Jesus Christ is God
The Holy Bible is very clear that Jesus the Christ is One with God the Father. I and the Father are One. (John 10:30 AMP)
For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. (John 5:18 NASB)
Trying to explain God with human understanding is very limited, because we are limited. We can only know about God by what He has revealed to us in His written Word, the Holy Bible. The Bible gives us enough information to know that we can trust God with our lives and believe that His word is truth. But we cannot understand all that there is to know about God from our human perspective.
One day I was seeking to understand how three can be One and I asked the Lord to help me understand. Immediately, I was reminded that man is created in the image of God so we can understand some things about God by looking at ourselves. There are three parts to humans we have a spirit, a soul, and a physical body, but they are one person. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:23) The following is a crude human analogy of God but it seems to fit with what we are taught in the Bible about God. The soul would relate to God the Father. The body would be Jesus the Christ and the spirit would be like the Holy Spirit.
The soul is a spiritual being, it is the mind, the heart, the control center of a person, the personality, it is the person. God the Father is Spirit. “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)
Jesus the Christ represents the body of God; He is God in physical form. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, (Colossians 2:9). Just as the body receives and obeys commands from the soul, or mind, Jesus receives and obeyed commands from the Father. Jesus said that He only did what He saw the Father do and He only said what He heard the Father say. Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. (John 8:28) The body is subject to the mind or soul.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love. I believe that the Holy Spirit unites the Father and Son as One; One in love, One in will, One in personality. The spirit that God has given man is what the world calls our conscience. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7) The spirit that God has given man is our source of life, (John 6:63). The moment that the spirit that God has given us departs from our body we are dead, (James 2:26).
Our spirit gives us understanding of truth from God. But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding. (Job 32:8) Our spirit is always trying to unite us with God through Jesus Christ, who is the only way to God. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Corinthians 2:9-11) Our spirit is the only part of our being that we can trust. Our spirit reveals truth to us in the way that God sees truth. The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, Searching all the innermost parts of his being. (Proverbs 20:27)
Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [Let Him be your example in humility:] Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, But stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assume the guise of a servant (slave), in that He became like men and was born a human being. (Philippians 2:5-7 AMP)
There is only one God as the Holy Bible says. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4) We also know that the Bible gives attributes of deity to God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit of God. We also know that there are not three Gods, they are One.
Jesus Christ is the Word of God. He is the very communication of God, and the revelation of God to man. Cults and false religions always try to belittle Jesus to the position of a created being rather than being the Creator. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. (John 1:1-3)
The issue of the deity of Christ is the line in the sand that God has given to man to separate truth from error, because Jesus Christ is Truth. “Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.” (John 14:6-10)
People that deny the deity of Jesus Christ seek to bring Him down to their level; this is the spirit of antichrist. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.… In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:1-10)
The issue of the deity of Christ as the only begotten Son of the Father is what separates true Christians from every cult, even those that may accept some of the Bible. It is also the issue that separates every other religion from true Christianity. That is the line that God has given us to test the spirits to see if they are from the true God or from the god of this world. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:22-23)
People that are offended when Jesus is called God do not know Him or His Father. If they think that they are honoring the Father by belittling His Son they are mistaken. Whoever honors the Son honors His Father also. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. (John 5:21-23) We are to honor Jesus in the same way that we honor His Father.
We can give no greater honor to Jesus Christ than to call Him God. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11) The word “Lord” is the Greek word kurios, it means supreme in authority, God, master. Every person will admit that Jesus Christ is Lord (God) sooner or later.
The true church is made up of believers in Jesus Christ. The church is called the “body of Christ” we are now Christ body on earth. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually (1 Corinthians 12:27). Jesus Christ is our head (Colossians 1:18), our mind, and we are to obey Him just as He obeys His Father. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:10) We are in Jesus Christ and He is in the Father and His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love, unites us all. “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. (John 14:20)
When a person gets a revelation of who Jesus is they will be like Thomas when he declared to Jesus “My Lord and my God”. Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:27-29)
David also spiritually discerned that Jesus is His God. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” They said to Him, “The Son of David.” He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying: ‘The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”‘? “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” (John 20:27-29)
The deity of Jesus Christ is known by His followers and can only be understood by His followers. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:20)
Jesus Christ is in the bosom of the Father issues out of the Father. Just as a solar flare, as part of the sun, issues out of the sun. “for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God. “I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father.” (John 16:27-28) The word “forth” above is the Greek word exerchomai, it means to issue out of. The same word translated as “came” is used in (John 19:34) But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. Jesus came out of the Father, just as blood comes out of a person.
People that can only see with their soul or mind are very short sighted and easily deceived. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:12-14)
But even if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. (2 Corinthians 4:3-4)
Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. (Colossians 2:8-10)