By: Jason Dull
Christology
Jesus Christ Fully God, Fully Man
THE DEITY OF JESUS, BIBLICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The Deity of Jesus Christ (Biblical meaning), He himself declared his Deity.
What Jesus said is the best Testimony of his Deity, since it is his testimony about his identity. What did Jesus say about himself? How did Jesus view his relationship with the Father? Jesus made some statements in which he openly and boldly declared his deity.
For example, he once said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). He did not mean that He was one in purpose with the Father as some scholars suggest, but that He was of the same essence (deity) as the Father.
The response of the Jews to this statement by Jesus allows us to appreciate the force of what He said. They picked up stones to stone him (v. 31). Their reasoning was that Jesus, who was a man, had made himself God (v. 33).
For the Jews this was blasphemy and deserved the death penalty. They fully understood that Jesus was claiming to be the same Father. If Jesus were not declaring his equality with the Father, this would have been the perfect opportunity to explain what He really meant. Instead, He continued to uphold their claim (vs. 34-38).
On another occasion, Jesus told the Jews, “He who sees me sees him who sent me” (John 12:45). A parallel to this statement occurred during Jesus’ conversation with his apostles, found in John 14:5-9. Jesus told Thomas: “If you knew me, you would know my Father also; and from now on you know him, and have seen him” (v. 7).
Philip could not understand this statement, so he asked Jesus to show the Father to all of them so that they would be satisfied. Jesus’ answer was: “I have been with you for so long, and you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say: Show us the Father?” (v. 9). According to Jesus’ own testimony, to see Him is to see the Father (God). One cannot get much clearer statement than this, as to what Jesus claimed to be.
Other statements Jesus made, and the prerogatives he exercised, imply his deity. If Jesus is not God, in fact these statements and allusions he made about himself would have made him a blasphemer. For example, Jesus forgave sins. He told the paralytic that he was lowered through the roof: “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2: 5).
The thought of the scribes present in the room was that Jesus’ statement was blasphemous, and therefore they said: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (v. 7). If Jesus really did not have the power to forgive, and indeed had not forgiven this man’s sins (which only God can do), then He had the perfect opportunity to clear the matter up for those Jews who inquired about his statements. .
Instead of pointing out that those scribes had misunderstood His words, Jesus said: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic: Your sins are forgiven, or to say to him: Get up, take up your mat and walk? So that you may know that the Son Man has power on earth to forgive sins (he said to the paralytic): I say to you: Get up, take up your bed, and go home”. (vs 9-11).
The deity of Jesus Christ: Jesus asserted authority in relation to the Law of God.
An example of this is the Sabbath Law. God established the Sabbath for Israel, as one of the 613 commandments of the Law of Moses that they had to obey. Since God had made the Law, only He had the power to modify or revoke it. However, we see Jesus claiming authority to modify the Sabbath Law when his disciples were questioned by the Pharisees for gathering grain on a Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28).
Jesus’ response was to remind them of the moment David ate the showbread, when he was fleeing from Saul (vv. 25-26). The showbread was strictly for the priests.
If someone else ate it, they were violating the Law of Moses, but God never punished David. In conclusion, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (vv. 27-28 ). Jesus clearly affirmed his right to redefine the Sabbath, or to disregard it entirely if He deemed it necessary, a right that belonged exclusively to God.
The Deity of Jesus Christ: Jesus’ Claims About His Deity
Jesus claimed that He will judge the world (Matthew 25:31-46), but this is only a divine prerogative (Psalm 50:6). Jesus also affirmed a relationship with the Father that was unique to Him alone (John 14:23). Jesus claimed to have the power of life, when he said to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life: he who believes in me, though he be dead, he shall live” (John 11:25). The Old Testament declares that only God has that power (Deuteronomy 32:39; 1. Samuel 2:6; 2. Kings 5:7).
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It is particularly interesting to observe the response of those to whom Jesus made these profound statements. After Jesus told the Jews, “My Father has been working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17), the Jews sought to kill him.
John gave us the explanation of this when he said, “Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his own Father, making himself equal with God” (v. 18).
