“I have often seen with what pleasure the Arian dwells upon the words “first born of every creature;” “the beginning of the creation of God.” And how seldom, and with what reluctance, he quotes “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last;” “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” Again, the Socinian emphasizes with great force upon the words “the man Christ Jesus;” but never dwells with delight upon this sentence, “Who being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be like God.” The Trinitarian rejoices that “there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and that these three are one;” that Jesus said, “I and my Father are one,” &c. But seldom does he quote on this subject the texts on which the Arian and Socinian dwell with pleasure. Not one of them will quote with equal pleasure, or readiness every thing said on this subject; and had they the liberty they would trim and improve the apostles’ style to suit their respective theories. (Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, March 1827)

Guess what: the subject of Jesus’ identity is not an easy one. Devout, godly, scholarly men have arrived at very different conclusions on the subject. It’s a mistake to claim that the conclusions are obvious.

It’s my belief that it should be hard to fully understand God. I talked about that in my post “My God Can Beat Up Your God.” It doesn’t bother me that I can’t fully understand the relationship between Jesus and the Father.

There are passages that directly say that Jesus is God. We have to deal with that on some level. I have heard people try to claim that “Jesus is divine” or “Jesus is a deity,” while maintaining that He isn’t God. Folks, that’s called polytheism, and we definitely don’t want to go there. There is one God and one Lord.

I think that Philippians 2 sheds some light on the subject. Look at verses 5-12:

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)

Jesus was equal with God before His incarnation. He was willing to take on the form of a servant, taking human form. That’s why Jesus can be described as God’s servant, as being submissive to God. That’s why He was able to be tempted, why He experienced all the limitations of being human. That’s why He could pray to His Father. The Word became flesh.

Still, Jesus isn’t the Father. They are not exactly the same, yet they are one. How do we fully explain that? We don’t. Not now, not in our present, finite state. We, as humans, are incapable of fully understanding God. We can speculate and theorize, but the only things we can say with complete confidence are the things directly stated in Scripture.

I’ve been quoting Stone and Campbell, mostly out of curiosity. They had very different views on the subject, but both agreed that the answer was to limit ourselves to what the Bible says.

What would happen if we did that?