Did Jesus Believe He Was the Son of God?
When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for Christ, chapter 7. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.
In the gospels, Jesus was a bit mysterious about his identity. He didn’t forthrightly proclaim Himself the Messiah or Son of God, but it wasn’t because He didn’t see Himself that way. If He’d announced He was God, Jews would have heard, “I’m Yahweh,” because the Jews of his day didn’t have any concept of the Trinity. They only knew God the Father - whom they called Yahweh - and not God the Son or God the Holy Spirit.
So if someone was to say he was God, that wouldn’t have made any sense and would have been seen as clear-cut blasphemy. And it would have been counterproductive to Jesus’ efforts to get people to listen to his message. So He was very careful about what He said publicly. In private with His disciples, that was a different story, but the gospels primarily tell us about what He did in public.
In 1977, John Hick and several like-minded theologians wrote a book that said that Jesus never thought of Himself as God incarnate or the Messiah. They said these concepts developed later and were written into the gospels so that it appeared Jesus was making these claims about Himself. So we want to go back to the very earliest traditions about Jesus - the most primitive material, without a doubt safe from legendary development. What clues, if any, can we find about Jesus’ self-understanding from the way He related to others?
For instance, look at His relationship with the disciples. Jesus had twelve disciples; yet notice that He’s not one of the Twelve. That may not sound like much, but if the Twelve represent a renewed Israel, where does Jesus fit in? He’s not just part of Israel, not merely part of the redeemed group, He’s forming the group - just as God in the Old Testament formed His people and set up the 12 tribes of Israel. That’s a clue about what Jesus thought of Himself.
Of His relationship with John the Baptist, Jesus says, “Of all people born of woman, John is the greatest man on earth.” Having said that, He then goes even further in His ministry than John did (by doing miracles for example). What does that say about what He thinks of Himself? But His relationship with the religious leaders is perhaps the most revealing. Jesus makes the radical statement that it’s not what enters a person that defiles him, but what comes out of his heart. This sets aside huge portions of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, with its meticulous rules concerning purity. Who has the authority to do this? Jesus obviously thought He did.
And if you can even call it a relationship, what about His relationship with the Roman authorities? If He had merely been a harmless sage telling nice little parables, how did He end up on a cross, especially at Passover, when no Jew wants any Jew to be executed? There had to be a reason the sign above his head said, “This is the King of the Jews.” Either Jesus had made that verbal claim or someone clearly thought He did.
Jesus’ deeds - especially His miracles - offer additional insights. Some would counter that His disciples later went out and did the same things, so His miracles can’t establish that He thought He was God. But it’s not the fact that Jesus did miracles that sheds light on His self-understanding, what’s important is how He interprets his miracles.
Jesus says, “If I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then you will know that the kingdom of God has come upon you.” He’s not like other miracle workers who do amazing things and then life goes on as always. No, to Jesus, His miracles are a sign indicating the coming of the kingdom of God - they are a foretaste of what the kingdom is going to be like. And that sets Jesus apart. He doesn’t see Himself as merely a worker of miracles; He sees Himself as the One in whom and through whom the promises of God come to pass. And that’s a not-too-thinly veiled claim of transcendence.
He was called Rabbi. Doesn’t this just imply he merely taught like the other rabbis of his day? He actually taught in a radical new way. He begins his teachings with the phrase “Amen I say to you,” which is to say, “I swear in advance to the truthfulness of what I am about to say.” This was revolutionary. In Judaism you needed the testimony of two witnesses, so witness A and B could swear to the truthfulness of one another. But Jesus witnesses to the truth of His own sayings. Instead of basing His teaching on the authority of others, He speaks on His own authority.
So here is someone who considered Himself to have authority above and beyond the OT prophets. He believed He possessed not only divine inspiration, as King David did, but also divine authority and the power of direct divine utterance.
