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:

"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:

"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.

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.

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:

"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:

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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:

Our gracious heavenly Father, 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).