Chapter 2 — Understanding the Deity of Christ
The Incarnate Christ and His Critics (Komoszewski & Bowman, 2024)
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"Jesus is God." It fits on a bumper sticker. It sounds simple. But as it turns out, those three words carry a lot of baggage — because different people mean very different things by them.
Mormons believe Jesus is God (the God of Israel, Jehovah), but they also believe he is one of many divine beings, a spirit child of Heavenly Father who was once not God. Oneness Pentecostals believe Jesus is God — specifically, the Father himself dressed in human flesh. Jehovah's Witnesses won't say Jesus is God at all; they call him "a god." Every one of these groups uses the same Bible. Every one of them claims their view is biblical. And none of them agrees with what the historic Christian church has confessed for two thousand years.
So before we dig into the biblical evidence for the deity of Christ, we need to get clear on terms. What do we mean by "God"? What do we mean by "deity"? And once we're clear on that — what exactly are we claiming when we say "Jesus is God"?
Defining God
Two of the most important scholars on early Christology, Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado, both point to a crucial insight about the Jewish world in which Christianity was born. In that world, "God" was not simply the most powerful being in the universe — God was the unique, uncreated, eternal Creator of all things. The God of Israel, YHWH, was categorically different from everything else that exists. He made everything. He rules everything. He alone is worthy of worship.
Building on this, we can offer a working definition: God is the one eternal, uncreated Being who was revealed to Israel as Yahweh, Creator and Ruler of all, and who alone is the proper recipient of the full range of religious honor.
That last point — "the proper recipient of the full range of religious honor" — is important. It's broader than just sacrifice or temple ritual. It encompasses all the ways human beings revere and respond to the one who is infinitely above them: worship, prayer, trust, love, obedience, praise, fear. In the Old Testament, all of this belongs to God alone. Giving any of it to anyone else is idolatry.
What the Church Actually Teaches
When Christians say "Jesus is God," they don't mean that Jesus is the same person as the Father, or that the Son and the Father are identical. They mean something more precise: that the one who became human as Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, the eternal divine Son — truly God in nature and status — who humbled himself to become one of us in order to redeem us.
The classic formula is: one God in three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God. They are not three gods; they are one God. The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Father. Yet both are God in the full sense.
This is not a simple idea, and we shouldn't pretend it is. It is a mind-stretching truth that no human analogy can fully capture. But it is what the biblical evidence points to, and it's what the church has confessed — not because it's easy, but because it's what the Scriptures teach.
Five Aspects of God's Identity
Komoszewski and Bowman outline five aspects of what makes God uniquely "God" in the biblical sense:
1. God alone is the proper object of the full range of religious honors
2. God alone is uncreated — he has no origin
3. God is eternal — he has always existed and always will
4. God was revealed to Israel as Yahweh, the covenant LORD
5. God is the Creator and Ruler of all things
Throughout the rest of the book, the authors will show that the New Testament ascribes every single one of these characteristics to Jesus Christ. Not by ripping verses out of context, but by reading passage after passage in which the earliest Christians — Jews who would have been horrified by idolatry — spoke of Jesus in terms that only made sense if he were truly God.
Why This Matters for Us Today
It's tempting to set aside these "technical" questions and just love Jesus. And there's something beautiful in that impulse. Faith is not primarily about having the right definitions — it's a living relationship with a living Lord.
But definitions do matter, because they tell us who we're in relationship with. If Jesus is a great creature, then our relationship with him is one kind of thing. If Jesus is the eternal God, it is something entirely different — something that changes the nature of worship, of prayer, of salvation, of hope.
The incarnation is not a theological puzzle for academics. It's the claim that the God who made you and knows every hidden corner of your heart loved you enough to enter into your world — your suffering, your death — so that he could bring you home.
That's the God we're talking about. And that is who Jesus is.