Paul and the Deity of Jesus
The Bible's Most Prolific Apostle Teaches Salvation Through Christ
The deity of Jesus is a central tenet of the New Testament. Was Jesus really the Son of God? According to the Apostle Paul, the answer is clearly YES.
The deity of Jesus is the central tenet of mainstream, evangelical Christianity today. The deity of Christ, evangelicals contend, is a doctrine that goes back to the very origins of the Christian faith.
There are many critics of Christianity, however, who argue that the deity of Jesus Christ was very much in dispute until the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. These critics either ignore or misunderstand the teachings of the Apostle Paul -- the most influential Christian teacher of the first century, next to Jesus himself.
Paul and the Deity of Jesus Christ
No one can study the earliest written accounts or creeds of Christianity without running into Paul. The Apostle Paul was a Jewish convert to Christianity, who became the most prolific writer of the early church. And the deity of Jesus is a theme that runs throughout Paul's writings. Here are just a few examples:
- In his letter to the Colossian Christians, Paul described Jesus as the "image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation" and said that "by [Jesus] all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth...that He is before all things, and in Him all things consist." (Colossians 1:15-16)
- In the same letter, Paul wrote: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form." (Colossians 2:9)
- In his letter to Timothy, Paul stated that Jesus will "judge the living and the dead," which is clearly a perogative of God Himself. (II Timothy 4:1)
- In his letter to the church at Corinth, Paul dealt with numerous problems in the congregation, while defending his apostolic credentials and emphasizing the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, in I Corinthians 15, Paul relayed in writing what had obviously become a fixed oral tradition of the early church. Some argue that tradition was a regularly recited creed. The resurrection of Jesus, to Paul, was confirmation of Jesus' deity and the primary justification for hope in the believer.
- Paul's letter to the church at Rome clearly and repeatedly declares Jesus to be "Lord" and the primary figure in the redemption of mankind from their sins (see especially chapters 3, 5, and 10).
That Paul saw Jesus as God is made even clearer as he tells the church at Rome that a personal confession of the risen Christ is the necessary means of salvation (Romans 10:9-10). Clearly, Paul taught that Jesus was God.
These are just a few of Paul's affirmations of Jesus' deity. And they are all written sometime before Paul's death in the 60s AD. Those who argue that Nicaea invented or codified Jesus' deity must account for Paul's writings, which pre-date Nicaea by nearly three centuries.
