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In the Word

    by Chuck Livermore

Honor the Father and the Son
Date Posted: June 30, 2009
For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working."
Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.
John 5:16-23 NKJV

Have you ever heard the ridiculous assertion that Jesus never claimed to be equal to God. Here is the evidence written by one of His closest friends that He made that very claim. Those who make such assertions do not know the bible well. They read only what they want to believe and understand only what fits their predetermined theology. You can say what you want about what you believe about Jesus’ divinity. But if you believe that Jesus wasn’t divine, you can never say Jesus agrees with you. He not only believed it, He proved it by the works that He did and the words that He said. In fact, the Jewish leaders gave this as the reason for crucifying Him in John 19:7. How about you? What do you believe about Jesus? C. S. Lewis put to rest any argument about Jesus merely being a great teacher when he said:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. 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 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 madman 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 patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 43)
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Biography Information:
Chuck Livermore's knowledge of the word is the result of a lifetime of study and reading. He is part of Galilee South Community Church, a multi-ethnic congregation in South Denver. He attended Wayland Baptist University and has participated in world evangelism through research of unreached peoples.
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