What's in a name?

What's in a name? A lot, it would seem, if that name is Jesus Christ.

Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt had said he would not eat until President Bush signed an executive order allowing chaplains to pray in public according to their individual faith traditions. Later, he said if the Navy would allow him to wear his uniform in public and pray in Jesus' name he would end his fast. Klingenschmitt told WND this evening he has received a letter from his commanding officer recommending he not wear his uniform but not prohibiting it.

What is it about the invocation of the name of the Christ that so gets some people's underwear in a knot? In a nutshell, it's that some take Christ to have made exclusivity claims about the way to God, namely that He is the Way - about the truth, that He is the Truth - and about life, that He is Life.

In our "all paths lead to God" / politically correct / intellectually disingenuous spirit of the age, this offends people - offends them greatly.

Early in my following Jesus Christ, I was challenged by an unbelieving friend that Christ himself never uttered the words, "I am God". I replied, "sure he did", to which my friend, in his best Missouri attitude, asked me to show him. So we took out a Bible (which he had in his bookcase next to a translation of the Koran, which must have been because he considered the Bible another work of fiction.). And here's where I totally dropped the ball. I had heard the Gospel, read it, processed it in light of what I had learned of the universe, the earth, man, and myself, accepted Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but here I was, unable to show a friend where Christ made such audacious claims about himself. I recall later sending him a list of such references, but the window had closed. Dialogue is information, but it's realtionship as well. Said another way - more eloquently - "people won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

About the deity of Christ, many have written well on the subject. But to the Bible itself and its references to the deity of Christ, here is one of the better summations I've read, specifically:

What Jesus Claimed for Himself

Matthew 11:27
Jesus said, "All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son, except the Father; and no one know the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." From this verse we can conclude that Jesus thought of himself as God's Son in an absolute and unique sense and as having the exclusive authority to reveal His Father to men.

John 8:58
In a dispute with the Jews of His day, Jesus said to them, "Before Abraham was, I am." Christ was not merely claiming that He existed before Abraham, but that He was still in existence before Abraham. Thus, He was claiming to possess absolute eternal existence, something that only God possesses. In addition, I AM was the most revered divine name of God in the Old Testament (Ex. 3:14), so Jesus was identifying Himself with the name of God. Dr. A.T. Robertson, one of the greatest Greek scholars who ever lived, had this to say about John 8:58 after translating it "I am": "Undoubtedly here Jesus claims eternal existence with the absolute phrase used of God" (Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. V, pp. 158-159).

John 10:30-33
This is another clear passage teaching that Jesus is God: "(Christ speaking) 'I and the Father are one.' Again the Jews picked up stones to stone Him, but Jesus said to them: 'I have shown you many miracles from the Father, for which of these do you stone me?' 'We are not stoning you for any of these,' replied the Jews, 'but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.'" When studying the original Greek of Jesus statement "I and the Father are one", the word translated "one" means one in essence, or nature, not merely one in purpose.

Objection to John 10:30-33
Some hold that Jesus goes on to correct the Jews in verses 34-36. This is not the case. What Jesus is simply doing is taking the Jew's statement about Him blaspheming to its logical conclusion to show that they are being inconsistent. In effect, Jesus is saying "If you say that I am blaspheming, you must also hold that God is blaspheming because He said to those by whom the word of God came, 'ye are gods.'" Nowhere does Jesus take back His statement and say that He is not one with the Father. He in fact draws a clear distinction between Himself and those "by whom the word of God came" when He says that He was sanctified and sent into the world by God.

Jesus' contemporaries understood His claims to be God
John 5:18 tells us that "For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God."

In John 20:28 we read, "And Thomas said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'". The fact that those the people Jesus spoke to, including His enemies, clearly understood His claims to be God is significant. If Jesus had not intended for them to interpret Him this way, He would have corrected them.

Jesus accepted worship as God
The disciples, who lived with Jesus for three years, believed He is God, and so at many other times worshiped Him. Jesus accepted their worship (see Matthew 28:17, Luke 5:8)! Since God alone is to be worshiped (Luke 4:8), why did Jesus not correct these "mistakes" if He truly is just a man? Every other man of God in the New Testament who receives worship immediately refuses the worship, declaring that God alone is to be worshiped (Acts 14: 10-16, Rev. 22:8-9). Why didn't Jesus do this in a forceful way like His followers did? So,

1. Since only God is to be worship, and
2. Jesus accepted worship, either
A. Jesus sinned when accepting the worship, thus disqualifying Him as Savior, or
B. Jesus is God

Clearly option A is unbiblical (Hebrews 4:15), so it must be true that Jesus is God.

Perhaps even most striking is Hebrews 1:6, where God commands the angels to worship Jesus: "And when He again brought the first-born into the world, He says, 'And let all the angels of God worship Him.'"

Jesus forgave sins
This is evidenced in Mark 2:5 and Luke 7:48. By Jewish law, this was something that only God could do. In Mark 2:7, the scribes say, "He is blaspheming; who can forgive sins but God alone?" I may be able to forgive someone for sins committed against me, but never for sins they commit against God, and this is what Jesus claimed to do. But only God can forgive sins that are committed against Him. So,

1. Only God can forgive sins committed against Himself (and all sins are against God).
2. Jesus forgave people for their sins, which were against God; therefore,
3. Jesus must be God

I like what William Biederwolf said about the subject:

A man who can read the New Testament and not see that Christ claims to be more than a man, can look all over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not see the sun.