The Jews understood that Jesus was claiming to be God himself. The Greek word isos, translated here as “equal”, means “to be the same as” something. Jesus put himself on the same plane, or established his deity as the Father.
From our perspective, the “Son” and “Father” terminology used by Jesus seems to imply some kind of subservience to God. It gives us the feeling that Jesus was less than God. However, the Jews did not see this terminology in the same way. When Jesus called God his “Father,” this was taken to be equivalent to saying that He is God, as is clearly seen in the passage quoted above.
When Jesus said that He and His Father were one (John 10:30), again the Jews picked up stones to stone Him (v. 31). When Jesus asked them for which of his good works they wanted to kill him, they replied: “For a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy; for you, being a man, make yourself God” (v. 33). The Jews did not understand Jesus’ reference to God as his “Father” to mean that Jesus was less than God, or some kind of second-rate god. Rather, they understood it as his claim to be Yahweh God himself.
What the Apostles Thought of the Deity of Christ
Now that we have discussed Jesus’ own testimony about his deity, let’s turn our attention to what the apostles thought of him. After Jesus rose, Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28 ).
The Greek word kurios, translated “Lord,” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word adonai; and the Greek theos, which translates as “God,” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word elohim. For Thomas, who was a monotheistic Jew who knew that the only sovereign God was Yahweh (Deuteronomy 6:4), it would have been blasphemy to call Jesus his Lord and his God, if he had not believed that Jesus is Yahweh himself in the flesh.
Peter’s bold statement regarding Jesus: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), demonstrates Peter’s conviction of his deity. Jesus told Peter that flesh and blood had not revealed this truth to him, but the Father who is in heaven (v. 17). If “Son of God” here refers only to the humanity of Jesus, then the revelation of the Father would not have been necessary.
Just by looking at him, anyone could have seen that Jesus was a human being. Even the Jews understood that He was a genuine human being. What the Jews could not believe was what Peter understood from God’s revelation: that Jesus is divine, being God and man at the same time.
Paul, who wrote most about the person of Christ, said that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15. See also 2 Corinthians 4:4).
What did Paul mean when he declared that Jesus is the image of God? We know that he was not referring to a physical likeness, because God is Spirit and therefore does not have a physical body. The Greek word that has been translated as “image” in the Reina-Valera version is eikon, whose root is eiko, meaning image, likeness, or representation.
Eikon denotes both the representation and the manifestation of a substance. Notice that Paul equates the image of Jesus with that of the invisible God. The point that Paul tried to convey to his readers is that Jesus is the visible representation of God to man. This is why Jesus could say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9. See also 12:45).
For this reason, saying that Jesus is the image and likeness of God means that He is God, since God is unique. What likeness could Jesus have had to God other than his divine essence? It cannot be said that his likeness is the same as that all human beings have of God (Genesis 1:27).
We were created in the image and likeness of God, but Jesus is the image and likeness of God. Then the likeness of Jesus with God must be that of the divine essence. Since the divine essence of God cannot be changed, the deity of Jesus cannot be different from that of the Father. To have the deity of the Father is to be the Father, because his divine essence cannot be fragmented.
If all Paul meant was that Jesus was similar to God, he could have used other Greek words. If Paul believed that Jesus possessed a likeness to God, but not in the same essence and being of him, being some kind of substance other than God, he could have used homoioma. This word indicates a “resemblance”, but emphasizes “the resemblance to an archetype, though the resemblance cannot be derived…”
He could also have used eidos, which means “a shape, or the shape.” However, this word is just an appearance “not necessarily based on reality”.
Instead, Paul used eikon, to express that Jesus is the very image of the Father in his essence and being.
The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is “the express image of his substance” (1:3). The Spanish phrase translated as “the image itself” comes from the Greek word charakter. From this word we get our Spanish word “character”. This is the only time this word appears in the New Testament. It means “to print on, or to seal.” Denotes an engraving made by a tool that prints an image in which he is being represented.
This impression, then, is a characteristic of the instrument used to make products of itself. What is produced corresponds precisely to the instrument.