Chapter IV
“Jesus Is God”
The Direct Witness of Scripture
Beyond Romans 9:5, the notes assemble a constellation of texts in which Scripture either names Jesus “God” outright or applies to Him language reserved in the Old Testament for YHWH alone. Taken individually each text can be disputed by a determined opponent; taken together, as the early Fathers argued, they form a rope of many strands that cannot be cut by isolating and reinterpreting any single fiber.
Luke 1:35 — Conceived by the Holy Spirit
The angel Gabriel tells Mary that the child to be born of her will be called “the Son of God” precisely because His origin is not natural generation but the direct overshadowing of “the power of the Highest.” The conception itself is a divine act without human paternity — the first sign in Luke's Gospel that this child's identity exceeds ordinary sonship.
Mark 1:1–3 and Isaiah 40:3 — Preparing the Way of YHWH
Mark opens his Gospel by quoting Isaiah's call to “prepare the way of the LORD (YHWH), make His paths straight” (Isaiah 40:3) and applies it directly to John the Baptist's preparation for the coming of Jesus. This is among the most striking of the implicit divine ascriptions in the New Testament: Isaiah is describing the coming of YHWH Himself to His people, and Mark identifies that coming with the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel writer is not being careless with a prophetic text — he is making a deliberate identification, in the very first sentence of his Gospel, between the God of Israel and the man about whom he is about to write.
Acts 20:28 — Purchased with His Own Blood
In his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, Paul charges them to shepherd “the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood.” Whoever shed the blood that purchased the Church is identified as God. (A small number of later manuscripts read “the church of the Lord” rather than “the church of God” here, but even on that reading the blood that purchases the Church is still attributed to the divine κύριος; the substance of the ascription is not weakened by the variant.)
John 20:28–29 — “My Lord and My God”
Confronted with the wounds of the risen Christ, Thomas does not merely exclaim in astonishment — he confesses, ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου, “My Lord and my God.” The double possessive personalizes the confession; this is not a generic exclamation but worship directed at Jesus. Crucially, Jesus does not correct him. He accepts the confession and pronounces a blessing on those who, without Thomas's privilege of sight, will nonetheless believe — placing every subsequent believer's faith on the same footing as Thomas's confession that the risen Jesus is God.
1 Timothy 3:16 — God Manifested in the Flesh
Paul (or the hymn he is quoting) confesses: “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” A textual note belongs here. The King James reading “God was manifested in the flesh” reflects the later Byzantine tradition and the theological confession is entirely orthodox; nevertheless, many modern critical editions read “He who” or “who.” Even on that reading, the hymn still moves from incarnation to angelic witness, worldwide proclamation, faith among the nations, and reception into glory. The doctrine does not depend on one disputed pronoun, because the wider New Testament already identifies the incarnate One as the divine Son, the Creator, the Judge, and the Lord who receives worship.
Isaiah 9:6 — Mighty God, Everlasting Father
The prophecy of the child to be born is given titles that no merely human king could bear: “Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” “The mighty God” (אֵל גִּבּוֹר, El Gibbor) is the identical title given to YHWH four chapters later in Isaiah 10:21. The prophet is not describing an unusually gifted statesman; he is describing the divine Son who will reign on David's throne.
John 1:1 and 1:14 — The Word Was God; The Word Became Flesh
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρός τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεός ἦν ὁ λόγος. The grammar is precise and deliberate: θεόν (with the article, “the God,” referring to the Father) is distinguished in person from θεός (without the article, predicating the divine nature) which is said of the Word. John is neither collapsing the Word into the Father (which would erase the distinction “with God” just stated) nor demoting the Word to a lesser, created god (the anarthrous predicate noun before the verb, by ordinary Greek usage, functions qualitatively rather than indefinitely). The Word possesses the very nature of God while remaining a distinct person in relation to the Father — the seed of all later Trinitarian grammar. Verse 14 then supplies the scandal proper to the Incarnation: καὶ ὁ λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, “and the Word became flesh.” The eternal, uncreated Logos who was God took to Himself a created, mortal nature without ceasing to be what He eternally was.
Hebrews 1:8 — Your Throne, O God
1 Corinthians 8:6 — Jesus Inside the Shema
Paul's confession in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is one of the most compact and powerful arguments for Christ's deity. He begins from Jewish monotheism: “there is no other God but one.” Then, instead of placing Jesus outside that confession, he reshapes the language around “one God, the Father” and “one Lord Jesus Christ.” The Father is the source “of whom are all things”; the Son is the mediator “through whom are all things.” This is not a demotion of Jesus into the category of creature. It is a christological rereading of the Shema: the one God of Israel is confessed with the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ without abandoning monotheism.
