01 – The Heart of It All: The God-Man (part 1)
The Heart of It All
Peter Amsterdam
2011-04-19
You’ll want to read “The Heart of It All: Introduction” before reading this article or the rest of this series.
The heart of our faith as Christians rests on the answer to one simple but extremely crucial question: Who is Jesus? In order to understand our faith, to understand the story of Jesus and what His life was about—His teachings, the reason for His coming—it’s necessary to understand who He is.
Jesus is God. He is the second person of the Trinity, which includes God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. (For more on the Trinity, see the Heart of It All series on the Trinity.)
The beauty of this truth is that His being God means that every person from every age who has invited Jesus into their life has received forgiveness for their sins as well as everlasting life. Because we as humans sin, and those sins are an offense against God, there is a need for us to be forgiven by God and reconciled to Him; and the only way for that to happen was for Jesus, who is God, to become human, to live a life without sin, to die for our sins, and to rise from the dead. And this is exactly what happened.
The whys and wherefores of how Jesus’ death brings God’s forgiveness will be the topic of a future article in this series. Suffice it to say for now that Scripture teaches that Christ’s death for the sins of the world is the basis and plan of salvation for humankind. Jesus fulfilled all the necessary requirements in order for humans to be forgiven for their sins by God.
The Logos
Jesus, being a member of the Trinity, along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, is God the Son. As such, He has all the attributes of God. (For more on the attributes of God, see The Heart of It All series “The Nature and Character of God.”)
God is the creator of all things. God is eternal and existed before anything else was in existence. This being the case, for Jesus to be God, then He must be eternal and He must have also existed before anything else existed. He must have had a part in creating all that is created. According to Scripture, all of those things are true of Jesus.
The first three verses of the Gospel of John make the point well:
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 were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.
When John was speaking of God the Son before He was born on earth, he referred to Him as the Word, not as Jesus. These verses show that the Word/Jesus had a hand in creation, as “all things were made by Him.” The word John used, translated into English as Word, was Logos in the original Greek. The term Logos was first used in the 6th century BC by a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus to designate the divine reason or plan which coordinates a changing universe. As such, to a Greek speaker at the time, Logos meant reason, so they would have understood the verses as “in the beginning was the reason or mind of God.” They would understand that before creation the Logos existed with God eternally. Therefore the Logos, the Word, God the Son, was in existence before any created thing—including time, space, or energy—existed.
As one of the early church fathers, Athanasius, wrote, “There was never a time when He (the Logos) was not.”[1] He is eternal. The Logos, God the Son, was with God the Father, and was God.
John 1:14 goes on to say:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John states clearly that the Logos, the Word, God the Son, became flesh and lived on earth. This means no less than that God the Son lived on earth for a time as a human being. It means that He, an eternal immaterial being, entered into His creation in time and space. This could only happen if God became incarnate, if He became man, which is exactly what happened when Jesus of Nazareth was born. He became the God-man, God in human flesh who dwelt amongst us.
Since this is fundamental to our Christian faith, I thought it good to review what Jesus said about Himself regarding being God.
Jesus’ Claims to Deity
It’s important to note that according to the Laws of Moses, anyone who claims to be God commits blasphemy, and the punishment for blasphemy is death. On more than one occasion the Jews took up stones to kill Jesus, and at His trial before the Jewish religious leaders, they condemned Him to death for His claims to be God. Clearly the Jews of His day understood He was making claims of deity.
One of His direct claims is recorded in John chapter 8, which says:
“Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing My day; he saw it and was glad.” “You are not yet fifty years old,” the Jews said to Him, “and You have seen Abraham!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” At this, they picked up stones to stone Him, but Jesus hid Himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.[2]
What Jesus said in this passage is significant in two ways. First, though He wasn’t even fifty years old, He was claiming that He was alive before Abraham—who had lived and died two thousand years earlier. Only God has eternal existence, which is what Jesus was claiming. Second, in saying “before Abraham was born, I am,” Jesus was assigning Himself the name of God.
In Exodus 3:14, God reveals to Moses that He is “I am who I am,” and then tells Moses to tell the people of Israel that I AM has sent me to you. God’s name, I AM, is the name YHWH, or Yahweh, from the Old Testament. It is so sacred that from before the time of Jesus until today, devout Jews have avoided saying it. (Since religious Jews don’t say the name YHWH, they instead use the word Adonai, which is translated as “Lord.”) But Jesus used this name of God in reference to Himself. The Jews He was speaking to clearly understood His claim and picked up stones to kill Him for it.
Another occasion on which the Jews understood Jesus to be claiming deity was described in John chapter 10:
At that time the Feast of Dedication took place at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around Him and said to Him, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s name bear witness about Me, but you do not believe because you are not part of My flock. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone Me?” The Jews answered Him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone You but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself God.”
“If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest Him, but He escaped from their hands.[3]
In these passages Jesus refers to the miracles He has performed, saying the Jews should believe the works He’s done because they show that “the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.”
Jesus made a number of I am statements which are indirect claims to His deity. He performed miracles which substantiated the statements He made. For example, the day after feeding 5,000 people with fish and bread multiplied from two fish and five barley loaves, Jesus said:
“I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.”[4]
“I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread also which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.”[5]
Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?”[6]
In John chapter 9 Jesus makes another I am statement followed by a corresponding miracle. As Jesus was leaving the temple, He saw a man who had been blind from birth and said:
“While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.[7]
When the Pharisees interrogated this man and asked how he was healed from his blindness, he explained that Jesus had healed him. The man was then put out of the temple. The chapter continues with:
Jesus heard that they had put him out, and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him.[8]
Another I am statement followed by an affirming miracle is related in John chapter 11, when Jesus’ friend Lazarus died. Four days later Jesus traveled to Bethany, where Lazarus was buried. His sister Martha said that if Jesus had been there, her brother wouldn’t have died.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”[9]
Jesus then raised Lazarus from the dead, which caused many to believe on Him. The response from the chief priests and the Pharisees was to convene a council, and “from that day on they planned together to kill Him.”[10]
Other I am statements made by Jesus include:
“I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.”[11]
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”[12]
Again the high priest asked Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” And the high priest tore his garments and said, “What further witnesses do we need? You have heard His blasphemy. What is your decision?” And they all condemned Him as deserving death.[13]
His use of both I am and Son of Man was understood by the Pharisees as Jesus claiming deity, and they deemed it blasphemy and said He deserved death as punishment. (To be continued)
Keep Praying for a Breakthrough
October 2, 2026
By Scott Hubbard
Once, long ago, you prayed for a loved one’s salvation earnestly and often. Now, you still pray sometimes, but you can barely bring yourself to hope for the answer.
Or maybe you once pleaded for grace against a stubborn character flaw or besetting sin. Now, you’ve succumbed to a sort of fatalism about yourself. Some things just don’t change.
Or perhaps you once sought God for a relational breakthrough. Now, though the sorrow stays deep, reconciliation seems all but impossible.
Most of us can think of some desire we once brought before God almost without ceasing. …
(Read or listen to the article here.)
https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/keep-praying-for-a-breakthrough
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