Was He Really God?
How Can We Know?
As we continue our study of Christology, we will be looking at the biggest aspect of Christ’s being today. That aspect, of course, is His deity. How do we know that Jesus really is God? Can we just simply believe what a bunch of old people told us about Him? While the Bible is the best and most reliable source we have for this, there are 3 main reasons I want to point out that I believe best support that Jesus really is the Christ. First, He claimed to be God Himself. Second, He fulfilled every prophecy ever made about the coming Christ. And third, He rose from the dead. If we acknowledge and take to heart these 3 truths about Jesus, then I believe we have more than enough evidence to claim that Jesus really is the Son of God and a member of the Trinity itself. As Dr. Wayne Grudem himself notes, “To complete the biblical teaching about Jesus Christ, we must affirm not only that He was fully human, but also that He was fully divine. The scriptural proof for the deity of Christ is very extensive in the New Testament.” We addressed lightly last week how Jesus Himself was fully man and fully God, yet today we will dive deeper into the second part of this aspect. As stated earlier, many people don’t have a problem acknowledging that Jesus was a real man who walked this earth. However, acknowledging that Jesus was truly the Son of God is a different story. Let’s dive in and see why we can trust Jesus’ claims to be God over all other beings.
Proclamations & Prophecies
First off, Jesus Himself tells us that He is the Messiah and the promised one from God. Look at what Jesus tells Philip in John 14:8-9 “8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” Jesus was not trying to hide the fact that He was the Son of God by any means. This is a huge aspect of Christ that separates Him from many false religions. There are many beliefs and religions in the world today that claim other human beings are God as well. However, when many of these people are studied, we find that these claims are simply made up or worse, never even took place. When we look at the life of Christ, we can be sure that we are not putting a label on Him that He never intended to put on Himself. Jesus knew who He was and how He needed to communicate His deity to others for mankind to accept what He was saying. Whether you personally agree with Jesus’ claims to be God or not, is dependant on your trust in scripture. One thing that is for certain though, is that Jesus did indeed make these bold statements about Himself. As addressed last week, there are multiple passages throughout Scripture where Jesus refers to Himself as the ‘Son of Man’ and many more where He defends His authority from God Himself. Something that Christians can’t be accused of is putting words in Jesus’ mouth. Jesus said what He said and meant what He meant.
Furthermore, Jesus alone fulfilled every prophecy that was ever made about Him. This fact alone should be enough to convince anyone that Jesus was indeed the Son of God and a member of the Trinity. Do you know how many prophecies were made about Jesus in the Old Testament? There are over 450 passages in the Old Testament that talk about the coming Messiah and the times that He will arrive. Scholars agree based on these passages, that Jesus fulfilled no less than 300 prophecies that were made before He was ever born. What are the chances of this?! Forward Ministries actually did the math on this and started what the probably of one man fulfilling just 8 prophecies would look like… this is what they concluded, “By multiplying all of the estimates of the fulfillment of each prophecy together, (1 in 2.8 x 105 x 103 x 102 x 103 x 105 x 103 x 104.) This gives 1 in 2.8 x 1028, where 28 means that we have 28 ciphers following the 2.8. Let us simplify and reduce the number by calling it 1 in 1028. Written out this number is 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.” Just a reminder, this is just 8. What are the chances for 300? Let’s just say that number would take a few more blog posts to write down. As the great professor of this experiment notes, “Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact, proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.”
Raised From The Dead
Finally, we can be sure that Jesus was God because of His ability to overcome the grave. As we clearly know, death is a certain part of life and inescapable. So anyone who could overcome death would prove to not be just a simple, mortal being. In Mark 16, we see Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James approach the tomb where Jesus was laid after He died. Look at what Mark 16:5-7 says next, “5 Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. 6 And he *said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. 7 But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’” Again, you may doubt the Bible and its accuracy all you want to, but one certain fact is that Scripture supports the deity of Christ. We’ve actually addressed some of the arguments made against Jesus being raised from the dead and have even gone deeper into the prophetic fulfillment possibilities in earlier posts as well. For now, however, I want to say that if you are someone who struggles with believing that the Bible is 100% true, I get it and I would encourage you to read our studies on bibliology from a few months ago. This is a big claim that isn’t made about almost any other writing! Yet, when we open our Bibles, it is unmistakably clear that Jesus claimed to be the coming Messiah, He did in fact fulfill every prophecy that was made about Him, and He was indeed raised from the dead. If you believe all that and still need help believing that Jesus was really God or not, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Sources
[1]BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages. (n.d.). https://www.biblegateway.com/
[2] Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA79455700
[3] GotQuestions.org. (2022, January 4). GotQuestions.org. https://www.gotquestions.org/prophecies-of-Jesus.html
[4] Byars, C. (2022, December 17). Jesus Fulfilled Over 300 Prophecies Mathematically proving that he is the messiah — Forward Ministries. Forward Ministries. https://www.clintbyars.com/blog/2020/7/20/jesus-fulfilled-over-300-prophecies
[5] The Mathematical Probability that Jesus is the Christ | Empower International. (2015, December 1). Empower International. https://empower.global/the-mathematical-probability-that-jesus-is-the-christ/
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