“Are God and Jesus the same person?” is a fundamental question of Christianity.
It goes to the core of God’s personhood and who Jesus is.
In the Bible, the word “God” can have a different sense or meaning depending on the context in which it is used. It can refer to the personhood of the Father or the nature of God.
This article shows that Jesus is God in nature and essence but distinct from the Father in personhood.
Contents
Who is God, and who is Jesus?
The question, “Are God and Jesus the same person?” is formulated by assuming that God is one person: only the Father.
The question could be written as “Are God the Father and Jesus the same person?”
No, they are not.
Jesus is the Son of God, distinct from the Father in personhood.
Is Jesus a person? Yes, He is.
Jesus is the second person of the Godhead who incarnated as a man.
Is Jesus God? Yes, He is, and we will show later how the Bible demonstrates this.
The Father is also God and a person, yet He is distinct from Jesus. Let’s see how this is the case by first defining a person.
What is a person?
Wikipedia does a good job of describing what a person is.
A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes, such as reason, emotions, morality, consciousness, or self-consciousness, and who is part of a culturally established form of social relations, such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility.
God is personal
Even in the Old Testament, the Bible grants all the above-mentioned capacities and attributes to God.
- God has emotions (1 Kings 3:10) and morality (Ten Commandments, the Law of Moses).
- He is conscious and self-conscious.
- God has a divine Son. (Proverbs 30:4)
- God owns everything in heaven and on earth. (Deuteronomy 10:14)
- God establishes covenants with responsibilities for Himself.
The Bible uses personal pronouns when referring to God. God is personal; however, He is not a person like man is but in a transcended God-like manner.
Jesus is a person
Jesus is a person. This doesn’t surprise anyone, but let’s see how Jesus fulfills all the above capacities and attributes for curiosity’s sake.
- Jesus has emotions (John 11:35) and morality (the Law of Christ).
- He is conscious and self-conscious.
- He is the divine Son of God the Father and the son of Mary and Joseph (Matthew 1:20-21).
- Jesus created the heaven and earth, and He owns them. (Hebrews 1:10, Colossians 1:16)
- Jesus ratifies the New Covenant (Luke 22:20).
Jesus’ personhood was never doubted, but is Jesus really God? Read on to find out.
Jesus is God
Where in the Bible does it say Jesus is God?
In numerous places.
- The Father says that the Son is God (Hebrews 1:8).
- The disciples, apostles, and the divinely inspired authors of the Bible say Jesus is God (John 1:1, 14, 18, John 20:28, Titus 2:13, Jude 5, 2 Peter 1:1).
- In John 10:30, Jesus claims, “I and the Father are one.”
- The same blessing, honor, glory, and dominion is given to the Son as to the Father (Revelation 5:13).
Furthermore, Jesus performs acts that only God does. According to Jesus’ words in John 5, He, as the Son of God,
- can give life to whom He desires,
- has all judgment over everyone,
- so that everyone would honor the Son as they honor the Father.
According to the Bible,
- only God gives and takes away life (Genesis 1-2, Deuteronomy 32:39).
- Only God judges everyone (Isaiah 33:22, Psalm 75:7, James 4:12).
- God does not share His glory, including honor, with any creature (Isaiah 48:11).
If Jesus is God, how come He is not the same person as God?
It’s because the question assumes that only the Father is God. God exists in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Son, Jesus, is God in attributes, nature, and essence but distinct from the Father in personhood.
How is Jesus distinct from the Father?
The New Testament clearly distinguishes between God the Father and Jesus in several ways while affirming their unity in nature, purpose, and divine plan.
- Titles and Roles: God is referred to as “the Father” (e.g., John 6:27), while Jesus is the “Son of God,” indicating a unique relationship with the Father (e.g., John 1:18).
- Authority and Subordination: Jesus speaks of being sent by the Father and doing the Father’s will (e.g., John 5:30), indicating submission in function while on earth but not inferiority in nature.
- Divine Unity: Despite their distinctions, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” highlighting their unity in nature and purpose.
The New Testament distinguishes between the persons of the Father and the Son by rendering the name “God” to the Father and “the Lord” to Jesus. (Romans 1:1-7, Romans 8:3, 28-35, 38-39)
As we have seen above, the New Testament also testifies that Jesus is of the exact nature of the Father.
The Greek language in John 1:1 provides an excellent insight into how the Apostle John uses Greek grammar to convey that Jesus is God in essence but distinct from the Father in personhood.
The below is a quote from William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, ed. Verlyn D. Verbrugge and Christopher A. Beetham, Fourth Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019), 33–34.
“The nominative case is the case that the subject is in. When the subject takes an equative verb like “is” (i.e., a verb that equates the subject with something else), then another noun also appears in the nominative case—the predicate nominative. In the sentence, “John is a man,” “John” is the subject and “man” is the predicate nominative. In English the subject and predicate nominative are distinguished by word order (the subject comes first). Not so in Greek. Since word order in Greek is quite flexible and is used for emphasis rather than for strict grammatical function, other means are used to distinguish subject from predicate nominative. For example, if one of the two nouns has the article, it is the subject.
As we have said, word order is employed especially for the sake of emphasis. Generally speaking, when a word is thrown to the front of the clause it is done so for emphasis. When a predicate nominative is thrown in front of the verb, by virtue of word order it takes on emphasis. A good illustration of this is John 1:1c. The English versions typically have, “and the Word was God.” But in Greek, the word order has been reversed. It reads,
| καὶ | θεὸς | ἦν | ὁ | λόγος | |
| and | God | was | the | Word. | |
We know that “the Word” is the subject because it has the article, and we translate it accordingly: “and the Word was God.” Two questions, both of theological import, should come to mind: (1) Why was θεός thrown forward? and (2) why does it lack the article?
In brief, its emphatic position stresses its essence or quality: “What God was, the Word was” is how one translation brings out this force. Its lack of the article keeps us from identifying the person of the Word (Jesus Christ) with the person of “God” (the Father). That is to say, the word order tells us that Jesus Christ has all the divine attributes that the Father has; lack of the article tells us that Jesus Christ is not the Father. John’s wording here is beautifully compact! It is, in fact, one of the most elegantly terse theological statements one could ever find. As Martin Luther said, the lack of the article is against Sabellianism; the word order is against Arianism.
To state this another way, look at how the different Greek constructions would be rendered:
| καὶ | ὁ | λόγος | ἦν | ὁ | θεός | |
| and | the | Word | was | the | God | (i.e., the Father; Sabellianism) |
| καὶ | ὁ | λόγος | ἦν | θεός | ||
| and | the | Word | was | a | god | (Arianism) |
| καὶ | θεὸς | ἦν | ὁ | λόγος | ||
| and | the | Word | was | God | (Orthodoxy) |
Jesus Christ is God and has all the attributes that the Father has. But he is not the first person of the Trinity. All this is concisely affirmed in καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.”
In other words, Jesus is God in nature and essence but distinct from the Father in personhood.
Sources and inspiration
William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar
Sam Shamoun: Does the fact that the Bible distinguishes Jesus from God disprove his Deity?