Is Jesus God?
Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus refer to himself as “God” or
ask others to call him that. In Matthew 19:17, Mark 10:18, and
Luke 18:19, you’ll see that he protests even when he is called
“good”. He says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but
One, that is God.” As for the “Trinity,” there is no indication that
Jesus was even aware of this concept. The word doesn’t appear
anywhere in the Bible.
In John 20:16-17, Jesus says he is human and that he shares
the same father as his brethren, and sharing the same God as they
have is an admission by him that he is human and not God. Jesus
said his miracles come from the power of God (Matthew 12:28).
The prophet Elijah made the same miracle as Jesus by asking God
to bring life back to a dead boy (1 King 17:20-24).
Because Jesus brought life to some dead people, some
theologists considered him to be God. Jesus always said, “Without
God, I do nothing. Without the power of God, I can’t do
anything.” There were many miracles formed by God to many
other prophets such as Moses, Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon,
and Jacob. The most sophisticated and unimaginable miracle is
the one of Moses parting the Red Sea and piling up the water on
both sides of the sea as high as a mountain. There were 12 different
roads dried immediately upon opening the bottom of the sea. Then
Moses gave the people water from a small rock to provide 12
different water fountains to the 12 different tribes, who were all
the offspring of Jacob. Jacob had moved to Egypt with his 12 sons
400 years earlier as the “people of Israel,” and they never called
Moses God or claimed he was. But because Jesus performed three
miracles by raising up the dead, some people call him the son of
God and give him more honor with the title by saying that he is
God. There are exactly four other miracles of raising the dead
performed by Elijah, Elisha, Peter, and Paul, and they have not
been called God. Seven people were raised from the dead in the
Bible. In Acts 19:11-12, God gave power to Paul to heal sick
people, and not one of those people called him God.
• Elijah raised the widow’s son (1 Kg 17:17-24).
• Elisha raised the Shunammites’ son (2 Kg 4:18-37).
• Jesus raised a widow’s son (Lk 7:11-15).
• Jesus raised the daughter of Jarius (Lk 8:41-42, 49-56).
• Jesus raised Lazarus (Jn 11:1-46).
• Peter raised Tabitha (Dorcas) (Acts 9:36-41).
• Paul raised Eutychus (Acts 20:9-12).
However, despite all that, the Catholic Church has been
ingenious. First, it denied Jesus the title he emphasized most, “Son
of Man,” and instead called him “Son of God,” the very title Jesus
wanted to distance himself from. Then it gave the title capital
letters (which didn’t exist in the alphabet of the original
languages) to make it “Son of God”. It next attached a literal
meaning to the phrase “begotten of God” and applied it to Jesus,
elevating him to become the “begotten Son of God”. This gave the
title exclusivity, portraying Jesus as literally “the only begotten
son of God” and, with a final about-turn of Christ’s teachings, got
people to regard Jesus as God Himself.
