Jesus Is God Proof Text
Does
the Bible say Jesus is God or the Son of God?
The Bible clearly says that Jesus is God, and the Bible clearly says that Jesus
is also the Son of God. Let's start with the proof texts that declare Jesus is God.
In
John
20:28, Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, called him,
"My Lord and my God!"
In
John chapter 1, Jesus is identified
as the
"Word" who
"became flesh and dwelt among us," (John 1:14)
and declared God:
"the Word was God."
(John 1:1)
In
John 8:58,
the reason the Jews in power tried to stone Jesus to death was because
he called himself,
"I AM,"
which is the name that God called himself in the Old Testament when
he was sending Moses to the Jews enslaved in Egypt:
Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to
the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has
sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I
say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus
you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’"
(Exodus 3:13-14)
In
Luke 17:18, the Samaritan man
"returned" to
Jesus
"to give glory
to God" after being healed by Jesus, and
Luke 8:38-39 clearly equates the
"great things God has done for you" with
the
"great things Jesus had done for him."
The proof that Jesus is God hinges on his
resurrection. Throughout the
New Testament, Jesus said
that he will die and rise from the dead to prove that he is God who
had come to pay the death penalty for our sins to save us from paying that
penalty ourselves.
After all of
the wonderful things that Jesus said and did, if he had died and
just stayed dead, he would
have been a liar or lunatic (see
Lord, Liar, lunatic). But if
he actually rose from the dead as he had prophesied before dying, then his claim
of deity has to be taken seriously.
For the proof that Jesus actually rose from the dead, see
Proof of Jesus'
Resurrection.