Jesus’ Claims to Be God2
December 25 is a date celebrated by billions of people all over the world each year. It commemorates a birthday that people have been recognizing for centuries. Thousands of songs are sung annually in festive celebration. Re-enactments of a lowly birth in a manger are performed. And millions hear the reading “she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7 KJV).
We celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ year after year. We proclaim the miraculous incarnation of God taking on human form. We preach about a God full of love and acceptance, who entered our world to save us from eternal death. And though the Scripture says God “became human and lived here on earth among us” (John 1:14), how can we really know if God actually showed up to demonstrate his acceptance and love for us?
God has given us a way to identify this person of history as truly being the Son of God.
That question may sound cynical, but the reality is, God himself wants to assure us that he actually came to earth to redeem us. That is why he had an angel declare to shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David!” (Luke 2:10-11). God wanted to assure those living at the time that Mary’s baby was actually the Son of God—the Supreme Being that came to redeem them. God wants us to believe with confidence that his Son born 2000 years ago is our redeemer as well.
God gave Mary a sign she would give birth to the God-man. God gave the shepherds a sign that the Savior had been born in a manger. He gave the “wise men” a sign that the son of Mary was in fact the King of kings. And he has given us a sign. He has given us a way to identify this person of history as truly being the Son of God “who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).
Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem of Judea some 2000 years ago, is the person of history who claimed to be God’s Son. His claim was exclusive. No other but the Incarnate One could redeem the human race. In fact, he made that truth central to all he said and did. It was crucial that this claim be true, because only the Son of God could solve the problem of sin and death. He made believing in him as the Incarnate One the pivotal point. Jesus told his skeptics, “You are of this world; I am not. That is why I said that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am who I say I am, you will die in your sins” (John 8:23-24). “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus said. “No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But if Jesus wasn’t the true Son of God, then his offer of salvation was a sham and a lie. It is absolutely vital that his claim to deity be valid if we are to trust him to be our salvation.
Some say Jesus Christ’s claim to deity is not really the important thing here. They suggest it is the teachings of Jesus that are really important—love your neighbor, feed the hungry, make this planet a better place, and so on. So they point to Jesus as a great moral teacher and discount his claim to deity. But anyone who said the things that Jesus said about himself could not be a great moral teacher. C.S. Lewis, professor at Cambridge University and once an agnostic, understood this issue clearly. He writes:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.
Then Lewis adds:
You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.1
Jesus’ claim to be God (Deity) leaves us with two alternatives: either his claim is true or it is false. And if his claim is false we are left with two added options (see diagram).
Jesus’ Claims to Be God2
First, let’s consider the alternative that Jesus’ claim to be God was false. This would give us two options, he either knew it was false, or he didn’t know it was false.
Was Jesus a Liar?
If, when Jesus made his claims, he knew that he was not God, then he was lying and deliberately deceiving his followers. But if he was a liar, then he was also a hypocrite because he taught others to be honest whatever the cost. Worse than that, if he was lying, he was a demon because he told others to trust him for their eternal destiny. If he couldn’t back up his claims and knew it, then he was unspeakably evil for deceiving his followers with such a false hope. Last, he would also be a fool because his claims to being God led to his crucifixion—claims he could have backed away from to save himself even at the last minute.
How could Jesus ever be considered a great moral teacher if he really wasn’t Deity? This means he would be knowingly misleading people about the most important issue of his teachings—believing in him as the Son of God.
To conclude that Jesus was a deliberate liar doesn’t coincide with what we know either of him or of the results of his life and teachings. Wherever Jesus has been proclaimed, we see lives change for the good, nations change for the better, thieves become honest, alcoholics become sober, hateful individuals become channels of love, and unjust persons embrace justice.
Consider William Lecky, one of Great Britain’s most noted historians. Although he was a fierce opponent of organized Christianity, he saw the effect of true Christianity on the world. He writes:
It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has been not only the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice…The simple record of these three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.3
Was Jesus a Lunatic?
If we find it inconceivable that Jesus was a liar, then couldn’t he actually have mistakenly thought himself to be God? After all, it’s possible to be both sincere and wrong. But we must remember that for someone to mistakenly think himself God, especially in the context of a fiercely monotheistic culture as Judaism was, and then to tell others that their eternal destiny depended on believing in him, is no small matter. It is the delusional ravings of an outright lunatic. Is it possible that Jesus Christ was deranged?
Today we would treat someone who believes himself to be God the same way we would treat someone who believes he is Napoleon. We would see him as deluded and self-deceived. We would lock him up so he wouldn’t hurt himself or anyone else. Yet in Jesus we don’t observe the abnormalities and imbalance that go along with such derangement. If he was insane, his poise and composure were nothing short of amazing.
