The aim of this arti­cle

What does the New Tes­ta­ment teach about who Jesus is? This very issue led to con­tro­ver­sies from the first cen­turies onwards and is a rea­son for schisms even today. Although we gen­er­al­ly do not reject the thoughts and the ideas of the peri­od of the Church Fathers and the ear­ly coun­cils, we want to con­cen­trate rather on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the Holy Scrip­ture, because that is the ulti­mate source of every­thing we believe. In spite of the human short­com­ings of the authors of the New Tes­ta­ment we trust deeply in God that he pro­vides clear answers to the most impor­tant ques­tions of faith, so that every­one who is look­ing for the truth may come to the same under­stand­ing. In this arti­cle we pre­sup­pose the entire­ly human nature of Jesus—who called him­self the “Son of Man”—and we abstain entire­ly from ascrib­ing his puri­ty and his per­fect devo­tion to God and peo­ple to his divin­i­ty. Our aim is to prove that accord­ing to the New Tes­ta­ment Jesus is the true God—of the same nature as the Father.

1 The Concept of a Divine Messiah Is Not Foreign to the Old Testament

Some pas­sages in the Old Tes­ta­ment already hint at the divin­i­ty of the Mes­si­ah, even if the major­i­ty ref­er­ences to Israel’s Sav­iour do not allow this con­clu­sion. One pas­sage that stands out among the few excep­tions is Daniel 7:13–14.

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heav­en there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was pre­sent­ed before him. And to him was giv­en domin­ion and glo­ry and a king­dom, that all peo­ples, nations, and lan­guages should serve him; his domin­ion is an ever­last­ing domin­ion, which shall not pass away, and his king­dom one that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13–14)

Here the Son of Man, who is clear­ly dis­tin­guished from “the Ancient of Days”, receives divine ado­ra­tion. Fur­ther­more, the sto­ry teach­es the simul­ta­ne­ous exis­tence of God’s king­dom and earth­ly author­i­ties who had been robbed of their for­mer pow­er (verse 12). From this fact it is pos­si­ble to derive that the Mes­sian­ic King­dom has a spir­i­tu­al and not a polit­i­cal char­ac­ter. These two points might have been a rea­son for Jesus to choose the title “Son of Man” as his most fre­quent self-des­ig­na­tion.

I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begot­ten you.” (Psalm 2:7)

Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever. The scep­tre of your king­dom is a scep­tre of upright­ness; (Psalm 45:6)

Although Psalm 2:7 and Psalm 45:6 do not speak of the divin­i­ty of the Mes­si­ah as clear­ly as the pas­sage in Daniel 7, this inter­pre­ta­tion can­not be entire­ly exclud­ed. At any rate, the usu­al expla­na­tions refer­ring them to Solomon and to oth­er kings are dis­sat­is­fy­ing if one con­sid­ers the per­son­al­i­ty and the polit­i­cal impor­tance these rulers had. Psalm 45 will reap­pear lat­er in our dis­cus­sion.

The peo­ple who walked in dark­ness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep dark­ness, on them has light shined. You have mul­ti­plied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the har­vest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his bur­den, and the staff for his shoul­der, the rod of his oppres­sor, you have bro­ken as on the day of Mid­i­an. For every boot of the tramp­ing war­rior in bat­tle tumult and every gar­ment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is giv­en; and the gov­ern­ment shall be upon his shoul­der, and his name shall be called Won­der­ful Coun­sel­lor, Mighty God, Ever­last­ing Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his gov­ern­ment and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his king­dom, to estab­lish it and to uphold it with jus­tice and with right­eous­ness from this time forth and for ever­more. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isa­iah 9:1–7)

Among the prophet­ic texts Isa­iah 9:1–7 (the prophe­cy of the Prince of Peace) is per­haps the most telling exam­ple. Although the prophet him­self pre­sum­ably thought of the king-to-be Hezeki­ah (cf. Isa­iah 7:14–17), his words are so deeply inspired that none of the earth­ly, polit­i­cal rulers were or ever will be able to ful­fil them. It seems to have fre­quent­ly occurred that prophets were unable to grasp all the aspects of the mean­ing of God’s thoughts which they them­selves com­mu­ni­cat­ed, fail­ing to fore­see hori­zons too far off for them. But who among mere humans could we ever call “Won­der­ful Coun­sel­lor, Mighty God, Ever­last­ing Father, Prince of Peace”?

