These
things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that
you may know that you have eternal life.
̶
1 John 5:13
Years ago a high
school friend of mine tried to convince me of the deity of Christ. He knew I was
in a cult that I perceived as genuinely Christian. This cult, at that time
called The Way International, did not believe in the deity of Christ. While I believe
I was already saved at that point, I was not grounded in Christian doctrine nor
connected to any church, so I was vulnerable to the lies of the world about
Jesus. My friend Jim (not his real name), greatly desired for me to break
through these lies and into an understanding of Christ’s deity. He used the
book of First John as his text. Throughout this text Christ is referred to as
the Son, not as God. He would say to me, “See, He’s God’s Son, so that makes
Him God.”
“Well,” I
began, “I’m Marv’s son as well, but that doesn't make me Marv.”
And on our
debate went. He couldn't explain the deity any better than the previous
example.
I Get It
Since those days,
I have come to see my error and now know that Jesus was indeed God in the
flesh. My flagship Scripture is:
“And
now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had
with you before the world was.”
─Jesus, John 17:5
This John 17
verse drips with pre-existence and deity, but that’s another blog. Suffice it
to say that I believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. So where am I going with
this?
Go back and quickly
review the opening verse. A key to understanding the deity of Christ in 1 John
is to understand the phrase “in the name
of.” The Greek word for name means, well, name, but it also means reputation. So
the meaning in 1 John is, I believe, both/and: It is encouraging us to believe
in both the name and reputation of Christ.
In the Name
Think about
that for a moment. The word Christ means messiah. Jesus was called the Christ,
the Messiah (Matthew 1:16). He was also called Immanuel which means God with us
(Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 7:14). Jesus’s
name means, at least in part, Messiah—God with us. So to the point of 1 John,
to believe in the name of Christ, is to believe all the way into understanding
and accepting that He was the Messiah and was God with us.
So while Jim
didn’t understand the depth of the detail of 1 John as has been briefly
explained here, he at least kept me thinking about the deity of Christ
throughout my lifetime until I finally arrived at accepting it for myself. Thank you, Jim!
What about you?
Do you believe the deity of Christ? Or have you bought the lie of our secular
culture and of many cults that He was nothing more than a great man?
