The Da Vinci Code Part 5

1 John 5:1-6

May 21, 2006

You heard in our scripture reading today that the one who believes in Jesus Christ as the one and only Son of God claims the victory which conquers the world. 

But is that a claim that we can confidently make?

In this, the final installment in our series on The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown tells us this about both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus:

”…many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon—the date of Easter, the role of the bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course the divinity of Jesus….until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet…a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. Because Constantine upgraded Jesus’ status almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man” (pp. 233 & 234).

“…almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.” (p. 235)

What the Da Vinci code wants us to believe is that the Divinity of Christ was something not believed by the early church, that it was an invention of the Council of Nicaea in 325, from which we get the Nicene Creed, as we heard earlier in this series. 

And so The Da Vinci Code would have us believe that the early church covered up information which would reveal that Jesus was only human and not divine in order falsely proclaim Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God.

And therefore, according to The Da Vinci Code, “any gospels that describe earthly aspects of Jesus’ life had to be omitted from the Gospel—what was included in the New Testament.”

However, the idea that Jesus was not regarded as divine until three hundred years after he died just doesn’t square with the facts. The gospel of John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … and the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

In the gospel of Matthew, written in the era of eyewitnesses, Jesus says to Simon Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus does not respond to Peter by saying, “No. No. I’m just a man like you.” Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon Peter, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

Now, that’s a bold statement for Simon to make, especially if it wasn’t true.

You see, history tells us that all of the original disciples died martyr’s deaths; they were killed for their faith in Jesus as the Son of God.  

All they had to do to save their lives was to say that Jesus was just a man, that he wasn’t God. He was just a prophet or a good man.  It’s a no-brainer!  Would you die for a lie?

And, to me, trying to say that they knew that Jesus was only mortal, as Brown tries to convince us, and then the disciples covered it up, and then they were willing to suffer and die for what they knew to be a lie … that’s the biggest leap of faith of all.

And so I am going to ask you to take a smaller leap of faith today, a leap which disregards what The Da Vinci Code has to say, and instead accept what Simon Peter had to say.

What, then, did Simon Peter mean when he said “You are the Christ the Son of the living God”?
The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah – which simply means God’s anointed One.

And so Peter recognized that Jesus wasn’t just some human prophet, but that he was the divine Anointed One of God—the very Son of God.

So what does that mean for us today?

Who do YOU say that Jesus is?

Let us look at some answers to that question as given over the centuries:

ALBERT SCHWEITZER the famous liberal theologian and one of the 113 Swiss Nobel Prize winners:
“[Jesus] was a deluded fanatic who futilely threw away his life in blind devotion to a mad dream. There is nothing more negative than the critical study of the life of Christ.”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW – the famous atheist and writer who said,
“Jesus was a man who was sane until Peter hailed him as the Christ and who then became a monomaniac…his delusion is a very common delusion among the insane…”

But there have been other answers.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis made this statement:

"A man who was merely 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 a man who says he is a poached egg--or he would be the devil of hell.
You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.
You can shut him up for a fool 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."

If Christianity is all about following Christ – rather than the common misconception that a Christian is simply someone who is nice and good and goes to church- then universalism (that is the belief that all religions will bring us to God) is not a Christian option.

Being a Christian is not simply about being a “good” person.

It is indeed not about who the follower is.  Rather it is all about Him whom we follow.

A Christian is a person who has recognized who Jesus is and has then decided to follow him.

And if Jesus is God’s anointed One and he is divine – then we need to take what he says seriously.
Jesus made some startling and very exclusive claims.

For example he said: “I am the Way the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14:6)

I often hear people say that “All religions are basically the same – they all worship the same God”.
But Jesus doesn’t leave us that option.

“There is something about Jesus. And the question to the disciples comes again: ‘Who do YOU say that I am?’ You must answer. And you. And you. And you and you.”

The question I’d like to leave you with today is this: Who DO YOU say Jesus is?
Because your answer will affect the way you live the rest of your life, and where you spend your eternal life.