Last week we discussed the humanity of Christ. This week (part 2) will be his deity. Next week will show how Jesus’ deity and humanity are united in the one person of Christ (part 3).
Last week we summarized the biblical teaching about the person of Christ as follows: Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person, and will be so forever.
The Deity of Christ
To complete the biblical teaching about Jesus Christ, we must affirm not only that he was fully human, but also that he was fully divine. Although the word does not explicitly occur in Scripture, the church has used the term incarnation to refer to the fact that Jesus was God in human flesh. The incarnation was the act of God the Son whereby he took to himself a human nature.” The scriptural proof for the deity of Christ is very extensive in the New Testament. We shall examine it under several categories.
The Word God (Theos) Used of Christ: Although the word theos, “God,” is usually reserved in the New Testament for God the Father, nonetheless, there are several passages where it is also used to refer to Jesus Christ. In these passages the word “God” is used in the strong sense to refer to the one who is the Creator of heaven and earth, the ruler over all. These passages include John 1:1; 20:28; Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8; and 2 Peter 1:1.
One Old Testament example of the name God applied to Christ is seen in a familiar messianic passage: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God . . .'” (Isaiah 9:6).
The Word Lord (Kyrios) Used of Christ: Sometimes the word Lord (Gk. kyrios) is used simply as a polite address to a superior, roughly equivalent to our word sir. Sometimes it can simply mean “master” of a servant or slave (Matthew 6:24; 21:40). Yet the same word is also used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which was commonly used at the time of Christ) as a translation for the Hebrew yhwh, “Yahweh,” or (as it is frequently translated) “the LORD,” or “Jehovah.” The word kyrios is used to translate the name of the Lord 6,814 times in the Greek Old Testament. Therefore, any Greek-speaking reader at the time of the New Testament who had any knowledge of the Greek Old Testament would have recognized that, in contexts where it was appropriate, the word “Lord” was the name of the one who was the Creator and Sustainer of heaven and earth, the omnipotent God.
Now there are many instances in the New Testament where “Lord” is used of Christ in what can only be understood as this strong Old Testament sense, “the Lord” who is Yahweh or God himself. This use of the word “Lord” is quite striking in the word of the angel to the shepherds of Bethlehem: “For to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Though these words are familiar to us from frequent reading of the Christmas story, we should realize how surprising it would be to any first-century Jew to hear that someone born as a baby was the “Christ” (or “Mes-siah”), and, moreover, that this one who was the Messiah was also “the Lord”, that is, the Lord God himself! The amazing force of the angel’s statement, which the shepherds could hardly believe, was to say, essentially, “Today in Bethlehem a baby has been born who is your Savior and your Messiah, and who is also God himself.” It is not surprising that “all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them” (Luke 2:18).
When Mary comes to visit Elizabeth several months before Jesus is to be born, Elizabeth says, “Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43). Because Jesus was not even born, Elizabeth could not be using the word “Lord” to mean something like human “master.” She must rather be using it in the strong Old Testament sense, giving an amazing sense to the sentence: “Why is this granted me, that the mother of the Lord God himself should come to me?” Though this is a very strong statement, it is difficult to understand the word “Lord” in this context in any weaker sense.
Jesus also identifies himself as the sovereign Lord of the Old Testament when he asks the Pharisees about Psalm 110:1, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put your enemies under your feet” (Matthew 22:44). The force of this statement is that “God the Father said to God the Son [David’s Lord], ‘Sit at my right hand. . .” The Pharisees know he is talking about himself and identifying himself as one worthy of the Old Testament title kyrios, “Lord.”
Other Strong Claims to Deity: In addition to the uses of the word God and Lord to refer to Christ, we have other passages that strongly claim deity for Christ. When Jesus told his Jewish opponents that Abraham had seen his (Christ’s) day, they challenged him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” (John 8:57). Here a sufficient response to prove Jesus’ eternity would have been, “Before Abraham was, I was.” But Jesus did not say this. Instead, he made a much more startling assertion: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). Jesus combined two assertions whose sequence seemed to make no sense: “Before something in the past happened [Abraham was], something in the present happened [I am].” The Jewish leaders recognized at once that he was not speaking in riddles or uttering nonsense: when he said, “I am,” he was repeating the very words God used when he identified himself to Moses as “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Jesus was claiming for himself the title “I AM,” by which God designates himself as the eternal existing One, the God who is the source of his own existence and who always has been and always will be. When the Jews heard this unusual, emphatic, solemn statement, they knew that he was claiming to be God. “So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple” (John 8:59).
Another strong claim to deity is Jesus’ statement at the end of Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). When this is combined with the statement of God the Father in Revelation 1:8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” it also constitutes a strong claim to equal deity with God the Father. Sovereign over all of history and all of creation, Jesus is the beginning and the end.
In John 1:1, John not only calls Jesus “God” but also refers to him as “the Word” (Gk. logos). John’s readers would have recognized in this term logos a dual reference, both to the powerful, creative Word of God in the Old Testament by which the heavens and earth were created (Psalm 33:6) and to the organizing or unifying principle of the universe, the thing that held it together and allowed it to make sense, in Greek thinking. John is identifying Jesus with both of these ideas and saying that he is not only the powerful, creative Word of God and the organizing or unifying force in the universe, but also that he became man: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14). Here is another strong claim to deity coupled with an explicit statement that Jesus also became man and moved among us as a man.
Evidence That Jesus Possessed Attributes of Deity. In addition to the specific affirmations of Jesus’ deity seen in the many passages quoted above, we see many examples of actions in Jesus’ lifetime that point to his divine character.