Eminent psychiatric pioneers Arthur Noyes and Lawrence Kolb, in their Modern Clinical Psychiatry text, describe the schizophrenic as a person who is more autistic than realistic. The schizophrenic desires to escape from the world of reality. Let’s face it—for a mere man to claim to be God would certainly be a retreat from reality.
In light of other things we know about Jesus, it’s hard to imagine he was mentally disturbed. Here is a man who spoke the most profound words ever recorded. His instructions have liberated many people from mental bondage. Clark Pinnock, professor emeritus of systematic theology at McMaster Divinity College, asks, “Was he deluded about his greatness, a paranoid, an unintentional deceiver, a schizophrenic? Again, the skill and depth of his teaching support the case only for his total mental soundness. If only we were as sane as he!”4
Psychologist Gary R. Collins explains that Jesus
was loving but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed. All in all, I just don’t see signs that Jesus was suffering from any known mental illness…He was much healthier than anyone else I know—including me!5
Was Jesus Lord?
As we can see, it would be very difficult for anyone to conclude that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. The only remaining alternative is that he was—and is—the Christ, the Son of God, as he claimed. Yet in spite of the logic and evidence, many people cannot seem to bring themselves to accept this conclusion.
In his book The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown claims, “By officially endorsing Jesus as the Son of God, Constantine turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable.”6 The novel propagates the idea that Christ’s deity was invented at the Council of Nicaea. This simply was not the case.
The New Testament itself provides the earliest evidence for the belief that Jesus is divine. Since these documents were composed in the first century, just decades after the events surrounding Jesus, they predate the Council of Nicaea by more than two centuries. While they were written by different people for a variety of purposes, one unmistakable theme they share is that Christ is God.
The ante-Nicene fathers were early Christian writers who lived after the close of the New Testament period (c. 100), yet before the Council of Nicaea (325). They provide additional support that Jesus was considered divine long before the Council of Nicaea. They include men such as Justin Martyr, Ignatius, and Irenaeus. There is no doubt that they understood Jesus to be divine. Consider some quotes from their ancient works:
Ignatius of Antioch (AD 110): “God incarnate…God Himself appearing in the form of man.”7
Justin Martyr (AD 100–165): “Being the First-begotten Word of God, is even God.”8
Irenaeus (AD 177): “The Father is God and the Son is God; for He who is born of God is God.”9
Probably the most convincing evidence that Jesus was considered divine before Nicaea comes from non-Christian writers. The Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. AD 170), the Roman philosopher Celsus (c. 177), and the Roman governor Pliny the Younger (c. 112) make it clear that early Christians understood Jesus as divine. Pliny persecuted Christians because of their belief that Jesus was divine. Pliny acknowledged, “They had met regularly before dawn on a fixed day to chant verses alternately among themselves in honour of Christ as if to a god.”10
Given these facts, in addition to many more, the authors of Reinventing Jesus conclude: “To suggest that Constantine had the ability—or even the inclination—to manipulate the council into believing what it did not already embrace is, at best, a silly notion.”11 The evidence is clear: Jesus was believed to be divine long before the Council of Nicaea.
The issue with these three alternatives concerning Jesus is not which is possible. Obviously all three are possible. Rather, the question is, “Which is most probable?” We cannot, as so many people want to do, put Jesus on the shelf merely as a great moral teacher or a prophet. That is not a valid option. He is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord and God. We must make a choice. Our decision about Jesus must be more than an idle intellectual exercise. As the apostle John wrote, “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and”—more important—“that by believing in him you will have life” (John 20:31).12
There are some today who would even say Jesus never really claimed to be the Son of God—he only said he was the Son of man, implying he wasn’t making a claim to deity. But these people are simply wrong. Jesus did claim to be the Son of God. He made his identity central to his message.
According to the New Testament record, Jesus repeatedly made it clear that he was the unique Son of God, an assertion that did not go unnoticed by the religious leaders of his day. In fact, that claim was the very reason they tried to discredit him and, eventually, the reason they put him to death: “The Jewish leaders tried all the more to kill him. In addition to disobeying the Sabbath rules, he had spoken of God as his Father, thereby making himself equal with God” (John 5:18).
On more than one occasion, Jesus’ clear assertion of his own deity caused his fellow Jews to want to stone him. Once, when he told the Jewish leaders, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad,” his listeners became indignant: “‘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 himself, slipping away from the temple grounds” (John 8:56-59 NIV). On another occasion, when Jesus said that he was one with the Father, the Jewish leaders again picked up stones to kill him (see John 10:30-31).
