Thanks for your responses.
I am not a sectarian Christian. I don’t belong to any church or organized system of Christian belief.
I believe profoundly in a Creator God; and I am devoted to the philosophy that Jesus actually espoused.
I don’t necessarily believe that Jesus was THE ‘Son of God’, any more than we all are. I believe that He was profoundly wise, and spiritually enlightened; and that if we all actually lived by His Sermon on the Mount, the world would be a much better place. And I believe that a lot in the Bible, OT and NT, is symbolical, with much deeper meaning than the literal surface would indicate.
But so many so-called ‘Christians’ do NOT really live by His simple teachings; and a lot of them just use scripture to batter people who believe otherwise.
No Christian ever has or ever will live by his teachings or example of his life . That’s why he is their savior, not their tutor, guide, coach or anything else, though secondarily, he is a lot of those things. I have started to think of it this way, God is a consuming holy fire who cannot allow sin in His presence and is has to destroy sinners. His moral law is as inflexible as His natural laws that order the universe.We can no more violate his moral law than we can violate the law of gravity. Although there are small exceptions made for gravity, like falling off a bicycle, all violations of moral law result in death, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” Ezek 18:4. But Micah 7:18 assures:” Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.” So Jesus who is God Himself in human flesh through the virgin birth( just look at the number of time humble Jesus claims authority in the Sermon on the mount(Matthew chapters 5-7)dies as the sacrifice God demands to pay for the sins of those who believe , and yet remains holy : Romans 3:26: “To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”Ephesians 2:7-9:7 “That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
But there is a problem - Jesus' own words e.g. in John 10, where he claimed identity with God; or in Luke 7, where he forgave sins. As C.S. Lewis said,
"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."