Is Jesus God?

Throughout history there has always been confusion regarding the person of Jesus Christ. While most people readily accept that He was once a man, many will rage at claims that state He was anything more than that. This is why it is imperative that every believer has a biblical answer to questions raised against the deity of Jesus.

Some have also alleged that Jesus never said He was God, but this is incorrect. Jesus asserted that He was God, and His statements shocked the listeners who heard Him.

Let's look at some of Jesus’ claims concerning His deity, including those of His closest followers and the statements of the early church.

Claims of Jesus:

• To be the eternal Yahweh (John 8:58)
• To have equality with God (John 10:30)
• To be able to forgive sin (Mark 2:5–10; Luke 7:48; Matthew 9:2)
• To be the Lord of Sabbath (Mark 2:28)
• To have all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 11:27; 28:18; John 17:2; cf. John 3:35; 13:3; 1 Cor. 15:27; Heb. 1:2)
• To have the authority to answer prayers (John 13:13-14)
• To be the Apocalyptic ‘Son of Man’ (Mark 14:62; Daniel 7:13-14)
• To be the Lord of King David (Matthew 22:41-45)
• To be Greater than the temple of God (Matthew 12:6)
• To be the supreme Judge who will one day return in glory (Matt. 16:27; 24:30; Acts 1:11; 2 Thess. 1:7)
• To be wherever His followers are gathered (Matthew 18:20)
• To be with His followers forever (Matthew 28:20)
• To be Eternal (Micah 5:2; Isaiah 9:6)
• To have come down from heaven (John 3:13; 6:38, 62; 8:23)
• To be the determiner of people’s eternal destinies (Matt. 16:27; 25:31–46; John 5:22, 27, 30)
• To be the source of eternal life (Mark 10:29–30; John 3:16; 4:14; 5:39–40; 6:27, 40, 47, 54; 10:28; 11:25; 14:6; 17:2)
• To have the right to be honored on an equal basis with the Father (John 5:23)
• To be one with the Father (John 10:30)
• To have the power to raise the dead (John 5:28–29) and even rise from the dead Himself (Matt. 16:21)
• To be the One to whom the Old Testament Scriptures pointed (John 5:39)
• To be omnipresent - ever-present (Matthew 18:20; 28:20)
• To be omniscient - all-knowing (Matthew 11:27; John 16:30; 21:17)
• To be omnipotent - all-powerful (Philippians 3:21)

Furthermore, in John 5:17–24, Jesus makes five distinct claims of being equal with God. He claims to be equal with the Father in His person, in His sovereign power, in His works, in His judgment, and in the honor that is due to Him.

John 5:17-24 (NKJV)

But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

Claims of Jesus’ Followers

Moreover, we also see statements by Jesus’ close disciples who acknowledged Him as God. Despite some of them taking a while to fully realize it, they finally discerned that behind His humanity dwelt the glory of His divinity.

• Thomas called Jesus God (John 20:28)
• John calls Jesus God (John 1:1; John 1:14)
• Matthew refers to Jesus as Immanuel in his book (Matthew 1:23)
• Peter recognized divine identity as the “Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)

Claims of the early Church

It is sometimes claimed that the church invented the deity of Christ — that the first Christians admired Jesus as a great teacher, and only centuries later did the church councils vote Him into godhood. This is actually backwards. In fact, the early church, led by the ecumenical councils, defended the deity of Christ, and they put their conclusions into careful words that Christians had already confessed and worshipped from the beginning.

(An ecumenical council was a gathering of church leaders from across the known world, called to settle a disputed question of doctrine.)

The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) confessed that the Son is of one substance with the Father — homoousios. Fully God, not a creature. Nicaea was answering Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter who taught that the Son was the highest of all created beings but not God Himself — that “there was a time when He was not.” The church’s reply was that the Son shares the Father’s very being: He is not made, but eternally God.

The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) sharpened the doctrine further. It confessed that Jesus is one person with two natures, fully God and fully man — “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” Theologians call this the hypostatic union.

These are not later inventions. They were the church’s first formal, churchwide definition of who Jesus is — and they read like the New Testament because they were drawn from it.

Concluding Remarks

As we can see from these clear statements, there is sufficient evidence for anyone to recognize that Jesus was more than just a man. He was God revealing Himself in human flesh. In fact, there are only three possible explanations for the claims that Jesus made.

(1) Either he was a Lunatic, (2) a Liar or (3) exactly who He claimed to be - that is, Lord.

This analogy is taken from C. S. Lewis, the famous author, who had this to say concerning the deity of Christ and those who claim that Jesus was merely a good teacher;

”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 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 patronising nonsense about Him being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”