Jesus Specifically Said, “I Am God”

As a skeptic, I was willing to accept a “nice guy” version of Jesus. You know, the wise sage from the past who was misunderstood and mythicized into something divine by leaders of a movement who were either mistaken or deceptive. Jesus might have been a nice guy and a great teacher, but did he ever really claim to be God? I had atheist friends who knew more about the Gospels than I did, and they said that Jesus never claimed to be God in any of the New Testament accounts. Once I began to examine the Gospels for myself, I discovered my friends were wrong; Jesus did say specifically that He was God. Now don’t get me wrong, Jesus didn’t use those exact words. But His listeners sure understood what He meant.

When God first appeared to Moses in the burning bush, Moses was adept enough to ask God for His name. And God gave Moses an interesting reply:

God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’“ (Exodus 3:14)

For generations following this interaction between God and Moses, the Israelites revered the name of God (“I AM”) as a precious title that was not to be slandered or given to anyone or anything other than God himself. Then along came Jesus. The Gospel of John tells us that on a day when the Pharisees were questioning the power, authority and teaching of Jesus, they actually accused Him of being demon possessed. Look at how He responded:

“I am not possessed by a demon,” said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” At this the Jews exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?” Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. 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!” (John 8:49-58)

Did you catch that? Jesus made two remarkable statements. First, he claimed to be eternal and to have existed before Abraham! But more importantly, Jesus called himself by the ancient title ascribed only to God Himself, “I AM”. The Pharisees knew exactly what Jesus meant by this. From their perspective, Jesus said specifically, “I am God”. How do we know this was their interpretations of His words? We know it from their reaction. They responded by attempting to stone Jesus for claiming to be God (an act of blasphemy they considered worthy of death):

At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. (John 8:59)

When Jesus took on God’s holy title as his own, He was stating the modern equivalent of “I am God”. He did this repeatedly over the course of his ministry (see Mark 14:62, John 18:5-6, John 8:24 and John 8:28). So while you may not find the expression “I am God” in the Gospels, you’ll certainly find the ancient equivalent. It’s no wonder that the Jewish religious leadership would eventually want Him executed. When I discovered these statements in the Gospels, I had to reconsider my simplistic view of Jesus as a “nice guy” or “good teacher”. What kind of teacher could Jesus have been if He was teaching a lie? Jesus’ clear statements related to His Deity forced me to reconsider Jesus and what He taught, because He did specifically say that He was God.

Comments

[Caleb G.]

This does assume that the statements recorded in the gospel of John were actually said by Jesus. Many scholars believe that at least some of these statements were never uttered by the historical Jesus because they only make sense in Greek, and Jesus would have spoken Aramaic.

The exception that you reference here is Mark 14:62. First there is the issue of knowing what actually happened at Jesus trial since none of his disciples were there. Second there is the issue of Jesus' expectation of an imminent parousia. Speaking to the High Priest, "You will see the Son of Man...coming with the clouds of heaven." This implies that the High Priest himself would still be alive when the parousia came.
These objections are not insurmountable, but they do show that this issue is more complicated than this blog post would suggest.

[John H]

So then what about Thomas in John 20:28 "Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God". Is that one lost in translation too?

[Robby Hall]

@Caleb G.

The Gospel of Mark is considered by scholars to be the recollections of Peter. We know from the Gospel accounts that Peter was indeed at the trial. Houses of the high priests were not so large that you could not hear such a trial as most 1st century Jewish houses - even of the rich - would be small by our standards, we can assume Peter heard what was happening.

But, John 18:15-17 tells us that "Simon Peter and another one of Jesus’ followers went along after Jesus. This follower knew the high priest, so he went with Jesus into the high priest’s courtyard. 16 But Peter waited outside near the door. The follower who knew the high priest came back outside, spoke to the girl at the door, and brought Peter inside. 17 The girl at the door said to Peter, “Aren’t you also one of that man’s followers?”