2 The Testimony of the Synoptic Gospels

But the hope for a pow­er­ful earth­ly ruler in the man­ner of David was deeply root­ed in Jew­ish thought and Jesus had to take this phe­nom­e­non into con­sid­er­a­tion, too. In fact, many of Jesus’ state­ments and actions were aimed at help­ing his audi­ence change their per­cep­tion of the Mes­si­ah, and con­se­quent­ly their view of God. It is against this back­ground that his min­istry takes on its true sig­nif­i­cance. The reports of all four gospels are in agree­ment here. How­ev­er, there is a notice­able dif­fer­ence in the depth of the descrip­tion in the syn­op­tic Gospels on the one hand and the Gospel of John on the oth­er. Let us con­sid­er the for­mer scrip­tures first.

The gospels of Matthew and Luke both begin with a descrip­tion of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Jesus’ con­cep­tion and birth. How­ev­er, the dif­fer­ences between them—most of which can be eas­i­ly explained—lead to the infer­ence that the two gospels drew on dif­fer­ent sources of infor­ma­tion. This being the case, they do both agree on one very impor­tant point: Joseph is not the father of Jesus, but it is God who caused the mirac­u­lous con­cep­tion in the womb of the vir­gin Mary. The agree­ment of the two gospels strength­ens the cred­i­bil­i­ty of this fact. Mark’s silence about this mat­ter has appar­ent­ly mere struc­tur­al rea­sons. In fact Mark does not say any­thing about Jesus’ ori­gin and child­hood, how­ev­er the expres­sion “son of Mary”, used in Mark 6:3 (com­pare the par­al­lels in Matthew 13:55 and Luke 4:22) reveals a good deal of his insight into the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the birth of Jesus. At that time it was com­mon prac­tice to name a per­son after his father. The fact that peo­ple referred to Jesus as the “son of Mary” sug­gests that they did­n’t regard Joseph as his father. Thus these gospels deliv­er a pow­er­ful indi­ca­tion of Jesus’ divine nature which can oth­er­wise be derived from but a few fur­ther pas­sages, such as Matthew 11:25–30; 23:37–39; Mark 2:1–12. But these state­ments of Jesus are not con­vinc­ing by them­selves because their inten­tion is not to reveal his divin­i­ty. Yet a full under­stand­ing of these pas­sages with­out acknowl­edg­ing Jesus’ divin­i­ty is impos­si­ble. Where­as Matthew 25:31 is in itself a clear indi­ca­tion of his divin­i­ty, because the Son of Man who comes in glo­ry is also the judge of the world, a func­tion plain­ly ascribed to God alone. Fur­ther­more, the gospel writer describes the way the dis­ci­ples wor­shipped Jesus in words that were reserved exclu­sive­ly for the wor­ship of God (Matthew 28:9,17) by which he shows who he con­sid­ered Jesus to be. Final­ly the expres­sion to bap­tise “in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spir­it” in Matthew 28:19 speaks for itself.

3 The Divinity of Jesus in the Letters of Paul

We should also expect to find the same tes­ti­mo­ny in the books of the New Tes­ta­ment that pro­vide us with infor­ma­tion about the life and teach­ing of the first Chris­tians, first and fore­most in the let­ters of Paul. How­ev­er, it is worth not­ing that Paul appar­ent­ly does not feel any need to explain Christ’s nature to his addressees—he sim­ply shared the very same belief with them. For him, faith in Jesus means sal­va­tion, which in itself requires Jesus’ divin­i­ty. Nev­er­the­less, we find a few pas­sages that stress Jesus’ divin­i­ty in such a strong way that deny­ing this fact would require chang­ing the text.

