Last night my Bible study group had a great discussion from John 10. Since I’m working on translating Greek all day today for my Exegesis class, I thought I would take a few minutes and share what we talked about and invite you to join the conversation.
To begin with, we talked about how Jesus claimed to be God here in John 10. There are dozens of other places that can be discussed but from this one passage, there are several proofs that Jesus was claiming to be God.
1. John 10:25 – After the Jews said, “If You are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus responded and said, “I did tell you and you don’t believe.” Don’t believe what? Obviously, the Jews were having a hard time believing that Jesus was the Messiah. We can infer, therefore, that Jesus is saying “I did tell you [that I am the Messiah] and you don’t believe.” Clearly, Jesus is NOT saying “I did tell you [that I am NOT the Messiah] and you don’t believe” because there is no ambiguity on what the Jews believed and didn’t believe.
2. John 10:28 – Jesus goes on to talk about how His sheep follow Him and then He says, “I give them eternal life.” That’s a pretty bold statement for a mere human to make. The Jews believed that only God Himself could give eternal life. Therefore, Jesus is clearly stating that He is God.
3. John 10:30 – Jesus said, “The Father and I are one.” Again, the devout Jew would never claim to be one with God. For Jesus to say this is to say that He is God.
4. John 10:33 – If we knew nothing of the Jewish context and couldn’t read between the lines of what Jesus said, the clearest proof that Jesus was claiming to be God doesn’t actually come from anything that He Himself said. The clearest proof of Jesus’ claim to divinity comes from the critics. They picked up stones to kill Jesus and said that their reason was “because You – being a man – make Yourself God.” They sensed no ambiguity in what Jesus was claiming. They knew that He was claiming to be God and were ready to kill Him for it.
5. John 10:36 – Jesus asks rhetorically, “do you say, ‘You are blaspheming’ to the One the Father set apart and sent into the world, because I said: I am the Son of God?” He then tells them to look at the works that He is performing as evidence of the veracity of His statements and then says, “This way you will know and understand that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.” Here Jesus alludes to the fact that He has said, “I am the Son of God.” and further reinforces that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father. This could be two separate proofs of Jesus’ deity but I’ve rolled it into one proof for brevity. It doesn’t need to be repeated that this was a clear indication to the Jews that Jesus was claiming to be God and once again they try to seize Him so that they could kill Him but he escapes.
So, did Jesus claim to be God? Here are several proofs that that’s exactly what Jesus was claiming. We could also look at all the times Jesus referred to Himself as the “Son of Man” – the Old Testament reference to the Messiah. We could look at Colossians 1:15-16 which says, “He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the One who is preeminent over all creation; because by Him everything was created…” We could look at John 1:1 which says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Of course, Colossians 1 and John 1 are not evidences that Jesus Himself claimed to be God, but they reveal what His disciples thought about Him because that’s what they wrote about Him. Taken together, Jesus clearly claimed time and again that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. So, if there are any Jehovah’s Witnesses reading this, I would love to hear your thoughts.
What do you think? Did Jesus Claim to be God? Anyone else want to offer insight into Jesus’ claim to be God? Does anyone see a flaw in the logic here? Let me know what you think.