Why Christ's Deity is Essential

[RickD]

As some of you may have noticed, recently we've had an influx of posters who deny the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. I started this thread, as a place to share the reasons why Christ's deity is an essential of our faith. So we can better understand this essential belief, and hopefully strengthen one another's faith.

So let's hear it! Tell us why Christ's deity is essential for salvation.

***As this thread is a discussion about why Christ's deity is essential, any posts denying Christ's deity will be removed. Let's keep this on topic. And keep the debates in other threads.

John 8:24
24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

[Silvertusk]

To me is fairly simple and logical and the Bible of course backs it up.

For me it goes like this.

1) What do you want your god to be like - Holy and Just?
2) Can we meet the standards of a Holy Just god?
3) How often do we fail to meet our own standards?
4) What chance do we have to meet the standards of a Holy and Just god then? - None.
5) Is there anyone on earth who can? No we are all alike.
6) It takes a God to meet a God's standards.
7) Jesus is God.
He is our standard
9) He met it.

Any religion that states that there is some other why for you to gain salvation is false as it is logically impossible, unless their god is not quite so holy and Just and therefore he/she/it wouldn't by definition be God.

Christianity is the only coherent belief where the standard of a God (by definition) is met by God himself through his son Jesus Christ.

And Jesus is pretty cool as well.

[Seraph]

I'm not sure if this is what caused it but looking at recent posts I'm inclined to think that the "There is No Trinity" thread prompted the creation of this one.
Does denial of the existence of a trinity mean that a person is denying that Jesus is God? I for example am very skeptical of the classic trinity idea, but I do believe that Jesus is fully God as well as the Holy Spirit. I think there are many possible biblical "models" for the nature/relationship of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that affirm that all of them are God, but don't necessarily exist as three sepererate-yet-one entity(ies).

I could just be way off and that has nothing to do with anything regarding this thread.

Edit: Nevermind, noticed the Christian Science thread that is probably more likely the origin...

[Jac3510]

As I have written elsewhere with reference to John 20:31.

• The term “the Son of God” is also important. One of the major themes of John is Jesus’ Sonship, with the Evangelist often employing title “Son of God” or often the unqualified “Son”. While a full study of this idea is outside the scope of this paper, it should be noted here that a major aim of John seems to be making explicit Jesus filial relationship to the Father. Whatever adoptionistic ideas the Jews had about “the Son of God,” John expected his readers to see its exalted meaning. For John, the Son of God is more than the nation’s king. He is God.

John 20:31 makes believe that Jesus is "the Son of God" a part of the gospel one must believe to be saved. The question must be asked, then, what John meant by the phrase. It is absolutely clear that, for John, "the Son" is God, just as much God as the Father is. That is to say, for John, "the Son" speaks of the deity of Christ. Therefore, belief in the deity of Christ is part and parcel with the gospel itself, and to deny the deity of Christ is to deny the gospel.

[B. W.]

As some of you may have noticed, recently we've had an influx of posters who deny the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. I started this thread, as a place to share the reasons why Christ's deity is an essential of our faith. So we can better understand this essential belief, and hopefully strengthen one another's faith.

So let's hear it! Tell us why Christ's deity is essential for salvation.

***As this thread is a discussion about why Christ's deity is essential, any posts denying Christ's deity will be removed. Let's keep this on topic. And keep the debates in other threads.

John 8:24
24 Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”

All comes down to monogenēs - monogenoús - one of a kind...


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[Gman]

If Jesus isn't G-d, then we haven't been redeemed..

[PeteSinCA]

If Jesus isn't G-d, then we haven't been redeemed..

Had Jesus only been a man or been fully man yet fully some other creature (I'm speaking, necessarily, hypothetically) the redemptive value of His death and resurrection would be, at most, the value of one human. Only by being fully man yet fully God (i.e. the Creator) could Jesus death and resurrection be applicable to as many humans who place their trust and reliance in Him and what He accomplished.

On another tack, God has the right, having created humans (and the rest of the universe), to judge how we have lived and our loyalty to Him. Being the Creator and not limited by time and space, God also has the total knowledge of what happened in creation, what was done by each and every creature, and the full motives of each human. By becoming and living a life as a human, God also knows fully and experientially what it is - limitations, physical needs and desires, temptations, brutalities and kindnesses of others - to be a human person.

As John 3:16 states so simply - and so familiarly that it's easy to miss its full meaning and awesomeness - the Word, Jesus, becoming a human being is a supreme expression of just how much God loves us humans - as an entirety and as each and every individual - and how much God values humans (with the same scope and focus). Philippians 2:5-8 digs deeper into the magnitude of what the Word did, and then shows that, with everything Jesus did in becoming, living and dying as a man, He is also the model for how believers should live their lives among each other and the world.

