More Than a Carpenter (3 page)

Jesus received honor and worship that only God should receive. In a confrontation with Satan, Jesus said, “For the Scriptures say, ‘You must worship the L
ORD
your God and serve only him’” (Matthew 4:10). Yet Jesus received worship as God (see Matthew 14:33; 28:9) and sometimes even claimed to be worthy of worship as God (see John 5:23; Hebrews 1:6; Revelation 5:8-14). Most of the early followers of Jesus were devout Jews who believed in one true God. They were monotheistic to the core, yet as the following examples show, they recognized him as God incarnate.

Because of the apostle Paul’s extensive rabbinical training, he would be an unlikely person to attribute deity to Jesus, to worship a man from Nazareth and call him Lord. But this is exactly what Paul did. He acknowledged Jesus as God when he said, “Feed and shepherd God’s flock—his church, purchased with his own blood—over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders” (Acts 20:28).

After Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was, Simon Peter confessed, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus responded to Peter’s confession, not by correcting the man’s conclusion, but by acknowledging its validity and source: “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being” (Matthew 16:17).

Martha, a close friend of Jesus, said to him, “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God” (John 11:27). Then there is the plainspoken Nathanael, who didn’t believe anything good could come out of Nazareth. He admitted to Jesus, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God—the King of Israel!” (John 1:49). While the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was being stoned, he cried out and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). The writer of the book of Hebrews calls Christ God when he writes, “To the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever’” (Hebrews 1:8).

Then, of course, we have Thomas, better known as “the doubter.” (Perhaps he was a graduate student.) He said, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side” (John 20:25). I identify with Thomas. He was saying, “Look, not every day does someone raise himself from the dead or claim to be God incarnate. If you expect me to believe, I need evidence.” Eight days later, after Thomas had expressed his doubts about Jesus to the other disciples, Jesus suddenly appeared. “‘Peace be with you,’ he said. Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!’ ‘My Lord and my God!’ Thomas exclaimed.” (John 20:26-28). Jesus accepted Thomas’s acknowledgment of him as God. He rebuked Thomas for his unbelief but not for his worship.

What Do You Think?

Would you consider yourself more of a Martha (always a believer) or a Thomas (a doubter) or a Nathanael (a cynic) in your attitudes about Jesus?

At this point a critic might interject that all these claims are from others about Christ, not from Christ about himself. People who lived at the time of Christ misunderstood him as we misunderstand him today. They attributed deity to him, but he didn’t really claim it for himself.

Well, when we delve deeper into the pages of the New Testament, we find that Christ did indeed make this claim. The references are abundant, and their meaning is plain. A businessman who scrutinized the Scriptures to verify whether or not Christ claimed to be God said, “Anyone who reads the New Testament and does not conclude that Jesus claimed to be divine would have to be as blind as a man standing outdoors on a clear day and saying he can’t see the sun.”

In the Gospel of John we have a confrontation between Jesus and a group of Jews. It was triggered by the fact that Jesus had cured a lame man on the Sabbath. (Jews were forbidden to do any work on the Sabbath.) “So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. But Jesus replied, ‘My Father is always working, and so am I.’ So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God” (John 5:16-18).

What Do You Think?

Why do you think the Jewish leaders were so enraged with Jesus after he healed on the Sabbath? Was it because he did it on a sacred day or something else?

You might say, “Look, Josh, I can’t see how this proves anything. Jesus called God his Father. So what? All Christians call God their Father, but this doesn’t mean they are claiming to be God.” The Jews of Jesus’ time heard in Jesus’ words a meaning that is easily lost to us now. Whenever we study a document, we must take into account the language, the culture, and especially the person or persons the document addresses. In this case, the culture is Jewish, and the persons addressed are Jewish religious leaders. And something about what Jesus said really got under their skin. “So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). What could he have said to cause such a drastic reaction? Let’s look at the passage and see how the Jews understood Jesus’ remarks more than two thousand years ago in their own culture.

Their problem was that Jesus said “
my
Father,” not “
our
Father.” By the rules of their language, Jesus’ use of this phrase was a claim to be equal with God. The Jews did not refer to God as “my Father.” Or if they did, they would always qualify the statement by adding the phrase “in heaven.” However, Jesus did not add the phrase. He made a claim the Jews could not misinterpret when he called God “my Father.”

To make matters worse, by the phrase “My Father is always working, and so am I,” Jesus was putting his own activity on an equal plane with God’s. Again the Jews understood that he was claiming to be God’s Son. As a result, their hatred of Jesus grew. Until this point they had been seeking only to persecute him, but soon they began to plan to kill him.

Not only did Jesus claim equality with God as his Father, but he also asserted that he was one with the Father. During the Feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem, some of the other Jewish leaders approached Jesus and questioned him about whether he was the Christ. Jesus concluded his comments to them by saying, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). “Once again the people picked up stones to kill him. Jesus said, ‘At my Father’s direction I have done many good works. For which one are you going to stone me?’” (John 10:31-32).

