Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the second message in our series Cracking the Da Vinci Code. The Da Vinci Code is a novel by Dan Brown that has sold 40 million copies. The sale of this book is unprecedented in history except for the Bible. The story is now scheduled to be released as a movie on May 19, featuring a powerful cast with Tom Hanks leading as the main character.

The Da Vinci Code should have our attention. We’ve said that we can’t blow this off as a fad or a flash-in-the-pan. This book makes some serious claims that, if they are true, effectively destroy traditional Christianity.

Last week we talked about the book. Today we’re talking about the man behind the book. The book is not The Da Vinci Code. It’s the Bible. And the man behind the book is not Dan Brown. It’s Jesus Christ.

The Da Vinci Code makes some serious claims about who Jesus actually was. The book doesn’t deny Jesus’ existence. But it does say that the church, in a massive cover up, conspired to rewrite the history of Jesus.

Here’s a summary of what The Da Vinci Code claims is the real truth about Jesus Christ. Jesus was not the divine Son of God. This book claims that Jesus, “was a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.” (DVC p. 233) Not only was Jesus not the divine Son of God, but he also had a wife. His wife was Mary Magdalene. Jesus fathered children with Mary Magdalene. The book says that, “The marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is part of the historical record.” (DVC p. 245)

The earliest followers of Jesus knew of his marriage. But in the 4th century, there was an attempt by the church to cover this up because it would prove Jesus was just a man, not God. So in this effort, the church outlawed, gathered up and burned the real gospel books that tell us the truth of Jesus. These books that were outlawed are known as the Gnostic Gospels.

So what did these Gnostic Gospels really tell us about Jesus and his humanity? What did Jesus’ real human side look like?

One story from the Gnostic Gospels show Jesus, as a boy, makes a pigeon out of clay. He throws it up into the air and it flies away. For all you skeet shooters, this was the first clay pigeon.

Another story Jesus’ boyhood. Little boy Jesus is playing with his friends. He gets into a disagreement with his friend and zaps him dead. Sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it?

The church had to hide this truth of Jesus found in the Gnostic Gospels. The church had to hide all his humanity, so they created a new Bible, painting Jesus as divine and leaving out the fact that he was human. That new Bible they created is the one that many of you have with you today. Question: Does the Bible that we have today try to cover up Jesus’ humanity? No way! Dan Brown apparently missed this.

The Bible has a lot to say about Jesus’ humanity. He was fully God, but the Bible also says that he was fully human.

1 John says, “Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. This is the way to find out if they have the Spirit of God: If a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ became a human being, that person has the Spirit of God. If a prophet does not acknowledge Jesus, that person is not from God.” (1 John 4:1-3, NLT) John isn’t trying to hide Jesus’ humanity. In fact, he said the only way to know if someone has the knowledge of God is if they say that Jesus was a human being.

The idea that the Bible tries to hide Jesus humanity is crazy. Jesus was a real human baby. He wasn’t like the Christmas Carol that says, “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” No crying he makes! Wow! He’s superbaby. The plain fact is that Jesus was a real baby, and every mom and dad knows that there’s only one kind of baby: the crying kind. Jesus cried. Jesus doo-dooed in his diaper. As Jesus grew older, he went through all of the human experience. He got hungry, thirsty, he got tired, he wept real tears, he shed real blood. And the Biblical writers wanted to be certain that we know this. The Bible makes sure we know Jesus was a human.

Dan Brown’s book has it backwards. The Bible we have today doesn’t hide Jesus’ humanity. It tries to show us Jesus’ humanity. The Da Vinci Code is built on a faulty premise. The code cracks.

Another faulty premise found in The Da Vinci Code. The real Holy Grail is Mary Magdalene. We’ve talked earlier in this series about how the church has been misled to think of the Holy Grail as the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper or a cup used to catch Jesus blood at the crucifixion. The real Holy Grail, according to The Da Vinci Code, is Mary Magdalene herself, who carried Jesus blood in her own body by bearing his children.

The Da Vinci Code states that the ultimate spiritual expression is to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene, which the main character does in the last scene of the book. Kneeling before Mary Magdalene, goddess worship, worshipping the sacred feminine. But you see, the church was not interested in that real spirituality, so it suppressed this truth.