Here, we see something common in John's Gospel. While it's never said, John had a habit of referring to himself in the story this way so most likely, the follower of Jesus mentioned who knew the high priest was John, and in fact we read that he brought Peter inside! Peter, being a disciple, was at the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin.

Can you offer a specific example of what statements only make sense in Greek?

[WisdomLover]

"First there is the issue of knowing what actually happened at Jesus trial since none of his disciples were there."

First, Paul might have been there. Of course, he would not have been a disciple at the time. Nicodemus might have been there. And, of course, John clearly claimed to be there.

But then, none of that even matters, because someone was there who would have been able to give a very accurate account to the Gospel writers of the events at the trial: Jesus.

Jesus was there wasn't He?

[squallybimbadine]

Jesus was fully God and fully man.

[Forrest Charnock]

Why should I believe that? For that matter since according to STR the first verse of the Bible is a lie why should I believe anything it says? Last week I heard STR on American Family Radio which supports people like Hugh Ross who claim their were soulless humans and that species are fixed .
Jesus Christ said in Mark 10 :6 , among other places , and in that Adam and Eve existed from the beginning of the creation and in Luke 17:26-30 KJV -
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage , until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
So Jesus said that the flood was a real event.
STR has this odd idea that the idea that Genesis is literal history is new when it was universal from the time of Moses and through all of church history until about 1800 when "science" proved Noah's Flood was a myth. If the flood was a myth so is Jesus and His return and the coming judgment. If Adam and Eve were not there from the beginning of creation and the world is billions of years old then there was no flood , Jesus lied about His return, and death is not the last enemy but part of His very good creation. Something everyone here seems to miss is the Bible not only teaches Jesus is God but that He is the creator. John 1 , In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Also For by Him [Jesus] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16
If the rock layers are a record of disease , predation, cancer , pain and death for millions of years before man sinned and that is what God thinks is "very good'! Genesis 1 :31 and Jesus Christ died for nothing!
It is a question of authority, we are commanded to believe the Bible but most Christians seem cow tow to atheistic interpretation of scientific data .
C-14 dating may actually be of some use between 800 and 2500 years but it could only disprove great antiquity and it is not remotely reliable. The other methods disagree with each other and I challenge anyone to give me an example of rocks of known age date withing 200 million years of their true age. People who will change the Bible to fit "science" they have no clue about make me question what they see as God. . The fairy tale of millions of years was firmly established 200 years ago and has been part of paganism for as long as we have records . C-14 was discovered in 1930 and even in theory .cannot date even 1 million years, the dates were fabricated to sell biological gradualism, evolution. . We choose to believe the Bible or not. If science was the authority then the fact all dinosaurs , coal , and diamonds date thousands not millions of years with c-14 would settle it for the Biblical truth the universe is very ancient, about 6000 years. It matters not how old it is or how long God took to create but if the truth of scripture is not absolute I may as well be an atheist.

[Gerald Collins]

First of all no one but the Hebrews of the house of Israel had need for salvation of the evil gentiles where they had been scattered following the divorce in Jeremiah 3 not even the siste of the divorced wife.
Jesus came to save but rather buy back the wife who was owned by anther. He died to be able to remarry his now divorced wife. He was the price paid to get her. No Gentiles NO Canaanite Jews and not even the house of Judah.
matthew 1:21 call his name Jesus and he save the people of him and pardon them for being without the covenants and promises. Jesus said I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israle, saying that he rejected all others.
He came for ones called ethnee in the Greek letter text. He never even called the evil gentiles by a respectful name, he used rotten trees, bad fish, goats, snakes, graves, blind, dumb, wolves Now this was not the loving Jesus that we see on TV and the Internet. God hated the gentiles from the foundation of the world because they are of their father the Devil and he is the wicked one. Jesus said he would call for a harvester to come bind them and take them out and burn them in the furnace.
Jesus came for those that he was biologically and genetically related to having the same Father.