When Jesus asked why they wanted to kill him, they retorted, “for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, have made yourself God” (John 10:33).
Yet another time, Jesus told a paralyzed man, “My son, your sins are forgiven” and again the religious leaders reacted with outrage. “What?” they said. “This is blasphemy! Who but God can forgive sins!” (Mark 2:5-7).
In the final days prior to Jesus death, he made it clear—even to the Sanhedrin (the Jewish high council)—just who he was: “The high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the blessed God?’ Jesus said, ‘I am…’” In response to the proclamation, they “condemned him to death” (Mark 14:61-64).
All that Jesus said and did pointed to his identity as the Deity and the Messiah, and all of it pointed to the purpose for which he came to earth. If he is not who he claimed to be, then his teachings are either the rantings of a lunatic who sincerely thought he was God (but wasn’t) or the words of a liar who knew he wasn’t God (but said he was).
But we can be confident in the truth—that he is Lord! He is the incarnate Son of the one and only God of the universe, the one who said, “I am the LORD, and there is no other” and “Do not worship any other gods besides me” (Isaiah 45:6; Exodus 20:3).
Given the three options considered above, it is fully reasonable to conclude that Jesus is Lord. But we have much more evidence of his deity than this. We will provide some of that evidence here and the rest of it in chapters 21 and 25.
Long before there was even the written Word, before anyone had heard of the Messiah, God erected in the Garden of Eden a signpost that pointed directly to the means by which his Son would be born. When God cursed the serpent who tempted Eve, he said to it, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” (Genesis 3:15 NASB). This verse is prophetic, for the offspring of the woman is, of course, Christ. The words “you and the woman” stand out as both unique and prophetic, for a critical reason we will now explore.
It is highly significant that Genesis 3:15 refers specifically to the offspring of the woman and not of the man. The natural process of conceiving and giving birth involves the ovum of a woman and the sperm of a man. The ovum and the sperm are the “seeds” from the two sexes that are necessary for human birth. When God promised the serpent that he would be crushed by the seed of the woman, he referred to a supernatural process: Satan would be defeated by a person conceived from the seed of a woman only, without the usual requirement of the seed of a man.
Scripture foretold that same supernatural process again, 700 years before God was born as a child, when the prophet Isaiah said, “The LORD himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel—‘God is with us’” (Isaiah 7:14).
What striking words: “The virgin will conceive.” In the course of nature, virgins don’t conceive. Conception requires fertilization of the female’s ovum (egg) by the male’s gamete (sperm) to form a new cell, called a zygote. The zygote must then implant itself in the lining of the uterus. That single cell possesses a complete set of chromosomes containing genetic information, half of which comes from the father and half from the mother.
But God, speaking to the serpent, and again through the prophet Isaiah, promised something that human history had never seen before (nor has it since): A child would be born outside the natural process of conception. Instead, the Holy Spirit of God himself would form, in the dark ocean of a virgin’s womb, a child of divine origin. This person would bear a unique identity because the infinite God would be his father and a finite human virgin would be his mother—thus the God-man would be born. From that miraculous moment of conception, that God-human fetus would develop from a single cell into sixty trillion cells and would be brought into the world as Immanuel, “God is with us”! (See Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23.)
If that really happened—if the historical Jesus truly was born to a virgin—it would provide compelling evidence for his deity. If Jesus was conceived apart from the natural process of conception, then we have powerful corroborating evidence to support his claims to deity. We can see that the Genesis record and Isaiah’s prophecy point to a virgin birth for the Messiah, but is there evidence that what had been promised in these passages actually came to pass? Is there any reliable way to investigate the circumstances of Jesus’ birth?
Let’s begin with the historical record. Seven centuries after Isaiah’s prophecy, Matthew reported the extraordinary circumstances of the birth of a child called Jesus of Nazareth. He wrote,
This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit…All of this happened to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet. “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us)” (Matthew 1:18, 22-23).
The Gospel of Luke, the careful historian whose writings have been repeatedly supported by archaeology, records the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary and his announcement that she would give birth to the Messiah. Mary answered with a question: “But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin.” Gabriel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:34-35).
These two historical accounts give us a record of the event of the virgin birth, but they give us no evidence to assure us the event actually occurred. As we continue to look at the record, however, evidences begin to appear, and these evidences give us confidence that the overall account is true.
Reactions of Jesus’ Contemporaries
Among the most significant of these evidences are those contained in the accounts of how the people of Jesus’ hometown, Nazareth, reacted to him after he began his public ministry.
