Truth
On
Tough
Texts
ISSUE 16 –
November/2006
Is the Bible Unclear About the
Deity of Christ?
Ephesians 4:5; John 1:1
A pastor once said to me,
“It’s too bad the Bible doesn’t just say, ‘Jesus
was God’ and therefore clear up all the confusion.” I
can’t express how that grieved me because it was based
upon ignorance not only of what the term one
lord (Eph. 4:5) means
but also of several other statements in Scripture. I
would interject that it’s also sad because it implies an
insufficiency in Scripture, that Scripture is ambiguous
and therefore weak. Such an implication, even if
unintended, is serious error.
So is the Bible unclear
about the Deity of Christ? Is this idea just something
men have read into the Bible? Did the disciples mishear
what Jesus claimed and falsely conclude that he was
claiming Deity? After all, several cults and religions
teach against it, so is it something that is so unclear
that the issue can “go either way”?
A pivotal term
concerning this doctrinal reality is the term one
lord in Ephesians 4:5. The Greek behind lord
is kurios. In early Classical Greek, while the
word was applied to the gods, there was no general
belief of a creator God. The word, therefore, was used
in a broad way of someone who had power or authority. It
was different in Eastern thought, however. To the
Oriental mind, the gods were “the lords of reality.” By
Jesus’ day, Eastern kings, such as Herod the Great (c.
73–74 BC), Agrippa I (10 BC.–44 AD, and Agrippa II (27
AD–c. 100) came to be called lord.
Most Roman emperors resisted such temptation, but
others, such as Caligula (37–41 AD) and Nero (54–48)
found it appealing. It was this very attitude of implied
divinity that caused both Jews and Christians to refuse
to use the term lord of the emperor.
Turning to the
Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament),
kurios appears over 9,000 times, some 6,156 of
which translate the Hebrew YHWH (Yahweh, Jehovah), thus reemphasizing the
meaning of divinity.
In the New
Testament, then, kurios
appears 717 times, the majority of which occur in Luke’s
Gospel and Acts (210) and Paul’s Epistles (275). The
reason for this, of course, was that they both wrote for
readers who were dominated by Greek culture and language
and who, therefore, understood the deep significance of
this word in implying deity.
Finally, while lord
is sometimes used as simply a title of honor, such as
Rabbi, Teacher, Master (Matt. 10:24; cf. Lk. 16:3), or
even a husband (I Peter 3:6), when used of Jesus in a
confessional way, it without question refers to His
divinity. The confession Kurios
Iesous (Lord Jesus) is rooted in the pre-Pauline Greek
Christian community and is probably the oldest of all
Christian creeds.
Early Christians
unarguably recognized Jesus as God, as Paul wrote to the
Philippians: “And that every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father” (2:11, emphasis added). Even more
significantly, when Thomas saw the risen Jesus, he
called Him, “My Lord and my God” (Jn.
20:28, emphasis added). As we’ll see in a moment, even
salvation is based on a confession of Jesus as
Lord, as Divine (Rom. 10:9-10).[i]
The Deity of Christ is an
absolutely cardinal doctrine of Christianity; without
it, Christianity collapses of its own weight. But it’s
also a doctrine that is clearly taught in Scripture
without any ambiguity. For example, at the very
foundation of this doctrine is the birth of Jesus.
Matthew 1:23, a quotation of Isaiah 7:14, declares:
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,
which being interpreted is, God with us.” As C. I.
Scofield rightly observes:
Why was Jesus not actually
called “Immanuel”? According to Hebrew usage the name
does not represent a title but a characterization, as in
Isa. 1:26 and 9:6. The name “Immanuel” shows that He
really was “God with us.” Thus the Deity of Christ is
stressed at the very beginning of Matthew.[ii]
We are then
immediately drawn to John 1:1: In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. Charles Ryrie well sums up the deep significance
of this verse:
Before time began, Christ
was already in existence with God. That is what is meant
by the term “the pre-existent Christ.” See Gen. 1:1 and
1 John 1:1. Logos [Word] means “word, thought,
concept, and the expressions thereof.” In the OT the
concept conveyed activity and revelation, and the word
or wisdom of God is often personified (Ps. 33:6; Prov.
