WHAT DID JESUS REALLY SAY?by Ian Ellis-Jones

Honorary Minister, Sydney Unitarian Church

PRECIS OF AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE SYDNEY UNITARIAN CHURCHON SUNDAY, 6 MAY 2007

Now, despite what they told you in Sunday School, assuming for the moment that

you went to Sunday School, or in Scripture classes at school, the true Biblical

position in relation to Jesus is, I believe, as follows:-

1. Jesus was not, and could not have been, the Messiah.

2. Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah.

3. Even if Jesus were the Messiah, that does not make him God.

4. Jesus did not claim to be God or equal to God.

5. The most that can be claimed from the Bible is that Jesus was the

“Son of God”, but not the Supreme or Almighty God.

6. Even if Jesus did call himself the “Son of God”, and that is by no

means clear, that is a purely human title and not a reference to a divine

figure.

7. The title most used by Jesus to describe himself was “Son of Man”,

which does not imply that Jesus was claiming to be God.

1. Jesus was not, and could not have been, the Messiah.

The Jews never expected that any other than a being distinct from and inferior to

God was to be their Messiah. In other words, the Messiah will be truly human in

origin and in no sense divine. Further, any talk of the Messiah being the “son of

God” is totally out-of-the-question and unbiblical: see eg Dt 18:15; Jn 1:45. The

kingdom of the Jewish Messiah is “of this world”, whereas Jesus asserted that

his kingdom was “not of this world” (Jn 18:36).

The Jewish scriptures make it perfectly clear that the Messiah will be a mere

man, born naturally to a husband and wife (cf Jesus’ supposed supernatural

“virgin birth”: Mt 1:23; Is 7:14 [the latter a reference, not to the Messiah’s birth,

but that of King Hezekiah, being directed at King Ahaz]). Sure, a remarkable and

very wise teacher and leader, but a mere man, and certainly not a god or demi-

god or someone who was supposedly fully god and fully man at the same time.

(The idea that God could become man, or that man could become God is still

unthinkable to Jews. Could God become man? God can do anything, except act

in a self-contradictory manner, which would be the case were God to become

non-corporeal.)

According to the Jewish scriptures this Messiah will bring complete spiritual and

physical redemption to the Jewish people, will build the Third Temple (Ez 37:26-

28; cf Jesus lived while the temple was still standing), gather all Jews back to

Israel (Is 43:5-6), usher in a new era of world peace and moral perfection, thus

bringing to an end all hatred, oppression, evil, suffering and disease ("Nation

shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall man learn war anymore": Is

2:4), and spread universal knowledge and love of the God of Israel. Ultimately,

this Messiah will supposedly unite all humanity as one ("God will be King over all

the world - on that day, God will be One and His Name will be One": Zech 14:9).

Jesus failed to fulfil any of these things whilst he was with us. That is the reason

the Jews believe the Messiah is yet to come. It is also the reason the early

Christians invented the doctrine of the “Second Coming” in order to give Jesus a

“second chance” to get it right!

2. Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah.

True, there are New Testament verses such as Mt 16: 16 and 17 (wherein Simon

Peter says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God, to which Jesus

replies, “Blessed art thou, etc”), and Mk 14: 61 and 62 (wherein Jesus

supposedly admits at his trial that he is “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed”)

which can be read as support for the view that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah.

However, as regards the verses in Mt 16, in Mark’s version of the same incident

(the earliest!) Jesus doesn’t actually endorse what Peter says. Secondly, as

regards Jesus’ supposed admission in Mark 14 that he is the Christ there is

again a variant reading; Matthew and Luke portray Jesus not as explicitly

admitting the charge. In Acts 2:36 there is the suggestion that God appointed

Jesus as Messiah only after the crucifixion. In short, the matter is by no means

from doubt.

3. Even if Jesus were the Messiah, that does not make him God.

Irrespective of whether or not Jesus believed he was the Messiah, even if he

were the Messiah that does not mean he was God. As I’ve already said, any talk

of the Messiah as being God or even the “son of God” is totally unacceptable.

