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What If God were … One of Us?

In my last Post I dealt with the humanity of Jesus.  The flip-side of this coin is the question about his Divinity.  Was Jesus God? Often, this controversy is argued only from the pages of the New Testament.  But what about Old Testament prophecies?  Long before Jesus came into this world, the prophet Isaiah (again!) had

Isaiah shown in historical timeline. He lived in the period of the rule of the Davidic Kings

Isaiah shown in historical timeline. He lived in the period of the rule of the Davidic Kings

some remarkable things to say about this.  Embedded in the same prophecy of the Virgin birth is this remarkable statement.

Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. 15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right (Isaiah 7:13-15)

‘Immanuel’ literally means ‘God with us’.  In other words, when this son of the virgin would be born, God would be with us.  There is hardly a more succinct way to predict the Incarnation – God becoming Man, than with such a title.  And just to make sure we did not misunderstand, two chapters later Isaiah explicitly predicts:

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

 

Jewish Predictions in the Old Testament of the Divine Son

And so here in these short, but explicitly prophetic sentences, penned by Isaiah hundreds of years before Jesus was born, in Jewish scriptures (i.e. not from the hand of anything Christian), we see that there are three distinct features to this prophecy:

  1. the virgin birth,
  2. the sinless/moral life,
  3. as well as the incarnation of God becoming man in the birth of a son. The son would be Divine.

We have already seen how the predicted ‘Christ’ of the Old Testament Psalms would also be the ‘son of God’.  It is the cumulative effect of many different predictions, on different themes, yet all still converging on the person of Jesus of Nazareth that beggars naturalistic explanations.

One of Us by Joan Osborne

One of the most poignant songs dealing with this question of God becoming one of us was written a few years ago by Joan Osborne.  What I find so intriguing is the song is not written from a posture of belief, but from one of asking some honest and human questions.  At same dinner where I was exposed as a Santa fraud, I had asked a friend, Chelsea, to sing this song.  The lyrics, with those haunting questions, are displayed along with the opening prologue from the Gospel of John.  This Gospel deals with questions that are basic to all of us, giving answers that hearken to the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of this very unique Coming Son..

 

17 thoughts on “What If God were … One of Us?”

  1. God was manifested to our level of understanding in the form of Jesus, but God did not make himself the image and likeness of a mortal, it is the other way around, we have to abandon our false sense of selfhood, to find the Christ in us, as us. God and Son, Creator and creation, are one, but not the same. It is more like the Korean flag symbol of ying and yang, two but one inseparable. The one cannot exist without the other. If they were the same, then the Father would be the Son, and vice versa, which is nonsense. For love to exist, you need two. And we are to become one with the Son, then Christ is all in all.

    1. Merely opposed to that explanation..His manifestation is symbolic of human nature in sense..The mortal body existed for some years and was destroyed totally on the cross of Calvary..God experience the pains and sufferings felt by the mankind and thereby simplified all forms of sacrifices and upon his grace we are still moving on unlike the past he destroyed mankind of their ignorance and sinful behaviour without giving them a chance..Only those who follow his principles and loyal to him found added life..God is one..

  2. i started standing the bible and it was lets make some one like us .God was with his son jesus ,,he was neve alone and as he said thz that belive in him do belive in me …its about father giving in his only son for our evil doing ,,God is our father and jesus is our brother ..thy love as so much that we are here because of them,im stil breathing because of them and im happy because of them ..i just love them so much and no one can ever tell me that God and jesus doesnt exited…

    1. Jesus is your God not your brother He created you He is the Word the eternal God who came into existence die on the cross for us and rose again the Father and the Son are both one Lord God Almighty. In the old testament God said I am the first and the last then He came to earth and became a man than He said again after He’s ascension into heaven He apaired to John in the vision and said again I am the first and the last that means there was no God before and neither shall there be after Him. He is the I AM in exodus the God of the universe creator of all things Yahweh Jehovah God all mighty Father and Son equal one God.

  3. God, the holy spirit and Jesus are one and the same. God is the source of all good energy. “Energy” being the key word. Energy comes from sound the “Word.” Sound “Vibration” in which God the source of all good energy had spoken to create all living things. Which explains why every living thing vibrates. The flesh in which God manifested himself into Jesus was a vessel in which spoke the word of good, the word of truth, The word of God. He put himself, his spirit into a vessel of flesh. Human, mortal flesh so that he could set by example and teach the way we should conduct ourselves. “Conduct” also being a key word because as a living thing we conduct energy. Humans are the only living creatures that have a choice to expel good or bad energy because flesh became weak when the first man and woman chose to go against God and listen to Satan. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life in which God wants us to live by. Jesus said he would inherent his fathers kingdom, why? Because Jesus is the name to which we pray to receive the holy spirit that gives guidance to how we should live. Which makes Jesus God . Gods spirit can also be within our own flesh if we choose to overcome sin, bad energy, bad spirits and seek to do Gods will which was given to us through Jesus the messenger . The flesh of Jesus was Gods son , just as we the flesh are Gods children. Which is why we should conduct ourselves the way Jesus conducted himself. To be Christ like is to be Godly and holy. To strive to live without sin.

  4. GOD’S DIVINE STRUCTURE

    THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN HEAVEN IS GOD

    God lives in heaven as his dwelling place with the host of heaven and angels around him.

    THE MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION OF GOD IS GOD

    (1) God has a Spiritual medium or device of communicating with his angels

    (2) God has a Spiritual medium or device of communicating with humans.

    The Spiritual medium of communication of God is known as the Spirit of God

    JOEL 2:28
    And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.