8). In the Targums (Aramaic paraphrases of the OT) it
was a designation of God. To the Greek mind it expressed
the ideas of reason and creative control. Revelation is
the keynote idea in the logos concept. Here it is
applied to Jesus, who is all that God is and the
expression of Him (1:1, 14). In this verse the Word
(Christ) is said to be with God (i.e., in
communion with and yet distinct from God) and to be God
(i.e., identical in essence with God).[iii]
John 1:14 goes on to
declare, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Only
the most dishonest or foolish “interpreter” would deny
what these verses unmistakably declare concerning Jesus
Christ.
Besides the many
confessions of Jesus as God by his followers—Peter
(Matt.16:16-17), Martha (Jn. 11:27), Nathaniel (1:49),
Stephen (Acts 7:59), and Paul (Acts 20:28; Heb.
1:8)—more importantly Jesus Himself claimed He was God. This silences those who
argue, “Well, Jesus’ followers were deluded; they
thought He was God, but He didn’t really claim deity.”
One key passage is John 5:16-18, where Jesus had just
healed a lame man on the Sabbath:
And therefore did the Jews
persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had
done these things on the sabbath day. But Jesus answered
them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Therefore
the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not
only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was
his Father, making himself equal with God.
While our culture
might understand these words to mean, “Big deal. My
father is working and I’m working. So what?” the Jews
heard something far different. Based on their culture
and traditions, what those religious leaders heard was
this: “By using the term my Father instead of
our Father, this man is claiming equality
with God. This man is, in fact, claiming to
be God.” And that is what
enraged them.
The same thing happened on
another occasion:
I and my Father are one.
Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus
answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my
Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The
Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee
not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a
man, makest thyself God (John 10:30-33; cf. 17:11;
17:21-23).
The Jews knew
exactly what Jesus was claiming to be. His
statement, in fact, becomes all the more offensive to
the Jewish ear because the Greek for “one” is neuter not
masculine, which therefore means not one in
person but one in essence or
nature. Jesus was clearly saying
that He was the same as God, and the Jews went berserk.
Perhaps the most
unmistakable claim of all that Jesus made to deity
appears in John 8:58: “Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am.” To use the term “I am”
denotes not just existence before Abraham, but rather a
claim to be Yahweh of the Old Testament, as God revealed
Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14. And once again, the
Jews understood immediately what Jesus claimed and “took
they up stones to cast at him” Jn. 8:59).
Still another statement
from our Lord’s own mouth appears in John 14:10: “Have I
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known
me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”
Jesus claimed that He was so like the Father that to see
Him was to see the Father. There is, in fact, even a
mild note of rebuke in our Lord’s words, namely, to fail
to recognize that Jesus is God is to fail to know Jesus
at all.
One author tells of a
businessman who scrutinized the Bible to verify whether
or not Jesus actually claimed to be God and said, “For
anyone to read the New Testament and not conclude that
Jesus claimed to be God, he would have to be as blind as
a man standing outdoors on a clear day and saying he
can’t see the sun.”[iv]
That is why we can
only come to one of three conclusions about Jesus. He
was either a liar, the biggest fraud who ever
lived, or He was a lunatic because He ultimately
died for His false claim, or He was exactly what He said
He was—Lord. He repeatedly spoke of His equality with the
Father:
All men should honour the
Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth
not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him
(Jn. 5:23).
Ye neither know me, nor my
Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my
Father also (8:19).
And he that seeth me seeth
him that sent me (12:45).
He that hateth me hateth
my Father also (15:23).
To this we should also add
that according to Jewish law, only God could forgive
sins, but this is precisely what Jesus did in Mark 2:5:
“When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of
the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Once again
the religious leaders were horrified and asked, “Doth
this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins
but God only?” (v. 7), to which the Lord Jesus asked,
“Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy,
Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up
thy bed, and walk?” (v. 9).
