Is Jesus God?
I always invite you to submit your questions about the Bible. Questions sent to hishandshisheart@yahoo.com will be viewed only by me and will be edited to maintain confidentiality. Here's one that was sent to me a few weeks back:
My friend is a new Christian and we have been meeting weekly and having discussions about the Bible. She believes that Jesus & God (the Father) are the same person. When I bring up different passages in the Bible, she says she cannot explain it but that she has prayed about it and God answered her by saying they are the same person. I hope you can help.
Your friend has picked up on a very old and still very "hot" theological issue. Historic, orthodox Christian teaching is that Jesus is both fully God and fully man--Colossians chapter 1 makes this abundantly clear. Not only that, it teaches that God reveals Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is triune, that is "three-in-one," which is where we get the theological term "Trinity." All three are distinct personalities, yet bound together inseparably as one God. This is a great mystery, yet one which we cannot explain away because of the rich evidence given by the Bible. All three characters, for example, are mentioned at the baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3:16-17), where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit clearly take on different roles. Before his crucifixion, Jesus gave his disciples unprecedented insights into the nature of God, recorded in John chapters 14-17. No one who reads these chapters carefully can miss the fact that the same authority and attributes that belong to the Father, also belong to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Some religious groups seek to preserve the integrity of Christ's identity by claiming that he is the same person as the Father and the Holy Spirit. However, this simply cannot be justified by any natural, reasonable reading of the texts listed above. When Jesus prays to the Father in John chapter 17, He isn't praying to himself. The words of the prayer itself make no sense whatsoever unless you distinguish the Father from the Son. 1 John 2:21 says that if we sin "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." This and dozens of other scriptures only make sense if you see the Father and Son as two distinct persons.
Your friend speaks to a feeling of peace she gets about her beliefs and it should be pointed out that our feelings can often mislead us. "There is a way which seems right to a man," Proverbs 14:12 warns, "but in the end it leads to death." Also, your friend should know that it could not have been God that spoke to her, since God will never contradict His word (Romans 3:4).
Whenever we discuss theological issues with our friends, it is important to (1) get agreement that the Word of God is the final authority for truth and (2) that the Word of God must be read in its context with all the relevant facts at hand.
I hope this helps! Keep your questions coming!
-William Sherman-