Is the Lord Jesus Christ God? The Eternal Son

One day, on a road in the north of Israel, a man asked His friends what people were saying about Him. They gave the usual answers: a prophet, a teacher, a great man returned. Then He turned the question on them: But whom say ye that I am? Everything in the Christian faith stands or falls on how that question is answered. It is not an academic matter. Almost every division in religion, and every counterfeit gospel, can be traced back to a wrong answer at this exact point.

So let us take the question seriously and answer it the way it ought to be answered, not with tradition, not with feeling, but from the Scriptures themselves. Who is the Lord Jesus Christ?

1. The claim itself, stated plainly

Let us have the Bible's own answer before us at the outset, so we know what is being argued:

Set aside for a moment what you think of it, and hear what is actually being claimed, because it is not a claim any other founder of a religion has made.

Not that He was a great teacher. Not that He was uniquely close to God. Not that He was the finest man who ever lived, and so revealed God to us the way a good son reveals his father.

The claim is that the eternal God took a body and lived among us as a man.

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." (1 Timothy 3:16)

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

Read the two halves of that verse together, because everything hangs on them standing side by side. With God, so He is distinct from the Father, a Person and not a mode. Was God, so He is not a lesser being, a creature, or a copy.

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." (John 1:14)

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1 Timothy 3:16)

God was manifest in the flesh. Six words that contain the whole Christian faith. Not a good man who represented God. Not a prophet who spoke for God. Not a created being of high rank. God — manifest — in the flesh.

And notice the Bible's own tone. It calls this a mystery, which means a truth we could never have worked out and would never have invented. But it says the mystery is without controversy, not up for negotiation among those who take the Book seriously.

2. He claimed the divine name for Himself

Begin where He begins. In an argument with religious leaders who prided themselves on descent from Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ made a statement so extraordinary that it changed the temperature of the room in a sentence:

At the burning bush, Moses asked God His name, and received an answer that has no parallel in any other religion.

"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Exodus 3:14)

Fourteen centuries later, in a dispute about Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ took that name onto His own lips, and did it in the present tense, in a sentence where every rule of grammar called for the past:

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58)

He did not say I was. And His hearers did not miss it:

"Then took they up stones to cast at him." (John 8:59)

Nobody stones a man for poor grammar. They understood the claim perfectly, and reached for the penalty their law prescribed for blasphemy.

"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58)

Read that carefully, because the grammar is deliberate. He did not say before Abraham was, I was, which would have claimed only pre-existence. He said I am — taking to Himself the name God gave from the burning bush, I AM THAT I AM. He was standing in front of them and using the personal name of the God of Israel about Himself.

And the response settles any doubt about how it was understood. They immediately picked up stones to kill Him. Nobody stones a man for claiming to be old. They stoned for blasphemy, and blasphemy was exactly what they had heard: a man making Himself God.

Here is a principle worth holding onto through the whole discussion: His enemies understood His claim better than many of His modern admirers. Those who wanted Him dead had no motive to exaggerate what He said. They killed Him precisely because they knew what He meant.

3. His enemies knew exactly what He was claiming

This happened more than once, and each time the charge was the same.

This is the point at which the modern reading of Christ collapses, and it collapses on the testimony of His enemies.

If He had been a teacher of love and humility, His opponents had no case. Nobody executes a man for telling people to be kind. They tell us plainly what the charge was:

"The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." (John 10:33)

And notice what He does not do next. He does not correct them. A man falsely accused of claiming deity has one obvious reply available, and He never once gives it.

"Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God." (John 5:18)

His enemies, who had every reason to understate the claim, are the ones who state it most sharply. That is not the kind of evidence a later church invents.

When He healed on the sabbath and called God His own Father, the record says they sought the more to kill Him, not only for the sabbath, but because He was making Himself equal with God. When He said plainly that He and the Father are one, they again took up stones, and when He asked which good work they were stoning Him for, they answered that it was not for any good work, but for blasphemy, because He, being a man, made Himself God.

Consider how easily that could have been corrected. Any ordinary teacher, accused of claiming deity, would have said at once: you have misunderstood me. He never did. Not once, in any confrontation, did He soften the claim or explain it away. Instead He pressed it further, and eventually it was on this charge that He was condemned to death.

This is why the popular position: that He was a fine moral teacher but not divine — is the one position the evidence will not permit. A fine moral teacher, wrongly accused of claiming to be God, corrects the misunderstanding. He does not go on making the claim until it costs Him His life.

