DavidTree
Well-known member
i have some insight to share with you
Find out why Jesus called His Father = my God and your God
The Things Jesus Did Not Do
- Thread starter dwight92070
- Start date
i have some insight to share with you
Find out why Jesus called His Father = my God and your God
Pancho Frijoles
Well-known member
This time you did try to provide a refutation to my argument, and I thank you for that.
This speaks about your respect and care for the person presenting the argument to you. So let me comment on your reply:
The title "The Righteous One" does not make Jesus God.
The title was used shortly after Pentecost, and then disappeared from the rest of the New Testament. It was used only at that time because it was important to make Jews aware that an Innocent Being, sent by the God of Israel, had been killed. All accusations on Jesus to justify his murder were still on the air.
However, in the same speech of Acts 3 that you quote, Peter presents The God of Israel as a Person different from Jesus. If the God of Israel, who is the Only and True God, is a person different from Jesus, then Jesus is not God by definition. Here are some extracts from the speech of Peter:
- The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His Son Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in the presence of Pilate (Acts 3:13). Jesus was not the God of Abraham that the disciples and their audience worshiped, but the son of that God.
- "But what God foretold through all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He thus fulfilled." (Acts 3:18). Jesus is not God, but the Annointed of God.
- For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall hear whatever He may say to you. (Acts 3:22). Jesus is not God, but the Prophet in the like of Moses that God would raise up.
- "God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to you first" (Acts 3:26). Jesus was not God, but the Son of God who God raised up.
Regarding the prayer of Stephan: He was imitating what Jesus said on the cross from the role of a follower of Jesus. Jesus had asked his Father to receive his spirit, and Jesus has asked his Father to forgive the roman soldiers who were executing him. Stephan did the same.
However, Stephan also clearly identified two Persons in his vision, but gave the title "God" to only One of those two.
Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56)
One person can't be at the right hand of himself. So Stephan saw TWO persons. One of them was the Son of Man. The other was God. The conclusion is unavoidable: The Son of Man was not God and Stephan knew it.
Last edited:
Pancho Frijoles
Well-known member
Jesus was Jewish. His apostles were Jewish.
All of them worshiped the same God.
During his ministry, Jesus many times mentioned "God" and "The Father", but he never had to explain his audience who he was talking about. All of them shared the same God. There was no doubt or debate around it.
In the episode of the temptation in the desert, the devil asks Jesus to worship him. However, Jesus answers with a quote from the Torah. Jesus would worship only YHWH.
When a doctor of the law approaches Jesus to ask for the most important of the commandments, Jesus again quotes the Torah and refers to loving and worshiping only YHWH.
Perhaps it was important for the evangelist to leave it clear that the first thing Jesus wanted after resurrection was to submit Himself to the God who had raised Him... and Jesus wanted his disciples to understand that, although alive, he was not God: he was still, along with them, a worshiper of the Only and True God, The Father.
dwight92070
Well-known member
How can any of us explain how God chooses to write His word? The Holy Spirit doesn't seem to be interested in meeting all of your requirements concerning how He refers to the Father and the Son - in order to get you to believe that Jesus is God. There is an abundance of verses which clearly display Jesus' Deity (and the Trinity), so I believe He wants us to look at that evidence and by faith, accept that Jesus is in fact God. But instead of looking at all those verses, you want to focus only on what you would accept as being sufficient evidence to believe that. We have to meet Him where He is and where His word takes us, not the other way around.
Pancho Frijoles
Well-known member
Indeed, the abundance of the evidence is on the other side, my friend.
That's why I am showing the proportion.
In all verses that put God and Jesus within the same verse, in only 1% the verse refers to Jesus as God, an in 99% it presents them as separate beings. In many of these cases, it gives the Father (but not Jesus) the title of God.
So, my comment is that, if God wants us to believe in the Trinity, he would have produced an abundance of explicit verses.
The abundance of verses, though, is on the other side.
I have been in the two sides, dwight. I have defended the Trinity in the past.
The most important thing for me to communicate, though, is that both Unitarians and Trinitarians worship the Only and True God, and should regard one another as BROTHERS.
Speaking of the title "Son of Man", the link below contains an excellent presentation on how Jesus' reference to himself as "Son of Man" denotes Divinity as per Daniel 7:13.
