Who was Jesus of Nazareth? This is a question that boggles the minds of many people. Many people have their own ideas, but few people actually look to see what Jesus has to say about himself. Over the past five years, Muslims have been coming to Christians with a particular question: “Where in the Bible does Jesus ever say, ‘I am God, worship Me’?” I have noted how Christian apologists have used the Gospel of John to prove the divinity of Jesus and to answer their questions. But in the very same book, the Gospel of John, to prove “Jesus is God,” Jesus Himself makes a number of statements about himself that run contrary to the Christian position.

The Bible & Gnosticism

First, I need to explain why the book of John was written. The books of Colossians, I John, and the Gospel of John were all written to counter against Gnosticism, a growing, eclectic religion tat continued as a threat to Second-Temple Judaism, and now it was endangering this new Messianic movement within Judaism, called “the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22), which I believe was a shortened form of the phrase, “the way of the LORD” (Acts 18:25), a phrase used throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, and that traces back all the way to Abraham (Genesis 18:19; see also, Judges 2:22; 2 Samuel 22:22; 2 Kings 21:22; Proverbs 10:29; Isaiah 40:30; Jeremiah 5:4-5; Ezekiel 18:25, 29; 33: 17, 20). It was because of the threat of Gnosticism that when the ancient Jewish scholars were asked to translate the Hebrew Scriptures (Heb. Tanakh) into Greek, they chose to translate the Hebrew word Torah (teaching, instruction) by the Greek word nomos (G3551;Law), rather than the Greek word, didasko (G1321; teaching), which would have been closer to the original Hebrew meaning of Torah. They did this to protect the Torah, the teachings of God, from their misuse by the Gnostics.

What Did Gnosticism Believe?

Gnosticism comes from the Greek word, Gnosis, which means “knowledge.” Gnosticism was an eclectic religion that began in the eastern Mediterranean region, primarily in big city centers like Antioch, Edessa, and Alexandria. They flourished into a movement in the second-to-third centuries, C.E. The Gnostics took the teachings of different world religions and sought to mix them all together into one religion. The Gnostics believed that inside each person, we have a part of god, and that with special teachers, we can gain this awareness, or “knowledge,” and achieve salvation. Therefore, they believed that salvation is found within each person – not outside of us. They also believed that the True High God – the God of Jesus – was pure Spirit, but the God of the Jews, the Creator God, was a lesser Demi-God. Finally, anything that was material or fleshly was corrupt and evil. Therefore, it would have been impossible for the True High God to have become a man with flesh and blood since then the pure and holy would have beccome corrupted and evil by human flesh and blood. Jesus, they believed, only appeared in flesh. It is from these Gnostic believers that we get the Gnostic gospels: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas. It was to counter these Gnostic beliefs that the Gospel of John was written.

The Christian Apologists Argument to the Muslims

Oftentimes, Christian apologists will present biblical passages from the Gospel of John to prove their position. For example, Christian apologists will often times quote fro the beginning of the Gospel of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.(John 1:1-2)

The interesting thing in this passage is that the word “Word” is the English translation of the Greek word, Logos (G3056). I earned my Master’s degree in Rhetoric and Creative Writing. The study of rhetoric is “the art and science of effective communication,” whether that communication is spoken, in writing, or even in Sign Language. It traces back to a book by Aristotle, when he was in Athens, between 367 B.C.E. to 347 B.C.E., and we still use these same concepts and practices in Education to this very day. Anyone who has ever taken Public Speaking or English Composition 1 or English Composition 2 have been taught the concepts of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, such as the “Rhetorical Triangle,” which I taught in community colleges or universities over the past thirty years.

What is the “Rhetorical Triangle”?

The “Rhetorical Triangle” is comprised of three appeals: Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. The root word, Logos, is where we get the English words “Logic” and “Logical,” and it deals with “the logical content and consistency of the message (or content) of one’s paper or argument being presented.” So the Greek word Logos involves much more than the idea of a single “word.”

The ancient Greeks believed that Logos (logic) was like a ladder that reached up to the heavens and connected humanity with the gods. In this beginning verse, John gives his own twist to this idea by identifying this Logos as both God and with God who became “flesh and dwelt among us” in the person of the Anointed-Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. This idea of God becoming an Israeli Jewish man was a direct attack against Gnostircism.

Another favorite passage that Christian apologists like to use is where Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58), claiming that Jesus has just identified himself as the “I am,” the name used by God for Himself in Exodus 3:14. an event which happens at the burning bush, and to reaffirm this, Christian apologists refer to the next verse where the Jews picked up stones to throw at him, “for committing blasphemy,” even though this reason of blasphemy is not explicitly given within this passage.

