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Jesus is God

Is Jesus really God? I often hear people say that Jesus never actually claimed to be God, and that Christians are mistaken to say that He is. But that is not true; Jesus often equated Himself with God, saying things like, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9)," and "I and the Father are one (John 10:30)." 

But even beyond those claims He made are the things He did. Yes, Jesus performed miracles, healed the sick, and cast out demons, but He also did something quite noteworthy: He forgave sin. In Mark 2 Jesus healed a paralytic and then told him his sins were forgiven. Those words enraged the Pharisees, who angrily said, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone? (v.7)”

That may seem like a poor litmus test, because how can any of us know whether or not the paralytic's sins were truly forgiven? Just because Jesus declared them to be doesn't prove that they were. How can we verify that statement? We cannot lay eyes on his sins, or his lack thereof. There is no way to measure that statement's accuracy. For example, someone can go to a confession booth and confess their sins to a priest, and the priest will prescribe some form of penance: say a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys, and your sins will be forgiven. A person might take the priest at his word, assuming that covers his sins, even though that is an unbiblical practice that cannot bring absolution.  

So Jesus told a man his sins were forgiven, but we cannot prove that they were (although we believe they were in faith, since we trust that whatever Jesus said is trustworthy). But that isn't the point. The point is Jesus declared to have done something that His critics admitted could only be done by God alone. The ones who say Jesus never claimed to be God have to come up with an explanation for why His enemies were so angry. 

Jesus claimed to be God simply by acting in the role of God--by forgiving sins. Because sin is mankind's greatest problem, Jesus supplies our greatest need. We can trust in Jesus, God in the flesh, to remove our sins as soon as we confess. 

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