The Words of Christ

The words of Jesus of Nazareth are among the constituent elements in the case that can be made for the deity of Jesus. We are under no obligation to make the case for Christ from a single element. However, there are some individual elements that do stand alone as both necessary and sufficient to prove His deity. We affirm the words of Jesus provide one of these single elements that demand the conclusion that Jesus is the Son of God.

In his book, Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., described what he called “the surrealistic beauty of the words [Jesus] used. ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin; And yet . . . Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . .’ Do we dismiss it as sublime poetry, pure and simple? . . . An old, Judaic Shakespeare? . . . A Shakespeare, raised as a carpenter, under the reign of Tiberius Caesar? . . . How much importance do you attach to the ‘uninventability’ of Christ? (It was C. S. Lewis’s contention that the life and in particular the preachings of Christ could not have issued from someone merely human.)” (237).

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) has been called “the academic dean of the conservative movement in America” (115). Kirk authored The Conservative Mind published in 1953 and twenty other books. He accepted the argument for the deity of Christ which essentially says that “only someone with a divine mandate would have spoken the words Christ spoke” (238).

The words of Jesus are spiritual (John 6:63). His words are authoritative (Luke 4:32). His words are astonishing (Mark 10:24). His words are simplistic. (As an example of the marvelous simplicity of His words note how He illustrated His lessons, e.g., salt, light, leaven, soil, children, birds, flowers, etc.) His words are wise and profound (Matthew 13:54; Luke 4:22). His words are powerful (Matthew 8:16; Mark 4:38; Luke 4:36). His words are unanswerable (Matthew 22:47; Luke 14:6). His words are flawless (Luke 20:26). His words are faith-producing (John 4:41-42), life-giving (John 6:63, 68), and peace-bringing (John 16:33). His words are enduring and eternal (Matthew 24:35). He claimed, “ He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him — the word that  I have spoken will judge him in the last day” ( John 12:48 ). Some of His enemies said “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to Him?” (John 10:20). However, the honest will admit, “These are not the words of one who has a demon” (John 10:21). Jesus’ words—His parables, His beatitudes, His debates, His prayers, His sermons, and His private conversations—serve as adequate evidence that He is who He claimed to be—The Son of God (John 9:35-37; Matthew 16:13-18).

One of the favorite authors of my late lamented friend, W. Terry Varner, was the English theologian, H. P. Liddon (1829-1890). Terry loved to read and study Liddon’s sermons. Early, in what became a friendship of fifty years, he introduced me to Liddon’s writings with his encouragement to invest in these volumes. In 1961, Terry purchased a book authored by Liddon titled Sermons on Some Words of Christ. The first sermon published in the book was one of Terry Varner’s favorite Liddon sermons called “The Words of Christ, Matthew 24:35”.

I am confident that he must have read and studied this sermon numerous times during more than sixty years of preaching the gospel of Christ. The sermon’s final paragraph is surely one of the great tributes written about the divine nature of the words of Jesus Christ. It is a memorable conclusion to this sermon because of the truthful and eloquent description the paragraph gives to our Lord’s matchless (beyond human invention) words. Liddon wrote,

“My words shall not pass away.” Write down these words, dear brethren, on the title-page of your New Testaments, that when you open that blessed book they may remind you of what you are doing: you are approaching the One Teacher Whose authority is not impaired by time. Write them down, fathers and mothers, but especially you who are Christian mothers, that you may never forget to teach your children, more carefully and thoroughly than anything that merely commands success in earthly life, those words which are more precious than ever before in the hour of death, and which are triumphantly justified beyond the veil. Write them down, I pray you, in your books and in your hearts, gentle and simple, lettered and unlearned, old and young, that they may help you, while the day of trial lasts, to set your feet upon the Rock, and order your goings. Never in the morning leave your room without asking, What do these blessed words, what does some of them, say to me for guidance, or support, or instruction, or warning in the work of the day? Never lie down at night without bringing what has been thought and said and done to be judged by the words of the Divine Teacher, that you may ask His pardon where you have gone astray, or thank Him for His grace when you have been enabled to conquer. To make those words the rule of life and thought must needs be the effort of a true Christian. God grant that we may make it while yet we can, and may find at our last hour, from a personal experience, that the words which do not pass away are also the words of Eternal Life. (18)

“The Officers answered, ‘No man ever spoke like this Man!’” (John 7:46).