No, he most definitely was not.
Now before you click away in a huff, let me explain.
That is not the answer I might have given to the question several years ago, or even several weeks ago. I might have said “Yes, he was a great moral teacher, but he was also the Savior.” My thinking has been challenged in recent days however, by a sermon and quote.
The sermon is “The authenticity of Christ” preached by the British theologian Brian Edwards for Answers in Genesis. In which he shares this quote by C.S. Lewis:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him {Jesus Christ}:
‘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 a 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.”
–Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
And what C.S. Lewis says is true. Someone who claimed to be equal with God in that time and culture would have either been classified as a raving lunatic, killed for blasphemy, or believed to be who he claimed to be. He would have never been regarded as or gone down in history as “a great moral teacher.”
Jesus is the Christ
Neither Scripture, nor the greatest historians claim Jesus to be “just a great moral teacher.” They, and I, claim him to be Christ. The Son of God. One of the three persons of the Triune God who is eternal, all-powerful and paid my sin debt.
Jesus said unto her {Martha}, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”
She saith unto him, “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”
– John 11: 25-27
Along with Martha, I am answering “Yes, Lord: I believe.”
And thinking on this, my friends, has brightened my morning and gladdened my heart with praise to my Lord. It is my hope that you will have the same response.
We do not worship a great moral teacher. We worship Jesus Christ, the risen and eternal Savior!