Evidence from the Fourth Gospel

The Gospel of John was completed to its present form some seventy years after Jesus was raised up to heaven.  This Gospel in its final form says one more thing about Jesus that was unknown from the previous three Gospels — that Jesus was the Word of God.  John means that Jesus was God’s agent through whom God created everything else.  This is often misunderstood to mean that Jesus was God Himself.  But John was saying, as Paul had already said, that Jesus was God’s first creature.  In the Book of Revelation in the Bible, we find that Jesus is,

   “the beginning of God’s creation” (ch. 3, v. 14; see also I Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:15).

Anyone who says that the Word of God is a person distinct from God must also admit that the Word was created, for the Word speaks in the Bible saying:

   “Yahweh created me” (Proverbs ch. 8, v. 22).

This Gospel, nevertheless, clearly teaches that Jesus is not God.  If it did not continue this teaching, then it would contradict the other three Gospels and also the letters of Paul from which it is clearly established that Jesus is not God.

We find here that Jesus was not co-equal with the Father, for Jesus said:

   “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

People forget this and they say that Jesus is equal to the Father.  Whom should we believe — Jesus or the people?

Muslims and Christians agree that God is self-existent.  That means that He does not derive his existence from anyone.  Yet John tells us that Jesus’ existence is caused by the Father.  Jesus says in this Gospel: “I live because of the Father” (John 6:57).

John tells us that Jesus did not have any authority of his own when he quotes Jesus as saying: “I can do nothing of my own authority” (John 5:30).  This agrees with what we learn about Jesus from the other Gospels.  In Mark, for example, we learn that Jesus performed miracles by a power which was not within his control.  This is especially clear from an episode in which a woman is healed of her incurable bleeding.  The woman came up behind him and touched his cloak; and she was immediately healed.  But Jesus had no idea who touched him.  Mark describes Jesus’s actions thus:

   “At once Jesus realised that power had gone out from him.  He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30).

His disciples could not provide a satisfactory answer, so Mark tells us:

   “Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it” (5:32).

This shows that the power that healed the woman was not within Jesus’s control.  He knew that the power had gone out of him, but he did not know where it went.  Some other intelligent being had to guide that power to the woman who needed to be healed.  God was that intelligent being.  It is no wonder, then, that in Acts of the Apostles we read that it was God who did the miracles through Jesus (Acts 2:22).  God did extraordinary miracles through others too, but that does not make the others God (see Acts 19:11).  Why, then, is Jesus taken for God?

Even when Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, he had to ask God to do it.  Lazarus’ sister, Martha, knew this, for she said to Jesus:

    “I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask” (John 11:22).

Martha knew that Jesus was not God, and John who reported this with approval knew it also.

Jesus had a God, for when he was about to ascend to heaven, he said:

   “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).

John was sure that no one had seen God, although he knew that many people had seen Jesus (see John 1:18 and 1 John 4:12).  In fact Jesus himself told the crowds, that they have never seen the Father, nor have they heard the Father’s voice (John 5:37).  Notice that if Jesus was the Father, his statement here would be false.

Who is the only God in John’s Gospel?  The Father only.  Jesus testified to this when he declared that the God of the Jews is the Father (John 8:54).  And the God of the Jews is no other than Yahweh who declared that he is the only God.  Jesus too confirmed that the Father alone is the only true God (see John 17:1-3).  And Jesus said to his enemies: “You are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God” (John 8:40).

According to John, therefore, Jesus was not God, and nothing John wrote should be taken as proof that he was — unless one wishes to disagree with John.