4. Jesus did not claim to be God or equal to God.

Jesus never said that he himself was God. Indeed, he virtually denied that he

was God, when he exclaimed, “Why callest thou me Good? There is none good

but one, that is God” (Mt 19:17; see also Mk 10:18.)

Jesus’ purported utterance, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30), must be seen

in its total context, for Jesus spoke of the Father, who sent him, as God, and as

the only God: see eg Jn 17:3 (“This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the

only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”). Jesus was not claiming

to be God in any unique sense. He was simply saying, “I am one with God in

affection and design”. As for his reported utterance, “no one comes to the father

except by me” (Jn 14:6), my view is the same as that of the great Methodist

preacher Dr Leslie Weatherhead, which is also that of the Jesus Seminar – I

don’t believe that Jesus ever said that. If he did, he was referring to his way of

life, his teaching, nothing more than that. Strangely, there appear to be a sizable

number of Christians who, when reading this verse, interpret it mean that Jesus

is God and that no one can get to heaven except if they worship Jesus and

accept him as their Saviour and Lord. The popular perception that this verse

claims that Jesus requires our worship in order for us to receive salvation is not

the intended meaning of this verse.

5. The most that can be claimed from the Bible is that Jesus was the

“Son of God”, but not the Supreme or Almighty God.

Now, the Jews - except in two instances that I will now explain - never opposed

Jesus on the ground that he purportedly pretended to be God or equal with God.

In the two instances in question, when charged, in the one case, with making

himself God, and in the other, with making himself equal with God, Jesus

positively denied the charges. In reply to the charge of assuming to be equal

with God (“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work”: Jn 5:17), Jesus says

immediately, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father

do (Jn 5:19)”; and directly after, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (Jn 5:30). He

also said, “My father is greater than all” (Jn 10:29). Is not the father, then,

greater than the son? Jesus also affirmed, in another connection, and without

the least qualification, “My Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28). Jesus positively

denied himself to be the author of his miraculous works, but referred them to the

Father, or the holy spirit of God: “The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the

works” (Jn 14:10). “If I cast out devils by the spirit of God” (Mt 12:28). Jesus

distinctly stated that the miraculous works bore witness, not to his own power,

but that the Father had sent him: see Jn 5:36.

In answer to the charge of making himself God (“I and my Father are one”: Jn

10:30), the Jews did indeed infer that Jesus was supposedly claiming to be God

(see Jn 10:31), but Jesus quickly rephrased his claim with the term "God's son",

appealing to the Jews in substance thus: Your own Scriptures call Moses a god,

and your magistrates gods; I am surely not inferior to them, yet I did not call

myself God, but only the Son of God. See Jn 10:34-36.

In other words, Jesus, after having said, “I and my Father are one,” gave his

disciples distinctly to understand that he did not mean one substance, equal in

power and glory, but one only in affection and design, as clearly appears from

the prayer he offers to his Father in their behalf --“that they all may be one; as

thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (Jn 17:21).

Jesus was saying, “The father is in me, and I am in the father”, which is a

wonderfully panentheistic view of God. (Similarly, Jesus is also reported to have

said, “I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you” (Jn 14;20).)

6. Even if Jesus did call himself the “Son of God”, and that is by no

means clear, that is a purely human title and not a reference to a divine

figure.

The title, “Son of God”, is a purely human title. In Jewish tradition the title did not

mean a divine figure: see eg Ps 2: 7: “You are my son, today I have begotten

you.” The king (eg Solomon) is God’s first-born (see Ps 89:27). Angels,

Israelites in general, righteous people, and (in the New Testament) Christians

can all be spoken of as sons of God, and can address God as Father.

Is Jesus God’s “only begotten son” (cf Jn 3:16)? If you think that, you have

carnalized a myth. The news, according to the Ancient Wisdom, is that we are all

begotten of the Only One. There is Only One, and everybody is the only

begotten son. The verse encapsulates an important metaphysical truth: one’s

only begotten son refers to a creative and saving idea, thought or desire, the

“father” being mind, thinker or consciousness, creatively expressed. Realization

of one’s desire is one’s saviour.