So to answer that
pastor’s statement, “It’s too bad the Bible just doesn’t
say, ‘Jesus was God,’” that’s precisely what it
does say. To the Jews’ ears,
Jesus’ statements were just as clear as the words “Jesus
was God” are to our ears. They knew exactly what He was
claiming, and they went berserk; likewise many are still
doing so today because they refuse to admit Jesus was
(and is) God.
Turning to the New
Testament Epistles, Paul wrote to the Philippians:
“[Christ], being in the form of God, thought it not
robbery to be equal with God” (2:6). That clearly states
that Jesus was God before His incarnation. Charles Ryrie
offers this paraphrase, “Who, though of the same nature
as God, did not think this something to be exploited to
His own advantage.” Another writer adds that the words
“thought it not robbery to be equal with God” is “an
expression which means ‘did not think it necessary to
grasp at deity.’ No ambition to become God could plague
Christ since He was in fact God!”[v] Further, while He took on
human form—the words “form of a servant” in verse 7 are
the Greek morphen doulou, “the nature or essence
of a slave”—and while He set aside His divine glory for
a time, His divine nature was in no way less than it had
ever been. “The incarnation was not a subtraction of
deity, but an addition of humanity.”[vi]
Paul likewise wrote
to the Colossians, “[Christ] is before all things, and
by him all things consist” (1:17), thereby asserting
both His preexistence and position as Creator. He again
writes, “For in [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the
Godhead bodily” (2:9). That is another important verse.
The Greek behind “fullness” is
pleroma, which refers to
“that which is filled” and was used of a ship being
filled with sailors, rowers, soldiers, and even cargo.
Paul is, therefore, saying that Christ is filled with
everything that God is, His very nature and
character.
While we could examine
much more, Paul well summed it up in his letter to
Titus: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious
appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”
(2:13). Could Scripture be any plainer as to Jesus being
God in the flesh? Those who reject that are apostate
indeed.
Dr. J.
D. Watson
Pastor-Teacher
Grace
Bible Church
*
* *
The
“God-Man” in Philippians 2:5-8
By
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Now this passage has often been
misunderstood. If I had been delivering these addresses,
say, forty or fifty years ago [the date of this article
was about 1952], in the time of the new theology,
so-called, and the “kenosis” theory, I would have had to
spend a great deal of time on these verses. The
Revised Version unfortunately translates “made
himself of no reputation” as “emptied himself,” and that
word “emptied” has led to all the trouble. Incidentally,
it is a bad translation; the Authorised
Version is altogether superior
there, as I hope to show you.
Now I often feel
that people have got into trouble with this passage
because they have forgotten the context. The passage
begins, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus,” and the context is, “Look not every man
on his own things, but every man also on the things of
others.” Paul is not setting out here to give a
doctrine, as it were, of the person of Christ; he is
giving a practical appeal about conduct. So what does he
say? Well, take this word form—“Who, being in the form of God”—what is this?
Form is the sum total of the qualities that make a thing
what it is. Take, for instance, a piece of metal; that
piece of metal can be either a sword or a ploughshare,
though it is the same metal. And when I talk about “the
form” of a sword I mean the thing that makes that piece
of metal a sword rather than a ploughshare. So if I take
a sword and smelt it down and turn it into a
ploughshare, I have changed its form. That is a most
important point.
Then there is this word
“being”—“Who, being in the form of God”—that means that
He already was in the form of God before He came into
this world. He always was God. That is the assertion.
Then take the phrase, “thought it not robbery to be
equal with God.” [In other words], He “did not regard it
as a prize to be grasped at”; He “did not regard it as
something to be held on to at all costs.” No, He did not
do that. He did not hold on to this form of Godhead, to
this equality with God which He had. What, then, did He
do? Well, instead of that, He “made himself of no
reputation.” He did not “empty himself” of anything; He
took another form.
