LESSON SIX
CHRIST IS GOD

Heb. 1:8 But of the Son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom.

The key to the understanding of the Bible and of God is the person of Jesus Christ. Many historians have considered Him a great leader, and many social reformers have considered Him a great teacher of mankind. Napoleon ranked himself equal with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne, but acknowledged that Jesus was above all of them and belonged to a different class. The early Marxists denied that He is God, and Engels even denied that Jesus ever existed. But later Marxists admitted that attempts to erase Jesus from European history and culture were fruitless and ridiculous, and that Jesus is “an example of the most sacred human values.”

CHRIST’S OWN DECLARATIONS

The book of Exodus tells us that the name of God is I Am (3:14). When Jesus said, “Before Abraham came into being, I am,” the Jews picked up stones to throw at Him because they knew He was saying that He was God. Jesus as the great I Am is the eternal, ever-existing God.

CHRIST’S MIRACLES PROVING THAT HE IS GOD

Another proof of Christ’s deity is the miracles that He performed on earth. One of the learned Jewish teachers of His time, Nicodemus, confessed that no one could perform the miracles that Christ performed unless God was with him (John 3:2). During His three and a half years of ministry He healed lepers (Luke 5:12-13), restored the lame (Matt. 11:5), the dumb (Mark 7:37), and the blind (Matt. 9:27-30), and even raised the dead (John 11:43-44). He cast out demons (Matt. 8:28-32) and quelled the storm (Matt. 8:23-27). He fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish (Matt. 14:15-21). He changed water into wine (John 2:1-11) and walked on the sea (Matt. 14:25). He had power over nature and authority over the demons. He exercised this power and authority to bring in the kingdom of God, and even gave this power and authority to His disciples. Some prophets in the Old Testament were able to perform miracles but no one was able to perform miracles as Jesus did. Jesus was able to raise the dead to life because He is God and He holds the power of life.

He proclaimed that He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). He proved Himself to be the Lord over nature and over Satan. The Gospel of John says that these miracles manifest His glory (John 2:11) and prove that He is the Son of God (John 20:30-31).

CHRIST’S WORDS TESTIFYING THAT HE IS GOD

He spoke with authority and life (Matt. 7:28-29; John 6:63). Many great world leaders have left words of wisdom to posterity, but no one in history has ever affected as many lives as Christ has with His words. Gandhi could not say that he was the light of the world, nor could Aristotle say that he was the way and the reality and the life. The greatest philosophers of the world can at most say that they point others to the way; they can never say that they are the way. But Christ said that He is the way and the reality and the life. One French philosopher once said that if the record of the Gospels were a forgery, the one who forged the records would be qualified to be Christ Himself.

CHRIST’S DEATH PROVING THAT HE IS GOD

He foretold His death to His disciples before it took place (Matt. 16:21). His death was an exact fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the Messiah foretold by the prophets hundreds of years before. (Psalm 22:15-18). In the Old Testament, Psalm 22:16-18 describes the scene at Christ’s death: “For dogs surround me; a congregation of evildoers encloses me; they pierce my hand and feet. I count all my bones; they look, they stare at me. They divide my garments to themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.” This is a vivid description of the way the Messiah was to die. If we read the record of the Gospels, we find that this was exactly the way Christ died. When Christ was hanging on the cross, His hands and feet were indeed pierced. The dehydration caused by the drainage of blood and water would surely have caused His tongue to stick to His jaws and His bones to stand out. Matthew 27:35 says that when the soldiers had crucified Christ, “they divided His garments among themselves, casting lots,” a literal fulfillment of the words of the Old Testament prophecy.

The time and the way Christ died were foreshadowed hundreds of years before in the types of the Old Testament (Exo.12:3, 5-6). When Christ died He said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30). The death of Christ was not the end of Christ; rather, it was the capstone to His work. Christ’s death set off supernatural events, which reflects the supernatural nature of His death (Matt. 27:45, 51-53). The Bible says that Christ died as the Substitute for all sinners (1 Pet. 3:18). The eternal efficacy of Christ’s redemptive death is a proof that Christ is God (Heb.9:12, 14).

CHRIST’S RESURRECTION PROVING THAT HE IS GOD

He was in the grave for less than seventy-two hours. On the third day Christ rose from the grave (Matt. 28:1-6). This is a historical fact, which no historian can overturn. He resurrected with a body and appeared to His disciples many times for forty days (1 Cor. 15:4-7; Acts 1:3).

Many modern critics have dismissed the resurrection as a myth or a story that the early disciples fabricated. But the fact that so many witnesses saw Christ after His resurrection, and the fact that their encounter with the resurrected Christ brought about profound changes in their lives, are strong proof that the resurrection is not a fabrication. Before Christ’s resurrection the disciples were fearful and disheartened; Peter even denied the Lord three times (Luke 22:54-62). After His resurrection the same group of people became bold and aggressive. Peter was the first one to stand up at Pentecost to preach to more than three thousand people (Acts 2:14). No fabrication can produce such a life-transforming change; nor could the disciples have been in any kind of religious hallucination, because all of them spoke soberly and behaved responsibly. The early church was not a community of self-deceived lunatics but a body of proper, upright, and sober-minded believers. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest historical fact in the history of mankind.

BELIEVING IN JESUS AS GOD

When a person calls on His name and believes in Him (Rom. 10:9), Christ as the living Spirit enters into such a one and changes his life. Today you can experience Him by believing in Him. If you open your heart to Him, He will come into you to set up His kingdom within you. You will be brought out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light (Col.1: 13). Christ will be your new life within (Col. 3:4), and you will be a new person in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). (Christ is God, pp. 1, 8, 10-11, 13, 15-21, 24-25)

References: Christ is God; CWWN, Vol. 27, The Normal Christian Faith, chs. 4-5; Five Great Mysteries in the Bible, ch. 3.