Anyway, did Jesus call himself the Son of God? Evangelical Christians rely upon

verses such as Mk 13:32 (where Jesus uses the words, “But of that day and that

hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son,

but the Father”) and Mt 11:27 (“All things are delivered unto me of my Father:

and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father …”, etc), but commentators point

out that both of those verses have question marks against them and are probably

later interpolations and not the actual words of Jesus. Further, there is nowhere

where the title “Son of God” must be read as implying that Jesus was in some

way equal with God. In Mark’s gospel (the earliest), the title “Son of God” is

purely a human title.

7. The title most used by Jesus (indeed over 60 times) to describe

himself was “Son of Man”, which does not imply that Jesus was claiming

to be God

That title was used over 60 times and only by Jesus himself. He never really

explains the meaning of the title, but it appears to be linked with what Jesus saw

as his mission in life, and that Jesus saw himself as a representative human

being through whom God was acting in an important way.

So, how did Jesus see his mission? To die for our sins, as a ransom for many?

No! That was not the message of Jesus. True, Mk 10:45 says, “The Son of Man

came … to give his life a ransom for many”, but higher criticism makes it clear

that those words come from Mark or the editor. Indeed, the words occur in a

portion of Mk 10:41-45 which is known as a duplicate of another portion (viz Mk

9:33-35) in which the “ransom” idea is wholly absent. In fact, there’s no

reference to Jesus’ martyrdom at all. The obvious interpolation represents not a

teaching of Jesus but the faith of the church. As for Mt 26:28 (“For this is my

blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”),

the lastmentioned words (“for the remission of sins”) are, as critical

commentators such as Dr Vincent Taylor has pointed, a comment added by the

evangelist and not authentic.

Both of these supposed utterances of Jesus are incongruent to the whole tenor

of Jesus’ teachings. They are hyper-Paulinistic editorial additions to support a

later theological interpretation of Jesus’ death. Critical investigation of the

documents confirms that.

Jesus of Nazareth, “a man approved of God” (Acts 2:22), preached what is

described in the New Testament as the “gospel of God”. He said, “The time is

fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

(Mk 1:15; cf Mt 4:17, 10:7, Lk 4:43) Note, not the “gospel of Our Lord Jesus

Christ”, but the “gospel of God”. In Mk 1:14 we read that Jesus came into Galilee

“preaching the gospel of God”. This is the answer to those Christian evangelists

who assert that there was no Christian gospel until after Jesus had died.

Ironically, the gospel that they proclaim is not the gospel of God that Jesus

proclaimed.

So, why all this Jesus the Messiah stuff, especially from the pen of St Paul? As

I’ve already mentioned, Jesus was totally unsuccessful in redeeming the Jews

politically. Therefore the early Christians could no longer look upon this as the

task of the Messiah. His redemption had to be given a new meaning. They

therefore taught that his mission was not to redeem humanity from political

oppression but to redeem it from spiritual evil. Worse still, Jesus had been

ignominiously executed. If Jesus was the true Messiah, how could that happen?

How and why would God allow that? So the Messiah’s mission had to be

redefined and then expanded. Unfortunately, there were so many other

Messianic prophecies that poor Jesus had failed to fulfil. Thus, the early

Christians were forced to teach that Jesus would return to the world again in a

“second coming”. How clever, and very convenient! How wonderful!

In short, the most that can be claimed from the Bible (both Old and New

Testaments), weighing everything in the balance, is that Jesus was the Son of

God (a very human title in any event) but not the Supreme or Almighty God.

It is my respectful submission to you this morning that we need to get back to this

more simple, and original, form of Christianity. Now, Jesus may not be God in

any exclusive or unique sense, but he must surely be more than a teacher and

moral exemplar. Yes, he is much more than that, for the Personality of Jesus,

can be experienced as a living presence, for he comes to us, and visits us, in our

home and in our community. Yes, he comes to us through an idea, a word we

hear, and a person who is suffering or joyful. We meet Jesus in our interactions

with others. Everyone we meet, everyone we serve, is in the image of Jesus.

