GOD



Those who wrote the historical accounts of Jesus' life were thoroughly Jewish. The accounts themselves clearly certify that the witnesses' natural tendency was to see Jesus in a conquering messianic, not a divine messianic, posture. Even on the night of Jesus' arrest, the disciples brought swords to Jesus (Luke 22:38). As devoted worshippers of Yahweh, it must have been quite difficult for them to report some of the things Jesus said and did which attributed deity to Himself. Vermes states concerning the alleged deity of Jesus, "The identification of a contemporary historical figure with God would have been inconceivable to a first-century A.D. Palestinian Jew." 80/212 The thrust of Vermes' conclusions is that Jesus Himself never would have imagined that He was God. Let's look at the evidence.
 
In Matthew 12:6, Jesus says to the Pharisees, "I say to you, that something greater than the Temple is here." How much greater? Look at verse 8. Referring to Himself, Jesus asserts, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath." How can anyone be Lord of the Sabbath except God who instituted it? This is a direct claim to deity.
 
In Matthew 23:37, Jesus speaks as though He has personally observed the whole history of Jerusalem:
 
0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.
 
In Mark 2:1,2, Jesus tells a paralyzed man, "My son, your sins are forgiven." Some scribes sitting there caught the obvious intent of Jesus' words and reasoned:
 
Why does this man speak in this way? He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?
 
Jesus challenged them:
 
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven"; or to say, "Arise, and take up your pallet and walk"? But in order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ...
 
And then Jesus healed the paralytic. The implication was obvious. No one forgives sin but God. Anyone could say he is able to forgive sin; but Jesus proved He had the authority to forgive sin when He healed the paralytic. Jesus was clearly claiming deity for Himself.
 
Back again in Matthew, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (7:21-23), Jesus speaks of Himself as the ultimate judge who will have authority to deny entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
 
In the next paragraph, rather than say, "Everyone who hears the words of God or Torah will lay a strong foundation for their lives," Jesus states, "Everyone who hears these words of mine . . . "
 
David Biven, a researcher of the Hebraic background of the Gospel accounts, concludes:
 
It was not the way He taught or even the general content of His teaching that made Jesus unique among the rabbis. What was unique about Jesus was who He claimed to be, and He rarely ever taught without claiming to be not only God's Messiah, but more startlingly, Immanuel, "God with us."
 
It is surprising how critics try to reject Jesus' constant references to Himself as deity. Ian Wilson, for example, writes:
 
In the Mark Gospel, the most consistent in conveying Jesus' humanity, a man is represented as running up to Jesus and addressing Him with the words "Good Master." Jesus' response is a firm rebuke: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:18).
 
Wilson's interpretation is 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Seen within the context of the situation, Jesus is using obvious irony In essence, He is arguing: (1) If no one is good but God alone, and (2) if I am good, then (3) 1 must be God. Often Jesus receives worship and does nothing to discourage it (see Matthew 14:33, John 9:38). You would think one who severely rebukes Peter for trying to keep Him from God's will of being crucified would also severely rebuke someone offering worship to Him which rightly ought to be given only to the one true living God. Paul severely reacted against being deified at Lystra (Acts 14:8-18). How much more should Jesus have reacted if He were only a mere man? Did He not quote Deuteronomy 6:13 to Satan during His temptation, "You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only"?
 
One notable occurrence of Jesus accepting worship is in Matthew 21:15,16. Children cried out, "Hosanna to the Son of David," in praise to Jesus. "Hosanna" is used here as a cry of adoration, but some critics insist on interpreting "Hosanna" in a stiffly literal sense, rendering the statement "Save us Son of David." This interpretation cannot be accurate, though, because (1) it would actually read: "Save us to the Son of David," which makes little or no sense; (2) the chief priests and scribes who saw Jesus receiving the praise "became indignant and said to Him, 'Do you hear what these are saying?' " as though Jesus should have silenced the crowd (something He would be expected to do only if the crowd were worshipping Him); and most important, (3) Jesus replied by attributing to Himself something which was meant for God alone. He asked the chief priests and scribes, "Have you never read, 'Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes Thou [God] hast prepared praise for Thyself [God]'?"
 
Did you catch what Jesus said? Basically it was, "When those children praise me, they are praising God."
 
Of all the Gospel writers, John most clearly perceived the cues Jesus gave about His identity. For his effort to report those cues, he has been the most criticized Gospel writer of all, allegedly falling under Hellenistic influence. Scholars today, however, have begun to realize the inaccuracy of this charge. In John 8:58, when Jesus proclaimed to a Jewish crowd, "Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was born, I Am," He was claiming two aspects of deity for Himself:
 
·        the eternal existence of God; and
 
·        the name of God.
 