In addition to employing the “Amen” phrase, Jesus used the term “Abba” when he was relating to God. “Abba” connotes intimacy in a relationship between a child and his father. As far as we know, He and His followers were the only ones praying to God that way. It was customary for Jews to work around having to say say the name of God because it was the most holy word you could speak, and they even feared mispronouncing it. “Abba” is a very personal term of endearment in which a child would say to a parent, “Father Dearest, what would you have me do?”
Its significance is that Jesus is the initiator of an intimate relationship that was previously unavailable. The question is, what kind of person can change the terms of relating to God? What kind of person can initiate a new covenantal relationship with God?
How significant is it? It implies that Jesus had a degree of intimacy with God that is unlike anything in the Judaism of His day. Jesus is saying that only through having a relationship with Him does this kind of prayer language - this kind of ‘Abba’ relationship with God - become possible. That says volumes about how He regarded Himself.
And let’s not forget Jesus’ repeated reference to himself as the “Son of Man.” It’s a reference to Daniel 7:13-14, and it’s extremely important in revealing Jesus’ messianic or transcendent self-understanding.
In its opening scene the gospel of John uses majestic and unambiguous language to assert the deity of Jesus. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made….The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-3, 14).
Some popular depictions, such as in the movie The Last Tempt-ation of Christ, show Jesus as uncertain about His identity and mission. He is filled with anxiety and angst. Is there any evidence Jesus had an identity crisis? Just the opposite actually; but there were points of identity confirmation. At His baptism, at His temptation, at the Transfiguration, in the Garden of Gethsemane - these are crisis moments (not identity crises) in which God confirmed to Him who He was and what His mission was.
There is substantial evidence that within 20 years of the Crucifixion, there was a full-blown Christology (the branch of Christian theology relating to the person, nature, and role of Christ) proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate. The oldest Christian sermon, the oldest account of a Christian martyr, the oldest pagan report of the church, and the oldest liturgical prayer (1 Cor. 16:22) all refer to Jesus as Lord and God. Clearly, it was the message of what the church believed and taught that “God” was an appropriate name for Jesus Christ.
Could this have developed - especially so soon - if Jesus had never made messianic and transcendent claims about Himself? Not unless you are prepared to argue that the disciples com-pletely forgot what the historical Jesus was like and that they had nothing to do with the traditions that start showing up 20 years after his death.
All sorts of things are possible, but not all possible things are equally probable. Is it probable that all this stuff was conjured up out of thin air within 20 years after Jesus died, when there were still living witnesses to what Jesus the historical figure was really like? That’s a highly unlikely hypothesis. The real issue is, what happened after the crucifixion of Jesus that changed the minds of the disciples, who had denied, disobeyed, and deserted Jesus?
Very simply, something happened to them that was similar to what Jesus experienced at His baptism - it was confirmed to them that what they hoped Jesus was, He was.
And what exactly was He? Jesus thought He was the person appointed by God to bring in the climactic saving act of God in human history. He believed He was the agent of God to carry that out - that He had been authorized by God, empowered by God, spoke for God, and He was directed by God to do this task
So what Jesus said, God said. What Jesus did was the work of God.
Under the Jewish concept of agency, a “man’s agent is as himself.” When Jesus sent his apostles into the world, he told them, “Whatever they do to you, they’ve done to me.” There was a strong connection between a man and his agent whom he sent on a mission. Well Jesus believed He was on a divine mission, and the mission was to redeem the people of God.
The implication is that the people of God were lost and that God had to do something - as he had always done - to intervene and set them back on the right track. But there was a difference this time. This was the last time. This was the last chance.
Jesus said in Mark 10:45, “I did not come to be served but to serve and give my life as a ransom in place of the many.” This is either the highest form of megalomania, or it’s the example of somebody who really believes “I and the Father are one.” In other words, “I have the authority to speak for the Father; I have the power to act for the Father; if you reject me, you’ve rejected the Father.”
We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn’t there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshipped today, while others are all but forgotten? Because the historical Jesus and the Jesus of faith are one and the same. Because the historical Jesus is also the living Lord, the second Person of the Trinity.