Is Jesus God?

[TonyChanYT]

Jesus healed a man (B1) born blind in John 9:

35 Jesus heard that they [the Pharisees] had cast him [B1] out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” 36He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” 37Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” 38He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.

B1 thought Jesus was God.

Paul thought Jesus was God, Romans 9:

5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ, who is God over all, forever worthy of praise! Amen.

Is Jesus = God?

The equal sign carries mathematical import. In some sense, this is true; in some other sense, it is not. It is better to stick to the wording of the Bible and not to over-generalize. God (or Godhead) is a complex concept in the Bible. God and Jesus are distinct manifestations.

Jesus says in Luke‬ ‭8:

39‬ "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

The above is a significant parallel between God and Jesus.

The church obtained by Jesus is the church of God in Acts 20:

28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

Paul describes some bodily mechanics in Colossians 1:

19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Jesus]

Colossians 2:

9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,

Titus 2:

13 [We are] waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

The phrase could refer to one or two entities. Either way is fine.

2 Peter 1 echoes the same concept:

1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

Christ is God.

Now, Numbers 23:

19a God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.

Let statement H = ∀h, if h is a human, then h is not God.

One can produce logical proofs/evidences that Jesus was a human because Jesus was born a man. But then we cannot apply H to Jesus. Jesus is the unique exception to that rule.

At the same time, one can also find logical proofs that Jesus is God because he is.

So how do I resolve the issue?

I look at two sets of proofs/evidences/arguments:

1. Jesus is God.
2. Jesus is not God, ignoring the ones that merely prove that Jesus was a man.

I assign a weight to each argument in the two sets according to this weighting scheme: I overweight direct statements over implied conclusions. I overweight simple arguments over complicated ones.

So far, according to my weighting, Jesus is God comfortably outweighs the opposite.

BTW, I have not heard of a proof of "Jesus is not God" that I didn't already know 10 years ago, i.e., in the last 10 years, I haven't heard anything new concerning Jesus is not God.

Next, is Jesus the Son of God?

John 10:

36 do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

Jesus claims that he is the Son of God.

How can Jesus be both God and Son of God?

With humans, that is impossible but not with God. Jesus continued:

38b "even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Yes, this is a first-order logical mystery. By faith, I believe that Jesus is God and Jesus is the Son of God. It is a mysterious divine nature/attribute.

See also

• The one and only Son, who is Himself God
• In the epistles, Jesus is often treated as God
• Did Jesus know that he was God?
• Why did Jesus not say explicitly that he was God in the Gospels?
• If Jesus was God, why …?
• No one is good—except God alone.