Is Jesus God?

This question must seem very strange to modern ears. Sorta like asking, is George Washington God, or is Abraham Lincoln God?

For modern people, the question may seem absurd, but for those who first heard it, it was blasphemy.

When Jesus said to the people of his day, “I and the Father are one,” here was their response: they picked up stones to stone him. Here’s what they said: “We are not stoning you for any good work . . . but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

To the Jews, the first article of their faith was that God is one. If Jesus claimed to be God, then he was, in their mind, attacking this fundamental article.

On the other side, when Jesus’ followers went out into the Roman world and claimed divine status for Jesus, this would have seemed neither strange nor improbable to Roman ears. The Romans believed in many gods, and the distinction between gods and humans was not that great. So, what would be the big deal with adding one more god to the pantheon?

The trouble for the followers of Jesus in the Roman world was that they claimed that there was only one God and that Jesus was that God. “He is the true God and eternal life” (1 Jn. 5:20) and “the Word was God. . . . Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:2–3). Paul wrote: “we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ . . .” (Tit. 2:13).

The early Christians believed, prayed to, and trusted in Jesus as the one true God.

So, how to explain that Jesus is God and the Father is God? The church had to struggle long to think through this relationship and express it clearly.

One possibility is that the Father and the Son are just different manifestations of the one true God in a similar way to the fact that I am a father, son, friend, and husband. I’m the same person, but I play different roles.

This just did not do justice to the New Testament revelation. For example, Jesus said, “In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me” (John 8:17–18). No, the Father was one person and Jesus another, yet there was not two gods but one God.

From this, it’s not a far jump to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. We believe that there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is hard to understand, but should it really surprise us that there would be something about God that is way above our understanding of God? It would almost be surprising if this wasn’t the case.

But the key question is, is it true? Is Jesus really God?

Let me suggest three things to consider.

First, everyone believes that Jesus is a great teacher. Even non-Christians throughout history have looked at him as a great moral teacher. Yet he claimed to be God and the Lord of all. Could a good teacher make such a claim? If I said that what my word that you are reading on this blog are the words of me, the one true God, would you continue to read my blog? No, you would think I was crazy or a charlatan. But Jesus is not the sort of person you can write of as a crazy person or charlatan. He is one of the greatest people who ever lived. So, how can you put those things together?

C.S. Lewis, the atheist turned Christian apologist, put it this way: it is a trilemma. He is either a liar, lunatic, or lord. You can’t say he’s just a good teacher because Jesus has shut that door. Those are really the only options. Which one makes the most sense?

Second, He rose from the dead. He said he was God, and he proved it by rising from the dead. I believe that this is not only a belief, it is historical fact. You can read the evidence for this claim here and here, but I’ll just say this. All of his followers believed he rose from the dead, and they staked their lives on it. They gained very little in this life for this belief, and most of them paid for believing this truth with their lives. If they made it up, would all of them have gone to terrible deaths for its truth? To me, that does not seem at all plausible. So, the only conclusion I can come to is that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

Third, all over the world, people from diverse cultures, regions, socioeconomic backgrounds, intellectual levels, and so on have come to Jesus. They have done this without any apparent gain in this world. They have done it often in the face of the greatest persecution. In China, as one example, all of the missionaries were expelled when the communists took over, decades later, Christianity was exploding all over China in the face of often terrible persecution. How did this happen? In my mind, it is only the power of the resurrected Christ that provides an adequate explanation.

Whether you find this convincing or not, I hope that you will consider this crucial question that Jesus asked his own followers while he was on earth: who do you say that I am?

If you are convinced that Jesus is God, let me ask you to consider the significance of this truth.

First, God wants to connect with us. If He became a human, He is not some distant, far off being. He is one who comes, very close. He wants to connect with us and have a relationship with us.

Second, he is accessible. How do you relate to an infinite being? Hard to conceive. But what if He comes down to our level to relate to us? If you’ve seen Jesus, you’ve seen the Father. You know God.

Third, he can sympathize with us. It would seem that God is remote from us and immune to all our problems. But if He became a human, then He has experienced all of our struggles and is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. He suffered. He died. He experienced rejection. He can sympathize with us.

He has come close to us and invites us to come close to Him. That is the implication of the glorious truth that Jesus is God.