Do You Agree That Jesus Is God?

Tom:  We’re presently going through certain verses in the gospel of John, which will help us better understand the gospel of salvation. As an aid in our selection of verses, we’re using the following background ideas as a guideline. These are things that Dave has presented in his book, An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith. First: Who Jesus is. Second: Who we are, and Third: What Jesus accomplished for us.

If you’re wondering why those particular questions, the correct answers to them are critical for one to comprehend what he or she must believe in order to be saved. The first ten verses of John, as we’ve seen, clearly provide the most important answer to question 1: Jesus is God.

Dave, we’re going to pick up with verse 11. This is John 1: 11: “He [that is Jesus] cameunto his own, and his own received him not.” Now, this, of course, is talking about Jesus as the Messiah. He came to the Jews.

Dave: Well, it’s the Jews, yes, because they’re primarily His “kinsmen after the flesh,” as Paul says it. But actually, we’re all His brethren. He became a man. So He was in the world. It goes on to say, “The world was made by him. The world knew him not.” So, it would include all of us, but primarily the Jews. But the world didn’t receive Him either. The gentiles didn’t receive Him either. Pilate was a gentile, and the Roman government sentenced Him to death.

Tom: Well, as we go on, verse 12, there were some that received him.

Dave: Right.

Tom: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” Dave, especially in this day of ecumenism, there’s a belief that we’re all children of God, we’re all sons and daughters of God. But this is making a distinction, isn’t it?

Dave:  We become…  “As many as received him, to them he gave the power [I don’t know—I think the Greek word there is actually “authority,” but the “right”] to become the sons of God.” So we become sons of God. We become sons of God through believing in Him. I mean, it’s quite clear.

In Galatians, Paul says, “You are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.” We are the children of Adam, to begin with. We’re the children of our fleshly parents. In order to become children of God, as Jesus told Nicodemus, we have to be born of the Spirit of God into the family of God. We are not all children of God! In fact, we’re not all children of God by nature. In fact, Jesus said in John 8 very clearly, He said to the Jews, “You are of your father, the devil!”

So, we’re really all of our father the devil because he’s the one who deceived Eve…

Tom: Right. Now, he wasn’t talking about all the Jews, because we just heard here, there’s some who received Him. He’s talking about the Jewish leadership.

Dave: Well, by nature, we’re all that.

Tom: Right.

Dave: Yeah. Until by faith we become the children of God.

Tom: Right. Verse 13 says exactly what you’ve stated: “Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We have to be born again—born of God.

Dave: Right. And it’s simply saying it’s not a physical birth. “Not of the flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man.” We couldn’t force it on God. We couldn’t make Him do this. This is something that He has done for us. But it doesn’t mean that we are not required to give our consent. “As many as received Him…” To receive Christ, you must be willing. You can’t force a gift on someone, or it’s not a gift. And the gift of God is eternal life. So we have to be careful that we don’t say…. We have said that the Christian life is something that only Christ can do. But we still have to trust Him. We still have to be willing. And salvation is also something that only God could gift to us. We can’t work it up, we can’t merit it. But it’s a gift. We must be willing to receive it: “As many as received Him, those become the sons of God.”

Tom:  Dave, verse 14 really goes back to what we’re underscoring here, that Jesus is God. Verse 14: “And the Word was made flesh.” And we mentioned last week, looking to Revelation:9:13And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
See All..., Jesus—His name is called “The Word of God.”

Dave:  Tom, it’s…again, I don’t know anything about Greek, but I think the meaning of the Greek there is “tabernacled among us.” Because in the Old Testament, there was a tabernacle. And God told them the pattern and how to construct it, and He said, “This is where I will manifest My presence.” And you had the Temple. And you remember when the priests went in to offer the sacrifices at the beginning? The glory of God came, to such an extent, the Shekinah glory filled the Temple! They couldn’t stand there. And this was where God manifested His presence.

Now, God has come into another tabernacle. That temple was destroyed. And it hasn’t been here for 1900 years. And God Himself now “tabernacles”—“temples,” you know, He dwells in a physical body. He becomes a man. And so, the scripture says, “The body that thou hast prepared me…” We talked about it before. Mary was the mother of Jesus—a virgin birth. She’s not the mother of God. Jesus was God from eternity past.

Tom: Right. She wasn’t born.

Dave: No. But this was the body that He took when He became a man. So now He comes to “tabernacle” in a human body—God becomes a man, and then (we talked about it earlier in the program), because of that, it is now possible, through Christ, that God can live in every human being who opens their hearts to Him, who believes in Him.

Tom: Dave, I get so excited about this. Just the idea—the truth, the reality—that God became a man. Every time I hear it I get more excited. And then sometimes I think about those out there who are searching for God, or seeking God, or who make that claim, who are wondering, “Is there really a God?”

We’re going to God’s Word here! It’s laying it out! God is…God became a man.

Dave: Mm-hmm. He didn’t become a fish, like the Hindus teach, or a boar—half-man, half-boar, or whatever. He became a man. He could only become a man. Of all His creatures, He couldn’t become an angel. He couldn’t become a chimpanzee. He couldn’t become a rock, as some naturalists believe—that the spirit dwells in everything.

Tom: Or Gaia, Mother Earth…

Dave: He could only become a man. Why? Because He said, “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness.” So, man was made in the image of God. The only way that image can be restored…because it’s become defiled, it’s deformed. The angels, looking at us today, Tom, I’m sorry—I mean we’ve got good faces for radio…

Tom: [laughing] Or so we’ve been told…

Dave: Right. It’s not just our faces, but looking at human beings as they are today, we’d say, “Wow! What happened to Adam?” Well, what happened to Adam was he sinned. And that…it’s gotten worse: the pool of disease and corruption has just increased in our genes, and so forth.

But this is the perfect Man. And God becomes a man, and now He can live in us because He paid the penalty for our sins.

Tom: Right. Well, that’s what I get excited about, Dave. The very idea that God would become a man and dwell among us, for a purpose! And the purpose was all for us. It’s just absolutely wonderful. And I think again—I think about those out there who claim to be seeking and searching after God. Look to Jesus! Look to God’s Word! If they really want to know the true and living God…it’s in God’s Word.

Dave: Well, Tom, the purpose was for us, yes. But more than that—to His glory.

Tom: Right.

Dave: I know you agree. He made man! He gave us the power of choice. We would have to be able to say, “no,” in order to say, “yes”; to experience love, we had to have the power of choice. We rebelled! We said, “NO!” Adam and Eve said no. We’ve all been saying no! Well, then, what’s God going to do? Scrap the human race? No, He loves us. And it is to God’s glory that God himself became a man and paid the penalty that His own infinite justice required. He’s not going to whitewash this. He’s not going to do away with us, and He’s not going to forgive us on an unrighteous basis. God becomes a man to pay the penalty. So it is to God’s glory what He has done. Also, He is lifting man up, now, and we will be in the image of Christ forever and forever.
 

“When we see Him, we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” This is what God has done.

Tom: And it’s incredibly, absolutely wonderful.

Dave: Amen.

Tom: And it’s available, free, for all who will come to Him!

Dave: Amen.