Chapter 20 — Jesus as Distinct from "God" in the Johannine Writings
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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Here's something that surprises many people: the New Testament rarely calls Jesus "God" outright. In most of its pages, "God" refers to the Father. Jesus is called "Lord," "Son of God," "the Word," but in the vast majority of verses, "God" is someone Jesus talks to, prays to, and is sent by.
Does this mean Jesus isn't God?
Some critics think so. They point to verses where Jesus calls the Father "my God" (John 20:17), where he says "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), or where he acts in dependence on God as an agent rather than as God himself. If Jesus were God, they argue, surely the New Testament would be clearer about it.
Chapter 20 of The Incarnate Christ and His Critics addresses this directly, and the answer it gives is worth sitting with: the New Testament's distinction between Jesus and the Father isn't an argument against the deity of Christ. It's an expression of it.
Two Qualifications to Hold Firmly
The authors begin with two essential points that shape how we should read the New Testament's language about Jesus and God.
First, Jesus is the Son, not the Father. This is fundamental. When Christians say "Jesus is God," they don't mean Jesus is the Father. The Father and the Son are genuinely distinct persons. The Son acts on the Father's behalf, was sent by the Father, prays to the Father, and calls the Father his God. None of this is incompatible with the Son being fully divine. It's simply what it means to be the Son rather than the Father within the Trinitarian life of God.
Second, Jesus is genuinely human. As a result of the incarnation, the Father is Jesus' God in a real sense, not a literary device or a role-playing game. The incarnate Son, as a human being, relates to the Father the way a human being relates to God. He prays. He obeys. He suffers. He grows. This genuine humanity isn't a disguise. It's real, and part of that reality is that the human Jesus has a God.
The Son as the Father's Divine Agent
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says forty-one times that the Father "sent" him. He repeatedly speaks of doing the Father's will, speaking the Father's words, and acting in dependence on the Father. "The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing" (John 5:19).
Critics read this as proof that Jesus is merely a human agent of God, a prophet or representative and not God himself. But that misses what the verse actually says next: "Whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise." The Son doesn't do a subset of what the Father does. He does everything the Father does, in the same way. That's the language of perfect unity, not a subordination that implies inferiority.
Think of it this way. In the first century, an agent sent on behalf of a person could legally and practically function as that person. "The one sent by a person is as that person himself" was a recognized legal principle. But an agent was always distinct from the one who sent him. Jesus is the Father's divine agent, not independent, not competing, but genuinely acting as and for the Father while remaining genuinely distinct as the Son.
"The Father Is Greater Than I"
One of the most frequently cited proof texts against the deity of Christ is John 14:28: "You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I will come to you.' If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I."
Critics take this as evidence that Jesus is ontologically inferior to God, a lesser being. But the context makes clear what Jesus means. He's speaking about his departure and return. He's going to the Father, and his disciples should be glad because in the Father's presence he'll be restored to the glory he had before (John 17:5). The "greatness" of the Father here is about the Father's position as the one to whom the Son returns, not about a hierarchy of being in which the Son is permanently lesser.
There's also the incarnation itself to consider. The Father is "greater" in the sense that the eternal Son, having taken on human flesh and all its limitations, is in a state of genuine limitation that's "less" than the Father's state. That was always part of the point. The Son humbled himself (Phil. 2:8). Humility isn't inferiority of being. It's the voluntary adoption of a lesser position.
The Father Is Jesus' God
"I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). Jesus explicitly calls the Father "my God." How can God have a God?
The answer is the incarnation. As the Son who has become human, Jesus has a genuine human relationship to the Father, including the human's proper posture of devotion, obedience, and dependency on God. The Son who is divine by nature has also become human, and in that human nature the Father is indeed his God.
That's not a contradiction. It's the consistent teaching of the New Testament, held together by the two truths we started with: Jesus is the Son, not the Father, and Jesus is genuinely human.
A Trinitarian Reading
What the New Testament teaches, when you read it whole, isn't that Jesus is an inferior being below God. It's that there's one God who exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The distinctions between them are real. The unity of their divine nature is equally real.
The Son calls the Father "my God" because that's what it means to be the Son, not because the Son is less than God. The Father and the Son are distinct in their relationship. They're equal in their divine nature.
That's paradoxical. It's mind-stretching. But it's what the evidence requires.