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.
2. They Used It With the Same Majesty.
As the OT exalts their Lord God in worship and majesty, so does the NT exalt Jesus. He is called the “Lord of Lords; the Lord of glory; the Lord of all; the Lord of the living and the dead; the Lord of all who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth” (Rev. 14:17; 1 Cor. 2:8; etc.).
3. They Used It as A Synonym for God.
Many times the Old Testament will be talking about God by His name “Lord” and the New Testament does not hesitate to ascribe these very passages to the Lord Jesus.
In Luke 1:76, John is the forerunner of Jesus, but in Malachi 3:1 this passage refers to Jehovah. Paul quotes Joel 2:32 when he says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).
But he refers to Jesus Christ and Joel refers to Jehovah. By the same constancy, by the use of divine title and by substitution of the name Jesus for that of Jehovah, the New Testament, with this title “Lord” brings forth the royal diadem and crowns Him Lord of all.”
C. SUBSTITUTING OLD TESTAMENT DESCRIPTIONS.
John 1:4 says of Jesus , “In Him was life,” yet in the Old Testament it is God who is the source of life (Gen.1-2). John says of Jesus Christ, “The life was the light of men.” Yet the Old Testament says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”
The Old Testament writers used many vivid pictures to describe God and the New Testament never hesitates to place these descriptions upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
In Revelation One John paints a picture of Jesus Christ: “His head and hair were white like snow” (In Daniel 7:9 a description of God); “His voice was as the sound of many waters” (In Ezekiel 43:2 a description of God’s voice.) The God described in the Old Testament is identified as Jesus Christ.
D. BY ASCRIBING GOD’S WORKS TO JESUS
1. The work of creation is ascribed to Jesus Christ,
“All things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (1 Jn. 1:3).
2. The work of resurrection is ascribed to Jesus Christ. Jesus says of the believer, “I myself will raise him up on the last day.” (John 6:40)
3. The work of judgment is ascribed to Jesus. In Matthew 25 it is Jesus Christ who says to those on the right hand “Enter into the kingdom” and to those on the left “these will go away into eternal punishment.”
It is before Jesus Christ that we must stand and receive our due reward. It is the eyes of Jesus Christ that see into the secret places of men’s hearts. “God has highly exalted Him and bestowed upon Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.” (Philippians 2:9-10)
E. BY ATTEMPTS TO EXPRESS THE INEXPRESSIBLE
The doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ is inexpressible! It is beyond human speech. The Bible paints word pictures to help us. John 1:18 says, “No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father has revealed Him.” Listen to the translations of “reveal”.. (He has brought Him out where He can be seen; He has explained Him; He has made Him known; etc.) This is a hard word to translate and the picture behind is leading someone out from behind a curtain so that he can be seen.
In Colossians 1:15 says Jesus is, “The image of the Invisible God.” This word (eikon) was used in that day as the word for “portrait.” We have an ancient letter where a young soldier writes his father, “I will send you a portrait (eikon) of myself painted by Euctemon.” In expressing the inexpressible the Bible says here that “Jesus is the portrait of God.”
F. BY THE WORSHIP OF JESUS
In the final analysis, however, the best proof of the Deity of Jesus Christ is not found in scattered verses of scripture, but in the spirit of worship, praise and adoration given to Him. Praise and worship of Jesus in the NT.
Charles Hodge says is “what the soul is to the body - its living and all pervading principle, without which the Scriptures are a cold, lifeless system of history and moral precepts.”
The Bible literally breathes out worship to Jesus Christ. He is the object of religious affection! I invite you to read through your New Testament and then you will see what I mean.
Thosewho think of Christ as merely a man, although they make Him the best of men, have left New Testament religion.
The New Testament writers knew that it was before His judgment seat that they were to stand . That every act, thought and word of theirs, and of every man who shall ever live, was to lie open before His all-seeing eye; and that on His decision the destiny of every human soul was to depend. True religion to them was not reverence for God, the eternal invisible Spirit, but love and reverence for Jesus Christ .
He is the object of faith. In His hands men place their total lives! The Doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ is fundamental to the Christian faith and no fundamental doctrine ever depends upon a few verses.
God writes it into the very fiber and heart of His Word. Jesus Christ is our God! That truth thunders upon us from God’s Word. From the hope of the Old Testament, from the words and claims of Jesus Himself, from the Old Testament pictures of God placed upon his head, from the name Lord where Jesus is identified with the God of Israel and from the spirit of worship.
There is hardly a page that does not breathe the affirmation “The Lord, He is God!” The Lord Jesus Christ! The cry of Thomas is the cry of the entire Bible. In the presence of Jesus the only response is “My Lord and My God.”