Jesus demonstrated his omnipotence when he stilled the storm at sea with a word (Matthew 8:26-27), multiplied the loaves and fish (Matthew 14:19), and changed water into wine (John 2:1-11). Some might object that these miracles just showed the power of the Holy Spirit working through him, just as the Holy Spirit could work through any other human being, and therefore these do not demonstrate Jesus’ own deity. But the contextual explanations of these events often point not to what they demonstrate about the power of the Holy Spirit but to what they demonstrate about Jesus himself. For instance, after Jesus turned water into wine, John tells us, “This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11). It was not the glory of the Holy Spirit that was manifested but the glory of Jesus himself, as his divine power worked to change water into wine. Similarly, after Jesus stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples did not say, “How great is the power of the Holy Spirit working through this prophet,” but rather, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:27). It was the authority of Jesus himself to which the winds and the waves were subject, and this could only be the authority of God who rules over the seas and has power to still the waves.
Jesus asserts his eternity when he says, “Before Abraham was, I am”, or, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 22:13).
The omniscience of Jesus is demonstrated in his knowing people’s thoughts (Mark 2:8) and seeing Nathaniel under the fig tree from far away (John 1:48), and knowing “from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that would betray him” (John 6:64). Of course, the revelation of individual, specific events or facts is something that God could give to anyone who had a gift of prophecy in the Old or New Testaments. But Jesus’ knowledge was much more extensive than that. He knew “who those were that did not believe,” thus implying that he knew the belief or unbelief that was in the hearts of all men. In fact, John says explicitly that Jesus “knew all men and needed no one to bear witness of man” (John 2:25). The disciples could later say to him, “Now we know that you know all things” (John 16:30). These statements say much more than what could be said of any great prophet or apostle of the Old Testament or New Testament, for they imply omniscience on the part of Jesus.
Finally, after his resurrection, when Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, Peter answered, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:17). Here Peter is saying much more than that Jesus knows his heart and knows that he loves him. He is rather making a general statement (“You know everything”) and from it he is drawing a specific conclusion (“You know that I love you”). Peter is confident that Jesus knows what is in the heart of every person, and therefore he is sure that Jesus knows his own heart.
The divine attribute of omnipresence is not directly affirmed to be true of Jesus during his earthly ministry. However, while looking forward to the time that the church would be established, Jesus could say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Moreover, before he left the earth, he told his disciples, “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
That Jesus possessed divine sovereignty, a kind of authority possessed by God alone, is seen in the fact that he could forgive sins (Mark 2:5 – 7). Unlike the Old Testament prophets who declared, “Thus says the LORD,” he could preface his statements with the phrase, “But I say to you” (Matthew 5:22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44), an amazing claim to his own authority. He could speak with the authority of God himself because he was himself fully God. He had “all things” delivered into his hands by the Father and the authority to reveal the Father to whomever he chose (Matthew 11:25-27). Such is his authority that the future eternal state of everyone in the universe depends on whether they believe in him or reject him (John 3:36).
Jesus also possessed the divine attribute of immortality, the inability to die. We see this indicated near the beginning of John’s gospel, when Jesus says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). John explains that he was not speaking about the temple made with stones in Jerusalem, “but he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (John 2:21 – 22). We must insist of course that Jesus really did die: this very passage speaks of the time when “he was raised from the dead.” But it is also significant that Jesus predicts that he will have an active role in his own resurrection: “I will raise it up.” Although other Scripture passages tell us that God the Father was active in raising Christ from the dead, here he says that he himself will be active in his resurrection.
Jesus claims the power to lay down his life and take it up again in another passage in John’s gospel: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18). Here Jesus speaks of a power no other human being has had, the power to lay down his own life and the power to take it up again. Once again, this is an indication that Jesus possessed the divine attribute of immortality. Similarly, the author of Hebrews says that Jesus “has become a priest, not according to a legal requirement concerning bodily descent but by the power of an indestructible life” (Hebrews 7:16).
Another clear attestation to the deity of Christ is the fact that he is counted worthy to be worshiped, something that is true of no other creature, including angels, but only God alone. Yet Scripture says of Christ that “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philemon 2:9 – 11). Similarly, God commands the angels to worship Christ, for we read, “When he brings the first-born into the world, he says, let all God’s angels worship him”‘ (Hebrews 1:6).
John is allowed a glimpse of the worship that occurs in heaven, for he sees thousands and thousands of angels and heavenly creatures around God’s throne saying, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12). Then he hears “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, ‘To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!”‘ (Revelation 5:13). Christ is here called “the Lamb who was slain,” and he is accorded the universal worship offered to God the Father, thus clearly demonstrating his equality in deity.
Conclusion: Christ Is Fully Divine. The New Testament, in hundreds of explicit verses that call Jesus “God” and “Lord” and use several other titles of deity to refer to him, and in many passages that attribute actions or words to him that could only be true of God himself, affirms again and again the full, absolute deity of Jesus Christ. “In him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19), and “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Now we conclude that he is truly and fully God as well. His name is rightly called “Emmanuel,” that is, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Why Was Jesus’ Deity Necessary? It is appropriate to recognize that it is crucially important to insist on the full deity of Christ not only because it is clearly taught in Scripture, but also because (1) only someone who is infinite God could bear the full penalty for all the sins of all those who would believe in him, any finite creature would have been incapable of bearing that penalty; (2) salvation is from the Lord (Jonah 2:9), and the whole message of Scripture is designed to show that no human being, no creature, could ever save man, only God himself could; and (3) only someone who was truly and fully God could be the one mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5), both to bring us back to God and also to reveal God most fully to us (John 14:9).
Thus, if Jesus is not fully God, we have no salvation and ultimately no Christianity. It is no accident that throughout history those groups that have given up belief in the full deity of Christ have not remained long within the Christian faith but have soon drifted toward the kind of religion represented by Unitarianism in the United States and elsewhere. “No one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 John 2:23). “Anyone who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).