That the New Testament good news teaches the Deity of Jesus Christ is beyond reasonable doubt.

Beyond the seven direct statements calling him theos, the case builds from several directions at once.

‘Jesus is presented not as a God alongside the God of Israel, but as properly included in the Divine identity of the God of Israel.’

What He’s Called

A sample of New Testament descriptions declares Jesus Christ to be:

• The Word of God (John 1:1-18)
• Pre-existent ‘in the beginning with God’ (John 1:1-2)¹‘In the beginning was the Word. In this prologue he [the author] declares Christ’s eternal Divinity, to teach us that he [Christ] is the eternal God, manifest in the flesh’ (John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John. 1-10, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Saint Andrew Press, 1959), 7).
• The Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36; cf. Rev 5:6)
• God’s Messiah (John 1:41; 4:25); Servant (Phil 2:5-11); and Saviour (Matt 1:21; Luke 1:47; John 4:42)
• The Image and Fullness of God in Bodily Form (Col 1:15, 19, 21)
• ‘The one Mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim 2:5; cf. Heb 7:22-8:6; 9:15)
• ‘Lord of lords and King of kings’ (Rev 17:14; cf. 19:16)²See the theses in Daniel J. Treier, Lord Jesus Christ (Zondervan Academic, 2023), 46-47. Other excellent recent comprehensive studies include Crowe, Lord Jesus Christ; and three titles by Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction (Crossway, 2021); Christ Alone: The Uniqueness of Christ as Savior (Zondervan, 2016); and God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Crossway, 2016).

What He Does

The ‘Jesus’ of the biblical gospel was ‘sent into the world’ by God (John 10:36), lived, taught, healed, died for our sins, rose from death, rules the universe, mediates for us at God’s right hand, and will come again ‘to be judge of the living and the dead’ (Acts 10:42).³See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Gospel of Jesus Christ: Part 3; forthcoming at greattruthsglobal.org.

But look at the kind of things he does. Christ does what God uniquely does: creating everything (John 1:3), forgiving sins (Matt 9:2), providing Divine instruction (Matt 5:22), delivering from evil (Gal 1:4), raising the dead (John 11:25), upholding the cosmos (Heb 1:3), judging all nations (Matt 25:32), regenerating the whole universe (Matt 19:28).

Not one of those is a job description that fits a creature.

The Pattern of ‘Not Only… But Also’

Notice how the New Testament keeps escalating.

Not only is Christ said to bear ‘the radiance of the glory of God,’ but to be ‘the exact imprint of his nature’ (Heb 1:3). Not only is he ‘the form [morphē] of God,’ but ‘equal [isa] with God’ (Phil 2:6). Not only do the disciples and New Testament writers describe Christ as God — but God himself addresses Christ as ‘God’ and ‘Lord’ (Heb 1:8, 10).

And this Jesus Christ is, purely and simply, ‘the Son’ — everywhere in John’s Gospel and Hebrews 1. That is, Jesus Christ is God ‘the Son,’ revealing and leading to ‘God the Father’ (Matt 11:27; John 14:6).

So when we ask what ‘the gospel of God’ tells us about God, we can begin by recognising that the God of the gospel introduces ‘the gospel of his Son,’ Jesus Christ (Rom 1:1, 9).

The Nicene Creed conveys it: ‘One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, of one being with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.’⁴Chad Van Dixhoorn, Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition (Crossway, 2022), 17; the alternative translation used there is ‘being of one substance with the Father.’

Or as the Christmas hymn puts it more briefly: ‘He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.’⁵First line, second verse, of ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ written in 1848 by Cecil Frances Alexander, and later set to music by Henry Gauntlett.

The Same God as Before

Here’s something that has to be said clearly, because the alternative has caused enormous damage.

The God of the Christian good news is the God of Jesus — and the God of Jesus is the God of the whole Bible. Old Testament and New.

The good news marks an advance in the revelation of God from Old to New Testament. But it permits no divorce between them. ‘The Jewish cradle of Christianity is essential, not incidental, to its being.’⁶Peter F. Jensen, ‘God and the Bible,’ in D. A. Carson ed., The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Apollos, 2016), 481.

Everywhere — in the Gospels, in Acts, in the Letters — Apostolic preaching drew on the substance of Old Testament Scriptures for its content (Luke 24:44; Acts 10:43; Rom 1:1-3).⁷See Ortland, ‘Gospel,’ in DNTUOT.

The character and attributes of the God of the New Testament gospel are the same as the character and attributes of the God of the Old. In the gospel, ‘Jesus is presented not as a God alongside the God of Israel, but rather as properly included in the Divine identity of the God of Israel.’⁸M. M. Thompson, ‘God,’ in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition, ed. Joel B. Green (InterVarsity Press, 2013), 327; building on the work of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008).

