Is Jesus Truly God? E-Book

Greg Lanier

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 200

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The question of Jesus's divinity has been at the epicenter of theological discussion since the early church. At the Council of Nicea in AD 325, the church fathers affirmed that Jesus the Son of God is "true God from true God." Today, creeds such as this are professed in churches across the world, and yet there remains confusion as to who Jesus is. To some, Jesus is a radical prophet—nothing more than a footnote in history. To others, Jesus is the only Son of God, fully God and fully man—the author of history entering history. Is Jesus Truly God? is an accessible resource, bridging the gap between the pulpit and the pew as it traces the rich roots of creedal Christology through the Scriptures, strengthening the reader's understanding of Jesus as fully God and fully man.

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“This book does two remarkable things: it solidly reinforces Christian belief in Jesus as God by gathering the most up-to-date evidence, and it also helpfully reshapes our ways of talking about Jesus as God, in greater conformity with biblical patterns of thought. Lanier doesn’t just show that the Bible teaches the deity of Jesus, he shows precisely how the Bible teaches it.”

Fred Sanders, Professor of Theology, Torrey Honors Institute, Biola University; author, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything

“‘Jesus is Lord’ is the fundamental confession of the Christian faith. Writing with the heart of a pastor and the wisdom of a seminary professor, Greg Lanier unfolds the rich Trinitarian framework within which the Old and New Testaments present Jesus as God’s divine Son. Anyone who desires to become a more competent reader of the Bible and a more faithful follower of the Lord Jesus Christ will find this book enormously instructive.”

Scott R. Swain, author, The Trinity: An Introduction; coeditor, The Oxford Handbook of Reformed Theology

“Maybe you think you can answer the title of this book with a simple yes and move on. But how do you know that Jesus is truly God? Can you articulate that well to others? Why does it matter? What changes about your faith if Jesus isn’t truly God? Is Jesus fully God and fully man—even now? In this succinct book, Greg Lanier works through both the Old and New Testaments to present a robust Trinitarian Christology that will equip believers and lead us to further delight in our Lord.”

Aimee Byrd, author, Theological Fitness and No Little Women

“Where would you go in Scripture to prove that Jesus is truly God? In this brief, accessible book, Greg Lanier shows that Christ’s divinity doesn’t rest on just one or two proof texts. Instead, it’s woven into the fabric of the whole New Testament, including the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. Is Jesus Truly God? will help you know Jesus and your Bible better. I plan to give it away regularly to church members and to stock it in our church’s bookstall.”

Bobby Jamieson, Associate Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church; author, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews

Is Jesus Truly God?

Is Jesus Truly God?

How the Bible Teaches the Divinity of Christ

Greg Lanier

Is Jesus Truly God? How the Bible Teaches the Divinity of Christ

Copyright © 2020 by Gregory R. Lanier

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Lindy Martin, Faceout Studios

Cover image: Shutterstock

First printing 2020

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked CSB have been taken from the Christian Standard Bible®. Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible® and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NET are from The NET Bible® copyright © 2003 by Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. www.netbible.com. All rights reserved. Quoted by permission.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture references marked NKJV are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright ©1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6840-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6843-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6841-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6842-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lanier, Gregory R., author.

Title: Is Jesus truly God? : how the Bible teaches the divinity of Christ / Greg Lanier.

Description: Wheaton : Crossway, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019025207 (print) | LCCN 2019025208 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433568404 (paperback) | ISBN 9781433568411 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433568428 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433568435 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ—Divinity—Biblical teaching. | Trinity—Biblical teaching. 

Classification: LCC BT216.3 .L26 2020 (print) | LCC BT216.3 (ebook) | DDC 232/.8—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025207

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019025208

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2020-06-25 08:37:17 AM

To my wife, Kate,

my true companion in all of life

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

1  Preexistence

An Eternally Alive Son

2  God the Son

A Unique Father-Son Relation

3  Christ the Kyrios

Reading the Old Testament Afresh

4  Maranatha

Early Worship of Christ

5  Three Persons

Trinitarian Relations in Full Color

6  “My Lord and My God”

Calling JesusTheos

Conclusion

Selected Bibliography

General Index

Scripture Index

Abbreviations

1 En.

1 Enoch

1 Macc.

1 Maccabees

AGJU

Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums

AnBib

Analecta Biblica

Ant.

Jewish Antiquities (Josephus)

BZNW

Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

DBTJ

Detroit Baptist Theological Journal

De Trin.

De Trinitate (Hilary of Poitiers)

Dial.

Dialogus cum Tryphone (Justin)

Did.

Didache

Eph.

To the Ephesians (Ignatius)

Ezek. Trag.

Ezekiel the Tragedian

Haer.

Adversus haereses (Irenaeus)

HBT

Horizons in Biblical Theology

JSJSup

Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism

JSNT

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

JTS

Journal of Theological Studies

Leg.

