The Divinity of Jesus

As I mentioned last week, we are going to attempt to fit a whole lot into a small period of time and the reason for that is because the Lord has left us a great deal of evidence and support for that which we are going to look over tonight and next week. When I first taught this series, we spent something like five weeks going over what we are going to go over tonight. Tonight we are going to look at the evidence for the divinity of Jesus Christ. Simply put, is Jesus truly God? One thing to note is that you would be very hard pressed to find someone who does not believe in a historical Jesus of Nazareth. We’re not arguing for a human Jesus tonight although that is certainly implied. False religions testify that Jesus of Nazareth existed and I believe that you truly are in the minority if you don’t believe in a true historical, human Jesus of Nazareth. What’s the issue then? You can believe that a man named Jesus walked the streets of Palestine 2,000 years ago but that does not mean that you believe that He is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. A purely human Jesus does not help us in anyway. If Jesus is solely a man, a man that has become the stuff of legends, we are still left with a huge problem. What can wash away our sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus but if Jesus is only another person like us, His death means nothing and we’re still in our sins. What I want to do tonight is go straight to the sources. What does Jesus say about His divinity? What did His immediate followers say about it? And what does the early Church say about it? How do we address the claim that Jesus never claimed to be God? How do we address the claim that the apostles simply made it all up? And how do we address the claim that the Church did not agree to the divinity of Christ until the Council of Nicea around the 4th century? We’ll attempt to answer all of those questions tonight but before we do that, let’s open up in prayer.

What Did Jesus say/Do?

What did Jesus say then in support of His divinity? And perhaps more importantly, what did He do to support His claims. I want to go ahead and put it out there, I have a very hard time reading the Gospels and thinking that Jesus would have ever thought of Himself less than the Son of God. I have a very hard time looking at these four books and finding any support for the notion that Jesus Himself never claimed to be divine. When I’ve taught apologetics in the past, I usually use an acronym known as the HANDS of Jesus and I don’t remember where I found this but it isn’t my own invention. HANDS is used to show how the Bible teaches that He is truly God but for times sake, we won’t necessarily be following that tonight. What the five letters of HANDS stands for is Jesus shares the Honor that is due to God alone. Jesus shares the Attributes of God. Jesus shares the Names of God. Jesus shares the Deeds that God does. And finally, Jesus shares the Seat of God’s eternal throne. So, where should we start in this journey? I’ll admit as I was preparing this lesson, I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed on where exactly we should dive in at because the Gospels are so rich with content. But I thought that it would possibly be best to start with the Gospel of Mark. Many believe that Mark is the earliest of the Gospel records that we have and Matthew and Luke borrow much from that Gospel so what I want to do is look at Mark and then look at the Gospel of John. It is believed that if Mark was the first to write his Gospel account, that it was written around AD 62, maybe even in the mid 50’s, so roughly 30 years after the resurrection of Christ. If we take the early date of Mark’s writings so let’s say AD 55, that is 20 years post Christ’s death and resurrection. That is a very short period of time to go from Jesus is a good teacher, a prophet, a great moral person to He is the eternal Son of God. That’s a very short time period to get an account of someone. Look at it in this way: it took Muhammad 23 years to receive the teachings of the Quran, even longer to put all of those sayings together, and even longer for Islam to grow. It took about a century for Islam to grow beyond the Middle East but what we can see from the New Testament and history is that Christianity exploded throughout the Roman empire by AD 70. All this is to say that if Jesus was deified by His early followers, they did it and it was accepted very quickly. Mark begins his Gospel with these words: Mark 1:1 “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” From the very beginning, Jesus is presented as no ordinary human. This is the Son of God Himself. As we make our way through Mark, we see in Mark 1:9-11 that in Christ’s baptism that as Christ rose from the water, the Spirit of God descended upon Him and God the Father proclaims from Heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” This is the only time in the course of John’s baptism where such a claim happens. Matthew 3:5-6 says, “Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” John was popular. Who knows how many he baptized over the course of his ministry but the only one that history is aware of is the baptism of Jesus of Nazareth! Later on in Mark 1, we see Jesus in Capernaum and as He is teaching in the synagogue, a demon possessed man comes in and says in Mark 1:24 “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” The demons recognize that this is no ordinary man. The demons have no fear of ordinary man. Look at what happens to the Sons of Sceva in Acts 19! Demons are not afraid of man but constantly when they are in the presence of the holy and divine they shiver in fear! One of the clearest statements of divinity comes in Mark 2. You may know the story, it is of the paralyzed man that is lowered through the roof of the house that Jesus was teaching in. The friends of the paralyzed man are unable to get him to Jesus so that he could be healed so they lower him through the roof. Mark 2:5-7 says