Jerry Collins

[Gerald Collins]

By the time that Adam was created the earth was very old. Satan had been here for millions of years and he created his own MAN, because he was on the mountain of God in the beginnng. He was there when God selected the Hebrews out from among all other people for Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth having the book of life.
How and when Satan created his people is not given to us but both Jesus and his cousin said that the Serpent had children and Jesus said you are of your father the devil.

The gentiles were rejected from the foundation of the earth because of their corrupt DNA. Here is not the place to prove that the gentiles are of their father the Devil.
Adam was created different that the children of Satan, the sons of Adam had a dual nature while the sons of Satan only had one. God considered them to be dead.
Read Jeremiah 3 of the backward time visions where the prophet saw dwelling places but he saw no ADAMS. Man is not correct.The birds had vanished among other things.
If ones believes the evil corrupt church which was created by evil gentiles for evil gentiles. 117 times the translators changed the text from being the ones invited out to that of the church.
Take the word CHRIST it should never be upper case for it is a action being done and not the title of Jesus. The corrupt English text more that 10000 errors from the Hebrew and the Greek letter text.
Do a study of the phrase; "Son of Man" in both the Old and New Testament. Jesus was not the son of man or do one on what God said to Abraham; I will make you the father of many nations WRONG
It is a hard study of the text to understand that the translators were evil gentiles with no understanding of the ways of God or his ways.

Jerry Collins

[Louis Kuhelj]

Gerald

You might do well to remember that it was the Jews that wanted Jesus dead and sought to have the Romans(gentiles) execute him. The idea did not originate with the gentiles. You seem to be intent on the marriage analogy. But what part of the wedding does 'Thou shalt not murder' come into play. How about keeping of the sabbath? Honoring your father and mother? How about not stealing? Or bearing false witness against your neighbor? How about coveting your neighbor's wife or possessions? How do you work all those things into the marriage analog?

It seems to me that those things lay outside of the bounds of the circle that you have drawn in your understanding of the bible. You need to make the circle wider. There is a lot more going on than what is included within the diameter of your circle. That fact should cause you to consider the possibility that there are blinders preventing you from seeing beyond the boundaries of a self imposed circle of knowledge.

[CreatorsKnight]

This is exactly why the idea that Genesis interpretation is so important. People like Hugh Ross and even STR support the idea of a long age of the Earth. This leads to situations where people question the authenticity of the new testament becuase they can't believe the old testament. After all Jesus who is the Son of God, is God referred to things in the old testament as literal. If they weren't then can his word be trusted.
I can't subscribe to that and reading articles on ICR.org, AnswersInGenesis.org and Creation.com I have found that the science that people claim disproves the Bible is theory. True science does not come from untestable things. You can't go back into history to prove how old something is. What you can prove is things that exist today with experiments that can be done over and over to verify their truth claims. When they say a rock is this old... I will always ask...how do you know...were you there? All we can do is make assumptions based on faulty premises to prove how old the Earth is.
If we instead take the Bible as it is meant to be read, and clearly a lot of biblical scholars will agree that Genesis does not read as allegory, then we don't have to come up with crazy theories about whether or not there was a race of man before Adam or if there was a lot of time before the creation of man. Counting backwards using geneologies we can see the Bible tells us that the Earth is about 6000 years old. Not 10000...not 4.5 billion. Standing firm in that I don't have to defend anything Jesus did or said because if the miracles of creation were true then the miracles through the rest of the Bible are true. I challenge everyone to go to those websites and do some research about the science that supposedly says the Earth is billions of years old. Both sides have theories about the creation of the world and you have been fed a lot of science through your entire life. Now hear the other side. I promise it will get you thinking.

[Louis Kuhelj]

CreatorsKnight

"After all Jesus who is the Son of God, is God referred to things in the old testament as literal. If they weren't then can his word be trusted. "

What do you mean by "literal"?

