Jesus DID state that He was divine

You have probably come across believers and non-believers alike state that Jesus never proclaimed that He is God. I, in fact, used to be one that would also take this stance but then I sat and read through the gospels and had to change my position as I had a more complete context of how Jesus spoke and the deeper meaning He put into his teachings. I have collected seven of my personal favorite ways that Jesus reveals that He is God and not just one from God.

The first and most common is actually not Jesus speaking but rather the apostle John beginning the book of John with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is stating that God and the Word, later identified as Jesus, are one. The next couple of verses expand on this claim stating that the Word brought all things into being and carried within Him the light of life. If Jesus wasn’t the Word of God then Christianity would be more of a polytheistic religion rather than monotheistic but I love that this not only establishes that God and Jesus are one but also have a relationship within Himself — the founding of the Great Mystery of the Trinity. As one of my favorite preachers says “If our mind is a coke can and God is the ocean, there’s some stuff that ain’t gonna fit.”

The second claim to the divinity of Jesus is why the Pharisees sought to kill Him. They didn’t try to silence Jesus because He was opposing their status. They wanted Him dead for this but they couldn’t outright say that this was their motive — they needed a legal reason to demand His execution. The Pharisees claimed that Jesus was guilty of blaspheming in John 10:33 [“It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you being a man, make yourself equal to God.”] They certainly saw Jesus and His teachings as opposition to their legalistic claim to authority and power but the Pharisees presented their argument for the death of Christ as one against his blasphemous proclamations that He was God. If Christ never claimed to be God they would have no standing to demand that He be put to death.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the story of the paralytic man who was lowered through the ceiling to be healed by Christ but in this story is yet another claim that Jesus is God. As the man was brought before Jesus, the book of Mark says in 2:5–7 [And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God Alone?”] and Jesus, recognizing the trouble these scribes were feeling, revealed His divinity in 2:8–10 [Said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”] This is not only Jesus stating that He is the Son of Man but also that He has the power to forgive sins without arguing the fact that God alone is the only one to do so, and this establishes His claim that He is God.

My fourth point to Jesus declaring His divinity lies in John 3:13–14 where He states that He is from heaven and came down to earth — [“No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up”] This not only is a claim that He came from heaven but also reasserts His title of the Son of Man (and thus being God in flesh) and is a foreshadowing of His crucifixion. In Exodus, while the Hebrews were being plagued with serpents in the wilderness, Moses was commanded by God to fashion a bronze serpent and raise it up so that anyone who should look upon it will not die from the serpents that bit them. The claim that Jesus is making is that as He is lifted upon the cross, anyone who would see and believe in Him would not die but be granted eternal life in Him.

Now that I have established that Jesus fully took up the title of “Son of Man” I’d like to visit Matthew 12 where Jesus outright states that He is God. Matthew 12:8 says [“For the Son of Man is the Lord of the sabbath”]. The sabbath being the day that we are called to do no work and reserve for the worship of God. As Jesus proclaims that He is the Lord of the sabbath He is saying that He is God. I believe that this is the most straight-forward of his claims to be God and not just a godly man.

As we have seen, Jesus foretells of His crucifixion and I would like to bring up another instance of just that as my sixth point in which Jesus states that He is God. After He flipped the tables of the money changers and drove the merchants from the temple courtyard, He was confronted for doing so and asked for a sign on which He staked His authority in His actions. Jesus responded, as it is recorded in John 2:19 [Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”] Now, those to whom He was speaking thought that Jesus was referring to the structure in which they stood but rather Jesus was speaking of the temple in which the Father resides — His body. This is referencing that Jesus would be killed and then resurrected. There’s a small detail that’s often overlooked here though, Jesus states that when the temple is destroyed, He would raise it again in three days — not God. This is a direct claim that Christ, being God, would raise Himself out of the tomb on the third day.

My final and favorite example of Jesus saying He is, in fact, God is in John 10:27–30 which reads [“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”]. In this excerpt Jesus is not only placing himself as shepherd but also paints a picture of Him holding the lives of His herd in His hand and the hand of the Father. He then makes things more clear by ending it with “I and the Father are one.” This is Jesus claiming that He is God, period, full stop.

I hope that this clears the air — Jesus did, in fact, state that He is God many times in His life. Even to those who are not Christians, I feel, would have to face the facts that Christ made this claim all throughout the gospels. If you are still of the idea that Jesus never actually claimed His divinity, I urge you to read through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I’m certain that, as you give those four a read with a critical mind seeking understanding rather than affirmation of assumptions (one way of the other) you’ll discover many more instances in which Christ declared He is God.