What Jesus Teaches About Himself

In contrast to what many Christian apologists say to “prove that Jesus is God,” there are a number of statements that Jesus makes about himself in the very same book, the Gospel of John, that contradict the Christian position. Throughout this book, Jesus presents himself as “the one God has sent” to work in and through so Jesus could do all that God had commanded him to do: to lay the groundwork for the next stage of the Kingdom process, “the redemption, re-unification, and the restoration of Israel” (the gospel), and what it took to open the way for “the gospel” to happen. For example, in John 5, Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, unless it is something he sees the Father doing; for whatever he sees the Father doing; these things the Son also does in like manner. (John 5:19).

Jesus says that he “can do nothing of himself.” How does this demonstrate that he is God if he cannot do anything of himself? Instead, because he is in an intimate relationship with God, and God works in and through him, it is actually the Father who is performing the miracles, healings, wonders, and signs, rather than Jesus himself. Also, eleven verses later, Jesus says,

I can do nothing on my own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment in just, because I do not seek my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. (John 5:36)

So here agin, we have Jesus saying that he i\does not do ANYTHING on his own initiative,” This means none of the healings, miracles, wonders, or signs were done by Jesus himself, but they were done by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the same God who worked in and through men like Moses, Elijah, Elisha and others in the Hebrew Scriptures to perform healings, miracles, wonders, and signs. The same God is at work throughout.

This is also verified by Peter in Acts 2, in his first recorded public sermon,, in this account, Peter says,

Men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarenem a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which GOD PERFORMED THOUGH HIM in your midst just as you yourselves know, (Acts 2:22).

Peter makes it clear that it was God who performed all the healings, miracles, wonders, and signs in and through Jesus; it was not Jesus himself who did them. And Peter said this after just receiving the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room in Jerusalem. In this passage, Peter calls Jesus “a man” that God used to perform “miracles and wonders through him.” So why do Christians usually teach that it was Jesus who did the ‘miracles, wonders, and signs” when the Bible actually does not teach that?How come they don’t teach that God used Jesus to perform these various miracles, healings, wonders, and signs?

And then in Acts 10, when Peter is in Caesarea, Peter proclaims to the Gentiles (non-Jews) there:

You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how he went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devill FOR GOD WITH WITH HIM, (Acts 10:38)

Notice that Peter did not say that Jesus was able to do these things because he was God, nor because he was the Son fo God, but because “God was with him.”

His Teachings Were From God

In John 7, Jesus says,

My teaching is not mine but His who sent me. If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, WHETHER IT IS OF GOD, OR WHETHER IT I SPEAK FROM MYSELF. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but he who is seeking the glory of the One who sent him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him. (John 7:16-19)

In this passage, Jesus makes a clear distinction between God and himself. He then follows up his statement by saying that it he was speaking from himself, then he was seeking “his own glory,” but if he was seeking the glory of God “who sent him,” then “he is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” So if the statement, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) was Jesus speaking about himself, then based on Jesus’ own teachings, Jesus was “seeking his own glory,” rather than “the glory of the One who sent him.” Instead, Jesus was only saying what the Father (God) taught him to say, and by him saying it, he was quoting God and glorifying Him.

Another statement that Jesus makes is in John 12 where Jesus says,

For I did nt speak on my own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent me has given me commandment, what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life: therefore the things I speak \, I speak just as the Father has told me. (John 12:49-50)

So if Jesus only says what God has commanded him to say, and he only did what God told him what to do, then wouldn’t Jesus be functioning as God’s representative or a prophet, rather than as God Himself?

Finally, contrary to what I have heard Christians teach, Jesus did not come on his own initiative (John 8:42), but he had been sent from God to do what God sent him to do: to preach “the good news of the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:15; Luke 4:42-44) – the Gospel (Good News) was the beginning of the next Kingdom phase: the Redemption, Re-Unification and the Restoration of the two ancient kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and to open the way so that “the good news of the kingdom of God” could begin..

My Point

Based on all of the above, I feel the questions that the Muslims were asking about the divinity of Jesus and where he commands our worship really did not receive the consideration and time that it deserved. The relationship between God and Jesus is far more complex then what mainstream Christianity teaches or that was indicated in the Christian apologists’ responses to the Muslim community. More and more mainstream Christianity is so oversimplifying the Bible that they are actually misrepresenting \, misinterpreting, and misunderstanding its teachings about God, Jesus, the gospel, Judaism and the Torah, both for the people in their own congregations by others beside. It is obvious, we need better trained Christians in our congregations and religious leaders behind the pulpit, in the classrooms, and even out in the fields.