4. He received worship, and never refused it

There is a rule that runs through the whole Bible without exception: worship belongs to God alone. When men fell down before the apostle Peter, he pulled him up, saying he was only a man. When John fell at the feet of an angel, the angel forbade it sharply and told him to worship God.

This is a quieter argument than the others, and to a Jewish reader it is one of the strongest.

Scripture is absolute: worship belongs to God alone. Good men in the Bible refuse it violently when it is offered to them. Peter lifted Cornelius off the floor. The apostle Paul and Barnabas tore their clothes at Lystra. Even an angel refuses it outright:

"And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant... worship God." (Revelation 19:10)

Every creature in Scripture who is worshipped refuses. The Lord Jesus Christ never once did.

"And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God." (John 20:28)

Read what happens next, because it is the whole argument. Thomas calls Him my God to His face, and He accepts it, and commends the faith behind it. If Thomas was wrong, that was the moment to say so, and it was the last chance.

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20:29)

Now set the Lord Jesus Christ against that rule. Lepers worshipped Him. A ruler worshipped Him. His disciples worshipped Him in the boat. The blind man He healed worshipped Him. The women worshipped Him after the resurrection. Not once did He stop them. Not once did He say what Peter said, or what the angel said.

And the clearest instance of all came from the most stubborn doubter among His own men. Thomas had refused to believe without evidence. When the risen Christ stood before him and offered the evidence, Thomas did not say you are alive. He said something far greater:

"And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God." (John 20:28)

A Jewish man, raised from infancy on the LORD our God is one LORD, looked at a man standing in front of him and called Him my God. If that was blasphemy, it was the moment for the sharpest rebuke in the Gospels. Instead the Lord Jesus Christ accepted it and pronounced a blessing on all who would believe likewise without seeing.

5. The prophets named Him before He came

None of this was a later development. Centuries before Bethlehem, Isaiah described a child who would be born, and gave that child names no created being could carry:

"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14)

And Matthew tells us what that name means, in case anyone should soften it: God with us.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

The mighty God. Isaiah, a Hebrew prophet writing to a fiercely monotheistic nation, applies that title to a child who would be born.

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." (Micah 5:2)

A birthplace, and no beginning. Micah holds both in one sentence seven centuries before anyone had to explain how.

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)

Weigh those titles. A child is born: that is His humanity, and it is real. A son is given: that is His deity, for the Son was not created at Bethlehem; He was given, sent from somewhere. And the names: The mighty God. The everlasting Father. No prophet, no angel, no righteous man is ever so named in Scripture.

The prophet Micah adds the same truth from another angle, naming the village where the Ruler of Israel would be born, and adding that His goings forth were from of old, from everlasting. A person born in a village in a particular year, whose origins are nevertheless eternal: that is precisely the mystery that the New Testament announces as accomplished.

6. The apostles state it without hedging

When the men who had lived with Him for three years came to write, they did not describe a great teacher. They wrote sentences like these:

"Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power." (Hebrews 1:3)

"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)

Not part of it. Not a portion. All the fulness, and bodily — written of Him after the incarnation, not before.

"Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." (Titus 2:13)

"But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever." (Hebrews 1:8)

That last is the Father speaking, and He addresses the Son as God. Whatever else is disputed, that verse is not the church’s language about Christ; it is quoted as the Father’s.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)

Every clause is load-bearing. In the beginning was: He did not come into existence. The Word was with God: a real distinction of Persons; He is not simply another name for the Father. And the Word was God, and yet not a second God, for there is only one. Two verses later John adds that all things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made, which places Him firmly on the Creator's side of the line between Creator and creature, with nothing left over.

"For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." (Colossians 2:9)

Notice the care of that sentence. Not some of the Godhead — all the fulness. Not in appearance, not in influence — bodily. The apostle Paul is deliberately closing every exit. Elsewhere he calls Him our great God and Saviour; and the writer to the Hebrews records the Father Himself addressing the Son directly as God, whose throne is for ever and ever.

7. He did what only God can do

Set aside the titles for a moment and watch what He actually did.

Beyond the titles, He did things Scripture reserves to God alone.

He forgave sins, not sins against Himself, but sins in general, which is why the scribes reacted as they did.

"Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?" (Mark 2:7)

Their theology was correct. Only God can forgive sin against God. Their error was in the conclusion they drew, not in the principle.

