Biblegems #111
Question: It is clear
that Jesus was equal in position to God—but chose to be the lesser. Where do we
get the concept that Jesus is God, in
the personal sense? They rightly seem to be two different personal entities:
What passages show that God and Jesus are “the same?”
This is a great
question that gets at the very nature of the Trinity. At issue are two aspects
of Jesus’ relationship to God: His personhood, and His nature.
God Is One
One of the most
fundamental teachings of Scripture is that God is One:
Deut. 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD
is one.
Rom. 3:30 …there is only one
God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through
that same faith.
Jesus Is God
Even though God is
one, the Gospel of John opens with a declaration that Jesus is God:
John 1:1, 14 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. …The Word became flesh and made his
dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who
came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Beauty of this passage is that Jesus, the Word, is declared to
be God, and yet He is also declared to be with God.
In
Revelation 1:8 and 21:6 God the Father calls Himself “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end;” yet in
Revelation 22:13 Jesus says of Himself that He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the First and the last
the Beginning and the End.” In other words, He is God.
Three Persons—One God
The Bible
teaches that God the Father, God
the Spirit and God the Son are each distinct personalities within the one God.
Consider the following passage:
Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (Jn. 10:30). Here Jesus identifies
Himself as God, but also as a distinct person (“I”) in relation to “the
Father.” Jesus not only saw no contradiction here, but He emphasized the
truth that God by His very nature is a plurality of persons. In His nature,
Jesus is one with God. This is precisely what Paul teaches in Philippians:
Phil. 2:5-7 Your attitude should be the same as that of
Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality
with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the
very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Notice
that Jesus is described here as being one with God in His “nature,” while on the other hand He is described as acting as an
individual person who “made himself
nothing.”
God is a communal
being. He has conversation, love and fellowship within Himself. We see this in
action in passages like…
Gen. 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our
image, in our likeness…
Who is God speaking
to? God the Father is conversing with the other two persons of the Trinity—the
Holy Spirit and the Son—who share His very nature as God.
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