The Witness of Friends

Jesus' influence has been such that men have "to take sides for or against Him. Indifference has always been impossible." In the Koran (Al-Imran, V. 45) Jesus is referred to as "the greatest above all in this world and in the world to come." Pascal said, "Who has taught the evangelist the qualities of a perfectly heroic soul, that they paint it so perfectly in Jesus Christ."

"Jesus, in every respect, was truly human and also more than human."

Channing, cited by Frank Ballard in The Miracles of Unbelief, stated: "I know not what can be added to heighten the wonder, reverence, and the love which are due to Jesus."

A. M. Farber in Philosophy of the Christian Religion says: "Jesus, in a word, was Deity manifested in humanity and under the conditions of time. Now this is in itself an extraordinary conception, and it is made more extraordinary by the marvelous way in which it is embodied in a personal history. There never was a loftier idea..."

"His life was holy; His word was true; His whole character was the embodiment of truth. There never has been a more real or genuine man than Jesus of Nazareth." G. Thomas

W. R. Gregg affirms that "Jesus had one of those gifted natures rarely met with, never in equal perfection, the purity and absolute harmony of whose mental and moral elements confer a clearness of vision which almost rises to the quality of prophecy."

Hausrath, cited by Frank Ballard, thinks: "There is no other noble life known to human record encumbered with so little that is earthy, transitory, local; no other that can be put to purposes so high and universal."

John Young in Christ of History asks: "...How it has come to pass, that of all men He alone has risen to spiritual perfection? What GOD did for piety and virtue on earth at one time and in one case, GOD certainly could have done at other times and in other cases. If Jesus was man only, GOD could have raised up, in successive ages, many such living examples of sanctified humanity as He was, to correct, instruct, and quicken the world. But He did not..."

Carnegie Simpson wrote: "Instinctively we do not class Him with others. When one reads His name in a list beginning with Confucius and ending with Goethe we feel it is an offense less against orthodoxy than against decency. Jesus is not one of the group of the world's great. Talk about Alexander the Great and Charles the Great and Napoleon the Great if you will...Jesus is apart. He is not the Great; He is the Only. He is simply Jesus. Nothing could add to that...He is beyond our analyses. He confounds our canons of human nature. He compels our criticism to overleap itself. He awes our spirits." (Quoted by John Stott in Basic Christianity.)

From Philip Schaff: "His zeal never degenerated into passion, nor His constancy into obstinacy, nor His benevolence into weakness, nor His tenderness into sentimentality. His unworldliness was free from indifference and unsociability, His dignity from pride and presumption, His affectibility from undue familiarity, His self-denial from moroseness, His temperance from austerity. He combined child-like interest in the welfare of man, tender love to the sinner with uncompromising severity against sin, commanding dignity with winning humility, fearless courage with wise caution, unyielding firmness with sweet gentleness."

In a conversation between Robert Browning and Charles Lamb, cited by John R. W. Stott, Lamb was talking about the reaction they would experience if someone from the dead walked in. When asked what he would do if Christ entered the room, Lamb replied "...If Shakespeare was to come into this room we should all rise up to meet him, but if that Person was to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment."

Griffith Thomas states: "He represents a definite, divine intervention on behalf of man, at a particular moment of time in the world's history, and on this great miracle of the Person of Christ we take our stand..."

"He embraces all the good elements which mark other men, and it is not too much to say that there is no element missing which men think desirable in the human character."

Klausner, a Jewish scholar, says, "Jesus was the most Jewish of Jews; even more Jewish than Hillel."

"It is universally admitted...that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, one which throws the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade."

Joseph Parker writes in Ecce Deus: "Only a Christ could have conceived a Christ."

Johann Gottfried Von Herder declares: "Jesus Christ is the noblest and most perfect sense the realized ideal of humanity."

Napoleon Bonaparte has said: "I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him."

Theodore Parker, a famous Unitarian, avows that "Christ unites in Himself the sublimest principles and divinest practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages, rises free from all prejudices of his age, nation, or sect, and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as GOD. Eighteen centuries have passed since the sun of humanity rose so high in Jesus. What man, what sect has mastered His thought, comprehended His method, and fully applied it to life?"

Ralph Waldo Emerson had this to say: "Jesus astonishes and overpowers sensual people. They cannot unite Him to history or reconcile Him with themselves."

"The latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica," writes Wilbur Smith, "gives twenty thousand words to this person Jesus, and does not even hint that He did not exist - more words, by the way, than are given to Aristotle, Alexander, Cicero, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon Bonaparte."