And so the apostle says,
in effect, “Now you Philippians ought to be doing what
He did. You are all of you looking after your own things
and not the things of others. You ought to be very
grateful that the Son of God did not do that. He did not
hold on to His equality with God; He made Himself of no
reputation. He did not look on His own things; He looked
on you and your needs, and He came down to earth in
order to help you. You must do the same.” Notice the
emphasis; Paul is not telling these Philippians to turn
their natures into something else. No. He says, “You
must now humble yourselves, though you still remain what
you are.” So our Lord did not empty anything. He did not
empty Himself of His Godhead. But He did not hold on to
the manifestations of that Godhead. He did not hold on
to the power of the Godhead, as it were, to the
assertion of it. No, Paul says again in verse 8, “he
humbled himself.” He remained the same, but He came in
this humble form. He came, Paul tells us, “in the form
of a servant.” Now, as we have seen, the form is the
consummation of those qualities that make a thing what
it is, so He really was a true servant. He came and
lived as a real servant, though He was still God. He did
not empty His Godhead out or cease to be God. What
happened was that He did not go on aserting this
equality, but came in “the form of a
servant.”
Now the apostle is
obviously emphasising this point because why else does
he say “in the likeness of men”? If our Lord left the
Godhead behind and become a man, Paul would never have
used that phrase; he would have said He was “made a man'
“But he does not say that; he says He was made “in the
likeness of men.” Then again, he says, ”And being found
in fashion as a man.” Why these expressions? If He had
emptied Himself of deity, if He had ceased to be God,
Paul would not be talking about “likeness” and
“fashion”; he would just say that He who was God also
became man. Again, he does not say that, but what he
does say is that though our Lord was still in the form
of God, He became man also. Far from pouring anything
out, He took something on.
That is the doctrine of
the Scripture, that He who is still God, took the form
of a servant, He was made “in the likeness of men” and
was found “in fashion as a man.” He took on this
something extra. He who was eternally God became man
also. And He lived and did His work in this world as a
servant. That is what Paul teaches. . . .
What, then, does all
this mean? It means that there was no change in His
deity, but that He took human nature to Himself, and
chose to live in this world as a man. He humbled Himself
in that way. He deliberately put limits upon Himself.
Now we cannot go further. We do not know how He did it.
We cannot understand it, in a sense. But we believe
this: in order that He might live this life as a man,
while He was here on earth, He did not exercise certain
qualities of His Godhead. That was why . . . He needed
to be given the gift of the Holy Spirit without measure.
That was why He found it necessary to pray. He had not
ceased to be God. He said, in effect, to Nicodemus, “The
Son of man who is on earth and who is speaking to you is
still in heaven” (John 3:13). Yes; but He chose to live
as a man. He did not cease to be God, nor did He resign
any part of His Godhead, but He was now living in this
form as a servant and as a man. . . .
Beloved friends, let us
continue to look at Him, to consider Him, to look unto
Him, and let us measure and estimate our spiritual life,
not by feeling and experiences, but by our knowledge of
Him and our love for Him. He is the centre of
everything.
[Excerpted from
Chapter 25 (“God-Man: The Doctrine”) in Great
Doctrines of the Bible, Volume 1: God The Father, God
the Son (Crossway Books, 1996),
pp. 285-8.]
*
* *
So,
following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice
teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect
in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a
rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father
as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial
with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects
except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father
as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same
for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin
God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same
Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two
natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no
division, no separation; at no point was the difference
between the natures taken away through the union, but
rather the property of both natures is preserved and
comes together into a single person and a single
subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two
persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God,
Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught
from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus
Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the
fathers handed it down to us.
Council
of Chalcedon (451 AD)
[ii] Scofield
Reference Bible; note on Matt.
1:23.
[iii] Ryrie Study
Bible (NASB; Moody Press;
emphasis in the original).
[iv] Cited in Josh
McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, p. 14.
[v] W. A. Criswell,
The Believer’s Study Bible
(Criswell Center for Biblical Studies, 1991), comment on
Philippians 2:6.
