When you have disciples who spent three years
with him, and he's teaching them who He is,
over and over and over again,
and they leave those encounters with the belief
that Jesus was God in human flesh.
That tells you what Jesus taught, what they understood,
and what they ultimately died for.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome back to the Straight Truth podcast.
I'm your host, Josh Philpot, and we're glad
you've joined us today.
As always, I'm joined by Richard Caldwell,
the pastor of Founders Baptist Church.
And our special guest today is Dr. Nicholas Ellen,
a senior professor at the College of Biblical Studies,
and also pastor at Community of Faith Bible Church.
As always, please leave a comment for us
in the comments section, and do us a favor
and please go to the iTunes podcast section
and leave us a review.
Well, brothers, our first question today
is more of a Bible and theology question,
and we get this often where people read the New Testament
and they hear that Jesus says something along the lines
that He is the Son of God.
And that brings to mind this question:
Does just actually say that He is God?
He says He is Son of God, Son of Man,
these other questions, too.
Does Jesus explicitly say, Pastor, that He is God?
- Well, I believe that He does.
It all depends on what you mean by explicit.
So if someone is asking did Jesus use the phrase,
"Oh, by the way, I am God," you're not going
to find that in the New Testament.
But if you asked did Jesus make clear
that He is God and did His contemporaries understand Him
to say that He was God, and did His followers later,
in their writings that followed His resurrection
and ascension, make the case that He is God,
the answer clearly is yes.
So I just jotted down a few places
where Jesus made this clear.
So, for example, in John chapter 10,
He claimed to be one with the Father.
And those people listening to Him on that occasion
clearly understood what He meant by that.
John 10:30, "I and the Father are one."
The Bible says, "The Jews picked up stones
"again to stone Him.
"Jesus answered them, 'I have shown you many good works
"from the Father; for which of them
"are you going to stone Me?'
"And the Jews answered Him, 'It is not for a good work
"that we're going to stone You,
"but for blasphemy, because You, being a man,
"make Yourself God.'"
So when He claimed to be one with the Father,
they understood Him to be saying He was God.
In John 17;5, Jesus claimed to have a glory
with His Father before the world was ever created,
sharing in divine glory.
In John chapter 5, when He claimed to be the Son of God,
verse 17, again the Jews understood Him
to be claiming to be equal with the Father.
It says here, "But He was even calling God His own Father,
"making Himself equal with God."
So that's how they understood His claim.
In John chapter 8, He used a name
associated with the Father.
He said, truly before Abraham was I Am.
And, of course, thinking back to when God told Moses
to say that I Am sent you, so Jesus
associates Himself with the divine name,
Jews understood that.
In John 20, Thomas worships Him as God.
My Lord and my God.
Jesus doesn't refuse that worship,
Jesus doesn't correct him in any sort of way.
So He accepts that view of Himself that Thomas had
and accepts the worship that Thomas offers.
And then, of course, later on, in John chapter 1,
Philippians 2, other places, New Testament writers
present Jesus as God.
So, did Jesus say, "Oh, by the way, I'm God"?
He didn't use that language.
Did Jesus make clear that He was and is God in human flesh?
He did.
And His enemies understood Him to say that
and His disciples understood Him to say that.
And when they presented that view of Jesus,
He never refused it, He accepted it,
and accepted the worship associated with that claim.
- Yeah, good.
- I do think also, when you think about that,
those sections where they said,
"Well, show us the Father and to be sufficient,"
And He says, "If you have seen Me, you've seen the Father."
And so, even though it wasn't explicit
as I believe my brother's accurate in that,
it was a true telling, "I am equal to the Father
and have the same essence that He has."
- [Richard] Amen.
- Doctor (mumbles), why do you think
that the Jewish people, at the time that Jesus was on Earth,
were so violent with His claim to be equal with the Father?
What is it about that that makes them so angry with Him?
- I think it had to do with the fact that, again,
you have someone who was born,
because you've got the God man.
And so I know Your father, per se.
And so now You're claiming to be God,
well, I knew You when You were just a kid,
not understanding that Jesus was representing
both the perfect Godhead, or not Godhead,
but the second person of the Trinity,
and also representing the fact that He's the perfect man.
And so I think I would be a little challenged, too,
if my friend one day claimed and said, "Hey, I'm God."
(Josh laughs)
(laughs) I mean, it's kind of strange, I grew up with you.
So I think that had a lot to do with not understanding
the agenda that God had in mind of coming down
and taking on the form of manhood to represent us.
- Pastor, do you think that Jesus
always knew that He was the Son of God,
or was this maybe something that He,
as He's reading the Scriptures as a young man,
He begins to understand?
That's an interesting--
- Yeah, it is an interesting thing to think about.
All I know is that everywhere we see Jesus
on the pages of Scripture, He understood who He was.
And so I'm gonna just stay right there.
Everywhere we ever meet Him on the pages of Scripture,
He had no doubt but as to His identity.
Even as a child going into the temple
and interacting with religious leaders,
He had to be in His Father's house, He said.
So, everywhere we see Him, He has an understanding
of who He is.
And I agree with what Nick just said.
In terms of the reason for the violence and the anger,
the Jews were rightly monotheists.
They understood there's one God.
What they did not clearly perceive
is that God is a trinity, and now they were meeting
with the eternal Son of God face to face.
And so it presented a real challenge to their thinking.
- And, in a way, the belief of Jesus's followers
that Jesus is the Son of God, is partly what sustains
the faith what's for all delivered to the saints, right?
A group of men that were claiming
that Jesus was the Son of God actually died for that claim.
- [Richard] Absolutely.
- So that should show us that they knew
and died for Christ as well, right, understanding
that He is explicitly saying He is God.
- Yeah, and, in fact, you think about His enemies,
you could perhaps make the argument
they must misunderstood Jesus.
When you have disciples who spent three years with Him,
and He's teaching them who He is over and over
and over again, and they leave those encounters
with the belief that Jesus was God in human flesh.
That tells you what Jesus taught, what they understood,
and what they ultimately died for.
- I do think the implication as well, with his enemies,
ties back to the fact of whether they necessarily agree
with Him or not.
His popularity was taken away from their agenda,
(Josh laughs)
and I think that's a crucial element to say,
"Wow, when you are who you stand for."
He is the Son of God, He was coming to do something
that was totally different than what they expected,
and it took away from their political power
and their influence, and, again, totally different
than what they were looking for.
- Well, thanks again for joining us
for the Straight Truth podcast.
And you can find more details about this podcast
by going to our website, straighttruth.net.
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Now Straight Truth is a production
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and you can find more details by going
to walkingingrace.org.
Thanks again.
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