About Jesus Steve Sweetman

About Jesus Steve Sweetman

Jesus is God

At this point we come to Jesus, God the Son. It
wasn't necessary to spend a lot of time showing the Father
as God, but to show Jesus as God is most important. The
significance of this fact cannot be underestimated. This
fact is central to our faith. This fact makes our
religion different from all other. The thing that makes
Buddha (BC 563-484) and Confucius (BC 551-478) and
Mohammed (AD 570-632) significant is their teaching. The
thing that makes Jesus most important is not merely what
He said, but "who He is". Who Jesus is sets Him apart
from the rest, and once again He becomes that stumbling
block and rock of offense that people stumble over.

The "deity of Christ", that is Jesus being God (the
same essence and substance) is the foundation stone of our
salvation message. Without this being true there is no
way our salvation message can hold any validity. Without
Jesus being God there is no logic behind what we believe.
Take away this foundation stone and all that we believe
and experience crumbles and falls apart. This is why
every Christian should know and understand this point of
faith. It should be clearly understood by our intellect
and the reality of it burned into our hearts forever with
the greatest of passion. Christians are different from
everyone else in the world. We are ahead of the pack;
that is to say, all other religions can be grouped
together. You cannot group Christians with anyone or
anything else. We are a group set apart. The reason is
that our Leader and Lord is God. Jesus being God means
that He is on a level of existence with no one else. He
has no rivals and absolutely no competition. Now let's
look at some scripture.

There are five divine attributes of deity that are
ascribed to Jesus. These are, eternity, omnipresence,
omniscience, omnipotence, and immutability. Let us look
at some texts that show the eternal nature of Christ.

John 1:15
" John testifies concerning Him. He cries out saying,
This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me has
surpassed me because He was before me."

John 8:58
"...Jesus answered, "before Abraham was, I am!"

John 17:5 , 24
"And now Father glorify me in your presence with the
glory I had with you before the world began."

"Father, I want those you have given me to be with me
where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given
me because you have loved me before the creation of the
world."

Here we see John acknowledging that even though Jesus
appeared after him that He in fact lived before him.
"Before Abraham was I am" is quite interesting.
This says that Jesus existed before Abraham was even born.
Note the verb tense that is used. Jesus is referring back
in time, before Abraham, yet he uses the present tense.
The words "was" and "is" in the same sentence can only be
used in Jesus' case. In a most real sense there is no time in
eternity. Jesus, you could say, lives in the eternal present.
You can't say it much better than He said it.
"Before Abraham was I am."

In John 17 we see a relationship between Father and
Son before creation. Though Jesus was in the flesh, in
the context of time in this world, part of Him pre-existed
before creation.

Col. 1:15
"He is the image of the invisible God, the first born
over (before) all creation."

This is a great verse. We do see the eternal nature
of Christ here, but we also see that He is the image of
the invisible God. This is Deity. This is God's love
directed towards us. By this I mean, God became man in
order for us to be able to comprehend Him, even if in
some small way. God is invisible, both to our eyes and
to our intellect. When God became visible to us in
Jesus we could then relate to Him, at least in some
limited measure. This is God's love.

John 1:1
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with
God and the Word was God."

Micah 5:2
"...out of you will come for me one who will be ruler
over Israel, whose origins, are from of old, from ancient
times."

Heb. 1:10, 11
"In the beginning O Lord, you laid the foundations of
the earth,...they will perish but you will remain..."

Rev. 1:4
"...Grace and peace to you from Him, who is, and who
was, and is to come."

In the above four verses you see both the past and
future aspect of Christ's eternal nature.
It is then clear that Christ is eternal. The question
that still remains concerning this eternal aspect is, "how
can Christ be eternal and yet begotten at the same time?"
My answer at this point, and it is mine and not the
traditional thinking is as follows. Jesus was not Christ,
or Jesus the God-man, until His physical birth into this world.
Before that He was something else, something quite different.
John calls this the eternal "Word". He was always part of the
Godhead in eternity past, yet at some time in eternity past
that eternal Word became - was begotten - as a Son. Thus
you can say that Christ is eternal, yet at one point was begotten
as a Son. He was always there, but not always there as a Son.
This is merely conjecture, not truth by any means.
Jesus is also omnipresent, meaning He is in all places
at all times.

Matt. 18:20
"For where two or three come together in my name,
there am I with them."

Matt. 28:20
"... and surely I will be with you always, to the very
end of the age."

Jesus said in the former verse that when two or three
gather together He would be there. He was not using the
future tense, but the present tense. He did not say that
after His ascension when two or three gathered together
that He would be with them via His Spirit. The point is
simple. Jesus told those people in Matt. 18 that at that
present moment He would be with the three gathered in one
place and then also with the two gathered at another
place.

