Skip to main content

Is Jesus Really God? Part 2




(continued from Part 1)
Jesus claimed to be God

In John 14:9 Jesus told His disciple Phillip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” He also made a similar claim in John 5:25, but the most clear claim to divinity came when He was under oath for that very reason. When asked by Pilate if He was God, Jesus answered, “I AM (Mark 14:62).”

Some people today say that Jesus was a good teacher, but that He never claimed to be God. That doesn’t make sense: Jesus was sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy, which is claiming to be God!
  

Jesus acted like God 

It wasn’t just that He claimed to be God, for anyone can do that. Jesus also acted as if He were God. Consider the fact that He let Thomas call Him “my Lord and my God” in John 20:28. Jesus never corrected Him and said, “No Thomas, I am not God.”

Jesus also allowed people to worship Him, like in John 9:38 and Matthew 28:17. Contrast that with Peter, who refused to let Cornelius worship him in Acts 10:25-26, saying, “Stand up; for I also a man.” Jesus never told the crowds not to worship Him because He wasn’t just a man.

Jesus forgave sin in Luke 7:48 and Matthew 9:2. This outraged the Pharisees because, according to Mark 2:7, no one could forgive sins “except God alone.” In Matthew 13:31 Jesus said that He had the power to send out angels, which was something else He could not do if He were not God.

In John 10:30 Jesus made the statement “I and my Father are one.” And in John 1 we see once again a claim that Jesus was God in the flesh: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (verses 1 and 14).

So to the Mormon who believes in the Bible and yet does not believe that Jesus was God incarnate, what do you do with all these verses?

The reason many Mormons overlook these verses is they put their primary focus on Joseph Smith, who supposedly received another revelation from God that was given to him by an angel. The problem with this is that Paul warned the Galatian church to reject any new gospel, even if it came from an angel (Galatians 1:8).

Whether it is a preacher, Joseph Smith, an angel, or anything else, let us make sure that their teaching is in line with Scripture. The Bible cannot be clearer: Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and His resurrection makes Him the only Savior of the world. 

Our Mormon friends must be shown that the Bible itself presents Jesus as God, so if their Book of Mormon teaches something different, then they need to reject that book and that religion. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The “Christians Hate Gays” Myth

During these Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) hearings before the Supreme Court I keep hearing how much Christians hate gay people. This was news to me since I am a Christian and I don’t hate gay people. I also go to church with over 1000 other Christians, and if any of them hate gay people, they sure haven’t told me. Before moving to South Carolina I worked at or attended several churches in Texas; prior to that I spent a decade going to church in Florida. Guess what? No one hated gay people. In fact, I don’t know any Christians who hate anybody. The very uniform of a believer is his love, and if a person does not show consistent love, then he is not actually a believer. Are there non-believers who hate gay people and claim to be Christian? Of course. But that doesn’t represent Jesus or His church. Equating  hateful sign-wavers with Christianity is like equating a kindergarten baseball team to the New York Yankees. They may claim to be playing the same
4 comments
Read more

To Save a Life

(Like my blog about the peace symbol, this blog was written as a default response to all the parents, students, and other people who are asking my opinion of To Save a Life.) By now you have probably heard of the movie To Save a Life, which opened nation-wide in theaters on January 22nd. The movie deals with so many issues that teens face today, like suicide, cutting, drinking, drugs, premarital sex, teen pregnancy, and abortion. At first glance this movie looks like an awesome resource that we should recommend for our teens, parents, youth pastors, and youth workers. But a closer look at the movie reveals a few disturbing things. For starters, according to pluggedin.com, there are 2 uses of the “A” word, 5 uses of hell (used as a curse word), and once the “D” word is used. There are other crude terms used to describe a girl, and crude terms for referring to sexual activity. There is also a bedroom scene that shows a girl removing a boy’s shirt, then afterwards the girl putting he
38 comments
Read more

The Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley

If you have spent much time in church you have probably sung some songs with lyrics like these: “He leads me to his banqueting table, his banner over me is love… Jesus is the rock of my salvation, his banner over me is love.” “Sweetest rose of Sharon, come to set us free.” “He’s the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star…” But are those songs biblical? They come out of the writings of the Song of Solomon, but are we to understand those lines as describing Christ? The Song of Solomon is a collection of love poems that were written between two people who were deeply in love and about to be married. While we know that King Solomon is one of the writers, the other’s name has escaped us, and we know her today simply as the Shulamite woman. Some people believe that since this woman is not named then she never existed; some teach that this book is pure allegory, only existing to serve as symbolism. King Solomon, they say, represents
6 comments
Read more