" Earth is billions of years old. Both sides have theories about the creation of the world and you have been fed a lot of science through your entire life. Now hear the other side. I promise it will get you thinking. "

Ok, let's suppose that you are right and the earth is only 6000 or so years old. How does that change the human condition and god's solution for that? For that matter, how does the old earth view change that?

BTW- I think that there is nothing about the earth being old that invalidates any of the classic christian doctrines or casts doubt about the reliability of the bible, from cover to cover. In my mind, it continues to be inerrant in the things it affirms.

[CreatorsKnight]

Louis,

When Jesus refers to something in the old testament to teach something to his disciples or the pharisees he refers to the events as if they actually happened. Meaning he knew that the old testament was referring to a literal thing that happened. For example he refers to being three days in death as Jonah was three days in the fish. He also referred to the Flood in Luke 17:27. He referred to the first man and woman in the beginning. What they had written down for millenia Jesus was confirming. This does not mean of course that every word is to be taken literally. There are obvious differences in poetry and histrical narratives. The book of Genesis is a historical narrative therefore it should be taken literally.
Viewing the Earth as old or young has no affect on sin and our need for a saviour. You can believe all day long that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and I will still see you in heaven. That is not the issue... the issue is that if we as Christians want to be effective apologists I think it is easier to stand with the Bible than to try to reintepret the Bible to fit with what we see in science. I can see if there was something in science that truly compelled me to question something the Bible says but so far I see nothing that isn't based on theory. When I look at the sedimentary layer around the world I don't see layers of dirt laid down over billions of years. I see layers of dirt that were laid down in a cataclsymic event that is recorded in the Bible. When I see all of the fossils of the world I don't see evolution played out over billions of years. I see God's judgement on the Earth.
It is easier for me to defend the Bible as it is and interpret science that deals with history based on that view. What surprised me the most, in my little venture as a christian, is that the Biblical view of science actually fits better. I mean what makes more sense...Dinosaur soft tissue preserved for 4000 years or dinosaur soft tissue preserved for 350 million years.

[Louis Kuhelj]

CreatorsKnight

Obviously you are very passionate about this. I don't know why you find radiometric dating along with sedimentary bracketing and changes in the object's magnetic field and some of the laser techniques for measuring daughter atoms more precisely problematic. I know that carbon-14 dating is not sufficient for anything beyond 50,000 years, but there are other isotopes that go beyond that into the millions.
While I accept that the Old Testament is an accurate accounting of history, I don't think it was meant to affirm or confirm the age of the earth. It was mean to unravel god's plan for mankind and how this occurred on the sands of time.

Personally, I have no real problem with you holding your views on this. I just wish that I understood why you think that science is not reliable in its measurements in this case.
I am sure that you have alternate explanations for the appearance of great age, perhaps caused by faulty measuring methods and maybe a prior bias for an older age on the part of scientists. I can certainly see that some of that might play into it to bias the results. The problem is that the earth being older really doesn't help the cause of evolution one bit. The mechanism, even with the greater time, is not sufficient for what we see around us. It does not explain the Cambrian explosion, even though atheists fight back with that it lasted millions of years(big deal), which is a huge bump in the variety of species in a _relatively_ short period of time. So, I don't think that it helps atheists one bit in supporting their claims. Maybe you see something I don't, but from my vantage point, the old earthy view doesn't really help the atheists or those committed to a materialistic explanation for either us or the millions of species that inhabit our lovely little planet.