Legum Allegoriae (Philo)

LNTS

Library of New Testament Studies

Marc.

Adversus Marcionem (Tertullian)

NovT

Novum Testamentum

NSBT

New Studies in Biblical Theology

Paed.

Paedagogus (Clement of Alexandria)

Pss. Sol.

Psalms of Solomon

Q (with preceding number)

Qumran texts, i.e., the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., 1QS; 4Q174; 4Q252; 11Q5)

Sir.

Sirach/Ecclesiasticus

SJT

Scottish Journal of Theology

SNTSMS

Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

T. Levi

Testament of Levi

Wis.

Wisdom of Solomon

WUNT

Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament

Introduction

In a recent interview with an individual seeking to work full-time in a Christian vocation, I asked, “Where would you go in the Bible to show that Jesus Christ is fully divine?” After an uncomfortable pause, the individual ventured in a slightly embarrassed way, “Uh . . . the first chapter of John?” Of course, that is a fine answer, but is there more? This book aims to help equip Christians with a more robust answer to such a question.

Why This Book?

The confession that the true God of all creation is triune—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is rooted deeply in the soil of Christian theology. And one of the most debated, and at times perplexing, aspects of this confession is the question “Does Scripture actually teach that Jesus is fully God?”

The early church experienced numerous fights on this front, as Theodotus, Noetus, Arius, Nestorius, and Eutyches (among others) challenged in various ways the full divinity of Jesus Christ. A series of writings and councils spearheaded by a prominent group of early church fathers, ranging from Athanasius to Cyril of Alexandria, defended the traditional doctrine and ruled the competing teachings out of bounds. The key doctrines were crystallized in the Nicene Creed (AD 325) and Chalcedonian Definition (AD 451).

But the debates have not gone away. Outside the church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons reject the Christian teaching that Jesus is fully divine. For instance, the translation of the Bible used by Jehovah’s Witnesses (New World Translation) famously renders John 1:1, “The Word was a god,” ascribing to Jesus the status of a “god”-like or quasi-angelic being but nothing more. Furthermore, while the Qur’an affirms some true facts about Jesus—such as his birth to Mary and his role as a prophet—Islam holds that the confession of Jesus as the fully divine Son of God is shirk, that is, the unforgivable sin of ascribing “partners” to Allah (e.g., Q ‘Imran 3:151; Q Nisa’ 4:48). And the acid rain of secularism has, for more than two centuries, eroded all possibility of a divine human altogether, instead holding that this doctrine was invented when pagan Greek theology was imported into the church.

Even within the church, Jesus is often taken to be an “ideal human” at best or perhaps simply a good teacher—especially within mainline denominations. But many evangelical Christians are confused or inconsistent as well. A 2018 survey by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research found that nearly 95 percent of self-described evangelical Christians affirm the Trinity, but simultaneously, about 80 percent believe that Jesus Christ is the “first and greatest being created by God.”1 The shocking thing is that these respondents do not appear to realize the stark contradiction in these two positions.

There is thus a clear need for fresh teaching on Christology (i.e., the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus). It could take many shapes: retrieving the teachings of Athanasius, deconstructing ancient and modern heresies, summarizing the orthodox teaching from the angle of historical or modern systematic theology, sorting out the complexities of Karl Barth. Each of these paths would be fruitful, but none is the focus of this book.2

Instead, I aim to do something even more basic: not only to affirm that, yes, Scripture does indeed teach thatJesus Christ is fully God but also to help average Christians understand how it does so. It is one thing to know the “right” answer; it is another altogether to understand how the New Testament authors get there—to show their work, so to speak.

Such an endeavor is by no means new. Numerous scholars—particularly among the members of the self-described “early high Christology club” (Richard Bauckham, Martin Hengel, Larry Hurtado, and others)—have recently explored these issues not just in the creeds and church fathers but in the pages of Scripture itself. But the vast majority of their work has focused on one aspect of the issue or one subset of writings (such as Paul’s letters), and their output has been largely confined to scholarly monographs and articles. It is high time for the findings to be set forth in a way that reaches a broader audience.3

In short, I am arguing that the full Trinitarian Christology that is bedrock to Christianity is found throughout the New Testament from the earliest days, is derived from the teachings of Jesus himself, and is rooted in the Old Testament. Put differently, my aim is to help readers discern how the concepts that later coalesce in the creeds are right there in the pages of Scripture from the outset of the Christian church.

