GOSPEL OF JOHN
How can a person be human and a deity at the same time?
There are a lot of controversial questions about Christianity, but there is only one that ultimately matters. Was Jesus God in the flesh?
The Gospel of John was written to show how Jesus was God in the Flesh. He starts with Jesus being with God and being God when the world was created.
Near the end of the book, John says:
John 20:31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Jesus was God in the Flesh, fully God and fully man at the same time. This is not controversial in Christian circles. This is the essential doctrine.
Without it, there is no Christianity. The rest is commentary.
Even so, there are detractors who try to shed doubt upon the claim. There could be a lot of reasons, but it was controversial at the time the claims were made too. The claim of being God in the flesh is what got Jesus killed.
Why it is an issue
In Biblical times, the Apostle Paul called the message of Christ “foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews.” Those were the two main groups of the culture at the time — the “conservative” religious people and the Greeks, who were the “liberal” scholars of the day.
In contemporary Greek culture, spirit was spirit, and flesh was flesh, and the two could not possibly mix or even hardly exist together. God was in heaven, and man was on earth. God was good, and man was not. As a result, claiming anyone was God in the Flesh was ludicrous, or as Paul said foolishness. It flew in the face of popular philosophy and knowledge.
On the other side were the Jews or the religious world. They had worshipped Yahweh since the time of Abraham, well before Moses. They had also gotten in trouble for idol worship and wanted to avoid that again at all costs.
Because of that, anything that even hinted at anything other than Jehovah God as being the only true God was considered heresy. That was why it was a stumbling block.
Son of Man or the Son of God.
The three synoptic gospels emphasize his humanity, while John focuses more on the spiritual aspects.
When Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man, he refers to his human self. We will see how John refers to himself as God in the flesh.
In biblical times being the son of someone was a claim to be equal. If you claimed to be the son of God, you were claiming equality with god — or claiming to be God.
There were several attempts among Greek scholars to explain this away because it was foolishness to them.
Some said he only appeared to be human or was less than God in some way. And in more modern times, some claim Jesus never made the claim, but he did.
Jesus may not have used those exact words to refer to himself, but he certainly claimed to be equal to God and from God in a way that no one else was. He also referred to HIS father and said he was busy doing his father’s work. All of the New Testament writers refer to Jesus as God.
The Bible is extremely clear in its claim that Jesus was divine in nature AND human in nature.
Here I want to outline the Biblical case for the divinity of Christ as recorded in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John focuses on fewer stories, does not go into chronological detail, and is more concerned about presenting the supernatural, or divine Christ, than the other gospels are.
The Gospel of John.
The gospel of John ends his book by telling us the purpose of the writing itself.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing, you may have life in his name. John 20:31
John wants us to believe Jesus is the Son of God. That is the purpose of his writing. The entire book of John is dedicated to this principle, laying out the stories that show Jesus to indeed be the Son of God.
John starts his gospel with these words:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:1–3, NIV)
“The word”, of course, refers to Jesus, who was with God, Was God, and was with God in the beginning. There never was a time that Jesus did not exist. We don’t really understand eternal and can’t really define it, but it means forever. Without a beginning or end. The “Word” is a translation of the Greek word LOGOS, from which we get our word Logo. It means the exact image, but more than that; it means the essence of the thing or the reality of the thing represented.
Verse two says he was God. Jehovah’s witnesses wrongly translate this as “A” God. It is true the Greek “can” be translated that way, but it is not translated that way in the rest of the passage, or anywhere else in the New Testament, so there is no reason to think it should be here.
John clearly states that Jesus was God at the beginning with God and that there was nothing created that was not created when Jesus was with God.
From there, he tells stories to illustrate the point several times.
The point of no return
In John Chapter 8, there is a fairly lengthy debate between the religious establishment and Jesus. They are trying to trap him in his words, to find something to use against him.
The great I AM
“You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid, slipping away from the temple grounds.” (John 8:58–59, NIV84)
Jesus says before Abraham, “I AM,” and the Jews picked up stones to kill him. Here he clearly claims to be God. The “I AM” is the same word that Moses was given to tell the Egyptians who had sent him to free the Israelites. God told Moses his name was “I AM”, and here Jesus says, “I AM.”
Other conflicts
Jesus quickly ran into conflict with the Jewish establishment. In John 5, he heals a man on the Sabbath, and the religious people were very strict about the Sabbath. They were so strict you could not even heal anyone on the Sabbath, but Jesus did it anyway. Jesus violated their law but did not violate the law of God or what we now call the Old Testament.
So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defence, Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (John 5.16–18)
Note that Jesus says “my” father, not “the” father. He is claiming to be God’s specific son or claiming to be equal to God.
Later in the same chapter, Jesus makes another statement concerning his deity. Or about him being the Son of God.
I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish — the very works that I am doing — testify that the Father has sent me.
In John 6, Jesus feeds thousands by miraculously providing bread. He then tells them that it was God who would give them true bread from heaven. He then proclaims himself to be the Bread of Life.
The miracles and the debates continue until the breaking point at the end of chapter eight when Jesus says he is “I AM,” which was a clear claim to be God in the flesh.
In John 10, the Jews ask him to “tell them plainly” if he is the Messiah. Jesus responds by telling them that he has already told them, but they are not listening.
John 10: 30… I and the Father are one.”
From there, the plot thickens with the Religious establishment plotting to kill him. They could not do so openly because Jesus was very popular with the crowds. That would have turned the people against them. They had to go about it in a more secretive way, and eventually, they got Judas to “bring the charge” of blasphemy against Jesus.
The following chapters, through the rest of the Gospel of John, record the final week of Jesus’ earthly life. The story leads up to the crucifixion and resurrection.
As John concludes, this book was written so you can believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
As part of the 100-story challenge, I am writing articles about the Gospel of John. This one is a bit different, as most have focused on a few verses. You may follow along on this adventure by subscribing to Medium with my link below.