Deity of Christ 3

The Light Shines in the Darkness...

All Scripture quotes are from the NASB (emphasis mine):

Colossians 1:19

For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him,

Commentary:

Paul is refuting the Gnostic belief that Jesus was a mere ‘aeon’, an angel of the ‘Pleroma’ (i.e. fullness; the word used by the Gnostics to refer to God the Father), a created being. Paul is saying that Jesus is indwelt with all the essence of God the Father.

Colossians 2:9

For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,

Paul again uses ‘pleroma’ (i.e. fullness) to describe Christ’s Deity. He implies that Christ is “of the same substance as the Father”. J.B. Lightfoot explains:

“The term pleroma, we may presume, was common to St. Paul and the Colossian heretics whom he controverts. To both alike it conveyed the same idea, the totality of the divine powers or attributes or agencies or manifestations. But after this the divergence begins. They maintained that a single divine power, a fraction of the pleroma, resided in our Lord: the Apostle urges on the contrary, that the whole pleroma has its abode in Him.”

-J.B. Lightfoot as quoted in Robert Morey, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues (Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 1996), p.361.

The attempt by Arians to get around this passage is futile. To make Christ a lesser god than God the Father is to agree with the Gnostics which would destroy Paul’s argument.

The Title ‘Savior’

Isaiah 43:11, Hosea 13:4, 1 Timothy 1:1, Jude 25 à John 4:42, 2 Timothy1:10, etc.

Isaiah 43:11

“I, even I, am the LORD, and there is no savior besides Me.”

Hosea 13:4

“Yet I have been the LORD your God since the land of Egypt; and you were not to know any god except Me, for there is no savior besides Me.”

1 Timothy 1:1

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope…

Jude 25

…to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Commentary:

Throughout the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament, YHWH says that He is the only Savior.

John 4:42

…and they were saying to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world.”

2 Timothy 1:10

…but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…

Commentary:

The New Testament applies the title savior to the Lord Jesus multiple times. What conclusion should we come to? Jesus is YHWH.

The Worship of Jesus

The worship of any other god other than YHWH (or Jehovah as some say it) is expressly forbidden in the Decalogue and multiple other times in the Old and New Testaments:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me.”

-Exodus 20:2-3

Then Jesus said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.’ ”

-Matthew 4:10

Thus, when we find people and angels worshipping Jesus in the New Testament and the writers of the New Testament giving much approval to this, we can come to only one conclusion: Jesus is God.

Matthew 2:11

After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Matthew 14:33

And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God's Son!”

Matthew 28:9

And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.

John 9:35-39

Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

Commentary:

The man that was given sight worshiped Christ, and Jesus never rebuked him. Rather, Christ accepted this worship and went on to give more glory to Himself.

Revelation 5:14

And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen.” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

Commentary:

In its context, they are worshiping the Lamb (i.e. the Lord Jesus).

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Texts Used By Arians

Luke 18:18-19

A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.”

Commentary:

Jesus was not denying His Deity, but rather, He was correcting the rich man’s anthropology. The rich man who came up to Christ assumed that Christ was just a “good teacher”, a mere man. Jesus, seeing into the man’s self-righteous heart, corrected his anthropology. The rich man’s self-righteousness became evident in the next few verses where he claimed to have kept the whole Law. Jesus then told him to do one more thing which exposed the rich man’s idolatry: sell everything that he had and give it to the poor. This proved Jesus’ point which was to say that no man can save himself (Luke 18:24-25). Only God can save (Luke 18:27). Therefore, Jesus was not denying that He is “equal with God” (John 5:18), but rather, He was correcting the rich man’s self-righteousness.

Also, if Jesus was denying Deity to Himself in this passage, then He would also be denying that He was good (v.19). Throughout the New Testament, however, the apostles state that Jesus was sinless (2 Corinthians 5:21), a claim also made in the Islamic Koran. So, unless Arians or Muslims want to deny dogmas of their own respective faiths, then they shouldn’t use this passage.

John 1:18

No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

Commentary:

First of all, it must be stated that the manuscript evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the “only begotten God” reading.

“…the only begotten God…”: Some Arians try to use the word ‘begotten’ and pretend that it means ‘created’. However, this is merely one of their many nasty habits of anachronistically reading the meaning of a 19^th/20^th century English word back into the meaning of a 1^st century Koine Greek word. The Greek word for ‘begotten’, ‘menogenes’, does not carry the sense of ‘created’ in this passage. It merely means ‘unique’. Just as Isaac was Abraham’s “only begotten son” (even though Isaac wasn’t Abraham’s only son; Genesis 16:15-17), so Jesus is the “only begotten God” or the ‘unique God’. He is ‘unique’ in that everything that the Father has He has (John 5:18). Why does He share everything with the Father? The only answer can be that He is of one substance with the Father (John 5:18). The next part of the verse explains what He shares.

“…who is in the bosom of the Father…”: John Calvin explains:

“When he says that the Son was in the bosom of the Father, the metaphor is borrowed from men, who are said to receive into their bosom those to whom they communicate all their secrets. The breast is the seat of counsel. He therefore shows that the Son was acquainted with the most hidden secrets of his Father, in order to inform us that we have the breast of God, as it were, laid open to us in the Gospel.”

-John Calvin, Commentary on John 1:18

http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/comment3/comm_vol34/htm/vii.iv.htm

John 5:30-32

“I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. If I alone testify about Myself, My testimony is not true. There is another who testifies of Me, and I know that the testimony which He gives about Me is true.”

Commentary:

Go here:http://www.carm.org/jw/John5_30.htm

John 14:28

“You heard that I said to you, ‘I go away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”

Commentary:

Go here: http://www.carm.org/jw/John14_28.htm

John 17:3

“And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent,”

Commentary:

Go here: http://www.carm.org/jw/John17_3.htm

Colossians 1:15

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Commentary:

Go here: http://www.carm.org/jw/col1_15.htm

Revelation 3:14

“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, says this…”

Commentary:

The Arians take the phrase the “Beginning of the creation of God” and say that this means that Jesus was the first created thing. Robert Morey responds:

“The word [e arche] “the beginning” does not imply that Jesus was the first thing created. If it did, then the Jehovah’s Witnesses will have to reduce Jehovah to a creature because in Revelation 22:13, they apply the word [arche] to Jehovah…In contrast, Trinitarians apply Revelation 22:13 as well as Revelation 1:8 and Revelation 3:14 to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Arians will have to either admit that Revelation 22:13 refers to Christ, which proves that He is God, or reduce Jehovah to a mere creature.”

-Robert Morey, The Trinity: Evidence and Issues (Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible Publishers, 1996), p.499.

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Also, some helpful audio on this topic can be found at:

Some helpful online reading can be found here:

http://christiandefense.org/jw.htm

http://www.carm.org/witnesses.htm

http://aomin.org/Witnesses.html

http://www.ntrmin.org/apologetic-tools.htm