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Jesus = God?
Posted by
DMB316
on
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 (PST)
Was Jesus really God or did he even claim to be God?
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Ok sorry for the long absence for those who are reading the lessons online. We've had a community revival, I've been out, and we have been watching a film the last couple of classes, and it will continue to be a little crazy until after October, but we were back on track Sunday morning and I'm here to share with you what we learned.
We decided that since our entire belief system is based on the person of Jesus Christ, we better make sure that Jesus is who is says he is and he really said he was in fact God. Now the first thing we looked at is was Jesus God in his actions. We know from some of our past lessons what some of the attributes of God are. We know he is All knowing, all powerful, unchanging, eternal, and omnipresent, but if Jesus is God shouldn't he have the same characteristics? Just like a cat isn't a dog just because we say so, a cat can never be a dog because of it's characteristics. Jesus and God should share these if Jesus is actually God.
1. Omniscience (All-Knowing) - We know that God is all knowing, the Bible tells us over and over again that he is (Deut. 29:29, Rom. 11:33), but does it ever tell us that Jesus is all knowing? Yes it does, in John 16:30 his followers say that exact thing. From what they have observed and by Jesus not rebuking them for saying it, we see that indeed Jesus is all-knowing
2. Omnipresent (Everywhere) - No doubt the writter of Psalms 139 knew that God was everywhere, but how about Jesus. Wasn't he bound by his earthly body? Well Jesus tells us in Matthew 28:18 that he is in fact everywhere, in order to be with them always even to the ends of the earth Jesus had to be Omnipresent there is no way around it. As a matter of fact we see that once he is resurrected he appears to people far off within a relatively short period of time, proving that he is omnipresent.
3. Eternal (no beginning or end) - Jesus was born right? So he couldn't have been eternal could he? Was there any way that Jesus could be eternal? John said absolutely in his Gospel he went as far as to say nothing came into being without Jesus. The he even says that Jesus is God, no if's, and's, or but's about it.
4. Omnipotent (all powerful) - Jesus himself addresses this one and it's recorded in Matthew 28:18. Jesus is all powerful.
5. Immutable (Unchanging) - The writer of Hebrews takes care of this one for us. Hebrews 13:8.
So we see that he shares the qualities of God, but did he ever come out and say he was God?
Take a look at John 10:24-33, he addresses it and hits the nail on the head. Jesus said I am God.
He wasn't the only one to attest to this, Pilate, the soldier at the cross, the criminal at the cross, and many others attested to this being God and it's not like he had anything to gain from lying about it. All he got was death, he didn't obtain riches, he didn't obtain faith, he didn’t obtain power. Why lie when it's result is death, and look at his disciples. They too found their demise after preaching the Gospel, if there was nothing there shouldn't they have scattered?
Well what if Jesus was crazy? Maybe that's what happened. Well we will talk about that next week.
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