Jesus was referring His listeners back to Exodus 3:13,14 where Moses tells God:
 
Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I shall say to them, "The God of your fathers has sent me to you." Now they may say to me, "What is His name?" What shall I say to them?
 
God answered Moses,
 
I AM WHO I AM ... Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."
 
Any Jewish person would have heard Jesus' claim to deity loud and clear. That is why the very next verse in John's account says: "Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him" (John 8:59). In all, Jesus uses the term I am (Gr. Ego eimi) more than nineteen times in reference to Himself in the Gospel according to John. Often it is used to make claims about Himself that normally would be thought appropriate only for God. For example,
 
I am the bread of life, he who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst (6:35);
 
I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life (8:12);
 
Unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins (8:24);
 
I am the good shepherd (10:11-14) [cf. Psalm 23:1: "The LORD is my shepherd"];
 
I am the resurrection, and the life; He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies (11:25).
 
Other Scriptures on this subject include John 4:26; 6:41,48,51; 8:18, 28,58; 10:7,9; 13:19; 14:6; and 15:1.)
 
Earlier, in John 5:17, Jesus claimed to be continuing the work of the Father. He also called God "My Father." In John 10:28-30 Jesus again called God "My Father." He also claimed at one time to be the giver of eternal life and at another time to be one with the Father. On both those occasions, the Jewish crowds picked up stones to stone Him because, as they put it, "You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God" (John 10:33; cf. 5:18).
 
In John 14:6, Jesus did not just claim to be teaching mankind the truth; He claimed that He was the truth. In John 14:9, Jesus admonished Philip, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." In Isaiah 42:8, God said, "I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another." But in John 17:5, Jesus prayed, "And now, glorify Thou Me together with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I ever had with Thee before the world was."
 
In John 5:19ff., Jesus delivers a long monologue in which He makes repeated claims to be on the same level of authority as God the Father.
 
"Even in His parables," says Norman Geisler, "Jesus claimed functions reserved only for Yahweh in the Old Testament, such as being Shepherd (Luke 15), Rock (Matthew 7:24-27), and Sower (Matthew 13:24-30)." 31/14
 
C. S. Lewis puts all these claims in the right perspective when he reminds his readers that Jesus was a Jew among Jews:
 
Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
 
Was Jesus the God He Thought He Was?
 
The question, Is Jesus God? is fundamentally different from the question, Is God Jesus? In the latter, God is limited to earth during the earthly life of Jesus. In the former, God simply manifests Himself in human flesh. Of course this means that a trinitarian theology (or at least a dual-personality theology) must be adopted in order to keep God from vacating His sovereign rule over the universe during the life of Jesus. Many Jewish scholars today no longer criticize Christians for being tritheists. Though these scholars almost universally reject the doctrine of the trinity, they do not generally deny the logical possibility of a single God manifesting Himself in more than one personality.
 
This is not the place to demonstrate the doctrine of the trinity, but it is necessary to see that such a concept is not ruled out by the Old Testament Scriptures. If the Old Testament did rule out such a doctrine, it would be ridiculous to think of Jesus possibly being God.
 
The fact is, the Old Testament suggests a plurality of personalities in one God from the very beginning. Genesis 1:26 states: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.' "
 
Old Testament scholars Keil and Delitzsch have reviewed the arguments proposed against this verse and found them wanting. 45/1:61-62 It is enough to say that if the passage doesn't demand the multiple person view, it certainly allows for it, and the most natural reading of the passage supports it.
 
One of the greatest objections to the trinity usually comes from the most often recited verse among the Jewish people, Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, 0 Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!" The Hebrew word used here for "one" is echod, meaning a "composite unity." It is the same word used in Genesis 2:24 where the husband and wife are commanded to become one flesh. Had the writer of Deuteronomy 6:4 wished to express an absolute unity, he could have used the Hebrew word, yachid.
 
A number of other passages also either suggest or require that the Messiah be seen as deity. Psalm 45, for example, begins as a song celebrating "the l King's marriage." In verse 3 it moves to a Messiah-type figure and in verses 6 and 7 it reads:
 
Thy throne, 0 God, is forever and ever; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of joy above Thy fellows.
 
