Did Jesus Ever Claim to Be God? What He Actually Said

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. We just began our series in John looking at miracles. And we started in John 1:1–5, which really gets into the deity of Christ, the eternality of the Son, the Word has always been. And so the question this week is, where else does the Bible say that?

Do we only have it here in John 1:1–5, or are there other places? So we certainly know that John believes that Jesus is God from what we studied this last week. In the beginning was the Word. He substitutes the Word, which is Jesus, for God, switching from Genesis 1:1, in the beginning God, to in the beginning was the Word.

He’s replaced those two. We talked about that this last week. Then we know Paul certainly believes Jesus is God. He writes Colossians 2:9, the whole fullness of the deity rests in Christ bodily. The whole fullness of the deity rests in Christ bodily. Colossians 2:9. So we know John thinks it, we know Paul thinks it. But the question is, what does Jesus think about himself?

What claims does he make of his own? And so one of the clearest places that we will get to in our series in John is John 8, beginning about verse 54. Jesus tells the religious leaders, Abraham looked forward to seeing my day. He saw it and was glad. And the religious leaders kind of laugh at him, and they say, you’re not 50 years old.

How could you have known Abraham? And then Jesus says, before Abraham was born, I am. He uses the name of God, the I am, the great I am, like Yahweh, presumably. And at that point, the religious leaders kind of lose their minds, they try to stone him. But we know Jesus, with that second instance, there’s two claims there.

Jesus says, Abraham looked forward to my day, he saw it and rejoiced. And the religious leaders weren’t mad yet. They were just kind of laughing at him. They’re like, you’re not 50 years old, you’re claiming to be old enough to see Abraham. They weren’t offended by that. It’s when Jesus says the next thing that they become offended. It’s when Jesus says, before Abraham was, I am. And if the only thing that he’d been saying was what he had already said, that I was around when Abraham was around, they would have just laughed at him like they did the first time.

But we know he said something else because of their reaction. And their reaction was, you’re calling yourself God, we want to stone you for blasphemy. So we know Jesus very clearly claimed to be the I am there in John 8, but that’s not the only place.

There’s all these other little things that he says. Luke 10, Jesus claims that he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. He just mentions that casually. Oh, yes, sure. You were there, Jesus, at sometime around the creation of the world when Satan fell from heaven like lightning.

Jesus, like, yeah, I saw that. Other instances — Jesus claims to be the judge. Matthew 7, not all who call me Lord, Lord will be saved, right? Or Matthew 25, Jesus is the judge that separates the sheep from the goats. And it’s not only that he’s the judge that separates the sheep from the goats, he says it’s how you treated me that determines whether you are a sheep or you’re a goat, or you go to eternal fire or you go to the home that God has prepared for you.

The thing that determines where you go is how you have responded to not God, but to me. I mean, who can make these kind of claims? It’s just God alone. Similarly, Jesus says that he’s able to forgive sins. In the Old Testament, obviously the only person that could forgive sins is God alone.

And other instances, like when various people confess that you are the Son of God, he doesn’t argue with them. In the Old Testament, when an angel appears and the people want to bow down and worship the angel, the angel’s like, whoa, whoa, no, no, no. That’s not right. I’m not God. People bow down and worship Jesus and he’s like, yeah, he pretty much got that right.

It is just consistently instance after instance where Jesus is making some kind of divine claim, or claiming the divine name for himself, or sitting in the seat of judgment — and not only kind of judging as a proxy for God, but saying how you respond to me is what determines where you go. Over and over again, he’s claiming titles, he’s claiming pre-existent existence. He is claiming to be the eternal one over and over and over again.

And then the people of his day had to decide what to do with that. Do we believe this guy who says he’s always been here? Do we believe this guy that he’s the judge, and how we respond to him is whether we’re in or out? And many, many, many, many people, of course, decided, yes, this is the eternal one who has come into our midst.

We need to give our lives to him. So we hope that’s helpful. We’ll see you next time.