In Philip­pi­ans we find Christ’s spir­it equat­ed with the Holy Spir­it (1:19), and right after that (1:23) he defines being with God sim­ply as being with Christ. Chap­ter 2:5–11 is espe­cial­ly obvi­ous, because here he direct­ly express­es that Jesus is of the same nature as God, and receives ado­ra­tion that is reserved for God alone.

Have this mind among your­selves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equal­i­ty with God a thing to be grasped, but made him­self noth­ing, tak­ing the form of a ser­vant, being born in the like­ness of men. And being found in human form, he hum­bled him­self by becom­ing obe­di­ent to the point of death, even death on a cross. There­fore God has high­ly exalt­ed him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, in heav­en and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue con­fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glo­ry of God the Father. (Philip­pi­ans 2:5–11)

Colos­sians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invis­i­ble God, the first­born of all creation”,—an expres­sion that refers to the degree of rela­tion­ship between the Father and the Son, i.e. his close­ness to the Father. Paul goes on to say, “all things were cre­at­ed through him and for him”, which would not be true if Christ were not God. Lat­er on in 2:9 Paul writes, “For in him the whole full­ness of deity dwells bod­i­ly”, which can hard­ly be inter­pret­ed as any­thing less than God. Like­wise, in Titus 2:13 he express­es what all Chris­tians are wait­ing for: “…the appear­ing of the glo­ry of our great God and Sav­iour Jesus Christ.”

Unar­guably there is only one sav­iour, God him­self! The objec­tion that in many pas­sages Paul teach­es a Christ sub­or­di­nat­ed to God (e.g. 1 Corinthi­ans 15:27 f.—this pas­sage and in fact the whole chap­ter sheds light on Jesus as the res­ur­rect­ed one. Res­ur­rec­tion, how­ev­er, is some­thing reserved for man only) can­not reduce the valid­i­ty of the above men­tioned state­ments. One is rather forced to admit that he nat­u­ral­ly and non-dog­mat­i­cal­ly deep­ens the teach­ing of the two natures of Jesus. More­over one has to con­cede that Paul, who was very famil­iar with what we call the Old Tes­ta­ment, want­ed to back up this under­stand­ing by allu­sions and quo­ta­tions from these Holy Scrip­tures, e.g. com­pare 1 Corinthi­ans 2:8 with Psalm 24:7–9 and Exo­dus 24:16, com­pare 1 Corinthi­ans 10:4,9 with Psalm 78:15 and Exo­dus 17:6 f. and com­pare Romans 10:9–13 with Joel 2:32 and Psalm 145:18.

4 The Book of Acts and Other New Testament Letters Testify of Jesus’ Divinity

If we con­sid­er the rest of the NT-scriptures—leaving aside those writ­ten by John for the moment—we can find a num­ber of argu­ments. Thus, Luke ren­ders the words of Stephen dur­ing his lynch­ing (Acts 7:51–60) in a way that Jesus’ mes­sian­ic, divine and human natures are so close­ly con­nect­ed that the only good solu­tion is to acknowl­edge His two natures.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the writer of the let­ter to the Hebrews tes­ti­fies to Jesus’ divin­i­ty by quot­ing from the Scrip­ture. He refers the mes­sian­ic Psalm 45 to Jesus ren­der­ing the Hebrew “Elo­him” with the Greek word “Theos” (1:8 f.)¹. Jesus can there­fore be seen as no less than God. Fur­ther on he directs the praise giv­en to God in Psalm 102² to Christ (1:10–12)³, which shows that the Chris­tians con­sid­ered Him to be the cre­ator.

Final­ly, Peter’s fre­quent rep­e­ti­tion of the terms, “Lord” and “Sav­iour” in his sec­ond let­ter reveals his own con­vic­tion. These terms are explic­it­ly applied to Jesus in 1:1,2,8,11,14,16; 2:1,20; 3:2,18 and rather to God in 2:9,11; 3:8 ff.,15, though these pas­sages could also be applied to Jesus, which shows clear­ly that Peter pre­sup­posed Jesus’ divin­i­ty.

