Many people would concede Jesus was a great moral teacher. Those who listened to Jesus were “amazed at his teaching because his message had authority.” Luke 4:32. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity argues that the option of Jesus being simply a teacher is not viable. He wrote: “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.”
Jesus told his followers in John 14:9-10: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather it is [God] the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”
In C.S. Lewis’ words: “Either [Jesus] 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.”