God and Jesus
Is Jesus God?
Christians believe that he is: Jesus is God the Son, who became fully human without ceasing to be God. That is what he claimed, and it is what his first followers came to believe.
What Jesus claimed
Jesus did not go about saying “I am God” in so many words. What he did say and do amounted to the same claim, and the people who heard him understood it.
- He forgave people’s sins, including sins committed against others. His critics objected that only God can do that (Mark 2:5–7).
- He said that he would judge the world and that eternal life depended on people’s response to him.
- He accepted worship, which a faithful Jewish teacher would never do.
- He used God’s own name for himself.
Jesus said to them, “Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM.”
“I AM” is the name by which God revealed himself to Moses (Exodus 3:14). The crowd understood, and picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy. On another occasion he said:
I and the Father are one.
What his followers concluded
The first Christians were Jews, who believed fiercely that there is only one God. They did not reach this conclusion lightly. Yet after the resurrection they worshipped Jesus. Thomas, who had refused to believe that Jesus was alive, saw him and said:
Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
John opened his Gospel by calling Jesus “the Word”:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Paul, once a fierce opponent of the Christians, wrote:
For in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily.
Fully human as well
The Gospels are just as clear that Jesus was a real human being. He was born, grew up, got hungry and tired, wept at a friend’s grave, felt anguish and died. Christians do not believe he was half God and half man, or God in disguise. He was, and is, fully both.
What “Son of God” means
The title does not mean that Jesus was created by God or is a lesser being. It means that he shares the Father’s nature, as a son shares his father’s. In AD 325 church leaders meeting at Nicaea summed up what Christians had believed from the start: the Son is “true God from true God”. Churches still say those words in the Nicene Creed.
Why it matters
- If Jesus is God, then we know what God is like. He is not distant or unknowable; he is like Jesus.
- If Jesus is God, then his death can deal with sin. Only someone fully human could stand in our place, and only God could carry the weight of the world’s wrongdoing.
- If Jesus is God, then he has the right to our trust and obedience.
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you such a long time, and do you not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.”