5 The Greatest Testimony: The Writings of the Apostle John

All these tes­ti­monies are con­firmed, deep­ened and sur­passed by the writ­ings of John the apos­tle. He does not begin his gospel with a descrip­tion of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Jesus’ birth. Instead he invites his audi­ence to see the depths and mys­ter­ies of Christ’s nature in order to illu­mi­nate God’s great love for His cre­ation and so to explain the back­ground of Jesus’ com­ing.

Already in his first words (1:1–3)⁴ he explains that the Word of God—the “Logos”—is of the same nature as God the Father him­self. He says that this Word became flesh (1:14), which in turn tes­ti­fies to the divine and human nature of Jesus. In Verse 18, the state­ment, “…the only begot­ten God…” (NASB)—or accord­ing to some oth­er ear­ly man­u­scripts, “the only (begot­ten) Son”—”…who is at the Father’s side…”, makes Jesus’ equal­i­ty with the Father clear due to his being begot­ten. Since God is spir­it (John 4:24) and his exis­tence is eter­nal, also this beget­ting can only be eter­nal. Con­se­quent­ly, verse 18 does not depict a lat­er begin­ning of the Son’s exis­tence, but it is an appro­pri­ate char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the inti­mate rela­tion­ship between the two per­sons who are in com­plete uni­ty both in nature and mind. This mes­sage is repeat­ed and con­firmed in the sub­se­quent chap­ters that nar­rate Jesus’ min­istry. How­ev­er John does not neglect the human side of Christ. On the con­trary, this gospel—a first hand account writ­ten by one of the Lord’s clos­est acquaintances—portrays in a vivid and cred­i­ble fash­ion the remark­able earth­ly min­istry of Jesus, as well as the thoughts of the dis­ci­ples who had to inter­nalise all the dras­tic and chal­leng­ing real­i­ties tak­ing place before their eyes. John pro­vides the read­er with a clear and believ­able insight into the far-reach­ing con­se­quences of the events he expe­ri­enced and the knowl­edge and under­stand­ing that result­ed.

The way Jesus iden­ti­fied him­self, name­ly as the true image and the per­fect min­is­ter of God, is tes­ti­fied in numer­ous pas­sages. It is under­stand­able that He used clear state­ments con­cern­ing his divin­i­ty spar­ing­ly, for even His mes­sian­ic claim caused increas­ing oppo­si­tion. But it was pre­cise­ly in the vehe­ment con­tro­ver­sies with his main adver­saries that he could not and did not hide the truth about him­self, not least due to the pres­ence of his dis­ci­ples and hid­den adher­ents. Thus, in 8:37–59, in the course of the dis­pute over whether his oppo­nents were true descen­dants of Abra­ham, we find a pow­er­ful allu­sion to his deity, which his ene­mies reject­ed with all spon­tane­ity and indig­na­tion. His state­ment,

Tru­ly, tru­ly, I say to you, before Abra­ham was, I AM. (John 8:58)

far exceeds the claim—in itself hard­ly acceptable—that Abra­ham had seen him (8:56) leav­ing no room for an inter­pre­ta­tion oth­er than “I am God.” This strik­ing gram­mat­i­cal “error” had nev­er been “cor­rect­ed” in the course of copy­ing man­u­scripts, since all copy­ists through­out all ages under­stood the mean­ing of the words, “I AM”—this is the name of God from Exo­dus 3:14.

