The Apologetics Advertisement for Christianity
By Nathaniel Ashcroft
Jesus Claims to be God?
Some skeptics claim that Jesus never claims to be God in the Bible and therefore should not be known by such an identity. The accuser usually admits that the gospel writers make it seem as though He is God, but they won’t concede that Jesus himself actually claimed divinity, in His own words. This is a very important objection to address, as Jesus’s divinity is essential to the gospel truth.
For a little bit of background, the gospel according to John records the most instances of Jesus blatantly claiming to be God, with statements such as,
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well” (NIV John 14:6-7),
“I and the Father are one” (NIV John 10:30),
“‘Very truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’” (NIV John 8:58).
Whenever skeptics and atheists are presented with this, they actually agree that Jesus clearly claims to be God in these passages, so they resort to simply stating that John is an unreliable gospel, as the current estimate puts John as written roughly 20 years after the other gospels. This claim is already very weak, as it’s not really based on anything concrete. These are skeptical claims, not evidential claims. The gospel according to John was written within John’s lifetime, and was attributed to him in the early church while being used authoritatively. John, the apostle of Jesus, was attributed to writing this gospel by a number of early church fathers, most explicitly Irenaeus. John is not totally other in comparison to the synoptic (‘synoptic’ meaning they follow generally similar events and may use some of the same source material) gospels, as Blomberg states in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ,
“‘For almost every major theme or distinctive in John, you can find parallels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, even if they’re not as plentiful (Strobel 30)”.
John takes it from a different angle, but does not go off onto hyperbolic tangents as some may think he does. Looking back at those three statements I quoted from Jesus at the beginning of this section, I’ll quickly break down how He is claiming to be God in each of them.
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well” (NIV John 14:6-7).
In John 14:6-7, Jesus claims to be the way; showing He is the way to heaven (singular). He also claims to be the Truth; He is claiming to be the truth objectively, and in a way that only God is: absolute and all encompassing. To claim to be the truth, He is claiming to be one with the One who is the origin of what is true, to be one with the One who is singularly and absolutely true. He also claims to be the life; He is the way to true life, eternal life, to life with the Father. Jesus isn’t claiming to be a way, truth, and life, He’s claiming to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
“I and the Father are one”(NIV John 10:30).
John 10:30 is pretty self-explanatory, but it should be noted that the Jews say they will stone Him for blasphemy directly after this statement, because they say He was a mere man, claiming to be God (John 10:33).
“Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”(NIV John 8:58).
In John 8:58, Jesus makes an ‘I Am’ statement, which parallels Exodus 3:14, where God tells Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (NIV Exodus 3:14). This is God’s covenant name, Yahweh. In Hebrew culture, a name signifies something about a person’s character. It is like a window into the person’s identity. So, when God gives His name as Yahweh, He is saying He is that which is, eternally existent, and the maximally great God. The phrase, ‘I AM WHO I AM’, is essentially saying ‘to be’. To be where? To be what? As His covenant name, God claims ‘to be’ with His people. That’s why the name Yahweh mattered so much to the ancient Israelites; It shows that God would be with His people. Jesus, when He makes this statement, could not be more clearly claiming to be Yahweh. Jesus is also claiming He was in existence before Abraham, who lived roughly 1700 years before Jesus entered history being born of a virgin.
Jesus claims to be God in every gospel, and since Mark’s gospel is dated the earliest, I’ll demonstrate how He claims divinity there to show the consistency across gospels. I could do this for any of the gospels because they are all recounting what Jesus said, just from different angles. Again, as I stated in the section about Biblical reliability, they all show a unique perspective of the exact same person, ministry, and life. They were eyewitnesses or sourced their information directly from an eyewitness (An example would be that Luke strongly shows evidence of using Mary as a source).
In the Old Testament, whenever any prophet was used as a mediator for the Word of God, statements such as, ‘declares the LORD’ (NIV Isaiah 59:20), ‘This is what the LORD says’ (NIV Isaiah 56:1), ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says’ (NIV Ezekiel 27:3), or ‘Now this is what the LORD God Almighty, the God of Israel, says’ (NIV Jerimiah 44:7), are used. These are very frequent, so much so, all I had to do was flip to a random page in each of those three prophetic books to find a statement. In the New Testament gospel according to Mark, chapter 13, Jesus tells the disciples about what will happen in the end times and at the fall of Jerusalem (often referred to as the ‘Olivet Discourse’). No phrases like the ones used by the prophets to show that they were communicating God’s words are present in the Olivet Discourse. Jesus doesn’t need those words; He is God, and has all authority to speak on the Father’s behalf (I say on the Father’s behalf because Jesus emptied Himself. The passage from John 14 quoted below shows this). Jesus tells them the future, and attributes the origin of that knowledge to Himself! Also, this prophecy came to pass in 70 A.D., when Jerusalem fell to the Roman empire and the temple was destroyed, in case anyone was curious.
The same can be said when Jesus informs Peter that he will disown Him three times. Mark 14:30 states,
“‘Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “today– yes, tonight– before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times” (NIV Mark 14:30).
The importance here is that Jesus says ‘truly I tell you’, before saying what the future would hold, demonstrating His divinity. This is fulfilled when Peter disowns Jesus in Mark 14:66-72. He claims to be speaking with the authority of God in each of these statements. Prophets attribute their prophetic utterances to God, when Jesus, however, attributes His prophetic utterances to himself. He speaks of the prophecies and teachings from an omniscient (all-knowing) source, and He claims they originate from Him. He is claiming something only God can claim. He is claiming omniscience. Additionally, John 14:10-11 states,
“Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (NIV John 14:10-11)
Jesus says He speaks with the authority of the Father, of whom He is one with. Clearly He is claiming divinity, and this helps out my point of how He speaks with the authority of God. Jesus’s prophetic teaching is not the only place Jesus speaks as God, when Jesus teaches theologically and morally, He also attributed the origin to Himself.
Jesus also predicted multiple times that He would die and rise from the dead. He never once said that anyone other than Himself is the origin of that knowledge. He clearly speaks with the authority of God, showing that He is God.
Mark 14:61-62 reads,
“Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ ‘I am,’ said Jesus. ‘And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven” (NIV Mark 14:61-62).
For obvious reasons, Jesus claims to be God in this passage. But to look a little deeper, Jesus calling himself ‘Son of Man’ is a reference to Daniel 7:13, where a God-like figure, called “one like a son of man” (NIV Daniel 7:13), comes on the clouds and interacts with the Ancient of Days. This son of man in Daniel 7 was
“given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped [H]im. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and [H]is kingdom is one that will never be destroyed” (NIV Daniel 7:14).
The Ancient of Days is Yahweh. The son of man described has all the qualities of God. So, when Jesus calls himself the Son of Man in Mark 14, He refers to himself as the Son of Man coming on the clouds in Daniel 7, a lucid example of Jesus claiming to be God. This claim is just as strong as the ‘I am’ statement in John 8. Just as in John chapter 10, the skeptic accuses Jesus of blasphemy, and they crucify Him not long after. Remember; this is from the gospel that is usually dated to be the earliest; there is no legendary development from Mark to John. They both proclaim the same Jesus.
Just denying John’s reliability doesn’t solve much, as the skeptic would have to discredit Luke, Mark, and Matthew as well to fully say Jesus never claimed to be God. Paul actually tells us about the divinity of Christ before the gospels do, as he writes his letters to the churches before the gospels are produced. Most skeptics insist that it must be in Jesus’s own words, however.
Have you heard the gospel? If not, click here.
View next week’s section to learn about the evidence for the resurrection of Christ.
Works Cited
NIV Quest Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Zondervan, 2016.