Roman Catholics understand this so much better than Protestants. Yes, the

“Anonymous Christ” comes to us in so many ways, and we fail to recognize that

Jesus’ incarnation continues all the time, in us and in other people, not in any

supposedly supernatural sense, but in a perfectly natural sense. Thus, we read in

Mt 25:34-40:

Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?”

The King will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Jesus’ followers were originally known as “people of the way”. Jesus, in his vision

of the Anonymous Christ, offers us a vision and a challenge. The call to follow is

not a call to worship Jesus. No, the Way of Jesus is a call to follow his path, to

live as he lived, and to serve. We read in John’s Gospel, “Sir, we would see

Jesus” (Jn 12:21). Well, as far as I’m concerned, all we really need to know about

Jesus and what is, or at least ought to be, our vision and challenge, can be found

in one verse of the Bible, namely, Lk 9:11, which reads:

When the crowds learned [where Jesus was], they followed him; and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing.

First, the crowds followed Jesus. Millions still do, for he continues to speak to our

time, saying, “Follow me”. One of my favourite Christian books is In His Steps

written by Congregational minister Charles M Sheldon and first published in

1896. Sheldon, a leading exponent of the Social Gospel, challenges us to ask

ourselves, in every situation in which we find ourselves placed, “What would

Jesus do?” That’s a good start, for, as Bishop Markus van Alphen has written,

Jesus “stands for the personality of every human being who treads the path of

purification” (“Jesus Christ and his True Disciples”, Esoteric Christianity E-

Magazine, July 2002, <http://www.lcc.cc/ecem/vanalphenmf/jesus.htm>).

Secondly, Jesus welcomed the crowds. No one was turned away. That is why we

do not turn away any person who comes to this Church with good intentions.

That is why we erect no barriers around our altars (metaphorically speaking, for

we have no altar as such). However, more is required of us than that. We must

make sure we erect no barriers outside this place as well.

Thirdly, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God. That kingdom was not of this world

(see Jn 18:36), for Jesus gave the words “Kingdom of God” new meaning. The

Kingdom of God, for Jesus, was a spiritual kingdom, not a physical organization,

and it was both a present and future reality all at the same time. Jesus formed a

community that strove, in steadfast service, to be a living model of God’s reign.

We accept the Kingdom of God by building it here on earth. Thus, the Kingdom

of God, sensibly interpreted, is not some supernatural event that will supposedly

come to pass when this world comes to an end but a kingdom of this world in

which there is justice, equality and freedom for all.

Fourthly, Jesus cured those who needed healing. Our task here is to provide

opportunities for healing. We come here as broken, damaged people in need of

healing. The healing word of Jesus, expressed most powerfully in his great

outpouring of suffering love, still has the power to change lives.

I am reminded of something the Presbyterian Samuel Angus wrote in his

wonderful book Jesus in the Lives of Men (1933):

Jesus is not accredited to us today by his miracles, or by a virgin birth, or by a resurrection from an underworld, or by a reanimation of his body from the grave, or by fulfillment of prophecies; he is accredited by his long train of conquests over the loyalties of men, and chiefly by the immediate, intimate and inevitable appeal made by him to everything that is best and God-like in each of us, and by his ability to “make men fall in love with him”, and “to win the world to his fair sanctities”.

Out of gratitude to the sacred or divine, we are told in the New Testament to

present ourselves as a “living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1). We do that by living

selflessly for others and, as a result, we not only encounter the Anonymous

Christ, we also share our saving experience of the Anonymous Christ with those

with whom we come into contact. The message of the apostle Paul, and Jesus

himself, is that we must re-surrender and rededicate ourselves every day,

“fervent in spirit, serving the Lord” (Rom 12:11). We must remain ever open to

truth and ever willing to change, no matter what. We must work, in steadfast

service, to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Amen.

-oo0oo-