Son of God: The True Identity and Divinity of Jesus
Jesus is the Son of God.
Recently someone commented on one of my social media posts that said, Salvation is as simple as 2 words. YES LORD! Her comment took me by surprise. Her comment was a question, “What is salvation?
Subsequently, for someone serving Jesus in ministry for 18 years, I realized that what is common knowledge to me, isn’t for everyone.
Look at these alarming statistics:
Global Commission Partners say that 1.6 billion people have never heard of Jesus.
An organization, Reach Beyond says that over 2 billion people never heard of Jesus.
That is not to say, that this information is new to me, but it isn’t something that I am actively aware of at all times. I spent the past 18 years leading and discipling Christian women, which means, they know Jesus.
When something is common knowledge to us, sometimes we are so close to it that we sometimes miss what is right in front of us.
Don’t miss the fact that Jesus, who came to earth as flesh and blood, is the Son of God.
The 4 books of the Bible known as the Gospels give us plenty of markers to identify Jesus as the Son of God.
Jesus’ disciples identified Him as the son of God. (Matthew 14:33)
Peter identified Jesus as the Son of God. (Matthew 26:63)
The centurion on guard at Jesus’ crucifixion identified Jesus as the Son of God. (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39)
The author of the gospel of Mark identified Jesus as the Son of God (Mark 1:1)
Evil spirits identified Jesus as the Son of God. (Mark 3:11, 5:7; Luke 4:41, 8:28)
The angel, Gabriel identified Jesus as the Son of God just before Mary conceived Jesus. (Luke 1:32)
Jesus identified Himself as the Son of God. (Luke 22:70)
John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Son of God. (John 1:34)
Nathanael identified Jesus as the Son of God. (John 1:49)
Martha identified Jesus as the Son of God. (John 11:27)
Son of God Equals An Identity Of Divinity.
Divinity defined – the state of being divine.
Divine means – of, from, or like God or a god.
In short, the English definition of divine and the Bible’s explanation of Jesus’ identity, reveals Jesus’ identity as the divine Son of God.
The apostle John’s writings have always been my favorite in the New Testament. In his writings he focused on the divinity of Jesus. John stated that he wrote everything in his gospel with the sole purpose that his reader, “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:31)
There are religions that pose themselves as Christians, but do not affirm this very core element of Jesus’ identity. The very foundation of our belief system is off base when we don’t understand that Jesus was, is, and always will be divine.
What we believe about Jesus makes all the difference.
When I was attending seminary getting my bachelor’s degree, my professor, Dr. Estes, a.k.a. Dr. Cliff, taught us about the significance of what we believe about Jesus. He quoted A.W. Tozer saying, “The first thing you think about when you think of God is the most important thing about you.” Dr. Cliff went on to say, “Our conception of God affects our lifestyle.” I will take it a step further and say, “What we believe about Jesus affects our life eternally and our today.
When I was 11 years old, I walked an aisle and got baptized to accept Jesus as my Savior. I don’t consider this my true point of salvation because my understanding was incomplete. I understood that Jesus was a man sent by God to die for me. At 11, that was pretty significant so if this man would do that, the least I could do was accept Him. The problem was the missing factor of the divinity of Jesus. I did not understand that Jesus was the divine Son of God. I did not understand that Jesus was God.
Now I know the truth. Jesus, the Son of God, was fully man and fully God.
In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
(John 1:1)
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
(John 1:14)
Need a few extra verses? Read Colossians 1:15-17.
Believing the human Jesus’ true identity was divine changes everything.
Jesus, fully human and fully divine, died for us and understands everything we face in trials and temptations. (Hebrews 4:15)
He always lives to intercede for us is God. (Hebrews 7:25)
Why does Scripture say that no weapon formed against you shall prosper? Because “. . . this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is from me,” says the Lord. (Isaiah 54:17)
We benefit by knowing Jesus in so many more ways. I recently wrote about understanding that He is the Lord God our Healer and another blog post about understanding Him as our Provider. However, we have only skimmed the surface of the benefits of knowing, understanding, and believing in Jesus the divine Son of God.
That is why John wrote:
And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one,
I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.
John 21:25
Ultimately, we walk in victory in the midst of life’s struggles when we believe that Jesus, our Lord and Savior is the Son of God. Jesus was, is, and will always be God.