He created.

"All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." (John 1:3)

He commanded nature. Not by petition, as prophets did, but by word, and the wind obeyed a voice, not a prayer.

And He will judge the world.

"For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." (John 5:22-23)

Even as they honour the Father. There is no room left in that sentence for a lesser honour.

He forgave sins, not sins committed against Him, but sins as such. The scribes who watched Him do it reasoned correctly: who can forgive sins but God only? Their theology was right; their conclusion about Him was wrong.

He commanded the natural world, and it obeyed instantly — wind and sea, disease, death itself. He did not pray for these things to happen, as the prophets had. He spoke, and it was done, on His own authority.

He knew men's thoughts. He accepted the title Lord from His disciples and told them they were right to use it. He promised to be present wherever two or three gathered in His name, in every place at once, which is either divine omnipresence or empty words.

And He raised Himself from the dead. He said beforehand that He had power to lay down His life and power to take it again, and then He did precisely that, before witnesses, in a manner that turned a group of frightened men into people who would rather die than deny what they had seen.

8. Answering the honest objections

There are real questions here, and they deserve real answers rather than dismissal. Nearly all of them dissolve once we hold firmly to a truth the Bible teaches everywhere: the Lord Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man — one Person with two natures, not a mixture and not a middle thing.

Four objections are raised constantly, and each deserves a straight answer rather than an evasion.

"He said the Father is greater than I."

"Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I." (John 14:28)

He said greater, not better. The word is one of position, not of nature. A soldier may say his officer is greater than he without implying that the officer is more human. The Son, in the days of His flesh, had taken a place of voluntary subjection, and He is speaking of going back to the position He had laid aside.

"He did not know the day or the hour." True, and He says so plainly. In His humanity He hungered, slept, wept and did not exercise omniscience independently. The incarnation means a real manhood, not a divine being wearing one.

"He is called the firstborn of every creature."

"Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created." (Colossians 1:15-16)

Read the next clause, which the objection never quotes. For by him were all things created. The reason He is called firstborn is that He made everything, which settles that firstborn here means rank and heirship, not sequence. In Scripture the firstborn is the heir; David is called God’s firstborn, and he was the youngest of eight.

"He prayed, so He cannot be God." He prayed as a man, to the Father, which is exactly what a real incarnation requires. A Christ who never prayed would prove He was not truly man; a Christ who is prayed to proves He is God. Scripture gives us both.

"And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." (Acts 7:59)

"He said the Father is greater than I." He did, and it is true — spoken by One who had taken the place of a servant, in the days of His humiliation. A king who becomes a soldier is truly under his commander; that does not make him less a king. The same Lord who said the Father was greater also said that He and the Father are one.

"He prayed. Would God pray?" As man, yes, and this is one of the loveliest evidences of a real incarnation. He was genuinely human: He hungered, wept, slept in a boat, and prayed all night. If He had not been truly man, He could not have died for men. His prayers show the reality of His humanity; they do not cancel His deity.

"He did not know the day or the hour." Spoken in His humanity, in the state of self-limitation He voluntarily accepted when He came. The Bible is plain that in coming He did not grasp at the outward exercise of His divine prerogatives but laid them aside to serve and to die. A voluntary limitation is not an absence of nature.

"He is called the firstborn of every creature." Firstborn in Scripture means the heir, the one holding the rank of first, not the first thing manufactured. It is used of Israel, and of David, who was the youngest of eight sons. Besides, the same passage that calls Him firstborn immediately says that by Him all things were created; He cannot be among the created things He created.

"He is called the Son, so He must be less." Sonship in Scripture speaks of sameness of nature, not inferiority of being. A man's son is as fully human as his father. That is precisely why His hearers heard Son of God as a claim to equality with God, and why they took up stones.

9. Why everything depends on this

Some will ask whether this is worth dividing over. It is, and here is why, not because doctrine is a game, but because our salvation stands on it at every point.

Someone will ask whether this must be settled, or whether a man may love Christ and leave the question open. It must be settled, for four reasons.

Because a creature cannot bear an infinite penalty. If He is less than God, the cross was the death of a good man, and good men have died before without saving anybody.

Because worship of a creature is idolatry. There is no middle position here. Either He is God and worship is owed, or He is not and every Christian who has ever prayed to Him has broken the first commandment.

