2. Good moral teacher?

2. Good moral teacher?

The ancient Grecian philosopher Socrates offered “how we ought to live”, as a working definition of ‘moral‘. Did Jesus teaching reflect a good way to live, and if he did, what did he teach? Jesus’ moral code, revolving as it would have done around the Old Testament, can be seen in “do to others, what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” Some people refer to this as the “Golden Rule“. However, Jesus, as ever goes further than anybody else and says that it is not only the outer actions of a person that makes them morally good, it is also the internal attitude behind it.

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, people such as Gandhi hold it as a paragon of virtuous teaching and regard Jesus as a great teacher. Although, this is the best-known teaching of Jesus, it is also the least understood, and certainly the least obeyed. Whilst Gandhi and his ilk see The Sermon on the Mount as a call to peaceful demonstration against provocation, this was never Jesus intention regarding this teaching. It is as somebody once said “a picture of God’s alternative society… containing the standards, the values and priorities of God’s Kingdom”. It was this that Jesus spoke in the Sermon, not as a general guideline for a pagan twentieth century pacifist to wallow in comfort and boundless joy. Jesus was a good moral teacher, certainly at least to his followers, but was he more than this?

To claim he was merely a good moral teacher, is as Lewis states “a foolish thing”. Nobody could do or say the things that Jesus did and said, and not be God. He would in fact have to be either a liar or a lunatic.

Tomorrow we look briefly at Jesus' humanity