Like­wise, the Jews felt chal­lenged to stone Jesus in the sit­u­a­tion depict­ed in chap­ter 10:22–39, since Jesus claimed to have author­i­ty to give life and sal­va­tion. His words, “I and the Father are one” must have appeared to be an exam­ple of unspeak­able blas­phe­my to his already irri­tat­ed lis­ten­ers. And, real­ly, even if strict­ly speak­ing this state­ment still allows the inter­pre­ta­tion, “I and the Father are entire­ly like-mind­ed, one in spir­it, and we pur­sue exact­ly the same goal”, nam­ing one­self and the Father in one breath and in this sequence strength­ens the claim of hav­ing divine attrib­ut­es enor­mous­ly. At first glimpse, Jesus’ con­se­quent expla­na­tion seems to be a retreat, but final­ly, after turn­ing their own weapons against them, he sim­ply and plain­ly con­firms what he had said before. Actu­al­ly, the Jews should have giv­en up all oppo­si­tion then and there, for the tes­ti­mo­ny of Jesus’ deeds made his words reli­able. But even the great­est sign he ever performed—raising Lazarus from the dead, the sign that over­shad­owed all the oth­er incred­i­ble miracles—would not change their mind. On the con­trary, it trans­formed the stub­born­ness and hatred of the High Priests and the Phar­isees into a spe­cif­ic plan to elim­i­nate Jesus.

On the final evening before his cru­ci­fix­ion Jesus revealed many impor­tant things to his friends, where­by he con­tin­ued to sup­port the reli­a­bil­i­ty of his words: “Believe in God; believe also in me; I am the way, and the truth, and the life; Who­ev­er has seen me has seen the Father; I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:1–10) by the tes­ti­mo­ny of his deeds (14:11). He also pro­vid­ed his dis­ci­ples with a deep­er insight into His rela­tion­ship with the Father, and last but not least he explained to them the role of the Holy Spir­it. Although in this mat­ter the dis­ci­ples still dis­played a rather low lev­el of understanding—as we see from their ques­tions and state­ments in 14:5,8,22; 16:17 f. + 29 f.—slowly but sure­ly the seed of faith start­ed to sprout, cul­mi­nat­ing in Thomas’ spon­ta­neous con­fes­sion, “My Lord and my God” (20:28). Thus Thomas, who had at first even doubt­ed the res­ur­rec­tion of the Lord (20:24–25), sim­ply expressed what his friends had under­stood all the more before him. That is the con­vic­tion John want­ed to get across and to strength­en through­out his whole gospel.

In Rev­e­la­tion John reaf­firms what he claimed before in say­ing that Jesus is the “First and the Last” (1:17; cf. Isa­iah 44:6), who is wor­thy of praise in the same way as the One who is sit­ting on his throne (5:12–14), and who, like God (21:6), is “the Alpha and the Omega” (22:13). The fact that John refers clear monothe­is­tic state­ments in the Old Tes­ta­ment (Isa­iah 40:10 and 62:11) to Jesus should be suf­fi­cient to help those who deny Jesus’ divin­i­ty to change their mind. Nei­ther John nor the oth­er New Tes­ta­ment writ­ers want­ed to under­mine the Jew­ish belief in the one and only God. Instead, they con­sis­tent­ly tes­ti­fy that the Almighty God has revealed that He him­self is the mes­sian­ic Sav­iour of His nation and of all peo­ple, show­ing his ever­last­ing love to the world in his one and only begot­ten Son (If the Son were only a cre­at­ed being, God could have or still could send many such “sons”).

1. But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the scep­tre of upright­ness is the scep­tre of your king­dom. You have loved right­eous­ness and hat­ed wicked­ness; there­fore God, your God, has anoint­ed you with the oil of glad­ness beyond your com­pan­ions.” (Hebrews 1:8–9)  ↩
2. Of old you laid the foun­da­tion of the earth, and the heav­ens are the work of your hands. They will per­ish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a gar­ment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. (Psalm 102:25–27)  ↩
3. And, “You, Lord, laid the foun­da­tion of the earth in the begin­ning, and the heav­ens are the work of your hands; they will per­ish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a gar­ment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a gar­ment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.” (Hebrews 1:10–12)  ↩
4. In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the begin­ning with God. All things were made through him, and with­out him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1–3)  ↩