Did Jesus Claim NOT to Be God?

An Excerpt From: Who Is Jesus?

A Plea for a Return to Belief in Jesus, the Messiah

A study booklet to further the restoration of biblical faith

by

Anthony F. Buzzard, MA (Oxon.), MA Th.

"There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” 

(1 Tim. 2:5).

Restoration Fellowship

www.restorationfellowship.org (Free PDF)

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"In the Gospel of John the identity of Jesus is a principal theme. John wrote, as he tells us, with one primary purpose: to convince his readers that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of God” (20:31). According to John, Jesus carefully distinguished himself from the Father who is “the only true God” (17:3; cp. 5:44; 6:27). If we are to find in John’s record a proof that Jesus is “coequal” God, in the Trinitarian sense, we would be discovering something which John did not intend and, in view of his Jewish heritage, would not have understood! Alternatively, we would have to admit that John introduces a brand new picture of Messiahship which contradicts the Old Testament and overthrows John’s (and Jesus’) own insistence that only the Father is truly God (John 5:44; 17:3). Such a glaring self-contradiction is hardly probable.

It is high time that we allow Jesus to set the record straight. In Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s accounts we are told that Jesus explicitly subscribed to the unitary monotheism of the Old Testament (Mark 12:28-34). Did he therefore, according to John, confuse the issue by claiming after all to be God? The answer is given plainly in John 10:34-36 where Jesus defined his status in terms of the human representatives of God in the Old Testament. Jesus gave this account of himself in explanation of what it means to be one with the Father (10:30). It is a oneness of function by which the Son perfectly represents the Father, as His ultimate agent. That is exactly the Old Testament ideal of sonship, which had been imperfectly realized in the rulers of Israel, but would find perfect fulfillment in the Messiah, God’s chosen King. 

The argument in John 10:29-38 is as follows: Jesus began by claiming that he and the Father were “one.” It was a oneness of thought and action which on another occasion he desired also for his disciples’ relationship with him and the Father (John 17:11, 22). The Jews understood him to be claiming equality with God. This gave Jesus an opportunity to explain himself.

What he was actually claiming, so he says, was to be “Son of God” (v. 36), a recognized synonym for Messiah.

The claim to sonship was not unreasonable, Jesus argued, in view of the well-known fact that even imperfect representatives of God had been addressed by Him in the Old Testament as “gods” (Ps.82:6). Far from establishing any claim to eternal Sonship, he compared his office and function to that of the judges. 

He considered himself God’s representative par excellence since he was uniquely God’s Son, the one and only Messiah, supernaturally conceived, and the object of all Old Testament prophecy. 

There is absolutely nothing, however, in Jesus’ account of himself which interferes with Old Testament monotheism or requires a rewriting of the sacred text in Deuteronomy 6:4. Jesus’ self-understanding is strictly within the limits laid down by God’s authoritative revelation in Scripture. Otherwise his claim to be the Messiah would have been invalid. The Scriptures would have been broken."