One of the most important features of Christian faith is accepting that Jesus is God. Christians are in trouble, then, if Jesus never made such a claim of himself! Yet many have argued that this is exactly the case: Jesus never claimed to be God, they say, and his divinity is an invention of the Christian church. Is this true?
I have found that there are two main reasons why people think Jesus never claimed to be God. Let’s take a look!
Jesus never said the exact phrase, “I am God”
Some people believe Jesus never claimed to be God because, in reading the Gospels of Jesus, they simply don’t see Jesus saying “I am God” (or something along those lines). While it’s true that the Gospels never quote Jesus saying, “I am God,” the Gospels still include statements from Jesus that clearly identify him with God. Examples include “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) and “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). I work through many more verses In one of my early YouTube videos, “Did Jesus really Say He was God?” While it’s always possible to reinterpret or raise skepticism over the meaning of any statement, the most natural and common-sense understanding of these quotations is that Jesus is claiming to be God.
The Gospel of John is not reliable
The second reason given to deny Jesus’s claim to divinity is this: to challenge the historical reliability of the Gospel of John. It’s well understood that John has the clearest examples of Jesus claiming to be God, and it was (probably) also the latest of the four Gospels written. So, many conclude that Jesus never claimed to be God, yet legend developed over time that he did. The earliest Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—did not include this legend because not enough time had passed. But John, which came later, has the legendary stuff. Notice how this argument admits that John presents Jesus as God, but it denies that John is a good source to use.
This second approach is a more thoughtful and sophisticated argument than the first. However, it has some big challenges:
1. Although it is difficult to date the Gospel of John, the more liberal, late estimates are around 100 AD. This is, at most, about 40 years after the earliest Gospels were written. Are we really saying such a crazy legend of Jesus developed in the 40 years between John and the other Gospels? This is hardly enough time for legend to develop. Normally, legends develop after centuries of time, and the original eyewitness of the event, their children, and their children, have long passed away. In the case of the Gospel of John, many of the original eyewitnesses of Jesus could have still been around when the book was written!
2.The ancient writer Irenaeus knew Polycarp, who knew John (a disciple and eyewitness of Jesus). Irenaeus informs us that John wrote the Gospel of John (Writing to Florinus H.E. 5.20.5–6). Given how John dedicated his career to spreading the message of Jesus, his memory would have stayed fresh, and it’s unlikely that he would have allowed such a massive mistake to slip into his Gospel in multiple places.
3. Even if we don’t use the Gospel of John, there are still clues that Jesus saw himself as God in the other Gospels, which came earlier.
- In Matthew 9:12–13, Jesus quoted God from the Old Testament, speaking as if God’s words were his own words.
- In Matthew 23:34, Jesus said, “I send you prophets.” Yet, in the Old Testament, God is always the one who sends prophets.
- Jesus taught from the Old Testament that you must worship God alone. (Mt. 4:10; Lk. 4:8). Yet he allowed himself to be worshiped. (Mt. 14:33, 21:15-16, 28:17.)
- Jesus refers to himself as the “Son of Man” over 80 times in the gospels. In Matthew 16:27, Mark 14:62, and Luke 21:27, Jesus connects the “Son of Man” to the person in Daniel 7, coming with the clouds of Heaven, given glory, authority, sovereign power, and worship by all peoples of every kind.
4. We have Christian writings calling Jesus God written at the same time or even earlier than Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Romans 9:5, Philippians 2:6, and Colossians 2:9 are some examples of this.
So, although the “legend” theory may sound impressive, it fails to make sense of everything we know historically. A much more reasonable explanation for these ancient Christian writings calling Jesus God is that Jesus, in fact, claimed to be God.