Sir Norman Anderson reviews a number of other passages concerning the Messiah:
 
His sway was to be not only universal (Psalm 2:8) but [also] eternal (Isaiah 9:7), and even divine (Psalm 45:6,7). The prophet Micah speaks of His pre-existence (Micah 5:2); Jeremiah describes Him as "The LORD our Righteousness" (Jeremiah 23:6); and Isaiah speaks of Him as "Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6) ... And it is interesting in this context to note that the statement in Hebrews 1:6 ("And when He again brings the first-born into the world, He says, 'And let all the angels of God worship him' ") almost certainly represents a quotation taken from the "Septuagint" Greek version of the Old Testament of words omitted from the end of Deuteronomy 32:43 in the now official Hebrew or "Massoretic" text, but present in that of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
 
Psalm 2:12 commands that the Messiah should be worshipped:
 
Do homage to the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!
 
In Zechariah 12:10, God says, "They will look on Me whom they have pierced." How can one pierce God unless He manifests Himself in the flesh? Of the ten other places where "pierce" is used, at least nine times a person is either thrust through or pierced to death; the remaining occurrence refers to wounded soldiers.
 
In Daniel 7:14, the Messiah is given an everlasting kingdom, "that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him." But if everyone is serving the Messiah, then no one would be left to serve the Lord unless the Lord and the Messiah are somehow united.
 
We can say then that the Old Testament in some places at least allowed for and in other places required that the Messiah to come should be identified as God eternal. Thus, if Jesus was Messiah, and if Messiah was God, then Jesus had to be God.
 
Returning to the first disciples, E. M. Blaiklock observes:
 
One of the sources of youth's disillusionment is the fading halo around the head of some human hero it has hastily sought to worship. Not so with Christ and His disciples. For three years they trod together the lanes and byways of Galilee and Judea. They climbed together the rough roads up to Jerusalem, sat together in the lush grass above Tabgha. Together they bore the heat of Jericho and the cold winds of the Galilean lake. They shared His chill rest beneath the stars, His breakfast on the beach. Together they bore storms and tensions in the holy city, together they enjoyed Bethany's hospitable home. Surely, this was test enough if shrewd men were to know Him. What happened? Far from detecting the hidden flaw, the human burst of annoyance at the end of a weary day, personal ambition betrayed by a chance word or unwise confidence, far from finding in Him disappointing blemishes, they found that their sense of wonder and reverence grew.
 
It is an amazing fact that the message of Jesus, including His deity, was spread abroad by these Jewish men and women. As James D. G. Dunn, Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham in England, states:
 
The testimony comes not from Gentiles to whom the deification of an emperor was more like a promotion to "the upper chamber." It comes from Jews. And Jews were the most fiercely monotheistic race of that age. For a Jew to speak of a man, Jesus, in terms which showed Him as sharing in the deity of God, was a quite astonishing feature of earliest Christianity.
 
It is remarkable enough that a Jew like Thomas would come to the point of calling Jesus "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). But then there is Paul. It is unbelievable how critics tend to forget he was a Jew par excellence. He was trained in Judaism by none other than Rabbi Gamaliel. He was so zealous for his monotheistic faith that he began persecuting the Christians. His goal in life was to help bring to pass Isaiah 45:22,23 where God says through the prophet, "I am God, and there is no other ... to me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance" [emphasis ours]. And then Paul discovered that this One had stepped out of eternity and into time. Now Paul writes of Him:
 
He existed in the form of God ... but emptied Himself... being made in the likeness of men ... He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross ... that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:6-11, emphasis ours).
 
That Paul meant "God" by the term Lord is clear from Romans 10:13 where he quotes Joel 2:32: "Whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered." In Joel 2:32, the LORD is clearly God.
 
These first-century Jewish men and women came to accept Jesus as the God of their monotheistic faith. Why? Certainly they had been attracted to Him by His teaching and attesting miracles. At some point they obviously put two and two together to see that Jesus, the Son of Man, was also the Messiah, that Messiah was God and therefore that He must also be God. But it was the resurrection that solidified their conviction. Norman Anderson summarizes:
 
He frequently made claims which would have sounded outrageous and blasphemous to Jewish ears, even from the lips of the greatest of prophets. He said that He was in existence before Abraham and that He was "lord" of the sabbath; He claimed to forgive sins; He frequently identified Himself (in His work, His person and His glory) with the one He termed His heavenly Father; He accepted men's worship; and He said that He was to be the judge of men at the last day, when their eternal destiny would depend on their attitude to Him. Then He died. It seems inescapable, therefore, that His resurrection must be interpreted as God's decisive vindication or these claims, while the alternative -the finality or the cross -would necessarily have implied the repudiation of His presumptuous and even blasphemous assertions.