Phillips Brooks: "Jesus Christ, the condescension of divinity, and the exaltation of humanity."

What the Antagonists Say

"And Goethe," cites historian Philip Schaff, "another commanding genius, of very different character, but equally above suspicion of partiality for religion, looking in the last years of his life over the vast field of history, was constrained to confess that 'if ever the Divine appeared on earth, it was in the Person of Christ,' and that 'the human mind, no matter how far it may advance in every other department, will never transcend the height and moral culture of Christianity as it shines and glows in the Gospels.' "

"I esteem the Gospels to be thoroughly genuine, for there shines forth from them the reflected splendour of a sublimity, proceeding from the person of Jesus Christ, and of as Divine a kind as was ever manifested upon earth."

H. G. Wells, the noted historian, writes a fascinating testimony to Jesus Christ:

"He was too great for his disciples. And in view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching? Perhaps the priests and rulers and the rich men understood him better than his followers. He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the smog burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love. Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him? Even His disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realized that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or the priestcraft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter, and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness...

"Is is any wonder that to this day this Galilean is too much for our small hearts?"

When Wells was asked which person has left the most permanent impression on history, he replied that judging a person's greatness by historical standards, "By this test Jesus stands first."

"Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed." Ernest Renan

Thomas Carlyle refers to Jesus as "...our divinest symbol. Higher has the human thought not yet reached. A symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest."

Rousseau asks, "Can the Person whose history the Gospels relate be Himself a man? What sweetness, what purity in His manners! What affecting goodness in His instructions! What sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom in His discourses! What presence of mind, what ingenuity of justice in His replies! Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Jesus Christ are those of a GOD."

To conclude, we hear first from Bernard Ramm and then from G. A. Ross: "Jesus Christ as the GOD-man is the greatest personality that ever lived, and therefore His personal impact is the greatest of any man that ever lived."

"Have we ever thought of the peculiar position occupied by Jesus with respect to the ideals of the sexes? No man has ever dared to call Jesus, in any opprobrious sense, sexless: yet in character He stands above, and if one may use the term, midway between the sexes - His comprehensive humanity a veritable storehouse of the ideals we associate with both the sexes. No woman has ever had any more difficulty than men have had in finding in Him the realized ideal. Whatever there is in men of strength, justice, and wisdom, whatever there is in women of sensibility, purity, and insight, is in Christ without the conditions which hinder among us the development of contrasted virtues in one person."

IF GOD BECAME MAN, THEN CERTAINLY HIS WORDS WOULD BE THE GREATEST EVER SPOKEN

Jesus Himself said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away" (Luke 21:33).

Luke 4:32 tells us that "they were continually amazed at His teaching..."

From the officers of the guard we hear, "Never did a man speak the way this man speaks" (John 7:46)

The Greatest Words Ever Spoken

Many of today's scholars feel that Jesus' words are the greatest ever spoken: one such man is Bernard Ramm. He feels their greatness lies in their ability to deal authoritatively and clearly with the greatest burdens and problems man faces; namely, those dealing with this relationship to GOD.

Sholem Ash wrote:

"Jesus Christ is the outstanding personality of all time...No other teacher - Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Mohammedan - is still a teacher whose teaching is such a guidepost for the world we live in. Other teachers may have something basic for an Oriental, an Arab,or an Occidental; but every act and word of Jesus has value for all of us. He became the Light of the World. Why shouldn't I, a Jew, be proud of that?"

G. J. Romanes tells us:

"For when we consider what a large number of sayings are recorded of - or at least attributed to - Him, it becomes most remarkable that in literal truth there is no reason why any of His words should ever pass away in the sense of becoming obsolete...Contrast Jesus Christ in this respect with other thinkers of the like antiquity. Even Plato, who, though some four hundred years before Christ in point of time, was greatly in advance of Him in respect of philosophical thought, is nowhere in this respect as compared with Christ. Read the Dialogues, and see how enormous is the contrast with the Gospels in respect of errors of all kinds, reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason, and to sayings shocking to the moral sense. Yet this is confessedly the highest level of human reason on the lines of spirituality when unaided by alleged revelation."

"For two thousand years, He has been the Light of the World, and His words have not passed away." Morris

The great personality behind His words is reason for the greatness of His words, according to Ramm.

From F. J. A. Hort:

"His words were so completely parts and utterances of Himself, that they had no meaning as abstract statements of truth uttered by Him as a Divine oracle or prophet. Take away Himself as the primary (though not the ultimate) subject of every statement and they all fall to pieces."