But First: The Humanity of the Son

In view of all this, many Christians are surprised to find out that the early church spent just as much time debating whether Jesus Christ was fully human, which is rarely a real debate today, as it did debating whether he was fully divine.4 If the Nicene Creed majors on the question of Jesus’s full divinity (“Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds . . . very God of very God”), the Chalcedonian Definition majors on his humanity.5 It affirms that Jesus is “the same perfect in deity and the same perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man . . . acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”6

It would be a mistake, thus, to press on in discussing the divinity of Jesus without making clear that the church has historically taught that the two natures—divine and human—cannot be fully separated. Yet the two are also distinguishable in various ways (“unconfusedly,” per Chalcedon), and there is value in understanding Scripture’s teaching on both. It would take another book to iron out the physics of howJesus Christ is fully human and fully divine at the same time. Here I simply survey the New Testament’s key affirmations of his humanity before turning the bulk of attention in this book to his divinity.

First, several passages assert that Jesus is human in the fullest possible sense and not just a visible apparition of a deity or angel. Matthew 1:16; Luke 2:6–7; and Galatians 4:4 state that Jesuswas “born” or “begotten” of a woman. Similarly, John 1:14; 1 Timothy 3:16; and Hebrews 2:14 affirm that Jesus “became,” was “manifested in,” and “share[d] in” the same kind of “flesh” (Gk. sarx) that all humans possess. Throughout the Gospels Jesus eats, walks, sweats, shows emotion, sleeps, and so forth. Even—or perhaps especially—after Jesus’s resurrection, the Gospel writers go to great lengths to reiterate that his resurrected body is still a fully human, though transformed, body, as seen in John 20:27 (Thomas touches Jesus’s scars) and Luke 24:42–43 (Jesus eats a fish). The apostle John emphasizes that he has “seen” and “touched” Jesus (1 John 1:1) and declares that anyone who denies “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” is a deceiver and “antichrist” (2 John 7). Indeed, the full humanity of Jesus is a line in the sand separating true Christianity from unbelief.

Second, the New Testament draws attention to the ways in which Jesus’s humanity is not only a true fact but is central to his accomplishing God’s redemptive plan. His humanity is essential to his fulfillment of everything expected of the human Messiah, or deliverer. I will catalog but a few. Jesus is

the eschatological prophet like Moses (Acts 3:22)a priest in the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 5:10)the king like David (Matt. 21:9; Rom. 1:3) who is born from his line (Matt. 1:1–18)the anointed one, or Messiah/Christ (Luke 2:11; 9:20; John 20:31)the second and greater Adam (Rom. 5:14; 1 Cor. 15:45)the servant who would suffer and die vicariously (Acts 8:32–33; 1 Pet. 2:22–23)the “root” of Jesse and “star” of Jacob (Rev. 5:5; 22:16—echoing Isa. 11:1 and Num. 24:17, respectively)the shepherd of the flock of Israel (John 10:14; Heb. 13:20)

Each is grounded in old covenant promises and comes to fruition in Christ. None of these, strictly speaking, require fulfillment by a fully divine person, but they do, often quite explicitly, envision a human fulfillment (e.g., shedding of blood, keeping the law in place of Adam). Consequently, these passages highlight how Jesus Christ accomplishes salvation specifically as a human mediator (1 Tim. 2:5). Without his full human nature, there is no redemption of humans.

Thus, the question that the rest of this book focuses on is this: How does the New Testament go further and teach that Jesus is specifically a divine messianic deliverer? How is he not only a human prophet, priest, king, and mediator but more than that—fully God? What I aim to demonstrate is this: the shocking “reveal” of the New Testament that Jesus is not just the Messiah but more than a Messiah.7

What Is the Goal?

One might at this point interject and ask whether the New Testament ever calls Jesus “God” (Gk. theos)8 and allow that to settle the matter. I will eventually take up that topic (in chap. 6—the short answer is yes). But we cannot start there. While it is an important consideration, calling Jesustheos may not necessarily prove anything. Theos was typically used in the ancient world for the pantheon, and “divine” or “god” language was regularly employed for human rulers, including Julius Caesar, who was called “divine Julius” (Lat. divus julius); Octavian, called “son of a god” (Lat. divi filius), and Domitian, called “lord and god” (Lat. dominus et deus). Further, in Acts 14:11 the crowds in Lystra claim that the “gods” (Gk. theoi) have appeared in human form as Barnabas and Paul. Angels are called “gods” in John 10:35. And Paul even calls Satan the theos of the present age (2 Cor. 4:4)!

So merely calling Jesus “god” may say little more than what Jehovah’s Witnesses—and Arius long before—could affirm.

Other ideas must also be avoided: that Jesus is an angel like Michael or Gabriel or a demigod like Hercules or Achilles, or that he started out as a human and then somehow became divine at a later stage. None of these notions capture what early Christians believed. And if that is all we find on the pages of Scripture, then we have a real problem.

Further, we are not looking for something foisted on Jesus long after the fact or for something limited to one or two proof texts (e.g., John 1). If Jesus Christ is truly what the Christian church has confessed—fully man and fully God in the way the creeds articulate—then we would expect this belief to be held by Jesus himself and to be saturating the pages of his revealed Word.

