Is Jeus God? The New Testament Answer Series

IS JESUS GOD? THE NEW TESTAMENT ANSWER

“The Word was God and the word was with God / and the Word became flesh (a human being) and lived among us for awhile.”

You could look at me on a revolving pedestal and know a little about me, gender, age, weight, nationality; but you would not know me, until I started speaking and thus revealed who I am on the inside.

This is why the inner personality of God, we humans can identify with is called “The Word”. In Jesus, God opens up to us who He is.

And to do this, He did not just visit earth in a body, like He did in the OT, he came to us as a human being, just like us in every way, except he did not have a sin nature or give in to temptation and sin.

The NT says Jesus Christ is God. Folks this is not something we can understand or explain. Any God we can come close to understanding, would not be God, for who and what He is, is far beyond anything we can imagine. We take it by faith and sing,

I know not how that Bethlehem’s Babe

Can in the God-head be

I only know that little Child

Has brought God down to me.”

The New Testament takes the crown of heaven and places it upon the head of Jesus of Nazareth. The spirit and cry of the New Testament is the spirit and cry of Thomas in the presence of Jesus when he says, “My Lord and My God.” We sing by faith,

” Let every nation, every tribe, On this terrestrial ball/

To Him all majesty ascribe/ And crown Him Lord of all. “

The New Testament does that:

A. BY EXPRESS STATEMENT

John 1:1 “The Word was God.”

Romans 9:5 says, “Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.”

Titus 2:13 says we are, “Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus.”

Acts 20:28 speaks of the “church of God which He (God) purchased with His own blood.” Read this passage in Acts and you will see that Paul is not talking about Jesus, but about God.

In John 14:8 Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father ... Jesus said to him ‘Have I been with you so long and yet you do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father’.” The NT crowns Jesus as God:

B. BY THE WAY HE IS CALLED LORD

The favorite New Testament title for Jesus Christ is “Lord.” The Greek word “kurios” was the normal word of courtesy and respect. It was the same thing as our word “Sir.” Boys of that day would address their fathers as “kurios” (sir). Letters of that day would begin with the word “kurios”, just as ours begin with “Dear Sir.”

It was the word used for master or ruler or one in authority. It was even used as a title for the Roman Emperor. This is the purely human use of the word and many times Jesus Christ is addressed as “Lord” when it simply means “sir or Master.”

But there was another use of this word and in it we find the Deity of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but in the time of Jesus most people spoke Greek. Therefore the Hebrew Old Testament had been translated into the Greek language.

The translation is known as the LXX (Septuagint-Seventy,) and was the Bible of the early church. In the Hebrew Old Testament there were no vowels and God’s name was written, “YHWH”. Vowels were added and it was pronounced “Yahweh.” or “Jehovah” in English.

In translating this name into English the A.S.V. used “Jehovah” and the R.S.V. used “Lord.” In one translation we read “Jehovah God” and in the other, “Lord God.”

When the Greeks translated it they used, like the R.S.V., the word “kurios - Lord.” When a Hebrew called upon God in OT times, he said , “Yahweh” . In NT Greek, he said, “Kurios-Lord”. We do this. We speak of the Lord God. It is in this divine sense that the NT calls Jesus “Lord”. It isn’t being just courteous, it is expressing worship lke Thomas who said to Him, “My Lord and my God”.

1. They Used It With the Same Constancy.

OT saints spoke of the Lord as their shepherd (Ps. 23). They said, “ Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord-- Have mercy upon me oh Lord. The Lord He is God, etc.” Time and time again men and women used this word “Lord” to denote God.

We do the same thing today. When we Christians follow the New Testament and speak of “the Lord,” when we say, “We shall be with the Lord forever” or “Absent from the body, present with the Lord” or “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” (Romans 10) who do we mean? Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ is Lord to Christians in the same sense that Jehovah was Lord to the Hebrews.