Was Jesus a Liar?

Extracted from "More Than A Carpenter" By Josh McDowell.

If, when Jesus made his claims, he knew that he was not God, then he was lying and deliberately deceiving his followers. But if he was a liar, then he was also a hypocrite because he taught others to be honest whatever the cost. Worse than that, if he was lying, he was a demon because he told others to trust him for their eternal destiny. If he couldn’t back up his claims and knew it, then he was unspeakably evil for deceiving his followers with such a false hope. Last, he would also be a fool because his claims to being God led to his crucifixion – claims he could backed away from to save himself even at the last minute.

It amazes me to hear so many people say Jesus was simply a good moral teacher. Let’s be realistic. How could he be a great moral teacher and knowingly mislead people at the most important point of his teaching – his own identity?

To conclude that Jesus was a deliberate liar doesn’t coincide with what we know either of him or of the results of his life and teachings. Wherever Jesus has been proclaimed, we see lives change for the good, nations change for the better, thieves become honest, alcoholics become sober, hateful individuals become channels of love, and unjust persons embrace justice.

Historian Philip Schaff gives a convincing argument against Christ’s being a liar: “How in the name of logic, common sense, and experience, could an imposter – that is deceitful, selfish, depraved man – have invented, and consistently maintained from the beginning to end, the purest and noblest character known in history with the most perfect air of truth and reality? How could he have conceived and carried out a plan of unparalleled beneficence, moral magnitude and sublimity, and sacrificed his own life for it, in the face of the strongest prejudices of his people and age?”

If Jesus wanted to get people to follow him and believe in him as God, why did he go to the Jewish nation? Why go as a common carpenter in an undistinguished village in a country so small in size and population? Why go to a country that so thoroughly adhered to the concept of one God? Why didn’t he got to Egypt, or even Greece, where they already believed in various gods and various manifestations of them?

Someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught, and died as Jesus died could not have been a liar.

Next: Was Jesus a lunatic?