Incomparable: 7 Days With JesusSample

Day 3: God in Flesh; the Deity of Christ, Col 2:9

Most people have no issue with Jesus being a historical reality, even a historical highlight, as long as He remains only a human. Jesus the man, they think, can be held at a safe distance. He can be appreciated for how His teaching and example both inspire and enlighten. Jesus the man is tolerable, manageable, quotable, and measurable.

Jesus as God, however, is different. If Jesus is God, then what we believe about Him is not just a matter of cultural relevance but of eternal significance.

Jesus as God holds us accountable. Jesus as God determines the course of our lives.

The conviction that Jesus is God goes back further even than Jesus’ life on earth. The prophet Isaiah, for example, writing seven hundred years before His birth, wrote that a “virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:14 esv), which means, “God is with us” (Matt 1:23).

But if the words of Old Testament prophecy sound too obscure to some, too mysterious to be regarded as evidence, the plain words of Jesus Himself should suffice. They contradict any claim that He was not considered divine during His lifetime. Jesus directly affirmed His divinity, stating that “I and the Father are one” ( John 10:30) and that “the one who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In fact, it’s upon this ground that Paul the apostle, in the years immediately following Christ’s resurrection, declared Him “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and stated that

God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him. (Col. 1:19)

In His only Son. In Jesus the man, the Son of God.
Not merely a son of God, as some religions claim.
Not a creation of God, as others believe.
Jesus is God Himself. That’s the truth—or else Christianity is false.

There are many important implications of this reality. Here are just three of them:

1. Because Jesus is God, it is possible for us to know God—through Christ.

From earliest times, not even someone of the spiritual stature of Moses was allowed the privilege of actually seeing the God “who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). People occasionally heard His voice; they could write down what He said. And in Exodus 33:19–23, Moses was allowed a brief glimpse of God’s “glory” from the back. But no one had ever really “seen God” in His fullness until they saw Jesus. “The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him” (John 1:18).

Pause to take in the wording of that verse again. By looking at the Son, we see the Father—not merely because He is God’s human representative, His ambassador to this earth, but because Jesus “is himself God.” He is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature” (Heb. 1:3).

Jesus has not left us to wonder what the Father is like. Our Father is like what we see in His Son. Jesus Christ is how we know Him—and also how we draw near to Him.

2. Because Jesus is God, He has provided for us the one and only way to the Father.

The world thinks of Jesus as being one way to God among many. The idea is that we’re free to pick and choose what seems best to us, but we can’t claim our way is the only way. And, honestly, a defensible argument could be made for that position. Christianity could be just another alternative in a religiously pluralistic universe—if Jesus were not God.

But if it’s true that sin has left an indelible stain on every human soul and that no one can stand before a holy God on the merits of his or her own righteousness, we need a righteousness that comes from somewhere else, from Someone as righteous as God. We need a God who can save us, not a religious system we can subscribe to.

The reason “there is salvation in no one else,” in “no other name” but the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12), is that no one’s good works can do what only God can do, through what Jesus has done. Because of who Jesus is. Because Jesus is God.

3. Because Jesus is God, He is to be worshiped, trusted and obeyed as God.

What right does He have to demand our total worship and allegiance if He is only a man? But if He is God—or, I should say, because He is God—how can we legitimately worship anyone or anything else?

The founder of Christianity—Jesus Christ Himself—claims to be God. No one else needed to make the claim for Him. He made it on His own, and He has saved us as His own. That’s why none of us needs to despair that we must find God on our own.

I bow before You, “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Help me to identify and dethrone any idols, any false gods that I’ve allowed to take Your place in my heart. My worship, love, and obedience belong to You and You alone. I owe my life to You, to Your divine grace and Your saving power. AMEN.