Because His own claims leave no third option. A man who says what He said is either telling the truth, or deceiving deliberately, or deceived Himself. Those are the choices. Great moral teacher is not among them, since a great moral teacher does not accept worship.

And because Scripture makes it a matter of life and death.

"I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." (John 8:24)

Consider what is required to save us. The debt of sin is owed to an infinite God, and no finite creature can pay an infinite debt. Only God has the standing to make a payment of that value. But the debt is owed by men, and God as God cannot die. So the payment must be made by One who is truly God — to give it infinite worth, and truly man — to make it ours to offer. Take away His deity, and Calvary becomes the tragic death of a good man, which saves nobody.

Consider also what we do with Him. If He is not God, then every Christian who has ever prayed to Him or worshipped Him is an idolater, and the Christian faith is not merely mistaken but wicked. There is no comfortable middle.

And consider what He said Himself. He told men that unless they believed who He was, they would die in their sins. That is a hard sentence, and He said it in love — as a doctor names a fatal condition while there is still time to treat it.

10. What will you do with Him?

The question on that northern road was never rhetorical, and it has not gone away.

Everything on this page comes down to a question, and it is not an academic one.

He asked it Himself, and He asked it of His own disciples rather than of a crowd:

"He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?" (Matthew 16:15)

Note the pronoun. Not what do people say. He had already asked that, and received the survey of opinions. Then He narrowed it to the only version of the question that matters.

There are only three honest answers available, and neutrality is not one of them. If the claims are false and He knew it, He was a deceiver on a scale nobody else has attempted. If they are false and He did not know it, He was deluded. If they are true, then the man from Nazareth is the God who made you, and nothing else in your life is arranged correctly.

"For if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins." (John 8:24)

And the invitation stands open to anyone who will make Thomas’s confession his own, not as a formula, but as a man surrendering.

"That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." (Romans 10:9)

If the Lord Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, then the cross is not a tragedy but a rescue — God Himself bearing what we owed:

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

And if He is who He says, then no work of ours could ever have reached that far, and none is required — only that we receive Him:

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." (John 1:12)

My Lord and my God

Thomas was the last man anyone would have expected to say it. He had demanded evidence and refused to be moved without it. And when the evidence came, he did not offer a careful theological formula. He said five words, and they are the right response of every soul that finally sees who this is: My Lord and my God.

Note that he did not say the Lord and the God, as a statement of fact about the universe. He said my. That is the difference between admitting a doctrine and trusting a Person, and it is the difference that saves.

God was manifest in the flesh, and He came for you.

Let us Pray:

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come before Your throne of grace through the precious name and perfect merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has opened the way into Your presence.

We thank You for Your beloved Son, and for Him who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. We praise You for Your preserved Word, which declares "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28), and which cannot be broken.

We confess before You that we have confessed His deity with our lips and lived as though He were merely a teacher. Forgive us, we pray, and cleanse us, for You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

We beseech You for every soul reading these words who is yet without Christ. Send forth Your Holy Ghost to convince them of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment; open their understanding; and draw them to Your Son before this day is done.

Strengthen Your people who read it. Comfort the discouraged, establish the wavering, and let none go away empty. And use this message to settle in every reader the truth that the Lord Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, for Your glory and not for ours.

We pray all of this to You, O God, our Holy and Heavenly Father, in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by the power and anointing of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Most Important Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Before you close this page, one question matters more than everything you have just read: if you died tonight, do you know where you would be?

You cannot be saved by joining a church, by being baptized, by giving money, or by living a decent life. Salvation is not a wage that is earned; it is a gift that is received. Every one of us has sinned, the wages of sin is death, and there is a real hell prepared for sin, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died on the cross in the sinner's place, was buried, and rose again the third day.

If you know yourself to be a sinner, and you are willing to turn from your sin and trust Him alone, then speak to God now. There are no magic words, but if these words are the cry of your heart, pray them and mean them:

After You Have Prayed

1. Tell somebody today. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved" (Romans 10:9).

2. Begin reading the Bible. Start with the Gospel of John, then Acts, then Romans. Read a little every day. "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2).

3. Talk to your Father every day. You may now come boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No appointment is needed and no man's permission.

4. Find a Bible-believing church and be baptized. Not to be saved: you already are, but in obedience, and as the public confession of what has happened to you.

5. Rest in this, and do not be shaken by your feelings. "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life" (John 5:24). You will still sin; when you do, confess it and go on — "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).