This really is a logical fallacy. Think about it. Mary Magdalene was the divine goddess because she was married to the divine Jesus and bearer of the royal bloodline. But the majority of the book claims that Jesus was not divine. There’s a contradiction in the premise. What makes Mary Magdalene sacred is that she’s married to divinity. If you take away Jesus’ divinity, then what happens to Mary Magdalene’s status as the Holy Grail and the sacred feminine? The code cracks.

Now, we’ve talked about Jesus’ humanity. What about his divinity? Was Jesus God? Was he divine? The Da Vinci Code says that no one believed that in the early years, not even Jesus himself. This belief didn’t happen until Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea changed everything in 325 AD.

This comes out in the book in a conversation between two of the main characters, Leigh Teabing and Sophie Nouveau. In this conversation, Teabing says, “Jesus’ establishment as the ‘Son of God’ was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.”

Sophie responds, “Hold on. You’re saying that Jesus’ divinity was the result of a vote?”

“A relatively close vote at that, “Teabing added. (DVC p. 233)

As we said last week, a lot of people become easily confused with The Da Vinci Code because Dan Brown does use real names, real dates, and real places in his book. There was actually a Council of Nicaea. But it wasn’t about deciding on the divinity of Jesus as Dan Brown claims. It was a gathering of 300 or so bishops. They gathered to refute the heretical teaching of Arius. Arius was saying, not that Jesus wasn’t divine, but that Jesus wasn’t eternal. He was brought into being. He didn’t preexist with the father. That sounds complicated, but it really was a serious issue the church had to answer. And we also said last week that the vote was not close as Dan Brown claims. The vote was 298 to 2. Some records suggest it was 316 to 2. Either way, it wasn’t close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades. All this Council did was reaffirm what the church had believed all along, from the day of Pentecost forward.

Colossians 2:9 tells us, “For in Christ the fullness of God lives in a human body…” (NLT)

1 John 5:20 says, “We know God's Son has come. He has given us the understanding to know Him Who is the true God. We are joined together with the true God through His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and the life that lasts forever.” (New Life Version)

These New Testament books are older that the Gnostic Gospels which The Da Vinci Code promotes. These books tell us what the earliest Christians believed, and they believed without reservation that Jesus was Emmanuel. God with us. God in the flesh. God with skin on. From day one, the early church believed Jesus was God.

Let’s tackle the issue from another angle. What did Jesus believe about himself? The Da Vinci Code claims that Jesus was not divine, and he never claimed to be divine. Since we’ve established the reliability of the New Testament gospels, let’s go to them and see what Jesus said about himself.

In John 10, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”

Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”

“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” (John 10:30-33, NIV)

Jesus also allowed others to call him the Christ in Matthew 16 and 20. He said he could forgive sins in Matthew 9 and Luke 7. He did not stop others from calling him the Son of God in Matthew 14. He promised to rise from the dead in Matthew 20 and 27. He said he would be the ultimate judge at the end of time in Matthew 25.

There’s an old saying that says, “Anyone who can read the New Testament and not see that Jesus claimed to be more than a man can look into the sky on a cloudless day and not see the sun.”

This whole idea that Jesus was just a good man, and that he never claimed to be anything more than a man, is ludicrous. C.S. Lewis said, “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 up 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)

After reading Jesus’ claims about himself, there are only three possibilities as to who he was. C.S. Lewis called this the trilemma. Jesus claimed to be God. Obviously, his claims are either false or they are true. If his claims were false, there are two possibilities. Either he knew they were false or he didn’t know they were false. If Jesus’ claims were false and he knew it, then he is nothing more than a liar. If his claims to be God were false and he didn’t know it, then he was a lunatic.

If his claims are true, then we have two choices. We can choose to either accept him or reject him. But, if his claims are true, then that makes him Lord.

Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. There are no other options. Jesus was not just a powerful mortal prophet as Dan Brown teaches. He was not good moral man, or a great teacher, or a philosopher. He didn’t leave any of those options open. Jesus claimed to be God, pure and simple.

No one will die for something that they know is a lie, but if Jesus was lying, then he knew he was dying for nothing. I can’t imagine him enduring the torture of the cross for a lie. If he were lying, at some point he would have said, “Hey, wait a minute. I was just kidding! Just a joke!”

When you examine the life of Jesus, it’s highly unlikely that he was a lunatic. In fact, he was a genius. Jesus, a simple peasant carpenter, could consistently outwit the elite of his day. He always came up with the wisest answer no matter what the situation. His enemies could never trip him up with his own words or actions. Do we really think that these wise words couldn’t have been contrived by someone who was out of his mind.

So if he wasn’t a liar or a lunatic, then that leaves only one possibility. He is Lord. He claimed to be Lord. The early church believed him to be Lord.

The Da Vinci Code teaches that no one believed Jesus was divine until the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. We have seen how this doesn’t score up with the facts. One more time, we see the code crack. Let’s watch it crack a little bit more as we think about what people said about Jesus outside of the Biblical writers. Keep in mind, this was all said well before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

Speaking of Jesus, Ignatius said in AD 105, “God Himself was manifested in human form.”

In AD 150, Clement said, “It is fitting that you should think of Jesus as God.”

In AD 160, Justin Martyr said, “The Father of the universe has a Son. And He…is even God.”

Irenaeus said in AD 180, “He is God, for the name Emmanuel indicates this.”

In AD 200, Tertullian called him, “Christ our God.”

We can go on and on. We could quote Origen, Novatian, Cyprian, Methodius, Lactantius, Arnobius. (Quotes taken from Cracking Da Vinci’s Code, p. 94)

The point is that it is crazy to believe that the earliest Christians didn’t believe that Jesus was the divine Son of God. That was the belief of the church from day one. The Bible as well as secular history all backs this up.

Now, let’s tackle another major question raised in The Da Vinci Code. Was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene? What do we actually know about Mary Magdalene? It is assumed that she was a prostitute, but that actually does not come from the Bible. Most historians agree that the idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute was started in the 6th century by Pope Gregory I. (Cracking Da Vinci’s Code pg. 118)

Here’s what we know of Mary Magdalene: She was devoted follower of Jesus. Jesus cast seven demons out of her. (Luke 8:2) She devoted her to life to following and serving and supporting Jesus and his ministry. She was present at Jesus death. (Matthew 27:32-56) She was there at the burial. (Matthew 27:57-61) She went with two other women to anoint the body of Jesus. (Mark 16:1) She was the first to see the resurrected Christ. (John 20:10-18)

Dan Brown takes these facts and gets carried away. The book claims their marriage is historical fact, but in reality there is not a shred of evidence. There is no evidence from any record of eyewitnesses at the time of Jesus that implies a marriage relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

But The Da Vinci Code alledges that it would be outside of social decorum for Jesus not to be married. Two answers to this. 1 – It was evident in Jesus’ life that he didn’t really care about social decorum. 2 – There are plenty of other records of unmarried Jewish men from that time period. How about the apostle Paul for example? He was single.

And let me ask a question that may raise an eyebrow or two. Even if Jesus was married, what’s the big deal? Along with being fully God, he was also fully human. Marriage doesn’t corrupt you. The sexual relationship within marriage is not sinful. Christianity doesn’t hinge on Jesus’ singleness. It hinges on Jesus being the sinless Son of God. Now, we know from history that Jesus was not married. But my point is that, even if he was, The Da Vinci Code’s claim that it changes everything is off the mark.

Misconceptions of Jesus are not new. There’s a great conversation between Jesus and his disciples in Matthew 16.

Jesus “asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew 16:13-16, NIV)

Even during his lifetime, there were misconceptions and mistakes about who Jesus was. But we have to determine our own decision about Jesus. The most important question you will ever answer in your lifetime is, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

Jesus is asking each one of us, “Who do you say I am?” Will you echo the answer of Peter: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? Jesus is asking you right now, “Who do you say I am?” Maybe you’ve answered that question before, but you need to reaffirm your faith. You need to answer again, “You are the Christ. You are the Savior and the Lord of my life.”

Maybe you’ve been avoiding the question altogether. There is one thing you can’t do with Jesus: you can’t ignore him. When you come into contact with Jesus, a decision is demanded. Will you answer for the first time, “You are the Christ. I need you in my life. I need you to be my Savior and my Lord. I need your love and your forgiveness in my life.”

“Who do you say I am?” Jesus is asking. How will you answer?

Mike Edmisten