‘For … Christ did not establish some new manner of calling upon God, but one that conforms to the one used in the Old Testament … And Christ, when he willed to be acknowledged and called upon as true God did not prescribe a new worship of God, but the one expressed in the first commandment. For in it God … wills him to be worshipped who is one and the same with God himself.’⁹Leiden Synopsis, 22:39-40, 243.

Continuity, But Not Repetition

That continuity does involve evolution and considerable clarification — expansion and extension through the addition of astonishing, and at first alarming, new ingredients. Nonetheless, as the Apostles put it, the God of the gospel is ‘the God of our fathers’ (Acts 3:13; 22:14).

‘The early preachers were convinced that they had not changed their religion but that they continued to serve the God of their fathers, the God of the Old Testament, though they were now commissioned to proclaim the news about God’s actions in sending the Messiah, raising him from the dead after crucifixion … and exalting him to the right hand of power as judge.’¹⁰Broughton Knox, Selected Works, 3:11.

The presentation of God in the New Testament against its Old Testament background witnesses to who Christ is in relation to God, and so to what God has savingly accomplished through Christ the God-man. ‘The foundation and beginning of confidence in God is, then, the knowledge of him in Christ.’¹¹John Calvin, Catechism of the Church of Geneva [1545], Q 14; trans. Elijah Waterman (Sheldon & Goodwin, 1815), 11.

Robert Doyle:

‘In all their exposition of the fulfilment of the Old Testament expectations … the New Testament writers continued to declare that “God is One” (Mk 12:9, 1 Tim 2:5). Yet a change has occurred. Throughout his mission Jesus calls God “Father” in such a way that he could regard himself as a unique Son (John 10:17), with whom he is also seen to have an eternal relationship (John 1:1; 17:24). … Yet the writers show no sign of feeling that the basic understanding of God’s “Oneness” has somehow been disturbed. On the contrary, the unity of God is not only acknowledged in the event of Jesus Christ but expressed in a threefold formula: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14). Finally, our salvation consists in knowing this God and none other: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).’¹²Doyle, ‘Using the Bible,’ 6; slightly amended. ‘Likewise in this development, the way the “Spirit of God” is spoken of adds to Divinity the characteristic of a separate person that can be addressed as a “who” alongside the “who” of Jesus and the Father (John 14:15-17, 25-26; Acts 5:3, 4; Rom 8:16, 26ff; Eph 5:30).’

—

• 1
  ‘In the beginning was the Word. In this prologue he [the author] declares Christ’s eternal Divinity, to teach us that he [Christ] is the eternal God, manifest in the flesh’ (John Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John. 1-10, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Saint Andrew Press, 1959), 7). ↩︎
• 2
  See the theses in Daniel J. Treier, Lord Jesus Christ (Zondervan Academic, 2023), 46-47. Other excellent recent comprehensive studies include Crowe, Lord Jesus Christ; and three titles by Stephen J. Wellum, The Person of Christ: An Introduction (Crossway, 2021); Christ Alone: The Uniqueness of Christ as Savior (Zondervan, 2016); and God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ (Crossway, 2016). ↩︎
• 3
  See Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – The Gospel of Jesus Christ: Part 3; forthcoming at greattruthsglobal.org. ↩︎
• 4
  Chad Van Dixhoorn, Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition (Crossway, 2022), 17; the alternative translation used there is ‘being of one substance with the Father.’ ↩︎
• 5
  First line, second verse, of ‘Once in Royal David’s City,’ written in 1848 by Cecil Frances Alexander, and later set to music by Henry Gauntlett. ↩︎
• 6
  Peter F. Jensen, ‘God and the Bible,’ in D. A. Carson ed., The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Apollos, 2016), 481. ↩︎
• 7
  See Ortland, ‘Gospel,’ in DNTUOT. ↩︎
• 8
  M. M. Thompson, ‘God,’ in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition, ed. Joel B. Green (InterVarsity Press, 2013), 327; building on the work of Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (Eerdmans, 2008). ↩︎
• 9
  Leiden Synopsis, 22:39-40, 243. ↩︎
• 10
  Broughton Knox, Selected Works, 3:11. ↩︎
• 11
  John Calvin, Catechism of the Church of Geneva [1545], Q 14; trans. Elijah Waterman (Sheldon & Goodwin, 1815), 11. ↩︎
• 12
  Doyle, ‘Using the Bible,’ 6; slightly amended. ‘Likewise in this development, the way the “Spirit of God” is spoken of adds to Divinity the characteristic of a separate person that can be addressed as a “who” alongside the “who” of Jesus and the Father (John 14:15-17, 25-26; Acts 5:3, 4; Rom 8:16, 26ff; Eph 5:30).’ ↩︎