By izartirta
When I was still a teenage I used to think that Jesus was only one of many holly persons which taught people who lived in his time to be a good person. I didn’t realize Jesus’ uniqueness among the others. I didn’t even know what the significance of his claim about himself during his work on this planet was. I just thought that those realities has happened sometime in the past and have nothing to do with my life today. But then I know I was wrong.
Here I put Lee Stroble’s thinking of Jesus’ claim about himself. And I also put some of my comments, placed in a bracket. I hope that we too can be sure that Jesus is real God and if he is God, then everything that he said is actually God’s word.
Lee Stroble gained his Master degree of Law from
So, here he is…
Did Jesus Ever Claim To Be God?
By Lee Strobel
I hear the objection all the time: Jesus never really claimed he was the Son of God; instead, this belief was superimposed on the Jesus tradition by overzealous Jesus’ follower years after his death. The real Jesus saw himself as nothing more than a rabbi, a sage, an iconoclastic rabble-rouser – anything but God. Or, at least, this is what critics claim. But this is not what the evidence clearly shows. The truth was summarized by Scottish theologian H.R.Macintosth: “The self-consciousness of Jesus … is the greatest fact in history.”
Kevin Vanhoozer, research professor of systematic theology at
(Our confession of Jesus as the Christ is so important and I think this is the basis which his church built upon. – addition from izartirta)
At least ten factors point toward Jesus as believing he was the one and only Son of God.
First
There was the way he referred to himself. No scholar doubts that the most common way Jesus referred to himself was “the Son of Man” which he applied to himself more than four dozen times, including in Mark, generally considered the earliest gospel. While some critics mistakenly believe this is a mere claim of humanity, the scholarly consensus is that this is a reference to Daniel 7:13-14, where the Son of Man is ushered into the very presence of the Almighty, has “authority, glory and sovereign power,” receives the worship of “all peoples,” and is someone whose dominion is everlasting.
(As far as I know, the Bible never mentioned someone who fears God willing to receive the worship from any other beings. Except for those who -falsely- think that he is god. Even an angel from God refused to receive such action from John at
“The Son of Man was a divine figure in the Old Testament book of Daniel who would come at the end of the world to judge mankind and rule forever,” said theologian an philosopher William Lane Craig. “Thus the claim to be the Son of Man would be in effect a claim to divinity.”
Vanhoozer adds an interesting sidelight: “The curious thing about Jesus’ use of the title … is that he linked it not only with the theme of future glory by also with the theme of suffering and death. In doing so, Jesus was teaching his disciples something new about the long-awaited Messiah, namely, that his suffering would precede his glory (e.g., Luke 9:22)
Second
Vanhoozer points out that Jesus also made a claim of divinity when he applied the “I am” saying to himself, at one point declaring, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). This obvious allusion to God’s words to Moses put of the burning bush was such an unmistakable declaration of equality with God that his audience picked up stones to hurl at him for blasphemy.”
Third
Jesus made a divine claim when he forgave the sins of the paralytic in Mark 2. “The only person who can say that sort of thing meaningfully is God himself, because sin, even if it is against other people, is first and foremost a defiance of God and his laws,” observed theologian D.A Carson.
Fourth
There was a transcendent claim made by the way Jesus selected his disciples, according to Ben Witherington III, author of The Christology of Jesus. “If the Twelve represent a renewed
Fifth
A clue about Jesus’ self understanding comes through the way he taught. “Jesus begins his teachings with the phrase “Amen I say to you.” Which is to say, “I swear in advance to the truthfulness of what I’m about to say, “This was absolutely revolutionary,” Witherington said.
He went on to explain:
In Judaism, you needed the testimony of two witnesses … but Jesus witnesses to the truth of his own sayings. Instead of basing his teaching on the authority of others, he speaks on his own authority.
So here is someone who considered himself to have authority above and beyond what the Old Testament prophets had. He believed he possessed not only divine inspiration, as King David did, but also divine authority and the power of direct divine utterance.”
Sixth
Jesus used Aramaic term Abba, or “Father dearest,” when relating to God. This reflects an intimacy that was alien in ancient Judaism, in which devout Jews avoided the use of God’s personal name out of fear they may mispronounce it.
Dr. Witherington made this observation:
The significance of “Abba” is that Jesus is the initiator of an intimate relationship that was previously unavailable. The question is: what kind of person can initiate a new covenantal relationship with God?
Jesus is saying that only through having a relationship with himself does this kind of prayer language – this kind of “Abba” relationship with God – become possible. That says volumes about how he regarded himself.
Seventh
A seventh indicator of Jesus’ self-understanding can be seen in his post-resurrection encounter with the apostle Tomas is John 20. Responding to Jesus’ invitation to personally check out the evidence that he had really risen from the dead, Thomas declares in verse 28, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus’ reply was telling. I would have been the height of blasphemy for him to have knowingly received Thomas’s worship unless Jesus really was God. Yet instead of rebuking him, Jesus said in verse 29, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus’ choice to receive Thomas’s worship clearly means he believed he was God and thus worthy of that homage. Similarly, when Simon Peter answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?” by saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus’ reaction was not to correct him but rather to affirm that this was revealed to him by the Father himself (Matthew 16:15-17)
Eighth
Jesus clearly believed that the eternal destiny of people hinged whether they believed in him. “If you do not believe I am the one I claim to be,” he said in John 8:24, “you will indeed die in your sins.” In addition, he said in Luke 12:8-9: “I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. But he who disowns me before the angels of God,”
William Lane Craig put the implication this way: “Make no mistake; if Jesus were not the divine Son of God, then this claim could only be regarded as the most narrow and objectionable dogmatism. For Jesus is saying that people’s salvation depends on their confession to Jesus himself.”
Ninth
Jesus declared in John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.” There is no question about whether his listeners understood that Jesus was saying that he and God are one in substance. Promptly, they picked up rocks to attach him “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (verse 33).
Tenth
A tenth factor that should be weighed in assessing Jesus’ belief about his identity is his miracles, which will be discussed in the next section. Jesus stressed that his feats were a sign of the coming of God’s kingdom: “If I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the
