DID JESUS EVER SAY THAT HE WAS GOD?

A friend of mine, who considers himself a Christian and yet seems to take issue with most standard Christian doctrines, recently bombarded me again with a list of objections to the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. One blanket proclamation he made at the start of his list was the fact that Jesus never called himself God. But is that a fair statement to make? Consider the following.

In the first place, there was a very good reason for Jesus not going around during his three-year ministry period on earth proclaiming that fact, especially using such clear and unmistakable language as "I am God." If he had done so, it would not have been a very long ministry at all, and his time had not yet come, as he states several times throughout the gospel accounts. Secondly, in his earthly existence during which he had purposely emptied himself, as Philippians points out, and it was more important for him to stress his dependence on the Father during that period. Thirdly, we often expect the biblical characters to express their thoughts using the same theological language that modern-day creeds utilize as they attempt to capsulize the ideas that are in the Bible. Instead, we should concentrate on the reactions of Jesus' audiences to see how they took Jesus' words at the time. When we do, it becomes clear that He did say He was God.

Matthew 9:2-3 describes Jesus telling the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” which prompts the scribes to think: “This man is blaspheming.” In the parallel accounts in Mark 2:7 and Luke 5:2 the reason for the charge of blasphemy becomes clear when the Gospel writers add: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Matthew 26:64 has Jesus quoting from Daniel 7:13 and Psalm 110:1, the former OT passage describing a heavenly throne scene is which “One like the Son of God” appears. This prompts the charge of blasphemy from the high priest, who tears his clothes. The parallel passage in Mark 14:62 has Jesus prefacing this quotation with “I am.” Thus, Jesus is using in an absolute sense the same wording (ego eimi) the identical words he uses to address the apostles when he walks out to them on the water (in itself an allusion to the Spirit of God hovering over the water in Genesis 1:2).

Thus, Horsley notes that Jesus directly compares himself to God. And that is not an exaggerated statement in light of the fact that God's holy name Yahweh translates to something like “I am who I am.” (Exodus 3:14). Similarly, Wahrisch and Brown explain that according to Sanhedrin 7:5, the blasphemer is not culpable unless he pronounces the divine name itself (cf. Lev 24:10ff).” At that point, “the judges were to rend their garments on hearing the evidence,” which is exactly what the high priest does.

Then we also have John 8:58 in which Jesus tells a Jewish audience, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” That doesn't seem to make much grammatical sense to us, but it certainly got the unfavorable attention of the crowd, who attempt to stone him. Their reaction is perfectly understandable since Jesus not only used the key phrase “I am” in an absolute sense referring to Yahweh, but at the same time made a claim to preexistence, another unique characteristic of God.”

In discussing the word “blasphemy” in The Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Wahrisch and Brown note that some scholars suggest that even the seven times in John's Gospel when Jesus uses “I am” followed by a predicate noun, he may be claiming the divine name for himself.

John 5:17-18 directly follows the account of Jesus performing a healing on the sabbath when the Jews start harassing him for working on that day of rest. Jesus' answer is, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” John then explains, “For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.” One can certainly try to discount the Jew's interpretation of Jesus' words at this point if one wishes, but it is not nearly as easy to accuse John the narrator of misunderstanding. By the way, it was a common belief at the time that God continued to work on the Sabbath since people were only born or died on that day at God's express will.

In John 10:10, Jesus tells the Jews, “The Father and I are one” and then to make it worse, he states in v. 38 that “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Between these two statements, his audience attempts to stone him with the words: “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.”

Some comments from two word study books are in order at this point:

    Wahrisch and Brown explain, “The strongest form of calumny...is expressed by the words of the blasphemeo group. In the NT, this group of words almost always refers directly or indirectly to an attitude toward God [Jude 9 is the only exception].”

    In Vine's Expository Dictionary of NT Words, he expresses the same fact: “The word 'blasphemy' is practically confined to speech defamatory of the Divine Majesty...”

A concluding exclamation regarding probabilities is necessary here. My friend, as I will show in subsequent posts, approaches the question of Jesus' divinity by looking at each passage in the Bible seeming to point in that direction and then attempting to discredit it. But all it takes is a single one of these passages to actually teach that Jesus Christ is God to prove that point.

Thus, even if we count the actual parallel passages above as just one instance and lump all seven of the “I am” statements in John together as a single instance, that still leaves seven independent times in the NT that appear to show that Jesus said he was God. Then only one of them has to actually state that fact. Conversely, my friend has to prove that not one of the seven occasions make that theological point.

The situation is the exact parallel to the odds involved in flipping coins. On one hand, if you flip seven coins and only require that one of them comes up heads, you have an overwhelming probability that you will win your bet. Conversely, if you require that all seven will come up tails, you are almost guaranteed of losing. And you can actually calculate what the odds are of that situation arising.

Assume for the minute that my reasoning above concerning those seven independent statements of Jesus apparently stating he was God only has a 50% probability of being true in each case (as in the coin tosses), then my probability of being correct in at least one of those cases calculates to 99.2%. And even if I there is only a 20% probability in each case that a particular passage teaches that Jesus said he was God, there is still a 79% probability that it will be taught in at least one of them.