In the latter verse He says, that "I Jesus", will be
with each and every one of you, no matter where you are
until the end of the age. This is the meaning of
omnipresent. Jesus Himself is with us, no matter where we
are. This is a great and important truth of scripture.

We need to know that we cannot hide ourselves from Jesus.
He is constantly present and sees us as we really are at
all times. Therefore we need to know that everything we
do, and everything we think, whether good or bad is done in
the presence of God. He doesn't leave us, or hide His
face from us when we are taking a shower. It is
impossible to close the door to Him. We may ignore Him.
We may turn our face and our hearts from Him, yet He is
there with us. It is then our responsibility to respond accordingly
to Him.

The word omniscience basically means that Jesus knows
everything about all there is to know. Read the following.

John 16:30
"Now we (disciples) can see that you know all things
and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you
questions. This makes us believe that you came from God."

Trinitarians show from this verse that Jesus knows all
things. This makes him omniscient. A question
arises in my mind concerning this verse. It may be more
of a question of Biblical interpretation, yet I think the
point should be raised. Jesus did not say that He knew
all things in this verse. It was the disciples that said
it. Now I believe that the disciples were right, but
there are things that people say in the Bible that are not
correct. For example the account of Peter telling Jesus
that he would not betray Him. It is an accurate account
of the event, yet the statement itself turned out to be
false. It should be noted though that Jesus did not refute
this statement. So the question is, should we use a verse for a
proof text where the statement about Jesus is made by a
man? I am sure this verse is one of those building block
verses, yet there still needs to be other scriptures
included. Here are some examples of specific things Jesus
knew.

John 2:24, 25
"But Jesus would not entrust Himself to them, for He
knew all men...for He knew what was in a man."

John 1:48
"How do you know me?" Nathaniel asked. Jesus answered,
I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before
Philip called you."

John 4:29
"Come see a man who told me everything that I ever
did. Could this be the Christ."

Luke 6:8
"But Jesus knew what they were thinking, and said to
the man with the shriveled hand, get up and stand in front
of everyone...."

Matt. 24:24-25
"For false Christs...will appear... See I have told
you ahead of time."

John 6:70-71
"...Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you
is a devil. He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot,
who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray Him."

Col. 2:2-3
"...Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge."

All of the above scriptures show the omniscience of
Jesus by giving examples of things He knew. So it is
fairly evident that He knew all things, yet in Mark 13:32
it says that Jesus was not aware of the time of His return.
To some that might suggest a case against omniscience.
It is apparent to me that the Father had specifically hid
this from Jesus. In my thinking the reason why this could
be possible is because of the humanity of Christ. Christ
having a human nature while on earth gave him certain
limitations. That meant that He had to "learn obedience by
the things He suffered". (Heb. 5:8) It also meant that things
could be hid from Him if that was the Father's will.
The argument against omniscience because Jesus did not
know the date of His return to me is weak.

The next divine characteristic that we will look at is
the omnipotence of Jesus. This simply means that He is
all-powerful.

Rev. 1:8
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who
is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

Heb. 1:3
"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact
representation of His being, sustaining all things by His
powerful word."

Matt. 28:18
"Then Jesus said, All authority has been given to me
in heaven and on earth."

It is hard to peruse these particular scriptures
without noting their majestic flavour. Jesus is the
"radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of His
being". You can't paint a more clear picture of just
who Jesus is. Once again the reason for Jesus being
the exact representation of God is so we can see who God
really is. We can't see Him as He is in reality since He
is Spirit, and beyond all comprehension. We can see a man,
a God-man, that is Jesus. God became like one of us in order
to reveal Himself to us in a way we would begin to understand
and appreciate. Jesus truly is all powerful. He is omnipotent.

Because He was, and is omnipotent you can say the
following concerning Jesus. He had power over demons
(Mark 5:11-15), over diseases (Luke 4:38-41), over death
(Matt. 9:25), over the elements (Matt. 8:26-27), over
nature (John 2:11), and over all things (Matt. 28:18).

Jesus is also immutable. This means that Jesus, like
God is incapable of change, or being changed. We as
humans fluctuate as we respond to life. Jesus responds,
yet He does not fluctuate in the least. He is always
constant in His character.

Heb. 1:8
"But about the Son he says, Your throne O God will
last forever..."

Heb. 13:8
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and
forever."

The latter verse is often used in evangelical circles.
It does show that Jesus remains constant. The problem I
see is how we use this verse. Many use this verse to
suggest the methods the Lord uses to do things never
change. They might say that Christians should not play an
electric guitar because it is too worldly, and His
standard of worldliness never changes. So if an electric
guitar is sinful in one generation it is sinful for
eternity. This is not the case. We must note that the
character of Jesus never changes. His methods and ways of
doing things can and do change from generation to
generation in order to meet the particular needs of
people in their day and age.

So now we have seen the five attributes of God's
divine nature in Jesus Himself. This is another major
building block in proving that Jesus is divine, and
therefore God.

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