Is Jesus Really God? A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Summary

On September 9, 2025 By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn Defending the Faith, Imago Dei ClassLeave a comment

Does the Bible present Jesus as God in the flesh? Is the Son of God really God? Or did the doctrine of Christ’s deity evolve over the centuries? Christianity rises and falls upon this doctrine just as much as any other. It is not an overstatement to say that salvation hangs in the balance. So, what’s the answer?

Dan Brown writes in his enormously popular book The Da Vinci Code that Jesus’ deity was a doctrine proposed and voted on at the Council of Nicaea in 325. He writes that the Roman emperor at the time, Constantine, “turned Jesus into a deity who existed beyond the scope of the human world, an entity whose power was unchallengeable.”[1] However, The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, and so is this claim. Fiction.

Not only is this claim historically inaccurate (the deity of Christ was not proposed/voted on at the council of Nicaea), it is biblically and theologically inaccurate. The Scriptures clearly present Jesus as God and our theology of salvation requires it. Yet countless cults and critics have bought into Brown’s claims or those like it, believing that the deity of Jesus is a historical development rather than biblical truth.

Biblical Evidence

I would like to pose three arguments that demonstrate that the Bible clearly expects us to believe that Jesus is God: 1. Jesus bears the names and titles of God. 2. Jesus does the works of God. 3. Jesus receives the worship of God.

1. Jesus bears the titles of God.

Consider the following verses:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

“Thomas answered him [Jesus], ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28)

Titus writes that we are “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). This verse features the Granville Sharpe Rule in Greek, where God and Savior refer to the same person, Jesus Christ. It is similar to how we might say “our father and friend David.” We would understand David to be both the father and friend referenced.

There’s another one of these in 2 Peter 1:1- “To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.”Peter clearly refers to Jesus as God and Savior.

Paul writes, “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 9:5)

And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 21:6). Compare this to what Yahweh says about himself in Isaiah 44:6, “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.”

The New Testament authors clearly identify Jesus as God by using these titles in reference to him.

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J. Gresham Machen, A Biographical Essay

On August 4, 2021August 7, 2021 By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn MiscellaneousLeave a comment

Introduction

Throughout the history of Christianity, certain theologies, ideologies, and philosophies have arisen and threatened the church’s understanding of the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. One such theology is the modern liberalism that arose in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which the main character of this essay describes as “an attempt to solve the problem of historic Christianity’s relation to modern culture.”[1] In an attempt to solve this “problem,” modern liberalism became rooted in naturalism and discarded the supernatural particulars of the Christian message such as the virgin birth, substitutionary atonement, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ as mere symbols of the more general aspects of religion.[2]

Modern liberalism taught that the essence of Christianity is to be found in its general ethical principles rather than in the event of the Son of God dying for the sins of His people. Liberalism made its way into many churches, denominations, and seminaries by the dawn of the twentieth century and was threatening to overpower historic Protestantism in its popularity and acceptance. However, church history often demonstrates that when a harmful theology arises, God raises up a voice to expose, correct, and provide clarity for the church. In the early decades of the twentieth century in the United States, that voice was J. Gresham Machen’s.

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Cyprian of Carthage on the Church as Family

On February 16, 2019February 16, 2019 By Jarrett Ray FletcherIn Miscellaneous1 Comment

In the middle of the third century, a bishop named Cyprian presented his understanding of the church as the “family of God” in order to answer two main controversies that were facing ancient Christianity at the time. These two controversies were over what to do with believers who denied the faith under persecution, and whether or not to re-baptize believers who were baptized by church leaders who also “lapsed.”[1] His opponents 180px-Cyprian_von_Karthago2 argued that those who caved in under persecution should not be allowed back into the church…ever, and that those who were baptized by leaders who did the same were not genuinely Christian. On the opposite spectrum were those calling for the lapsed to be readmitted to the church without asking any questions.