    THREE MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD MENTIONED IN JOEL 2:28

    (1) PROPHESY- Means what prophet says after receiving a message from God.
    (2) DREAMS- God (by his Spirit) can communicate through dreams
    (3) VISIONS- God can show you things even without dream, through his Spirit.

    The pouring out of the Lord’s Spirit upon all flesh is the manifestation of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament, the Holy Ghost was poured to all already, it is left for you to accept or reject him.

    THE PRESENCE OF GOD ON EARTH IS ALSO GOD
    God did not left heaven and came down to earth to create anything; it was his word and his Holy Spirit that represent his presence on earth.

    As a matter of fact everything that God did on earth, is not by leaving his heavenly throne to come and do it?
    He has his word that became the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament and his Holy Spirit representing his presence already on earth.

    God will never leave heaven to come and fight demons, if demons can appear physical, then his word the Lord Jesus Christ also became physical and paid the price for the battle.
    And if demons remain Spiritual then the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus will also conquer them spiritually.

    All we need to do is to rely on the representatives of the presence of God on earth.

  5. One example of a Bible verse that is often misused is John 1:1. In the King James Version, that verse reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God [Greek, ton the·onʹ], and the Word was God [the·osʹ].” This verse contains two forms of the Greek noun the·osʹ (god). The first is preceded by ton (the), a form of the Greek definite article, and in this case the word the·onʹ refers to Almighty God. In the second instance, however, the·osʹ has no definite article. Was the article mistakenly left out?

    Why is the Trinity doctrine so difficult to understand?

    The Gospel of John was written in Koine, or common Greek, which has specific rules regarding the use of the definite article. Bible scholar A. T. Robertson recognizes that if both subject and predicate have articles, “both are definite, treated as identical, one and the same, and interchangeable.” Robertson considers as an example Matthew 13:38, which reads: “The field [Greek, ho a·grosʹ] is the world [Greek, ho koʹsmos].” The grammar enables us to understand that the world is also the field.

    What, though, if the subject has a definite article but the predicate does not, as in John 1:1?
    Citing that verse as an example, scholar James Allen Hewett emphasizes: “In such a construction the subject and predicate are not the same, equal, identical, or anything of the sort.”

    To illustrate, Hewett uses 1 John 1:5, which says: “God is light.” In Greek, “God” is ho the·osʹ and therefore has a definite article. But phos for “light” is not preceded by any article. Hewett points out: “One can always . . . say of God He is characterized by light; one cannot always say of light that it is God.” Similar examples are found at John 4:24, “God is a Spirit,” and at 1 John 4:16, “God is love.” In both of these verses, the subjects have definite articles but the predicates, “Spirit” and “love,” do not. So the subjects and predicates are not interchangeable. These verses cannot mean that “Spirit is God” or “love is God.”

    Identity of “the Word”?

    Many Greek scholars and Bible translators acknowledge that John 1:1 highlights, not the identity, but a quality of “the Word.” Says Bible translator William Barclay: “Because [the apostle John] has no definite article in front of theos it becomes a description . . . John is not here identifying the Word with God. To put it very simply, he does not say that Jesus was God.” Scholar Jason David BeDuhn likewise says: “In Greek, if you leave off the article from theos in a sentence like the one in John 1:1c, then your readers will assume you mean ‘a god.’ . . . Its absence makes theos quite different than the definite ho theos, as different as ‘a god’ is from ‘God’ in English.” BeDuhn adds: “In John 1:1, the Word is not the one-and-only God, but is a god, or divine being.” Or to put it in the words of Joseph Henry Thayer, a scholar who worked on the American Standard Version: “The Logos [or, Word] was divine, not the divine Being himself.”

  6. Jesus is God manifest in flesh and kind..He is omnipresent..God can not give his reign away to another person.He is our saviour ,master,king of kings,lord of lords, Everlasting father,prince of peace

  7. Peace be with you;
    To whom is concerned,
    your reference to Old Testament does not clarify Jesus is total God or part of God. If total God then while God was on earth, so who was ruling heaven? If part of God was on earth, then how you explain was this part?
    Yours sincerely,
    Javad Mousavi

    1. God came down to earth as sonship.While on earth he also oversees the heaven as God is omnipresent..zHe contains the universe..God became man through son..He is Holy and in spirit..Jesus is God alone..Do you think God will give away his heir to any second or third person..No..He can..He works in the three distinct ways..Gone is one… Amen

      1. God is never Jesus, the time juses was on earth he prays I want ask who was he praying to? Himself. Two he also says my father in heaven. So which father was he referring to? Read luke 18:18 -19 u will understand

  8. It is truly controversal matter when it come to judging the fact about Jesus Christ. let us agree or not Jesus is the son of God as it is in John 3:18-21; “18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” Also Jesus proved it when he said in John 11:18 “18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” therefore the almighty Jesus have is from our Father in heaven that is God. therefore through these two examples it is vivid that God is the source of everything but God does work by using the son that is Jesus Christ and the holy ghost which working in the name of Jesus christ

  9. God the Father,the Son of God,and the Spirit of God so peoples misunderstand about the trinity and they say;God the Father,the Son and the Spirit

  10. William White Saopa

    The question of God being Jesus and Jesus being God is just as good as the question ‘Who created God? this question is beyond human comprehension and requires revelation to answer it.

  11. William White Saopa

    Things of God are understood through revelation not intelligence. Most of the comments that I have read base their augments on the intellect hence missing it.
    True of the matter is God is Jesus and Jesus is God. Remember God swears to Himself. So When Jesus prayed to God He prayed to himself. Jesus is seated on the right-hand of himself. that’s how complicated God is to understand. The moment you understand God, he ceases to exist .

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