Deity of Christ

Opening quote - The deity of Christ is the key doctrine of the scriptures. Reject it, and the Bible becomes a jumble of words without any unifying theme. Accept it, and the Bible becomes an intelligible and ordered revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Dr. John Oswald Sanders (October 17, 1902—October 24, 1992) was a general director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship (then known as China Inland Mission) in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Why is the question of the deity of Christ important?

It gives us a better picture or understanding of who God is & what he’s like. And clues us in on the unity of God in Salvation: the Father plans (predestines), the Son atones (substitution), the Holy Spirit applies (regeneration).

How does the Truth of the deity of Christ effect us?

Well if Christ is God & he died for our sins then we can have assurance of both the length God will go to rescue us & trust that Jesus’ atonement for our sins was a sufficient substitution.

What are some ways Jesus claimed to be divine himself?

What are some reasons the disciples give for believing Jesus is YHWH? – Unknowable knowledge, control over nature, sovereignty over the animal kingdom, miracles & specifically the resurrection.

Answer: In addition to Jesus’ specific claims about Himself, His disciples also acknowledged the deity of Christ. They claimed that Jesus had the right to forgive sins—something only God can do; as God is the grieved party in sin (Acts 5:31; Colossians 3:13). Jesus is also said to be the one who will “judge the living and the dead” (2 Timothy 4:1). After his resurrection is proven; Thomas cried out to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). After his dramatic conversion Paul calls Jesus his “great God and Savior” (Titus 2:11-13) and points out that prior to Jesus’ life on Earth Jesus existed in the “form of God” (Philippians 2:5-8). And John (IMO Jesus’ closest friend) states that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word [referring to Jesus] was God” (John 1:1).

**We were talking last week about some names or roles of God.**

Jesus is also given titles that are unique to YHWH (the formal name of God) in the Old Testament. The Old Testament title “redeemer” (Psalm 130:7) is used of Jesus in the New Testament (Revelation 5:9). Jesus is called Immanuel—“God with us”—in Matthew 1. In Zechariah 12:10, it is YHWH who says, “They will look on me, the one they have pierced.” But John in the New Testament applies this to Jesus’ crucifixion (John 19:37; Revelation 1:7). If it is YHWH who is pierced and looked upon, and Jesus was the one pierced and looked upon, then Jesus is YHWH. Further, Jesus’ name is used alongside God’s in prayer “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:3; Ephesians 1:2). This would be blasphemy if Christ was not deity. The name of Jesus appears with God's in Jesus' commanded to baptize “in the name [singular] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19; see also 2 Corinthians 13:14).

What miracles did Christ do to prove he was God? - Now, it is one thing to claim to be God or to fool someone into believing it is true, and something else entirely to prove it to be so. Christ offered many miracles as proof of His claim to deity. Just a few of Jesus' miracles include turning water to wine (John 2:7), walking on water (Matthew 14:25), multiplying physical objects (John 6:11), healing the blind (John 9:7), the lame (Mark 2:3), and the sick (Matthew 9:35; Mark 1:40-42), and even raising people from the dead (John 11:43-44; Luke 7:11-15; Mark 5:35). Moreover, Christ Himself rose from the dead. Far from the so-called dying and rising gods of pagan mythology, nothing like the resurrection is seriously claimed as true historical & verifiable in a particular place & time by other religions, and no other claim has as much extra-scriptural confirmation.

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Why is the deity of Christ important?

1^st a person who denies Jesus as deity ought not to worship him; worship belongs to God alone – or Soli deo Gloria, as the Reformers would say.

(ME) 2^nd a person who denies Jesus as deity will have to come up with some explanation why early Christians within Jesus’ lifetime & the lifetime of the disciples treated him as God. The anti-Christian orator Celsus, in On the True Doctrine (by which he meant a common Roman quasi-religion that mixed Stoicism and Platonism) ridiculed second century Christians in the Roman Empire for worshiping a man as God. To be sure some religious scholars have posited explanations for this, but others have pointed out how difficult that would have been (to elevate a mere man to divine status) so quickly and in such a cultural milieu (synagogues and Roman culture).

3^rd a person who denies Jesus as deity needs to invent a new way to explain the resurrection or deny it. As theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg so famously put it, the resurrection was God’s confirmation of the claims of Jesus Christ which amounted to deity (e.g., ability to forgive sins not on someone else’s behalf but by his own authority). If a person denies the resurrection, then Jesus is still dead and/or a ghost. Almost no one denies that the resurrection, including the empty tomb, was the cause of the rise of Christianity among the disciples (a category here not restricted to 11 or 12 but including all the first generation Christians in Palestine). If the empty tomb was a myth or legend it is difficult to explain the rise of the Christian church and the martyrdoms of the disciples. **ancient Jewish answer to this question

4^th a person who denies the deity of Jesus Christ will have to re-define “salvation” away from any recognizably orthodox Christian notion of it toward & to some new idea. Died as an example to us that oppressive forms of Government or selfishness are bad.

Finally, a person who denies the deity of Jesus Christ will have to also deny the Trinity (and most that reject Christ already see this point and do deny the Trinity).

In conclusion, Christ claimed He was YHWH, that He was deity (not just “a god” but the one true God); His followers (Jews who would have been terrified of idolatry) believed Him and referred to Him as God. Christ proved His claims to deity through miracles, including the world-altering resurrection. No other hypothesis can explain these facts. Yes, the deity of Christ is biblical.

This brings us to 1 of the best books a Christian can own (or give away).

C.S. Lewis was an Oxford medieval Literature scholar, popular writer, Christian apologist, and former atheist. He used the argument outlined below in a series of BBC radio talks later published as the book Mere Christianity.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him (Jesus): 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 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 the 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. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.^”