It is confusing to people who know little about Jesus and about God the Father if we simply state that Jesus is God without saying other things too such as that what is usually meant by God is the one Jesus calls The Father who Jesus also calls His God. The fullness of deity that is in Jesus does not mean He is not human and does not make Him a deity like the deities of the ancient Greeks but it is deity which stems from who Jesus has always been since time began - the Son of Man who is to God God's only begotten Son - and the fullness of the way in which God the Father fills Lord Jesus and gives Him all authority in the Universe. Also He has the Spirit without limit. There is no lack of deity in Jesus both from the fact He is the Son from of old from everlasting and from the relationship He has with God The Father whose fullness fills Him forever. Yet we need to avoid those who know none of this with certainty getting confused over our words because we are not denying The Father is truly the one even Jesus calls God. Jesus is not Son of Himself, which is what it sounds like to the ignorant to say on one hand He is Son of God and on the other He is God. I prefer to not say He is God as a logical doctrinal statement because of this possible misunderstanding it creates. It is wonderful though what we have in Jesus who has completely become human born in history to die and rise again and ever live in human body filled with the fulness of deity. We can truly know the very Son of Man who has been from everlasting Son of God and ever will be. The One who truly knows God His Father and makes God known to us. The Christ by whom God saves the people of God from sin and teaches what is right and acceptable to God.
[Acts 17:18 shows Luke did not consider Paul to be proclaiming Jesus as a deity like the deities of polytheists because Luke reported it as a misumderstanding that some thought Paul was preaching Jesus as a god foreign to the Greeks; clearly Luke reported this negatively as a misunderstanding of Paul's preaching.] If a spirit within you is assuring you that Jesus is fully human having become flesh like all humans though before that He was in heaven with God and was with God from the beginning then you listen to that spirit. We each have to find truth that Jesus Himself gives rather than any mere human philosopher. Then live that out. The truth I get from Him is that whatever He did on earth we too can do with faith like a mustard seed. He is so human the people who knew Him growing up did not know Him as anything special - even His close family. It is written in John 9:35-37 that Jesus asked a man if he believed in the Son of Man and said "He is the one speaking to you". I believe the only way Jesus might have expected the man could have already believed in the Son of Man would have been from the Book of Enoch manuscripts in circulation at the time (quoted by Jude in his epistle) and these tell of the Son of Man being the Son of God but tell of Him being with God, so not Himself actually God.
[Acts 17:18 shows Luke did not consider Paul to be proclaiming Jesus as a deity like the deities of polytheists because Luke reported it as a misumderstanding that some thought Paul was preaching Jesus as a god foreign to the Greeks; clearly Luke reported this negatively as a misunderstanding of Paul's preaching.] If a spirit within you is assuring you that Jesus is fully human having become flesh like all humans though before that He was in heaven with God and was with God from the beginning then you listen to that spirit. We each have to find truth that Jesus Himself gives rather than any mere human philosopher. Then live that out. The truth I get from Him is that whatever He did on earth we too can do with faith like a mustard seed. He is so human the people who knew Him growing up did not know Him as anything special - even His close family. It is written in John 9:35-37 that Jesus asked a man if he believed in the Son of Man and said "He is the one speaking to you". I believe the only way Jesus might have expected the man could have already believed in the Son of Man would have been from the Book of Enoch manuscripts in circulation at the time (quoted by Jude in his epistle) and these tell of the Son of Man being the Son of God but tell of Him being with God, so not Himself actually God.