[CreatorsKnight]

Louis,

You are right I am passionate about this. I don't know why either. Up until seven years ago I could care less about whether the Bible could be proven or not. Of course as I was sitting down one day watching a youtube video it hit me. The radiometric dating you are referring to makes some very big assumptions. In every case the scientist has to assume that the parent element was at 100 percent and the daughter element was at 0 percent. No one was there to test how much it had when it cooled. Couple that with ICR.org's study of radiometric dating and you have even more holes in the dating quandry. You see they decided to test samples of rocks where the age of the rock after it cooled was known, Specifically Mount St Helens. They did not get 29 years for an age.. they got millions of years. So I don't trust radiometric dating for those two reasons and more.
You are right there are a lot of different reasons why the data does not back up evolution. Of course all of those are valuable tools in getting people back to the Bible but I take it even further. Why compromise at any point? God said he created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. If you believe in old Earth view you have to believe that those days were extended periods of time. Many will say that you can interpret the word Yom in the hebrew language to mean a period of time as well as a specific amount of time. I agree with them but in Genesis every time the word Yom is used it is predicated by something. Meaning that in those specific instances, and in every instance where it is predicated by something, they are talking about a specific amount of time. So when it says this was the first day...it did not mean the first 500 million years it meant one day. Up until a couple of centuries ago no one ever thought to question that as not literal. It wasn't until mans interpretation of science and what the rocks were showing did they start to question that.
You mentioned carbon dating and I wanted to touch on that as well. You see in that study where ICR did testing of rocks through radiometric dating. They tested for something that other scientists don't test for. They tested for Carbon 14. The half life of carbon 14 is 5730 years so when they are testing uranium decay or potassium argon decay they would test that as well. In every sample they tested there was at least a trace of carbon 14. They even tested diamonds and found carbon 14. More holes in the theory. So I choose to not accept long ages becuase the data is inconsistent and the only truly consistent thing I have seen is the Bible.

[SomeRandomGuy]

CreatorsKnight,
You are close, but a slight correction. The assumption is not 100% parent to 0% daughter, but rather that the parent element and the daughter element are at a specific ratio when the item in question stops absorbing that specific element. For example I think carbon 14 is around a 99:1 ratio of parent to daughter elements in a creature that is alive today.
The problem is that this is the ratio today. We have to guess what the ratio was 10,000 years ago. That usually means assuming that the starting ratios have not changed from what we observe today. This problem of assumptions about initial ratio exists for every type of dating based on radioactive decay.
If anything has changed the starting ratio of parent to daughter elements, the entire result will come up wrong.

[CreatorsKnight]

SomeRandomGuy,
You are correct but the keyword is guess. So many people are told that the age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years based on a guess and they aren't explained the flaws in that theory. That isn't even mentioning the amount of things that could possibly affect the rate of decay in between when it started and now.
I wonder how much timelines would change if scientists went back to recalibrate the rock clocks if they used the ratios of radioactive elements with known ages. For example we have new rock being formed every day in some part of the world where there is a volcano. I wonder what kind of ratio those new rocks have. I mean they tested Mt Saint Helens and got ratios consistent with what they conseder millions of years old. What if that was the new beginning ratio? I don't see it happening. People don't get their name in the paper for making the world younger.

[Nathan]

@ Caleb

Greek was the dominate language. More than likely Jesus was bi-lingual. You couldn't do business without it. All of the manuscripts are written in Greek you don't get an Aramaic Manuscript till about 500 AD.

Daniel B Wallace discovered a potencial 1st century fragment of mark about 55 AD.. Should be published this spring.. Even though Papyri 52 of John 18 is dated about 120 AD very close to John.

There just isn't any evidence for Aramaic rendering texts. Everything Aramaic is based on assumption.

This is very similar to what I am blogging over. I am reviewing a book on my blog by Victor Paul Weiwille Jesus Christ is not God...
www.iupuixa.org/grace-and-truth.html

In reference to John 8:58 "Before abraham was I am" in the greek it looks like "πριν αβρααμ γενεσθαι εγω ειμι"

We miss a lot not reading it in greek. It says "prior Abraham coming into existence I exist"

The stem of the word γενεσθαι is γεν meaning coming into existence without birth it it was talking about being born or being birthed the stem would look like this γενν.