God being all-powerful, all-knowing and utterly righteous is scary. That God loves us so much that He became fully, and lived and died, as a human is far scarier (you know, no excuses!). And demands our full love, loyalty, and service.

[Byblos]

More food for thought. At the most basic level you have to ask yourself if Jesus is not God then why him. I mean really, think about this for a second, why Jesus? Why the parade of prophets over thousands of years before him? Why not Abraham or David or Elijah or even Mohammed? Why did God choose Jesus to be his redemptive instrument? If Jesus were not God, at best that decision is completely arbitrary.

[PaulSacramento]

The issue is the identification of the term God with The Father.
To some God = The Father, it is like a personal name.
To suggest Christ is God is to say that He is The Father.
The other issue some have is calling Jesus God, but Isaiah didn't have those issues"
Isaiah 9:6
Isaiah 7:14

To Isaiah the saviour would be called God.

The thing that must be understood is that Jesus is begotten of God, the ONLY begotten according to John.
What is begotten is of the same nature and it is clear that Jesus is of the same nature as God.
Paul states so in Colossians, Phillipians, Hebrews.

The other issue then is to reconcile what that means:
Jesus is God, but that means what?
He is The Father? the Spirit? what?
This is an issue to those that think of the term God to mean a The Father in terms of His identity, they believe that God is the "name" of God, it is a personal designation to a being that has no other like Him in the Universe and that is NOT the case.
God is a term the signifies the characteristics of a being, in this case a divine Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent being.
It doesn't mean there is only ONE by the way and, as a matter of fact the bible recognizes that other beings are called gods too but there there is only ONE supreme God.

One can argue that the very proclamation that God is ONE exists to make us understand that God is ONE.
Note it doesn't say there is ONLY ONE GOD, it doesn't say Hear O Israel, there is ONLY ONE GOD.
It says God is ONE, WHY?
To, even then before Christ was revealed to Israel, to help us to understand that GOD is ONE.
As Christ echoes in the GOJ: My Father and I are ONE.

It is a statement of nature:
What is begotten is of the same nature and as John makes clear, there is only ONE begotten son of God and that is Christ and since He is begotten of God then He has the same nature as God, hence He is God.

[jlay]

There was a show on NRB (Word Pictures) last night that addressed the diety of Christ as it relates to Jehovah's Witnesses. The late Walter Martin was perhaps the gold standard in both explaining and defeating the JW position. His position argues definatively for the diety of Christ and implodes the JW argument. Imagine that it would for any other cult that denies such.

I think the reason this is such an issue is due to how the doctrine of the Trinity can be such a mindbender. It's one of those things that the more you study, the more frustrated one becomes. I'd say more than a few theologians have lost their marbles trying to unpack this doctrine. The incarnation for me is one of those things that I can't comprehend, but can only apprehend, and then not near as well as I like.

[PaulSacramento]

There was a show on NRB (Word Pictures) last night that addressed the diety of Christ as it relates to Jehovah's Witnesses. The late Walter Martin was perhaps the gold standard in both explaining and defeating the JW position. His position argues definatively for the diety of Christ and implodes the JW argument. Imagine that it would for any other cult that denies such.

I think the reason this is such an issue is due to how the doctrine of the Trinity can be such a mindbender. It's one of those things that the more you study, the more frustrated one becomes. I'd say more than a few theologians have lost their marbles trying to unpack this doctrine. The incarnation for me is one of those things that I can't comprehend, but can only apprehend, and then not near as well as I like.

Would love to hear Martin take on this, link?

To me what helped the most was the begotten thing, how CS Lewis explained that whatever God begets must be God.
What also helped me was the understanding of God being an "other-centered" being of love, that for God to be GOD "HE" must be other-centered ( or else He would be inferior to a being that was and as such, He would NOT be God).
The incarnation was, for me, the easiest part to accept.

[PeteSinCA]

There was a show on NRB (Word Pictures) last night that addressed the diety of Christ as it relates to Jehovah's Witnesses. The late Walter Martin was perhaps the gold standard in both explaining and defeating the JW position. His position argues definatively for the diety of Christ and implodes the JW argument. Imagine that it would for any other cult that denies such.

I think the reason this is such an issue is due to how the doctrine of the Trinity can be such a mindbender. It's one of those things that the more you study, the more frustrated one becomes. I'd say more than a few theologians have lost their marbles trying to unpack this doctrine. The incarnation for me is one of those things that I can't comprehend, but can only apprehend, and then not near as well as I like.

Would love to hear Martin take on this, link?

Walter Martin died in 1989, so unless some one has converted some of his tapes to MP3 or OCRed some of his writings, your best approach might be to find a copy of his Jehovah of the Watchtower.

[PeteSinCA]

I did find these two videos of Walter Martin on YouTube, speaking about Jehovah's witnesses and their beliefs about Jesus:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxtiVIxDflM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVezrewx3SM[/youtube]