I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus. “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, 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 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 to with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity)