In my re-reading of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, I have just come across one of the most insightful passages in the book. In this passage, Lewis shows that Jesus could have been merely a great moral teacher:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the 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 the 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. 

At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, defer to one another. Each person, so to speak, makes room for the other two. I know it sounds a little strange, but we might almost say that the persons within God show each other divine hospitality. After all, John's Gospel tells us that the Father is "in" the Son and that the Son is "in" the Father, and that each loves and glorifies the other. The fathers of the Greek church called this interchange the mystery of perichoresis and added in the Holy Spirit--the Spirit of both the Father and the Son. When early Greek Christians spoke of perichoresis in God, they meant that each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In a constant movement of overture and acceptance, each person envelops and encircles the others.

Supposing that hospitality means to make room for others and then to help them flourish in the room you have made, I think we could say that hospitality thrives within the triune life of God and then spreads wonderfully to the creatures of God. The one who spreads it is a mediator, a person who "works in the middle." We ordinarily think of Jesus Christ as the mediator of salvation, but I think we can see now that those mysterious places in the New Testament that speak of creation happening "through Christ" reveal that the agent of redemption is also the agent of creation. Christ is the person designated to work in the middle both times.

The Scriptures do not explain how Christ mediates at Creation, or exactly why, but they do give us hints. They say, for example, that Christ is not only the Son of God but also the "wisdom of God" and the "word of God." These metaphors suggest that the work of Jesus Christ represents the intelligence and expressiveness of the triune God. According to God's intelligence, the way to thrive is to help others to thrive; the way to flourish is to cause others to flourish; the way to fulfill yourself is to spend yourself. Jesus himself tried to get this lesson across to his disciples by washing their feet, hoping to ignite a little of the Trinitarian life in them. The idea is that if--in a band of disciples, in a family, in a college--people encourage each other, pour out interest and goodwill upon each other, favor each other with blessings customized to fit the other person's need, what transpires is a lovely burst of shalom.

Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning and Living

In his collection of essays entitled Off Main Street, Michael Perry recounts how he lost his faith because of a legalistic preacher:

In our little corner of Wyoming, Brother Tim was seen as the heavyweight champ of preaching. Church members would grin and shake their heads in benevolent wonder when recounting his exploits; the deeper implication was that he was not to be messed with. Preaching or not, Brother Tim tended to Hold Forth. This day he was in strong, confident voice, sharing the stories of saints and sinners and their weakness in the face of salvation. There was a woman nearby who had been coming to church off and on for some time. She was a beautiful thing, and, as the story went, had worked as a model. We heard anecdotes of her struggle, of her inability to adhere to our dress code, for which women are forbidden to cut their hair or wear pants. After working with her for some time, with mixed success, Tim paid her a surprise visit. She answered the door in a pair of shorts. By his own account, Brother Tim spun on his heel, walked right back out the sidewalk to his  car, and drove away. The woman who first told me this story chuckled with admiration for Tim's resolve. But the chuckle was double-edged; it also conveyed condescending pity for this woman who didn't know enough to slip into a skirt and save her soul.

The idea of an unannounced inspection struck me as goofy as it was creepy. But that paled in comparison to the idea of this man filled with such vindictive hubris that he was willing to risk this woman's soul to Hell, to abandon her in her own home, willing to stand before the throne of God on the Big Day and say, Lord, she was clad in shorts, so I turned away. I got her behind me, back there with Satan.

I can still see him, down at the end of the long cookhouse table, right across from me, his big frame backlit in the window, telling this story with booming certitude, and I remember thinking, if the kingdom of heaven can swing on a pair of hot pants, if the cut of your shorts can shift the firmament, then we got trouble. And now, when I think back, I feel a little sorry for him, sad that he could tell these stories in front of a kid like me and not have any perception of my perception. Blown up in his own spiritual bulk, he unwittingly blocked the one true light, and a shadow fell on my heart. In time, I came to know others like Tim Copper. In their zeal to count heads, they lost track of souls. And when they saw some of us turn away, they assumed we simply strayed, were tempted away, or left in ignorance, when in truth, many of us left in full awareness, seeking a purer truth. He wasn't the only one. But I remember that Sunday. For the first time, I felt the foundation of my faith crack.

As I read this, I can't help but think of the contrast between the way this preacher treated the girl and the way Jesus treated the woman caught in adultery:

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

"The common path to sure knowledge of the real Jesus is this: Jesus, as he is revealed in the Bible, has a glory--an excellence, a spiritual beauty--that can be seen as self-evidently true. It is like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light and not dark, or like tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet and not sour. There is no long chain of reasoning from premises to conclusions. There is a direct apprehension that this person is true and his glory is the glory of God."

--From Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, Piper

From Jonathan Edwards' "Advice to Young Converts":

Be always greatly humbled by your remaining sin, and never think that you lie low enough for it, but yet don't be at all discouraged or disheartened by it. Although we are exceedingly sinful, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, the preciousness of whose blood, the merit of whose righteousness, and the greatness of whose love and faithfulness infinitely overtop the highest mountains of our sins.

"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst."—John 4:14

He who is a believer in Jesus finds enough in his Lord to satisfy him now, and to content him for evermore. The believer is not the man whose days are weary for want of comfort, and whose nights are long from absence of heart-cheering thought, for he finds in religion such a spring of joy, such a fountain of consolation, that he is content and happy. Put him in a dungeon and he will find good company; place him in a barren wilderness, he will eat the bread of heaven; drive him away from friendship, he will meet the "friend that sticketh closer than a brother." Blast all his gourds, and he will find shadow beneath the Rock of Ages; sap the foundation of his earthly hopes, but his heart will still be fixed, trusting in the Lord. The heart is as insatiable as the grave till Jesus enters it, and then it is a cup full to overflowing. There is such a fulness in Christ that He alone is the believer's all. The true saint is so completely satisfied with the all-sufficiency of Jesus that he thirsts no more—except it be for deeper draughts of the living fountain. In that sweet manner, believer, shalt thou thirst; it shall not be a thirst of pain, but of loving desire; thou wilt find it a sweet thing to be panting after a fuller enjoyment of Jesus' love. One in days of yore said, "I have been sinking my bucket down into the well full often, but now my thirst after Jesus has become so insatiable, that I long to put the well itself to my lips, and drink right on." Is this the feeling of thine heart now, believer? Dost thou feel that all thy desires are satisfied in Jesus, and that thou hast no want now, but to know more of Him;, and to have closer fellowship with Him? Then come continually to the fountain, and take of the water of life freely. Jesus will never think you take too much, but will ever welcome you, saying, "Drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved."

C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, October 6

When they had eaten breakfast, Jesus asked Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord," he said to Him. "You know that I love You."

"Feed My lambs," He told him.

A second time He asked him, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?"

"Yes, Lord," he said to Him, "You know that I love You."

"Shepherd My sheep," He told him.

He asked him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love Me?"

Peter was grieved that He asked him the third time, "Do you love Me?" He said, "Lord, You know everything! You know that I love You."

"Feed My sheep," Jesus said. "I assure you: When you were young, you would tie your belt and walk wherever you wanted. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will tie you and carry you where you don't want to go." He said this to signify by what kind of death he would glorify God. After saying this, He told him, "Follow Me!"

John 21:15-19, HCSB