Lesson 10: The Deity of Christ:  “Thou art the Son of God.”

Source: J. Oswald Sanders, The Incomparable Christ, Chapter 9.

My mother always made me take naps after lunch when I was a pre-schooler.  To induce a rambunctious child to lie still, she always told me a story.  She began in Genesis, and we progressed through the Old Testament. When we got to the New Testament, she began with the birth of Jesus and as the days passed, her story reached the crucifixion.

I distinctly remember being sick to my stomach when she told me that people crucified the Son of God. Despite my short attention span, I had been listening and I had remembered the stories. My mother’s graphic retelling of the scripture account of his suffering was too much for me to bear.  I couldn’t believe the cruelty of his death. I wanted to avenge his death!  It was just wrong.

I asked my mother why they killed Jesus.  She said that it was because those people did not believe that Jesus is God.  They believed him to be just another man who wanted to be known as a prophet and healer.  I remember wishing out loud then that I had been there in Israel in those days.  I believed that Jesus is God and I will tell others that he is truly God.

But my mother was realistic.  She said that Jesus’ disciples themselves had difficulty believing that Jesus is God even when they saw all the miracles that he did.  His death on the cross seemed to some of them, the tipping point toward unbelief:  during his earthly ministry, they may have wanted to believe that Jesus is all that he claimed to be, but when he died, all hope was gone.  My mother explained that this was the reason why they found it difficult at first to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead.

My mother said that every person who does not believe that Jesus is God crucifies Jesus Christ in his heart.  I decided then to believe that Jesus is God. I will not crucify the Son of God. I was like Nicodemus: “I know that thou art a teacher come from God for no man can do these miracles except God be with him.”

That is one of my earliest memories. I share it because even today, Jesus asks that same question of us: WHOM DO MEN SAY THAT I AM? With this question, Scriptures force us to deal with the issue of the deity of Jesus Christ.  The question pushes us to declare what we truly believe about Jesus Christ:

• If Jesus is not God, then we are idolaters for we worship he who is not God. Christianity is just another bogus religion.
• If Jesus is not God, then Jesus was a liar, or he was delusional.
• But if Jesus is God then all who say that he is not God are liars and blasphemers. To our eternal shame, we reject “he only begotten of the Father.”

What do we mean when we say that we believe in the Deity of Christ? When we assert belief in the deity of Christ we mean that the person known to history as Jesus of Nazareth existed in eternity as the infinite and eternal God before he became a man, that he is the second Person of the Godhead.

Unlike the disciples of Jesus whose knowledge (pagka-kilala) of Jesus Christ came in gradual and progressive realization as they walked daily with him, we have the testimony of Scripture:

1.  References to Jehovah in the Old Testament are applied to Christ in the New.  The New Testament writers were strict monotheistic Jews and yet they constantly use the OT ascriptions of God and applied them to Jesus Christ without explanation or consciousness of incongruity.

2. The gospel writers were depicting a real and not an imaginary character.  They could not have created the story out of their inner consciousness because their were “unlearned and ignorant men.”

3. The gospel account was thoroughly saturated with the assumption of His deity. And more remarkable still, the writers of the Epistles continued to present “this same Jesus.”

4. The attributes of deity were ascribed to him:

• Omnipotence: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.” (Matthew 28:18)
• Omniscience: “…he knew all men” (John 2:24); “Come see a man which told me all things ever I did.  Is not this the Christ?” (John 4:29); “Now are we sure that thou knowest all things” (John 16:30)
• Omnipresence: “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20)
• Self-existence: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.” (John 5:26)

5.Jesus evinced a self-consciousness of His own person and work.  Christ preached himself.  His first recorded words: “Wist ye not that I should be about My Father’s business?”

6.The Jews understood all that Christ preached about himself, that he is God.  The Jews were horrified at Jesus’ audacity. They tried to stone him to death when he assumed the sacred name of Jehovah by saying “Before Abraham was, I am. (John 8:58)” When he healed on the Sabbath and claimed that God was His Father, the Jews were rabid because in saying so, he had made himself equal with God.

7.  Jesus assumed superiority over prior revelation.  Matthew 5 records the Sermon on the Mount which was a summary of the ethical teachings of the OT.  But Jesus, even with his profound love of the Scripture clears away the rabbinical teachings and says “Ye have heard that it hath been said…but I say unto you..” thereby making divine pronounces that reached beneath the letter of the statute and searches the thoughts and intents of the heart.  In pronouncing his authority over and above the OT scriptures, Jesus declares himself the final word of authority.  He brought all life under his own personal rule.  This is why the writer of the Hebrews opens his epistle with the declaration: “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son…”

Many will say that all these are anecdotal, that these words of Scripture are not reliable, and that these do not at all prove that Jesus is God.  To this day, there is still lively debate over this issue of whether of not Jesus is God.  I cannot persuade people that Jesus is God. Flesh and blood cannot reveal to us that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God.

One has to meet Jesus in order to decide for oneself to believe that He indeed is God. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own but his own received him not.  But as many as received him to them gave he the power to become the sons of God even to them who believe in His name. (John 1:10-12)

One has to meet Jesus in the Scripture in order to decide for oneself that He indeed is God. “And he said unto them, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” (Luke 24:44-45)

Many refuse to believe the Scriptures.  To them the Scriptures are not enough proof. If one refuses to accept the testimony of Scripture regarding the deity of Jesus Christ, the scriptures have this to say: “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book: but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing ye might have life through his name.” (John 20:30-31)

If one refuses to accept the testimony of Scripture regarding the deity of Jesus Christ, the scriptures have concluded: “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them… if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16: 29 & 31)

As for me, Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  And I am looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the Great God and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and glory for evermore.