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**The original length of this post revealed itself to be too long for a blog. I have taken the advice of some and broken it up into several smaller and more manageable parts. This is part one, part two will be posted tomorrow and so on and so forth. I hope that this allows people a greater chance to read the entirety of the post.**

If you were to ask the average person who they believe that Jesus is, they will usually respond one of two ways. Some will say that he was a good man, while others will say that he was a great prophet. They either believe that he was good, but not a prophet, or vica versa. This is the first type of response. The second response involves an acceptance of both the premises. In this second type of response, the person will acknowledge the goodness of Jesus, as well as the fact that he held the office of a prophet.

There is also a third type of response to this revealing question, and it is the Christian’s response. The Christian maintains that not only are the first two premises true, but that a collective third premise is necessary. The Christian adds the premise that Jesus was God incarnate, that Jesus was equal with God, and that Jesus was the human expression of God’s deity. The third response transforms Jesus from merely a man, to the God-man. This is what is known in Christian theology as the Hypostatic Union. That topic is for another post.

When pressed on the issue of His deity however, most people recoil from the concept. “No”, they say, “I just can’t believe that He was God in the flesh.” They might also respond, “A good man sure, but God, I doubt it.” I find this to be an interesting phenomenon which has become the catalyst of this post. The confusion that I am experiencing can be summed up with the following questions: Where do people get their information about Jesus? Do these sources contain the words of Jesus? Have these people who deny the deity of Christ ever actually read His words to them? Allow me to elaborate.

The main source of information about Jesus is the Bible. It is true that there are many extra biblical sources such as the writings of Josephus, Justin Martyr, Iranaeus, Clement, Igantius, Polycarp, Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Theopholus of Antioch to back up the Biblical account of who Jesus was. However, the main source however is still the scriptures, particularly the Gospels. It is within the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that we have eyewitness accounts of the things that Jesus said, places He went, things that He did, and even the friends that He had. To read the Bible and to acknowledge Jesus as a good man or a prophet is to remove words from the mouth of the very man that this topic encompasses. I intend to show that during His ministry, Jesus made it very clear as to whom He was, and what His purpose was while He was on the earth.

There are many evidences for Jesus’ deity. We will not, in this post, be discussing the documented miracles that He did, His bodily resurrection, or His ascension into heaven. These topics do, at some point deserve to be considered by the skeptic who would like to weigh the claims of Jesus’ deity with any degree of accuracy. To leave these aspects out of the total picture of who Jesus is, is to observe the Mona Lisa with one eye shut. If you are to appreciate it, you must look at the whole picture. Our reference point however, will be His speech and the way that He interacted with His fellow human beings. I believe that a proper, in depth analysis of Jesus’ speech will show with sufficient worth that He believed and presented himself as God.

 Tomorrow – Part Two

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