"But Jesus' words and acts are impressively integral, and we trust those sayings we judge to be authentically His as revelatory of His person. When Jesus uses the personal pronoun, "I" ('But I say to you,' 'Amen, I say to you'), He stands in back of every word with personal fidelity and personal intentionality. If His words and acts are messianic in character, it is because He intends them to be, and if He intends them to be, He is thinking of Himself in messianic terms." Gruenler

"Christ's words are of permanent value because of His person; they endure because He endures." Griffith Thomas

Joseph Parker states: "After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates or Aristotle, we feel the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation."

In the words of Bernard Ramm: "Statistically speaking, the Gospels are the greatest literature ever written. They are read by more people, quoted by more authors, translated into more tongues, represented in more art, set to more music, than any other book or books written by any man in any century in any land. But the words of Christ are not great on the grounds that they have such a statistical edge over anybody else's words. They are read more, quoted more, loved more, believed more, and translated more because they are the greatest words ever spoken. And where is their greatness? Their greatness lies in the pure, lucid spirituality in dealing clearly, definitively, and authoritatively with the greatest problems that throb in the human breast; namely, Who is GOD? Does He love Me? What should I do to please Him? How does He look at my sin? How can I be forgiven? Where will I go when I die? How must I treat others? No other man's words have the appeal of Jesus' words because no other man can answer these fundamental human questions as Jesus answered them. They are the kind of words and the kind of answers we would expect GOD to give, and we who believe in Jesus' deity have no problem as to why these words came from His mouth."

"Never did the Speaker seem to stand more utterly alone than when He uttered this majestic utterance. Never did it seem more improbable that it should be fulfilled. But as we look across the centuries we see how it has been realized. His words have passed into law, they have passed into doctrines, they have passed into proverbs, they have passed into consolations, but they have never 'passed away.' What human teacher ever dared to claim an eternity for his words?" G. F. Maclean

"Systems of human wisdom will come and go, kingdoms and empires will rise and fall, but for all time to come Christ will remain 'the Way, the Truth, and the Life.' " Philip Schaff

Christ's teachings are complete in every point, from the regulation of thought to control of the will. Because of this, Thomas points out that Christ's message is "inexhaustible." Each generation finds it new and exciting.

Mark Hopkins affirms: "No revolution that has ever taken place in society can be compared to that which has been produced by the words of Jesus Christ."

W. S. Peake: "It is sometimes said, 'Everything that Jesus said has been said before Him by others.' Let us grant that it is true, what then? Originality may or may not be a merit. If the truth has already been uttered, the merit lies in repeating it, and giving it new and fuller application. But there are other considerations to be borne in mind. We have no other teacher who so completely eliminated the trivial, the temporal, the false from his system, no one who selected just the eternal and the universal, and combined them in a teaching where all these great truths found their congenial home. These parallels from the teaching of others to that of Christ are brought together from this quarter and from that; how is it that none of these teachers furnishes us with any parallel to the teachings of Christ? As a whole, while each of them gives us such truths as He expresses mingled with a mass of what is trivial and absurd? How was it that a carpenter, of no special training, ignorant of the culture and learning of the Greeks, born of a people whose great teachers were narrow, sour, intolerant, pedantic legalists, was the supreme religious Teacher the world has known, whose supremacy here makes Him the most important figure in the world's history?"

Griffith Thomas concludes: "Although without formal rabbinical training, He showed no timidity of self-consciousness, no hesitation as to what He felt to be truth. Without any thought of Himself or His audience, He spoke out fearlessly on every occasion, utterly heedless of the consequences to Himself, and only concerned for the truth and the delivery of His Father's message. The power of His teaching was also deeply felt. 'His word was with power' (Luke 4:32). The spiritual force of His personality expressed itself in His utterances and held His hearers in its enthralling grasp. And so we are not surprised to read of the impression of uniqueness made by Him. 'Never man spake like this man' (John 7:46). The simplicity and charm and yet the depth, the directness, the universality, and the truth of His teaching made a deep mark on His hearers, and elicited the conviction that they were in the presence of a Teacher such as man had never known before. And thus the large proportion of teaching in the Gospels, and the impressions evidently created by the TEacher Himself, are such that we are not at all surprised that years afterward the great Apostle of the Gentiles should recall these things and say, 'Remember the words of the LORD Jesus' (Acts 20:35). The same impression has been made in every age since the days of Christ and His immediate followers, and in any full consideration of His Person as the substance of Christianity great attention must necessarily be paid to His teaching."

Back to Top

  

Home	Site Index	Bible Index
Kingdom Dynamics	Truth in Action	Links