Does the Bible call Jesus 'God'? - Discovery Website

Does the Bible describe Jesus as 'God'?

Given the large number of remarkable correlations between the descriptions of Yahweh in the Old Testament and those of Jesus in the New (see Jesus and the Father), we might expect to find references to Jesus as 'God' appearing frequently in the New Testament. Astonishingly, however, this is not the case! All we have is a tiny handful of references, and all of these, barring just one, John 20.28, which is preserved even in the New World Translation of the Jehovah's Witnesses, are open to a range of interpretations either on textual and grammatical grounds.

One reason, it could be suggested, might be that the writers of the the New Testament were Jews for whom the idea of God appearing in human form was so revolutionary and so shocking that they had difficulty in expressing it openly on paper! This is certainly possible, though there were plenty of precedents in the Old Testament for such an idea (see Pointers to a Divine Messiah).

Another reason may have been to preserve a clear distinction between Jesus and the Father. Generally speaking, the New Testament prefers to describe the Father as 'God' (theos) but Jesus as 'Lord' (kyrios). Both of these were titles for Yahweh in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, but preserving the distinction of names avoids the impression that Jesus is the Father: the New Testament shows, rather, that they are both equally God (John 10.30; 14.10; Heb.1.8-9; 2 John 9), however difficult this might be to understand.

There may, however, be a further reason. What did it mean for God to become a man? Paul, in Philippians 2.5-8, seems to be saying that Jesus, though possessing the form or nature of God, did not exploit his equality with the Father, but emptied himself of divine privileges in becoming a human being like us. His identity is obscured, but it does not vanish. David Wells writes that, in taking on the human nature of Christ, 'God became incognito, but he did not disappear; he is hidden, but not lost'.<1>

In other words, while all the pointers in the New Testament may lead inexorably towards the divinity of Christ, the evidence, for the most part, is hidden just below the surface. So powerful is the force of this evidence, however, that the landscape appears unable fully to contain it, and the verses which describe Jesus directly as 'God' are the ones where it erupts, volcano-like, to the surface. These 'eruptions' sometimes come unexpectedly and unpredictably, as we find in the writings of Paul, and sometimes as part of a much bigger pattern, as we see in the writings of John. Yet they only serve to reinforce what is already a clear underlying trend.

In the links below, I have tried to observe a balance in the discussions of the individual verses in question. Some readers will find them too detailed and laborious; others, too sketchy and brief. For any reader wanting to plunge in 'head first', the most authoritative exploration of the subject is Murray Harris’s book Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids, Illinois: Baker Book House 1992).

In the end, we can be left in no doubt about Jesus' claim to be the full human expression of God: 'Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father' (John 14.9). The challenge to us, as with the apostle Thomas, is whether we can truly worship and serve Jesus as 'My Lord and my God' (John 20.28).

Index of verses discussed:

Matt 1.23|John 1.1|John 1.18|John 10.33|John 20.28|Acts 20.28|Rom 9.5|Phil 2.5-7|

Other verses in Paul|Examples elsewhere