Day 2: Jesus Is God

Day 2: Jesus is God

Prayer:Our Father in heaven, show us the fullness of Your glory through the flesh and blood person of Christ. Amen.

Primary Scripture:John 1:1-2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

As we saw with the first name of Jesus in the book of John, the opening verse takes us back to the “time” before time. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God…” And John 1:1 tells us that the God who created all things was the same as this incarnate Word. The Hebrew word used for God in Genesis 1:1 is Elohim. It is a plural word. God Himself states in Genesis 1:27, “Let Us make man in Our image.” From the very first verse of the Bible, God is revealing to us that He is a plurality, one God in 3 persons, the Trinity. Genesis 1:1-3 shows us the Trinity: God the Father creating, the Spirit of God hovering over the void, and the spoken Word of God bringing all things into existence. That Word was God. John declares at the very beginning of his book that Jesus Christ is fully God, one of the Trinity.

We cannot separate the Word of God from God Himself, any more than we can separate the words of any person from the person themselves. Words express the person, his thoughts and feelings, his will and personality. Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 15:18). All that we say comes from the depths and reality of our hearts. Jesus, the Word of God, reveals to us the heart of God. By sending Jesus as a tiny baby born in the poorest of places, God is telling us that He is approachable, that He desires to draw near to us, that He comes to meet us in our need, that He identifies fully with us. He has taken the initiative and reached out to us; He wants to have a relationship with us.

Jesus told the Samaritan woman that God is Spirit (John 4:24). And the Bible says that God is invisible (I Timothy 1:17). In Jesus Christ, the invisible God has made Himself visible. This is what John marvels at in I John 1:1-3 as we saw on Day 1, “. . . that life which was with the Father, was manifest to us. . . which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.” Amazing. Spirit has been made flesh. Invisible has been made visible. Unapproachable has been made approachable. This is who Jesus Christ is and what He has done.

We must be careful not to think that the Man Jesus is part God, or less than fully God. Because He was born as a baby and grew up like we all do, it’s so easy for us to think of Him as just like us. And yet, He was. Hebrews tells us He was made in all things like us; He shared in every way our humanness (Hebrews 2:17). I've wondered this about God becoming like us through Christ Jesus: Did He identify with us so fully because He was God? Was He trying to show in a tangible way that we really are made in His image by becoming made in ours? And wasn't God becoming man the only way God could fully show us what He is really like—that is, the fullness of His heart toward us? God had to become man to show us the fullness of God, His own character and likeness, and to reveal to us what He intended for us as people made in His image to be. Jesus reveals the true “imago Dei” and how God desired for us to relate to Him and commune with Him and He with us in our day-to-day lives.

In fully identifying with us, He was also tempted in all the ways that we are—but there was one big difference: He never sinned; He never fell for the temptations like we do (Hebrews 4:15), which is why He could take our sins on Himself on the cross and die in our place. But His sinlessness wasn't the only reason Jesus was able to shoulder the sins of the world. One of the primary reasons one Man could die in the place of all men in the whole world throughout all of history is because He is God. The Eternal God whom the heavens and earth cannot contain is greater than the sum total of all humanity, for He is Creator of all humanity. God > all mankind. Twice in Isaiah, God tells us that His own arm brought salvation (Isaiah 59:16 & 63:5).

How can God be fully human, yet still fully God? How can the Infinite be confined to finiteness? How can the Eternal have a beginning with a birthday? How can the Almighty become dependent and defenseless? This is truth that is hard to wrap our minds around. This is the mystery of the incarnation: God of very God—the all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-present, the One who fills all things and is more than all things—was restricted to the smallness and frailty and helplessness of a baby.

The disciples, who spent three years with Jesus, had a hard time understanding this also. The night before Jesus died Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” In other words, Philip was saying, "We just want to know God. That would be enough; we’d be satisfied with that.” You can almost hear the sadness and incredulity in His voice as Jesus responds, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father, so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? . . . Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. . .” (John 14:7-11, emphasis added). And Thomas wouldn’t believe until he saw the nail prints in Jesus’ hands and the gash in His side after the resurrection; only then did he say, “My Lord and my God!”

The Jewish leaders seemed to understand Jesus' claim to Deity better than His disciples, for they tried to kill Him more than once because He, being man, made Himself out to be God. When Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I AM," they knew what He meant. Jesus was clearly taking to Himself the sacred Name that God had given to Moses, so they took up stones to stone Him (John 8:58-59). Later at the Feast of Hanukkah, when Jesus claimed, “I and My Father are one,” they took up stones again to stone Him (John 10:22-31). All through His three years of ministry they sought to kill Him and were finally successful. At His mockery of a trial, the one accusation the ruling elders used to declare the death penalty was that He blasphemed God by claiming to be God (Matthew 26:63-66). But He was only telling the truth. He was God.

This One we celebrate at Christmas is the Eternal, Infinite, Almighty God made flesh. Do you want to see God? Do you want to know God and what He is like? Look at Jesus. Study Jesus. Read the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—over and over and over.

Family Worship:Discuss what it means that Jesus is fully God. What do you see in Jesus that tells you what God is like? How has Jesus made God approachable? What does God coming to earth as a baby and having only a manger used to feed sheep as His crib tell you about God?

Conclude your family time with prayer. Let each person worship God for some aspect of Jesus as the fullness of God.

Jesus Christ: Fully man, fully God. The Word was with God and the Word was God.

Other Related Scriptures:

John 1:18: No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

Colossians 1:15a, 19; 2:9: He (Jesus Christ) is the image of the invisible God. . . For it pleased the Father that in Him (Jesus) all the fullness should dwell. . . For in Him (Jesus) dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

Titus 2:13: . . .looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.