One might wonder why the Jews reacted so strongly to what Jesus said about being one with the Father. The structure of the phrase in the Greek gives us an answer. A. T. Robertson, the foremost Greek scholar of his day, writes that in the Greek the word
one
in this passage is neuter, not masculine, and does not indicate one in person or purpose but rather one in “essence or nature.” Robertson then adds, “This crisp statement is the climax of Christ’s claims about the relation between the Father and himself [the Son]. They stir the Pharisees to uncontrollable anger.”
²

It is evident that in this statement the Jews clearly heard Jesus claiming to be God. Thus, Leon Morris, former principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, writes that

the Jews could regard Jesus’ word only as blasphemy, and they proceeded to take the judgment into their own hands. It was laid down in the Law that blasphemy was to be punished by stoning (see Leviticus 24:16). But these men were not allowing the due processes of law to take their course. They were not preparing an indictment so that the authorities could take the requisite action. In their fury they were preparing to be judges and executioners in one.
³

The Jews threatened Jesus with stoning for “blasphemy,” which tells us that they definitely understood his claim to be God. But, we may ask, did they stop to consider whether or not this claim was true?

What Do You Think?

The Jews wanted to stone Jesus for blasphemy. Was their own guilt over not believing him beginning to convict them? Or were they just jealous of his popularity?

Jesus continually spoke of himself as one in essence and nature with God. He boldly asserted, “If you knew me, you would also know my Father” (John 8:19). “For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me” (John 12:45). “Anyone who hates me also hates my Father” (John 15:23). “Everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him” (John 5:23). These references definitely indicate that Jesus looked at himself as being more than just a man; he claimed to be equal with God. Those who say that Jesus was just closer or more intimate with God than others need to consider his statement, “Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him.”

While I was lecturing in a literature class at a university in West Virginia, a professor interrupted me and said that the only Gospel in which Jesus claimed to be God was John’s Gospel, and it was the latest one written. He then asserted that Mark, the earliest Gospel, never once mentioned that Jesus claimed to be God. This man simply had not read Mark carefully.

In response I turned to Mark’s Gospel, to a passage in which Jesus claimed to be able to forgive sins. “Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven’” (Mark 2:5; see also Luke 7:48-50). According to Jewish theology, only God could say such a thing; Isaiah 43:25 restricts forgiveness of sin to the prerogative of God alone. When the scribes heard Jesus forgiving the man’s sins, they asked, “What is he saying? This is blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!” (Mark 2:7). Jesus then asked which would be easier to say to a paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven” or “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk”?

According to
The Wycliffe Bible Commentary,
this is

an unanswerable question. The statements are equally simple to pronounce; but to say either, with accompanying performance, requires divine power. An imposter, of course, in seeking to avoid detection, would find the former easier. Jesus proceeded to heal the illness that men might know that he had authority to deal with its cause.
⁴

At this the religious leaders accused him of blasphemy. Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder and first president of Dallas Theological Seminary, writes that

none on earth has either authority or right to forgive sin. None could forgive sin save the One against whom all have sinned. When Christ forgave sin, as he certainly did, He was not exercising a human prerogative. Since none but God can forgive sins, it is conclusively demonstrated that Christ, since he forgave sins, is God.
⁵

What Do You Think?

In this instance, why do you think Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven” instead of “Stand up and walk”?

This concept of forgiveness bothered me for quite a while because I didn’t understand it. One day in a philosophy class, answering a question about the deity of Christ, I quoted Mark 2:5. A graduate assistant challenged my conclusion that Christ’s forgiveness of sin demonstrates his deity. He said that he could forgive people without the act’s demonstrating any claim to be God. People do it all the time. As I pondered what the man was saying, the answer suddenly struck me. I knew why the religious leaders reacted so strongly against Christ. Yes, one can say, “I forgive you,” but only if he is the one who has been sinned against. If you sin against me, I have the right to forgive you. But if you sin against someone else, I have no such right. The paralytic had not sinned against the man Jesus; the two men had never even seen each other before. The paralytic had sinned against God. Then along came Jesus, who under his own authority said, “Your sins are forgiven.” Yes, we can forgive sins committed against us, but in no way can anyone forgive sins committed against God except God himself. Yet that is what Jesus claimed to do.

What Do You Think?

Do you agree that no one can forgive sins committed against God except God himself?

It’s no wonder the Jews reacted so violently when a carpenter from Nazareth made such a bold claim. This assertion that he could forgive sin was a startling exercise of a prerogative that belongs only to God.

Another situation in which Jesus claimed to be the Son of God was at his trial (see Mark 14:60-64). Those trial proceedings contain some of the clearest references to Jesus’ claims of deity. “Then the high priest stood up before the others and asked Jesus, ‘Well, aren’t you going to answer these charges? What do you have to say for yourself?’ Jesus made no reply. Then the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God?’ Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see me, the Son of Man, sitting at God’s right hand in the place of power and coming back on the clouds of heaven’” (Mark 14:60-62).

At first Jesus wouldn’t answer, so the high priest put him under oath. Because Jesus was under oath, he had to answer (and I’m so glad he did). He responded to the question, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God?” by saying, “I am.”

Jesus’ reference to “the Son of Man” who would be “coming on the clouds of heaven,” was an allusion to Daniel 7:13-14 (
nasb
):