Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Yesterday we considered some of the characteristics of Jesus’ invitation, but why does His invitation matter in 2024? Is the invitation valid? Has it expired?
Jesus’ timeless invitation matters because of who is extending the offer.
If you’re reading this, you probably do agree the verse above matters as much today as it did in the first century, but what about the others around us? What will they say?
How many times have you heard others say they admire the teachings of Jesus but reject His deity? Around seventy years ago, C.S. Lewis offered his thoughts that still resonate today. It’s a longer quote well worth considering again and again.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. 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 the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon 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. He did not intend to.”
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Lewis was right. Jesus made it clear that He is the way, the truth, the life (John 14:6) and as Begg pointed out from John 8:12, Jesus claimed to be not “a” _____ but “the ______.”
“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12
The invitation remains and is still being offered because Jesus is who He says He is.
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