Philippians 2:5–11 and Isaiah 45 — The Divine Name and Universal Worship
Philippians 2 says that Christ existed in the form of God, humbled Himself in true humanity, and was then exalted so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Paul is deliberately echoing Isaiah 45, where YHWH alone declares that He is God and there is no other, and then swears that every knee will bow to Him. The apostolic claim is astonishing: the worship promised to YHWH is rendered to Jesus, and this glorifies the Father rather than competing with Him. The Son shares the divine Name and receives the divine homage because He belongs within the identity of the one God.
Colossians 1:15–20 — Creator, Sustainer, Reconciler
Colossians calls Christ “the image of the invisible God” and “firstborn over all creation,” then immediately explains that all things were created by Him, through Him, and for Him. “Firstborn” therefore cannot mean “first creature,” because the Son is placed on the Creator side of the Creator-creature distinction. All visible and invisible powers are created through Him; He is before all things; in Him all things hold together. The same passage moves from creation to redemption: the One through whom all things were made is the One through whose blood all things are reconciled.
The author of Hebrews, building a case for the Son's superiority to angels, quotes Psalm 45:6 and applies it directly to the Son: “But unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” The Father Himself, in the author's argument, addresses the Son with the vocative “O God.” This is among the clearest texts in the New Testament in which God the Father is depicted speaking to God the Son and naming Him θεός in direct address.
Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 — The Granville Sharp Rule
Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1
Two apostolic greetings call Jesus “God” not by a disputed word but by a rule of Greek grammar. Titus 2:13 awaits “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”; 2 Peter 1:1 is addressed to those who have obtained faith “through the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” In each, a single Greek article governs two singular nouns — “God” and “Saviour” — joined by “and,” a construction that points to one and the same person.
Grammar note Granville Sharp's rule: when one article governs two singular, personal, common (non-proper) nouns joined by “and” (the article—noun—kai—noun construction), both nouns denote the same person. Daniel B. Wallace's exhaustive survey of every such construction in the New Testament and thousands of Hellenistic papyri found no clear exception once plurals, proper names, and impersonal nouns are set aside. In Titus 2:13 (tou megalou Theou kai soteros hemon Iesou Christou) and 2 Peter 1:1, the rule makes “God” and “Saviour” one referent: Jesus Christ. The same writers use the identical construction elsewhere for plainly single referents, so an exception here would be special pleading.
John 1:18 — The Only-Begotten God
John's prologue closes its opening movement by declaring that no one has ever seen God; the Son “hath declared him.” In the earliest manuscripts the key word is not “Son” but “God”: “the only begotten God, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” The reading forms a deliberate bracket with John 1:1 (“the Word was God”), enclosing the whole prologue between two affirmations of the Word's deity.
Textual note The reading monogenes theos (“only-begotten God”) is supported by the oldest and best witnesses — the papyri P66 and P75 (c. 200) and the great fourth-century codices Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Ephraemi. The later majority reading monogenes huios (“only-begotten Son”) is itself orthodox, but it is the easier, more familiar phrase — which is exactly why a scribe was far likelier to soften “God” to “Son” than the reverse. Modern critical editions print “God.”
Colossians 2:9 — The Fulness of the Godhead Bodily
Colossians 2:9; cf. 1:19
Against teachers who would dilute Christ with a hierarchy of angelic mediators, Paul writes that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” The Greek noun is theotes — not merely “divine quality” but Deity itself, the very state of being God — and “all the fulness” of it dwells (present tense, permanently) and “bodily” in the incarnate Christ. Whatever it is to be God, Paul says, resides wholly and personally in Jesus of Nazareth.
1 John 5:20 — This Is the True God
John's first epistle ends: “we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” The nearest antecedent of “this” (houtos) is “Jesus Christ,” just named; and “eternal life” is a title John has already given the Son (“that eternal life, which was with the Father,” 1 John 1:2). The apostle therefore closes by calling Jesus “the true God” — the very phrase the Old Testament reserves for YHWH over against all idols (Jeremiah 10:10).
Further Ascriptions and Applied YHWH-Texts
The pattern recurs across the New Testament. 2 Thessalonians 1:12 speaks of “the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (again a Granville Sharp construction on a natural reading). 1 Corinthians 2:8 calls the crucified “the Lord of glory,” a divine title (Psalm 24:7—10). Most pointedly, Philippians 2:10—11 and Romans 14:11 take Isaiah 45:23 — where YHWH swears “unto me every knee shall bow” and insists He will share His glory with no other — and fulfil it in the universal confession of Jesus as Lord. And Hebrews 1:10—12 has the Father address the Son in the words of Psalm 102, a hymn to YHWH the Creator: “Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth.” Texts spoken of YHWH alone are, without apology, spoken of Jesus.