It was London in the early days of World War II. A rescue team was digging through the ruins of an apartment house following a night of intense bombing by the Germans. Surprisingly, they found an old man sitting in a bathtub, naked but unharmed. 

The man said, “You know, that was the most amazing experience I’ve ever had! When I finished my bath and pulled the plug to let the water out, the whole house blew up!” 

His logic led him to believe that draining the tub caused the explosion—we would conclude something else!

I want to try some logic on one of the most important questions ever: Is Jesus Christ really God? 

The answer to that question makes a world of difference. So how would you know?

The 20th century writer C.S. Lewis first suggested the question that has since been expanded on by others. Contemporary author Josh McDowell explained the approach this way: Lord, liar or lunatic? 

In other words, when you consider the question of who Jesus was, it really comes down to one of those three choices: either he was a liar or a lunatic, or he is the Lord. 

Allow me to explain.

Jesus Christ plainly stated that he was God. At one point he said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). Another time he claimed, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). And to top it off, he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). 

Without question, he said repeatedly that he was the God of the universe in person on planet Earth.

That is either true or false. Either he is indeed God, or he is most certainly not. 

So how can logic help evaluate this important question? 

Let’s take it to the next step. If Jesus claimed to be God but that claim was false, then there are just two possibilities. Either he knew it was false but continued to say it anyway, or he believed it to be true, even though it wasn’t.

In the first case—if he knew it was false yet continued to say it—that would make him a liar. And not just some everyday run-of-the-mill liar but a terribly horrible person because he asked people to stake their entire lives on his claims.

In the other case, if he truly believed himself to be God in person but that wasn’t true, then he would be insane. Anyone continuously claiming to be the God of the universe who obviously is not, is someone who has lost touch with reality. 

As Lewis humorously put it, that would be on the level of a man who claimed to be a poached egg. Commit your life and your destiny to someone like that? I don’t think so.

The logic behind this trilemma looks like this:

The question then comes down to which possibility makes the most sense. Does what we know about Jesus—the kind of life he lived, the things he said and did, his wisdom, his love, the way he gave his life to die on the cross for the sins of the world, the evidence that supports the eyewitness accounts that three days later he came back from the dead—does all that lead you to believe that he was a liar? That he was crazy? Or would it lead a person to conclude that he really was and is God? 

I’m not saying the trilemma settles it once and for all. Remember the Englishman in his tub—logic can take you only so far! 

But this is a good starting point to consider the evidence about Jesus. The important questions to answer are, who is God? And what does he have to say to us?