April 20 I Wednesday

2 Samuel 9-11

Luke 15:11-32

“And [Jesus] said, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.’”   —Luke 9:22

The opening verse probably gives one of the most absurd—yet true—claims that Jesus made about Himself to His disciples. If one were to say, “On Friday this week, I am going to die. But don’t worry, I’ll be back on Sunday,” the first part of dying would be quite easy but coming back on Sunday would be rather difficult, especially when this is not a magic trick or an illusion. Jesus, however, made that claim before He was crucified. Not in retrospect, where He died and rose again, but He said it in advance to His disciples who did not believe Him and tried to oppose it because they had no understanding of it.

      In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him, ‘I am 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 really 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 patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

      After Jesus’s resurrection, Thomas, one of the twelve disciples, doubted and said, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25). Eventually Jesus appeared to Thomas and told him, “Put your finger here; see My hands” (John 20:27). But Thomas did not put his finger anywhere, because he did not need any more convincing; instead, he cried out, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

      With power to conquer death, Jesus’s resurrection proves that He is indeed the Son of God. We cannot relegate Him as a great moral teacher and deny His deity. When we place our faith in Jesus, we are humbly surrendering our lives to Him in faith as our Lord and our God.

Prayer: My Lord and my God, how almighty You are to be the conqueror of death. Thank You that Your resurrection proves Your deity. Grow my faith in You. Amen!