I was reading some comments from a guy that I was conversing with on a friend’s site a while back. This particular person claimed to be a Believer, but yet in the course of our discussions he made it very clear that Jesus was NOT God. Jesus was the Son of God and was to be honored he said, but not God Himself. I did my best to show this gentleman that Jesus IS God, but I am afraid to no avail; which saddened me.

No one can be a true bible-believing son or daughter of God if they do not believe in the deity of Christ. No one can obtain eternal life without belief in the Son of man as God (Hebrews 5:8-9, John 3:16). The Father is not approachable accept through the Son (Hebrews 7:25).

Why believe that Jesus is God? Is this really that important? You bet it is…

Our entire foundational belief in God rests on believing in the Truth of Jesus Christ as God. God is eternally existent as three persons. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 3:16-17 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Note in the above verses that Jesus is present as He is being baptized; next we see that the Spirit of God is descending, and at the same time a voice from heaven speaks…God the Father. The Father is proud of His Son, The key here is that the Father says “my son”. God’s own Son is not adopted as we are; therefore He is God. The thought that God would have a Son that He entrusts all things to who is not God Himself is ludicrous. The Word is replete with statements that Jesus created all things, is before all things, will be the One to judge, and is coming again.

There are many more verses that support the Holy Trinity, Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, John 14:16-17, to quote a few.

Jesus Christ, what does that mean? In Matthew 1:21-22 an angel appears in a dream to Joseph and tells him to name the child Jesus, because He will save His people. The name Jesus means, “God is salvation”. Christ is actually not really a name; it is a title. Christ is derived from the Greek word “Christos”, meaning “anointed”. The Hebrew word Messiah means the same thing, anointed, or anointed one. So Jesus Christ is salvation, the Anointed One, meaning set apart for God’s work. Christ came here to do the will of the Father, (Luke 22:42) not His will; so this makes perfect sense to say that Jesus was set aside for the work of God. You can find an excellent article for more in depth study here.

People do not normally dispute that God the Father is God; Jesus is a whole other matter. For some reason that defies logic and the very Word of God itself, people doubt that Christ was God. Jesus was NOT a good teacher, nor was He a great humanitarian. To quote C.S. Lewis, “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 one thing we must not say. A man who 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. 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.” Jesus was God in the form of man…by choice. Jesus chose to obey His Father and come here as a babe in human form, why? To pay the price for our sins!

John 10 is a tremendously powerful witness to the fact that Jesus is God. In verse nine Jesus says that He is “the gate”, meaning that He is the way to salvation. In verse eleven; Jesus says He lays down His life for the sheep, again a clear reference to the coming crucifixion, and to the fact that Jesus IS salvation. In verse fourteen Jesus says He is the “good shepherd”, and the sheep know Him. In verse sixteen Jesus refers to sheep “not of this pen”, meaning the Gentiles, the first group of sheep being the believing Jews. To get the proper context of these verses, one really needs to read the whole chapter.

John 10:28-30 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.30I and the Father are one.”

In these verses Jesus says He gives eternal life, no one but God can do that! Then He says that No one can take them (anyone possessing eternal life) from Him. Jesus proceeds to say that His Father is “greater than all”, and that He (Jesus) and the Father are one. What a clear declaration of Godhood!

Notice the claim that Jesus makes here that He and the Father are one, this is huge in proving Jesus is God. Many will say that this verse and others like it mean nothing…Jesus did not after all come right out and say; “I am God”, and this is true. This is however just another example of either ignorance, or outright self-deception. Let me explain why I say this. In the bible one must, absolutely MUST read in context…contextual meaning is different than what you will pull out of say a couple of verses. Entire paragraphs even pages are grouped together as one related expose on a single subject, therefore if you do not read all of them together you are apt to miss the authors intended meaning. Knowing what various thoughts relayed to us in the bible meant in the day the authors wrote them is also key to understanding what a particular passage of scripture means. I do not have all the answers and am open to learning more; I am saying that how you read the bible does matter. John 10:30 is a great example of this, Jesus has just said, “I and the Father are one”, read on further in (John 10:33) and you see that the Jews are readying themselves to stone Jesus. Why are they doing this…the Jews clearly understood Jesus claim to being one with the Father as a direct claim of being God!

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