"Jesus Never Claimed To Be God"

"Jesus never claimed to be God."

This is a common claim, but when we examine the earliest biblical texts carefully, the evidence tells a different story.

In the Gospels, Jesus makes several statements that strongly imply his divine identity. For example:

In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” which his Jewish audience clearly understood as a claim to divinity, since they accused him of blasphemy (Carson, 1991; Kostenberger, 2004).

He accepts titles that belong only to God, like “I am” (John 8:58), directly echoing God’s self-identification in Exodus 3:14 (Beasley-Murray, 1987).

Jesus forgives sins (Mark 2:5-7), a divine prerogative that amazed the scribes (Witherington, 2001).

He also accepts worship (Matthew 14:33; John 20:28), something Jewish law reserves for God alone (Danker, 2000).

Even outside the Gospels, the early church clearly understood Jesus as divine — a belief reflected in the letters of Paul, written within 20-30 years of Jesus’ death (e.g., Philippians 2:6-11) (Wright, 2003).

Scholars overwhelmingly agree that Jesus claimed a unique divine status. While the exact nature of his divinity was later clarified in church councils, the claim that he never asserted it is not supported by the earliest texts or historical scholarship (McGrath, 2011).


References

Beasley-Murray, G. R. (1987). John (Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 36). Word Books.

Carson, D. A. (1991). The Gospel according to John. Eerdmans.

Danker, F. W. (2000). Jesus and the law in the synagogue: Textual, historical, and theological studies on Jesus’ relation to the Torah. Baker Academic.

Kostenberger, A. J. (2004). John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament). Baker Academic.

McGrath, A. E. (2011). Christian theology: An introduction (5th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Witherington, B. (2001). The Jesus quest: The third search for the Jew of Nazareth. InterVarsity Press.

Wright, N. T. (2003). The resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press.