Mark 2:5–7 ESV

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Now the scribes are absolutely correct! Only God can forgive sins! This is seen all through the Old Testament that God alone has the power to forgive sins. Exodus 34:6-7 “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”” David says in Psalm 51:4 “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” The Lord says in Isaiah 43:25 ““I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” God alone has the power to forgive sin and Jesus knows this! To claim that He has the ability to forgive sins when He didn’t would be a blasphemy! He would be guilty of sin if He claimed to have the ability to forgive sin but actually didn’t. What does Jesus do then in response? Mark 2:8-12

Mark 2:8–12 ESV

And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

What Jesus was doing was that the divine ability to forgive sin and the ability to instantaneously heal goes beyond what man is capable of and falls solely within the power of God. John Calvin wrote in his Institutes, “The Lord proclaims by his prophets, ‘I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake.’ When, in accordance with this declaration, the Jews thought that injustice was done to God when Christ forgave sins, he not only asserted, in distinct terms, that this power belonged to him, but also proved it by a miracle. We thus see that he possessed in himself not the ministry of forgiving sins, but the inherent power which the Lord declares he will not give to another. What! Is it not the province of God alone to penetrate and interrogate the secret thoughts of the heart? But Christ also had this power, and therefore we infer that Christ is God.” What we see within the first 2 chapters of Mark are very clear statements and clear acts that Jesus of Nazareth is no ordinary person. Yes, the prophets of the Old Testament did miracles but they never claimed to have the ability to forgive sins. Why? Because they had no such ability and they knew that if they claimed such an ability, they were claiming to be God Himself! If we continue going through the accounts, we see in Christ’s miracles things that are only possible by the power of God Himself. Look at Christ’s calming of the seas in Mark 4. With a word Christ calms the seas and the disciples are left asking, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Jeremiah 10:13 says of God: “When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses.” Man has no authority over the weather but Jesus simply tells the storm to stop and it obeys Him. If we jump ahead a bit to Mark 8-9, Jesus begins to tell His followers about His upcoming death and resurrection and while He uses the title in other areas of Mark before this, Christ says in Mark 9:31 “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” That title, Son of Man, is used 69 times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke and another 12 times in the Gospel of John. It is the title that Jesus most often uses in reference to Himself and it is brought out of Daniel 7:13-14 ““I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.” Out of those 81 times that Jesus refers to Himself with that title it is never as A son of man but as THE Son of Man. It is as if every time He used it that He immediately wanted His listeners to think of Daniel 7. James Montgomery Boice said, “Nowhere but in Daniel 7:13-14 does the distinct person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ emerge so clearly. For here are two great personages: The Ancient of Days and ‘one like a son of man.’ And it is to this latter figure that dominion over the peoples and nations of the earth is given forever.” Mark 14:60-64

Mark 14:60–64 ESV

And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?” But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned him as deserving death.

Jesus uses the exact same language that Daniel uses when he has his prophecy of the Son of Man. Jesus says that He will sit at the right hand of power, He will have dominion over the nations and as He makes this claim, the priests accuse Him of blasphemy. He’s not accused of misinterpreting Scripture, He is accused of blasphemy because Christ is clearly claiming to be divine! From John’s Gospel, I want to look at 2 key moments where Jesus clearly asserts Himself as divine and both you are likely familiar with. In John 8, we see one of the many I Am statements that Jesus applies to Himself and at the end of chapter 8, we see the most violent response to such a statement. John 8:58-59 says

John 8:58–59 ESV

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

Here we see Jesus once again taking one of the names of God and applying it to Himself and we see that the people accuse Him of blasphemy. There’s no way around this claim. Jesus takes the very name that God reveals Himself to Moses in Exodus 3 and applies it to Himself. A.W. Pink puts it simply like this: “Here was the full disclosure of His glory; the affirmation that He was none other than the Eternal one. That they so understood Him is evident from what follows.” This is one of the most forceful statements that Jesus ever makes in regards to His divinity. One last thing that I want us to look at is in John 20 with the interaction that takes place between Jesus and Thomas. John 20:28-29 “Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”” Notice what Jesus doesn’t do. Thomas is worshipping Him but He doesn’t do what Paul and Barnabas do in Acts 14 where they immediately tear their garments and reject the praise of man. Deuteronomy 6:13 says, “It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.” Jesus doesn’t say to Thomas, “Whoa Thomas, what are you doing? I’m just a man, I’m just a prophet, I’m just an angelic being, praise God above all!” No, instead He not only embraces and receives the worship, He calls for others to make the same claim in the next verse. As you go through the Gospels, you don’t see Jesus making claims and not following through on them. His death and resurrection, His teachings and His miracles, His acceptance of praise that should be directed to God alone all point to His divine nature. It’s one thing for Jesus to make these claims but what did the Apostles teach?

