Do Christians believe Jesus is God?

Do Christians believe Jesus is God? Yes they do. Let me explain why.

First of all, it is important to note that there is historical evidence for the life of Jesus. He was not a mythological figure. There are Christian sources on the person of Jesus (the letters of Paul and the Gospels) and there are also Jewish and Roman sources (e.g. Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger) that mention Jesus.

So Jesus was a real person, let’s look at what he said about himself.

In Mark 14:61-62 we have this account: ‘Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ ‘I am,’ said Jesus. ‘And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’

Jesus confirmed he was the Son of God.

Jesus confirmed he was the Son of God.

In Matthew 3:17 God affirms Jesus is his Son at the transfiguration: ‘And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’

From his birth, Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of the coming Messiah.

In Luke 1:26 it says; ’In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”

This miraculous birth was a fulfilment of a prophesy of the Messiah, given about 700 years before Jesus was born to Mary: Isaiah 7:14“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.

The ‘Son’ will not only be born of a virgin, but is ‘Immanuel,’ which means ‘God with us.’

Christianity is different from other religions in believing Jesus is the Son of God.

Christianity is different from other religions in believing Jesus is the Son of God.

In Islam Jesus (commonly transliterated as Isa) is the Messiah and one of God’s highest-ranked and most-beloved prophets not the Son of God. He is referred to as the son of Mary in the Qu’ran.

In the Druze faith, Jesus is considered one of God’s important prophets and the Messiah.

Sikhism views Jesus as a high-ranked Holy man or saint.

Jesus said in John 14:6 ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’

And 1 John 2:22-23 says the antichrist will deny Jesus is the Christ: ‘Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.

And why is this significant, well, as C.S Lewis said in his book Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

There is power in the name of Jesus. Call on his name and ask him reveal himself to you.