The Big Questions About Jesus Sýnishorn

Was Jesus Just a Good Man?

Hardly anyone these days denies Jesus existed. The evidence for the reality of Jesus is far too strong. However, one way Jesus is marginalized in the minds of many is by the idea that Jesus was just a good man. They’re partially correct!

Jesus was a man. He was undoubtedly a good man. However, he wasn’t just a good man. It doesn’t make sense to think of him as just a good man.

Here, I want to lean on what the English scholar C.S. Lewis famously wrote. He said that accepting that Jesus was just a good man and a great teacher and not accepting his claim to be God is just foolish. If Jesus was merely a man who said what he said, no one could say that he was a good man. An ordinary man who said the things Jesus said would either be a lunatic, an absolute crackpot, or else he would be one of the worst liars ever.

Through what he said and did, Jesus constantly claimed to be God. He claimed he had always existed, had the authority to forgive sin, and would be the judge of the world. He consistently claimed to be one with Jehovah God, taking the names and prerogatives of the God of Israel for himself.

It’s appropriate to claim to be God if you are God, but not if you are just a man. If you were just a man and claimed to be God, you couldn’t rightly be called a good man, could you?

A good man wouldn’t claim to be God because it would be a lie that would do great harm. A man who perpetuated a fraud on such a massive scale would be the greatest deceiver in history—certainly not worthy of the description, “just a good man.” Yet the life and teachings of Jesus are hardly consistent with his being a bad man.

The other alternative is Jesus was stark, raving mad. We have it on record that none of those who knew him considered him mad. His enemies crucified him, which isn’t how they usually treated someone who was mad.

If Jesus was either an exceptionally evil man or one of the craziest people in history, he is automatically disqualified from being described as “just a good man.” The evidence of his contemporaries is that Jesus was both sane and good. No person other than Jesus Christ has profoundly influenced our world and shaped our civilization for good.

My conclusion is that only one possibility exists: Jesus was just who he claimed to be, God himself. If you’re open-minded, you must consider this.

– Eliezer Gonzalez