What Did the Apostles Teach?

Now we can spend ages talking about what the Apostles taught in regards to the deity of Christ. We could very easily look at the book of Acts and see from the very beginning of the Church’s history that the apostles ascribed deity to Christ. In Acts 1, Peter prays to Christ as Lord so within just a few weeks of His resurrection, the apostles are already addressing Him as Lord and confessing that He is sovereign over the affairs of man. Within weeks of the resurrection, we see Jesus identified as more than just a prophet and more than just a martyr. Thomas Schreiner summarizes the divinity of Christ as seen in Acts in this way: “In Acts Luke emphasizes that Jesus is the resurrected Lord, and hence he is now the exalted Lord and Christ. What Luke says about Jesus’ lordship clearly implies his divinity: He appears to Paul as the exalted Lord; human beings put their faith in him; believers are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus; and Jesus is exalted as the Lord of all. Certainly only God himself can be designated as the Lord of all. The theology of the name is also prominent, so that Jesus takes on divine status in baptism, healing, and salvation.” I wish we had time to look at everything but let’s look at what Paul says in 3 distinct places in Scripture: Romans 9, Colossians 1 and Titus 2. Paul says in Romans 9:5 “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” Now Romans 9:5, along with pretty much the entire chapter, has been under constant debate for centuries. The debate really comes down to an issue of punctuation. Should there be a period after certain words in this verse. For example, some theologians believe that Romans 9:5 is a doxology and that it should be read more like this, “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all. God be blessed forever. Amen.” Now if Paul’s Greek is to be interpreted in that way, one could argue that Romans 9:5 is not ascribing deity to Christ but is a praise to God the Father. Now, I’m no expert in Greek. I took 1 semester of Greek and I picked Southeastern for my doctorate because they don’t make me learn Greek but the traditional understanding of Romans 9:5 is that it is ascribing deity to Christ. Beyond our present day, beyond the Reformation, beyond even the time of Augustine, even the early church fathers seemed to interpret Paul’s text as a reference to Jesus being fully God. Men like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen, that’s second century believed that Paul is not being doxological but is pointing out Christ’s deity. Now let’s say you reject Romans 9:5 as a proof text that Paul believed that Jesus is God, we know that Paul has numerous texts that all point to Christ’s divinity, even if he does not directly say the words: Jesus is God. There is enough in his writings where we can see clearly that that is what Paul believed. Colossians 1:15-20 is one of my favorite sections of Scripture in the entire Bible:

Colossians 1:15–20 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

There are many different places where we could dive into this verse and see the deity of Christ. We see Him being the image of the invisible God, we see Him as the creator of all things and the sustainer of all things but what I want to zero in on is Paul’s statement in verse 19, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” He will repeat this later on in Colossians 2:9 “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” What does Paul mean when he refers to the fullness of God? Paul is saying that Jesus does not possess a handful of attributes of God but that He is fully God of fully God. Jesus is no little g god. John MacArthur said, “All the divine powers and attributes was not spread out among created beings, but completely dwelt in Christ alone.” Just as none would question the extent of God the Father’s deity, there is no reason that one should question the deity of God the Son. Everything that makes God divine is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Lastly, in Titus 2:13 Paul writes that believers are “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” Now do we have in this verse another example of what is argued against Romans 9:5? Should We read this verse as we are waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God the Father and our Savior Jesus Christ? I would argue no and we will use Scripture to interpret Scripture. The glory that Paul refers to in Titus 2:13 is an obvious reference to the second coming of Christ. If you look at what Paul teaches in 1-2 Thessalonians, when the blessed hope comes, when Christ returns, it is Christ Himself that descends and calls His people home. God the Father does not physically come at the time of the rapture but instead, it is Christ the Son. Here in Titus 2 we have the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ. Back in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 we read

