Where in the Bible Does It Say That Jesus Claimed to Be God?
How does one respond to a person who claims to be God? This is one of the vital questions we must ask about the historic figure, Jesus of Nazareth. There is no way to escape the fact that Jesus declared that He was, in fact, God in the flesh.
I and the Father are one. (John 10:30, NASB)
He who has seen Me has seen the Father… (John 14:9b, NASB)
Since Jesus claimed to be God, we have to judge his statements as either true or false – there is no middle ground.
The great British writer, C. S. Lewis, explained in his well-known book, Mere Christianity:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher; he’d either be a lunatic – on a level with a man who says he’s a poached egg – or else he’d be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.”
“You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
So Jesus was either a madman, a liar, a myth, or He really was – and is – the Son of God.
Why It Matters That Jesus Is God
There are two reasons why Jesus was the only person qualified to die on the cross for the sins of every human being:
Because He was fully God.
Because He was fully human.
As God, Jesus was able to live a life without sin. No human being is able to do that.
As man, Jesus was qualified to take on the sins of his fellow human beings.
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