Divinity of Jesus

“ Jesus was not divine because he was less human than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason that he was supremely human, and it is this of which his divinity consists, the fullness and perfection of him as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual being. ”

“ The Word that was in the beginning with God, that was God in His divine attributes, became flesh and dwelt among us. In the person of the babe of Bethlehem we have a being that never before existed—a being both human and divine. He brought from the skies the divinity of His Father, and dwelt among men with the humanity of His mother. Hence the mighty chasm between man and God, between earth and heaven, is bridged over in the God-man, Christ Jesus. His divinity reaches half-way from heaven to earth, and His humanity half-way from earth to heaven, and the two unite in Him. ”

“ That Jesus Christ was not God is evident from his own words, where, speaking of the day of judgment, he says, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in Heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." This is giving up all pretention to divinity, acknowledging in the most explicit manner, that he did not know all things, but compares his understanding to that of man and angels; "of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son." ”

“ Of this the apostles in subsequent years testified, and we have on record their testimony. So that the existence of God the Father, and the relationship of Jesus to him, is most clearly show in these scriptures." (Mormon Doctrine of Deity, p. 12, 13.)
2. Jesus Declared to be God: "But Jesus himself claimed to be the Son of God and in this connection there is clearly claimed for him divinity, that is to say, Godship. Let me read to you a direct passage upon that subject; it is to be found in the gospel according to St. ”

“ The earlier Christian literature is acquainted with a Jesus-god, a god-man, a heavenly high-priest and saviour Jesus, a metaphysical spirit, descending from heaven to earth, assuming human form, dying, and rising again ”

“ What is essential and original in it is the practical demonstration that the human and the divine nature may co-exist, may become fused into one sublime flame; that holiness and pity, justice and mercy, may meet together and become one, in man and in God. What is specific in Christianity is Jesus—the religious consciousness of Jesus. ”

“ But men of today argue that this endless discussion of the question is unimportant. What is the necessity, they urge, of exact definition? Whether Jesus is Divine in any unique sense, or merely Divine as all men are claimed to be Divine ”

“ No wonder, then, that men soon learned to honour Jesus as a God, and then as God himself. Apostolical and other legends tell of his divine birth, his wondrous power that healed the sick, palsied and crippled, deaf and dumb and blind, created bread, turned water into wine, and bid obedient devils come and go; a power that raise the dead. ”

“ It is by the love and grace of our heavenly Father that we can be justified freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God loved us in our sin and rebellion, and sent His only-begotten Son to bring earth's inhabitants back to Himself, that they might share the joys of the heavenly home. Ere He came to earth, an angel of the Lord appeared and said His name should be called Jesus, for He should save His people from their sins. ”

“ As Jesus was humanly perfected, that is, as he lived the life of overcoming, the Inmost Divine, Jehovah or the Father, descended. God as the Logos cast out from the soul-form, or plane of reception, on the level of the angelic heavens, i.e., the plane of spirit,—the imperfect reception of God on that plane by substituting therefor the Divine Wisdom or Truth, or God in His first emanation. ”

“ We need the whole of what God teaches in His Word in regard to holiness in all its different aspects. We need still more to be ever returning to the living centre where God imparts holiness. Jesus is the Holy One of God: to have Him truly, to love Him fervently, to trust and obey Him, to be in Him—this makes us holy. ”

“ Jesus, the most divine and most transcendent spirit, the principle and the being and the most divine power of every hierarchy, holiness, and divine operation, brings to the blessed beings superior to us a more bright and at the same time more spiritual light and makes them as far as possible like to His own light. ”

“ When God descended into Jesus, as Christ, He chose Him because Jesus' soul was the purest and most perfect of human souls, and being favored by God above all human souls, it had, from generation to generation, animated new bodies, always retaining, by God's will, a remembrance of its former condition, and every man in whom it resided was conscious that Jesus' soul was within him. ”

“ We ought not to interpret it in terms of the primeval savage, or even of average human nature to-day, but in terms of what we have come to feel is its highest expression, and that is Jesus. If we think therefore of the archetypal eternal divine Man, the source and sustenance of the universe, and yet transcending the universe, we cannot do better than think of Him in terms of Jesus ”

“ But instead of putting forth his creative power, as when the angelic orders were called into existence, the Lord Jesus himself, in human form, comes into the dark and wicked world, and, out of the most impure elements, moulds a people for himself, whom he will acknowledge as his brethren, and to whom the angels of God are to act for ever as ministering spirits. ”

