Myth #4: Jesus did not claim to be God

DVD

The Real Jesus: A Defense of the Historicity and Divinity of Christ

Explodes the myths of the liberal critics and the movies, books and television programs that have popularized their views.

Ever since the dawn of modern rationalism, skeptics have sought to use textual criticism, archeology and historical reconstructions to uncover the “historical Jesus” — a wise teacher who said many wonderful things, but fulfilled no prophecies, performed no miracles and certainly did not rise from the dead in triumph over sin.

Over the past 100 years, however, startling discoveries in biblical archeology and scholarship have all but vanquished the faulty assumptions of these doubting modernists. Regrettably, these discoveries have often been ignored by the skeptics as well as by the popular media. As a result, the liberal view still holds sway in universities and impacts the culture and even much of the church.

The Real Jesus explodes the myths of these critics and the movies, books and television programs that have popularized their views. Presented in ten parts — perfect for individual, family and classroom study — viewers will be challenged to go deeper in their knowledge of Christ in order to be able to defend their faith and present the truth to a skeptical modern world – that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of history — “the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is the real Jesus.

Speakers include: George Grant, Ted Baehr, Stephen Mansfield, Raymond Ortlund, Phil Kayser, David Lutzweiler, Jay Grimstead, J.P. Holding, and Eric Holmberg.

Myth #4: Jesus did not claim to be God

The idea that Jesus did not claim to be God is often put in a more subtle way.

Jennings: “The word Messiah did not mean the Son of God. It simply meant ‘the anointed one.’” [34:52]

[INTERVIEWS WITH PANEL OF EXPERTS: “Did Jesus claim to be God?”]

The idea that the Jewish Messiah is God himself is not something that first century Christians made up. The divinity of the Messiah is something we find throughout the Old Testament.

[INTERVIEWS WITH PANEL: “Is the Old Testament Messiah divine?”]

The great Reformed scholar Benjamin Warfield wrote:

It is quite clear, at the outset, that the writers of the New Testament and Christ Himself understood the Old Testament to recognize and to teach that the Messiah was to be of divine nature. For example, they without hesitation support their own assertions of the Deity of Christ by appeals to Old Testament passages in which they find the Deity of the Messiah afore-proclaimed (Dr. Benjamin B. Warfield, The Divine Messiah In The Old Testament).

As an example of this, let’s look at Psalm 110, which happens to be the most quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament writers.

The Lord said to My Lord, “Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool.” Psalm 110:1

Jesus himself brought this prophecy into focus when He confronted the skeptics of his day.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?”

They said to Him, “The Son of David.”

He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him “Lord,’ saying:
“The LORD said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”’?

If David then calls Him “Lord,’ how is He his Son?” And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore (Matthew 22:41-46).

Let’s look at Psalm 110 carefully: God addresses the Son as God. He tells us that the Lord Jesus sits upon God’s own throne. We have to ask: Who except God could sit upon God’s throne? Jesus sits on God’s throne because He always was and always will remain God in every sense of the word.

1 Comment

The problem with your exegesis is that in Psalm 110, “The LORD said to my lord” translates two different things with “lord.” The first, often spelled all caps in English translations, is Yahweh. The second is literally “my lord” (adoni). The Hebrew doesn’t equate them both with Yahweh. Also, it says “sit at my right hand, [not on God’s own throne] UNTIL I make your enemies your footstool.” That agrees with I Cor. 15:28, which says that Christ is Lord UNTIL all things have been subjected to him, at which time he will subject himself to God, “so that God may be all in all.” A clear distinction between Christ and God.