus? 

1. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperCollins, 1980, pg. 52
2. Nicky Gumbel, Questions of Life, Kingsway Communications LTD, 1993, pg. 32