On one occasion, after he had taught in the synagogue, the people he had grown up with said, “‘He’s just the carpenter, the son of Mary’…They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him” (Mark 6:3). The label “son of Mary” was an unambiguous insult in a society that called children by the name of their fathers—except, of course, in the case of children whose paternity was doubted.
At another time, Jesus’ opponents threw a sharply pointed barb at him when they said, “We were not born out of wedlock!” (John 8:41).
The insult and the reference to Jesus as the “son of Mary” imply that it was common knowledge in Jesus’ hometown that he had been conceived before Mary’s wedding to—and without the help of—Joseph.
In other words, it seems very likely that the circumstances of Jesus’ miraculous birth—to a virgin—caused him to be labeled as an illegitimate child in the society of his day. Thus, as a direct result of the unusual circumstances of his birth, he not only accepted the robe of humanity but undoubtedly endured cruel taunts on the playground of his childhood and coarse comments from critics as an adult. When Jesus made claim of deity, the people ridiculed him and scoffed, “We were not born out of wedlock! Our true Father is God himself” (John 8:41).
In an irony of unbelief, the evidence of his divine glory became a smear on his human reputation. This irony persisted in some of the vehemently anti-Christian writings of Jewish rabbis in the years following his death. The rabbis invented a story that cast Jesus as the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier named Panthera, “unintentionally admitting that Jesus was not born of an ordinary marriage,” as the third-century theologian and biblical scholar Origen put it.13
These insults hurled at Jesus give us evidence that his hometown people knew he was not Joseph’s son. This gives us a leg up in believing in the virgin birth, but it is not a clincher. How do we know these insulters were not right? How do we judge whether the birth was indeed miraculous or whether Mary was lying and Joseph was deceived? For answers let’s look first at Mary’s story and then at Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth.
The Responses of Mary and Joseph
When Mary turned up pregnant, why would she have insisted that she was a virgin? She knew that such a story would certainly be too wild to believe; why didn’t she come up with a story more believable? She could have concocted an excuse to make herself look innocent of any wrongdoing, or at least to put all or part of the blame on someone else. She could have claimed she was raped, or she could have claimed Joseph pressured her into yielding to his desire. Joseph would have known better, but no one else would have. But instead of a rational explanation that would fit the known laws of nature, she tells people that she is pregnant by God’s Holy Spirit. Why would she say such a thing when it is so certain to be the least believable of explanations? Only one reason makes sense. It was true.
Now let’s look at her pregnancy from her fiancé Joseph’s point of view. Here is what Matthew tells us about Joseph’s reaction:
This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit”…When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife (Matthew 1:18-20,24 NLT).
As you can see, Joseph knew all about the birds and the bees. He knew how babies were made, and he had not had sex with his fiancée. So when Mary turned up pregnant, he was naturally convinced that she had committed fornication. So he resolved to do what any man would—call off the engagement. Matthew’s account, however, tells us that an angel told Joseph the truth about Mary’s pregnancy. And based on that communication he believed and went on with the wedding.
Think about what this tells us. Joseph would have been the hardest man on the planet to convince of Mary’s story that she was a virgin. He was the man most closely affected. He was the man who would, for the rest of his life, be ridiculed for marrying an unfaithful, pregnant woman who was bearing another man’s child. He would have to endure the contempt of the men in the town, who would forever look on him as a cuckold, too stupid not to believe Mary’s wild story about God making her pregnant. He would have to endure the humiliation of being married to a shamed woman and raising the child of her adultery.
Yet it’s clear that Joseph was not stupid and made his decision fully aware of its implications. The fact that he first did not believe Mary and resolved to break the engagement, just as any man would, shows us he was not stupid. It shows us he knew full well the implications of violating social expectations about purity and the sanctity of marriage. A good and prudent man, as Matthew calls him, would be well aware of how marrying Mary would mar his reputation for the rest of his life. So why would he go on and marry the girl? Only one reason makes any sense at all. He knew the truth. He actually received a message from an angel, and that message delivered to him was the absolute truth. Mary was a virgin who was bearing in her womb the Son of God.
The fact that Joseph believed this truth, knew the lifelong consequences, and yet did the right thing and took under his protective wing the Son of God and his earthly mother is what makes this man one of the great heroes of the Bible.
The evidence for the virgin birth not only points to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth is who he claimed to be; it also shows how much he identified with us. Though he was God, he humbled himself and willingly endured the sneers and scorn of those who didn’t believe in him. The evidence of Christ’s deity through the miracle of the virgin birth is just one of the truths God has given us to reinforce that he accepted us in spite of our sin and sent the one and only person who could redeem us.14