1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 ESV

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

I believe that when you consider these verses, it is clear that Paul believed that God Himself would come down to rapture the Church and it is Christ Himself that will lead the charge. It seems to me that the apostles believed 100% that Jesus of Nazareth was God. We haven’t even looked at John, Peter, James, Jude, and the book of Hebrews. Now what do you do then with the argument that the immediate followers of Jesus deified Him? Could the followers of Jesus have just made things up to make Him look like He was God? Couldn’t they have just written things to make people buy into what they were tricked into believing? We’ll talk about this more next week with the evidence for the resurrection but I will bring up two arguments that we can talk more about later during the discussion time if you want: the first argument is this, the human writers of the New Testament, other than Luke, were all of Jewish decent. These are men that obviously were familiar with the Old Testament and were obviously familiar with Deuteronomy 6:4 ““Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” They were obviously familiar with Isaiah 43:10-11 ““You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.” They knew the punishment that was to be delivered for blasphemy and idolatry. They knew that they were believers in a monotheistic God. These men did not believe in a multitude of gods but were set in their Jewish beliefs. Even in Acts 1, post resurrection, the apostles were focused on the Jewish understanding of who the Jews thought the Messiah was to be. These men had absolutely no reason to depart from the monotheism of Judaism if they did not truly believe that Jesus was divine. They had no problem worshipping and praying to Jesus and did not see that as disobeying what is taught in the Law. That’s reason 1, reason 2 is that every apostle suffered and died holding onto the belief that Jesus was divine. No apostle ever recanted of their faith, they suffered horribly and most of them died a martyrs death. All that many of them would of had to do to escape death is to not say Jesus is Lord. If they had said, “Jesus is a Lord” they would have lived but instead they all believed that Jesus is Lord, the definitive article. People will die for lies all the time but very, very few will die for something that they readily no is not true. These men had no reason to go to their deaths in droves for something that they knew was false. There must have been something about this Jesus that made them all go to their deaths willingly.

What Did the Early Church Teach?

Now with the few minutes that we have left, what did the early church teach? Was the Council of Nicea in the 4th century the first to firmly implement the belief that Jesus was and is divine? No, they weren’t. The council was basically putting into writing what was already believed by I would say the majority of the Church up to that point. I mentioned some names earlier like Tertullian and Irenaeus that all believed that Jesus was truly divine. Around 180 ad, Irenaeus released a book titled, Against Heresies which was one of the first books to address the gnostic heresies that were prevalent during the early years of the church. It is a massive book and it took me a long time to get through it. I’ve read quite a few of the works of the early church fathers like Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian and the one that took me the longest to get through was Against Heresies. It addresses so much, really impressive but really daunting at the same time. In that book Irenaeus writes, “For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no-one of the sons of Adam is, absolutely and in every respect, called ‘God’ or named ‘Lord.’ But that he [i.e., Christ] is himself, in his own right, and beyond all men who ever lived, God and Lord and King eternal, and the incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets and by the Spirit himself — this may be seen by everyone who has attained even to a small portion of the truth.” 150 years after the resurrection of Christ, roughly 80 years after the book of Revelation was written and the belief is that Jesus is fully God. But we can go back even further. We can go to a writing from around 130 ad known as the Epistle to Diognetus, I’ve quoted this letter in some of my sermons before so that title may sound a little familiar. In this letter we read, “So, then, did he [God], as one might suppose, send him [his Son] to rule in tyranny, fear, and terror? Not at all.  But with gentleness and meekness, as a king sending his own son, he sent him as a king; he sent him as God; he sent him as a human to humans.  So that he might bring salvation.” What we see in these 2 examples is not the belief that it took four centuries for the church to accept that Jesus was divine but that from the very beginning, the Church held to the divinity of Christ. We see it in the first century with the Apostles, we see it in the second century with the apostolic fathers, we see it in the third century as well as the fourth. The Church did not create this belief over time but held to one of the core beliefs that was taught from Christ Himself. We’ll end tonight with a reference to C.S. Lewis’s famous trilemma. This is his Liar, Lunatic, or Lord argument. It comes down to this, Was Jesus a liar? What He insane and a lunatic? Or if He is neither of those, He must be Lord. Lewis said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 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.” Christ is clearly not a lunatic because even His enemies recognized His great understanding and teaching. He can’t be a liar because why would God work so powerfully through someone that was leading the world away from God. But what if Jesus is another L? Is Lewis’ trilemma too simple? What if Jesus is simply a legend? What if he is just like any other Greek god or fanciful story of heroes and villains? History doesn’t allow that to happen. Because if Jesus is only a legend like Robin Hood, He is a legend that has changed the world more than any true historical figure. No legend can do that. The world has not been changed through the story of Hercules. The world has not been changed through the great dramas of Shakespeare. The world has not changed over night by the beauty of great poems and artistry. It is Jesus Christ who has changed the world and it is very fitting because as we have seen in Scripture, it is this Jesus who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He can’t be a legend because no legend has ever done so much. He can’t be a liar because God has blessed Him too much. He can’t be a lunatic because no lunatic has ever spoken so clearly and truthfully. Therefore, if He is anything, He must be Lord and God over all. Let’s pray.