Gentle Reader,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. – John 1:1-2 (NKJV)
The first thing that we need to know about Jesus is that He is God. He is not “a” god, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses assert in mistranslating these verses. He is not part of a tritheistic, divisible “head,” as in Mormon teaching. He does not exist in a pantheon from which we can pick and choose. He is not the archangel Michael. He is not a part of the unsound understanding that splits the names “Elohim” and “YHWH” into two entities. He is not the product of God the Father having sex with Mary. He is not the brother of Lucifer, nor is Lucifer His equal. He is not, nor ever was, married. He is not an “enlightened” teacher like Buddha. He is not lesser than Muhammed.
Jesus is God. He is not created. He has no beginning. He has no end.
Defining Jesus as anything other than God is to miss Him completely. He the eternal Son, consubstantial (of the same substance or essence) with the Father and the Spirit. (Note: This one Trinity is not at all the same as believing in three gods. If you are unsure, please do some reading. This article is a good place to start). The Father is one hundred percent God. The Spirit is one hundred percent God. Jesus is one hundred percent God.
Jesus explicitly told us that He is God (see John 5:17-18, John 8:58, John 10, John 14:9, Mark 2:5-7 for just a small sampling). Let us therefore end with this, from C.S. Lewis’ 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.”
For all entries in the Jesus: 31 Days with the Savior series, go here.