Apologetics · Jesus

Did Jesus Claim to Be God?

A Common View

Many people today hold Jesus in high regard. They see Him as a wise teacher, a prophet, a man of compassion and courage. What they doubt is the Christian claim that He was God. That, they argue, was a later invention: the Church turned a Jewish rabbi into a divine figure over the following centuries.

It is a reasonable question. Jesus never said, in so many words, “I am God.” But when we look closely at what He said and did, as recorded in our earliest sources, the picture is very different.

He Did What Only God Can Do

He forgave sins

In Mark’s Gospel, often considered the earliest, a paralysed man is lowered through a roof to Jesus. Jesus says to him: “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5).

The scribes present immediately object: “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7).

They understood the claim perfectly. A person can forgive wrongs done to himself. But Jesus forgave sins committed against God and others, as though He were the one primarily offended. Only God can do that. Jesus did not correct their interpretation. Instead, He healed the man to show “that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

He spoke with His own authority

The prophets of Israel always prefaced their words with “Thus says the Lord.” Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said… but I say to you” (Matthew 5:21–22). He set His own word alongside, and even above, the Law of Moses given by God.

He accepted worship

Faithful Jews worshipped God alone. When Cornelius fell at St Peter’s feet, Peter quickly lifted him up: “Stand up; I too am a man” (Acts 10:26). But when the apostle Thomas saw the risen Jesus and said, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28), Jesus did not correct him. He accepted it.

He claimed to be Lord of the Sabbath and judge of the world

Jesus called Himself “lord even of the sabbath” (Mark 2:28), the day God had instituted. He said that at the end of time, all nations would be gathered before Him for judgement (Matthew 25:31–46). In Jewish thought, judging the whole world was God’s own role.

What He Said About Himself

”Before Abraham was, I am”

In a heated debate recorded in John’s Gospel, Jesus says: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). The phrase “I am” echoes God’s own name revealed to Moses at the burning bush: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). His listeners understood: they picked up stones to stone Him for blasphemy.

”I and the Father are one”

Later He says, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Again, they took up stones. When Jesus asked why, they replied: “for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33).

At His trial

The decisive moment came at His trial before the high priest. Asked directly, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered: “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61–62).

This combined two Old Testament passages: Psalm 110, about one who sits at God’s right hand, and Daniel 7, about a heavenly figure who comes on the clouds and receives everlasting dominion. The high priest tore his robes and declared it blasphemy. Jesus was condemned to death for it.

Wasn’t This Invented Later?

Sceptics sometimes argue that these sayings were added by later Christians, especially in John’s Gospel, written around the end of the first century.

But belief that Jesus was divine appears far earlier. St Paul’s letters, written in the 40s and 50s, already treat Jesus as divine. In Philippians 2:6–11, Paul quotes what many scholars believe was an even earlier Christian hymn, which says that Christ was “in the form of God,” and that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” This deliberately applies to Jesus a passage from Isaiah (45:23) about God Himself.

The scholar Larry Hurtado, in his book Lord Jesus Christ (2003), showed that devotion to Jesus as divine appeared astonishingly early among Jewish Christians, strict monotheists who would never have worshipped a mere man. There was no slow evolution over centuries. Belief in Jesus’ divinity was there from the start.

”Just a Good Teacher” Is Not an Option

C. S. Lewis famously argued in Mere Christianity (1952) that Jesus’ claims leave only a few possibilities. A man who said the things Jesus said, if He were not God, would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be deluded, on the level of a man who thinks he is a poached egg, or deliberately deceiving people. Otherwise, He is who He said He was.

This argument is often called the trilemma: liar, lunatic or Lord. Critics add a fourth option: legend, that Jesus never said these things. That is why the early dating of the evidence matters. The claims were not invented generations later; they belong to the earliest layers of Christian testimony.

Whatever one concludes, the comfortable middle position, admiring Jesus as a wise teacher while ignoring His claims about Himself, does not fit the evidence. Jesus did not leave that option open.

Why It Matters

If Jesus was only a man, Christianity is a beautiful mistake. If He is God, then His words carry the authority of God, His death has the power to save, and His Resurrection changes everything.

That is why the Church has always held fast to the faith of Thomas: “My Lord and my God.”