So what is the goal of this study? I aim to test whether Scripture actually teaches that Jesus Christ has a real existence from before creation; that he is eternally the second person of the triune God; that there is absolute unity and equality in essence among Father, Son, and Spirit; and that the distinctions in person are not collapsed altogether (such that the Son is absorbed into the Father, or vice versa). Anything else would not be orthodox Christianity.

The goal in the chapters that follow is to demonstrate that a full-orbed divine Christology is taught throughout the entire New Testament, focusing on how Scripture does this in six major ways (one per chapter):

1. asserting Jesus’s preexistence

2. claiming that Christ is a fully divine “Son”

3. applying the Old Testament in a variety of ways to show that Jesus is fully Israel’s God

4. describing early worship offered to Jesus

5. showing the relation of the Son to the Father and Holy Spirit

6. directly describing Jesus as theos (“God”)

1. See “The State of Theology,” Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, accessed October 28, 2019, www.thestateoftheology.com.

2. In his Simon J. Kistemaker Lectures at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando (February 2019), Fred Sanders commented that the “eternal subordination” controversy of 2016–2017 produced much clarification on the person of Christ from a dogmatics perspective but that there is now a need for fresh work proving things more robustly from an exegetical perspective. I hope this small book helps further that goal.

3. Larry W. Hurtado has taken this step in summarizing thirty years of research on early-church worship patterns in his Honoring the Son: Jesus in Earliest Christian Devotional Practice (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2018). I will cover this topic in chap. 4.

4. The Docetism controversy—asserting that Jesus only appeared human—arose with Serapion (among others) and was refuted in the ecumenical councils.

5. Trinity Psalter Hymnal (Willow Grove, PA: Trinity Psalter Hymnal Joint Venture, 2018), 852.

6. Author’s own translation from the Greek provided in Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, vol. 1, Early Eastern and Medieval (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 180.

7. To borrow language from Andrew Chester, “The Christ of Paul,” in Redemption and Resistance: The Messianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiquity, ed. Markus Bockmuehl and James Carleton Paget (London: T&T Clark, 2007), 121.

8. All Greek words are transliterated in lowercase for consistency, even if a word is referring to God. English translations, however, follow normal conventions for capitalizing clear references to God.

1

Preexistence

An Eternally Alive Son

The time-honored science-fiction trilogy Back to the Future explores what it would be like for someone to travel back in time and influence past events in such a way that would, in due course, change his own future when he is born. Though mostly pitched as comedy, the films raise intriguing questions about what it means to “exist”—and to shape reality (as when Marty McFly rescues his teenage father from a car wreck)—before you exist. While the movies fall woefully short as analogies to the eternal existence of the Son of God, they do get us thinking in the right direction.

One of the prerequisites for a full doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ is that he exists forever in the past. God is, by definition, uncreated. God cannot come into being; he exists, from eternity past to eternity future. Yet as we saw in the introduction, Jesus Christ was born as a man. For him to be divine, he somehow must also have had a real, eternal existence even prior to his human birth to Mary. This is typically called preexistence: that is, the Son of God was alive and active as a spiritual being before taking on flesh at a particular point in time. He was not just a glimmer in the mind of God, but he was (and is, and always will be) real.

The aim of this chapter is to unfold the various ways in which Scripture indeed affirms the Son’s real, active, heavenly preexistence within the Godhead. Though such preexistence is often overlooked (perhaps owing to our lack of ability to conceptualize it or to the exclusive focus in some circles on the cross of Christ), this study hopefully puts it more on the layperson’s radar.

Heavenly Origin

I begin by examining where Jesus is from.1 Though the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke—and Christmas pageants ever since—make the point clear, there was some debate about the birthplace of Jesus during his ministry. Some Jewish crowds questioned whether the Messiah (Gk. christos) was to come from Galilee, Bethlehem, or some other place (John 7:40–43).2Jesus challenged their preconceived notions, however, when he revealed to various opponents (though cryptically at the time), “I am the living bread that came down from heaven” (6:51), and, “You are from below; I am from above” (8:23).

One does not have to look only at John’s Gospel. Paul, writing years before John’s Gospel was published, indicates that Jesus’s own view about his place of origin was accepted very early by his followers. Paul asks in Romans 10:6, “‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down).” This could, in principle, refer to Christ’s reign in heaven upon his ascension, but it may refer to his original existence in heaven. A clearer reference is found in a near parallel (Eph. 4:9–10), where Paul describes how Jesus “descended” from somewhere to earth, only to reascend to heaven later.

But even if these passages are debatable, Paul states clearly in 1 Corinthians 15:47 that the Son of God “is from heaven.” He is not from around here. He existed as a real person, though without a physical body, in the heavenly places. In John 3:31 John the Baptist (or perhaps John the apostle, depending on whether the quotation ends in 3:30 or