“ Is it not possible, on the testimony of one's own conscience, and on the testimony of history present and past, and on the testimony of the Apostles and Evangelists—even when critically reviewed and disencumbered of the miraculous element—to acknowledge that Jesus has been indeed "a life-giving Spirit" to mankind, and to worship Him as representing the Creative Word who has moved on the face of the material and of the spiritual waters, creating order alike in the matter of the Universe and in the minds and consciences of men? ”

“ I'll not leave Jesus,—never, never!
Ah, what can more precious be?
Rest and joy and light are ever
In his hand to give to me.
All things that can satisfy,
Having Jesus, those have I.
Love has bound me fast unto him,
I am his and he is mine;
Daily I for pardon sue him,
Answers he with peace divine.
On that Rock my trust is laid,
And I rest beneath its shade.
Without Jesus earth would weary,
Seem almost like hell to be;
But if Jesus I see near me
Earth is almost heaven to me. ”

“ O, God, we once rejected Thee and disbelieved Thy word and set at naught Thy counsels, but now we bow down in shame and we do acknowledge that there is a God, and that Jesus is the Christ." This time will come, most assuredly. We have the faith of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. It is not a frenzied, frantic idea, like the systems of religion invented by men. We have ceremonies, but there is life in those ceremonies; and our religion has organization, body and soul. ”

“ We bow our knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus, that He would grant unto us, according to the riches of His glory, what He Himself has taught us to ask for. We ask nothing less than this, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. We long for that most blessed, permanent, conscious indwelling of the Lord Jesus in the heart, which He so distinctly promised as the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s coming. ”

“ I can no longer refrain from saying, Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Let none beguile you of your simplicity, or the reward that attends it. I believe your light is shining out of obscurity, and will shine unto the perfect day. You are coming unto the light that your deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. In his light you behold yourself of the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. ”

“ We have shown repeatedly, and we think conclusively, that He was to come in the form of a servant, despised and rejected of men, and yet that He Was to be "the mighty God, the everlasting Father." And we have seen that Jesus could have been no other than God in the flesh. ”

“ That is the spirit that prepares us for the revelation of Jesus. Oh! my dear friend, has this been the spirit in which we have looked upon the wonderful blessing that we have sometimes heard of? "Oh! my Lord Jesus, though I do not understand it, though I cannot grasp it, though my struggles avail nothing, I am not going to let Thee go. If it is possible for a sinner on earth to have Jesus every [26] day, every hour, and every moment in resurrection power dwelling in his heart, shining within him, filling him with love and joy,—if that is possible, I want it." ”

“ He is now King of kings and Lord of lords, and the time will come when every knee will bow and every tongue confess, to the glory of God the Father, that Jesus is the Christ. That very character that was looked upon, not as the Savior, but as an outcast, who was crucified between two thieves and treated with scorn and derision, will be greeted by all men as the only Being through whom they can obtain salvation. ”

“ The doctrine that Jesus is God's image, God manifest in the flesh, is the one great doctrine of Christianity,—the sum, the substance of the whole Gospel,—the Gospel itself,—the power of God to the salvation of every one that truly believes and contemplates it. It is a world of truth in one,—a whole encyclopædia of divine philosophy; the perfection of all wisdom and of all power; the one great revelation needful to the salvation of the world. ”

“ This acceptance of Jesus as an infallible teacher, as one whose every word is to be believed simply because He said it, and whose every direction is to be observed simply because He directs it, whose spirit is to be possessed and cultivated to the transforming of the life, till we grow into the divine image and become partakers of the divine nature, is all involved in the "good confession": Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. ”

“ How empty would devotion or religion be if one's spiritual well-being depended on whether one believed in miracles or no!" "The truly miraculous thing about Jesus is Himself, the purity and serene holiness of His character, which is, notwithstanding, genuinely human, and adapted to the imitation and emulation of mankind." ”

“ Jesus calls us by our sorrows, Jesus calls us by our dreams. He thrills us by each high aim that life inspires. His voice is one of understanding, of tenderness, of human appeal. How could we love Jesus if He did not sympathize with our ideals? But here is a Divine One in whose sight we are not visionary; who lovingly guards our least hope; who welcomes our faintest spiritual insight; who takes an interest in our social plans, and points out to us the great kingdom that is to be. Christ lays hold of the divine that is in us, and will not let us go. ”

“ Whatever truths other religions contain,—and they all contain some,—it is certain that the religion founded by Jesus, as given in his life and words, makes the truest appeal to the religious instinct, which is the highest instinct, or motive force, of our lives. ”

“ Jesus is the Son of God; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth that proceeds from God. What God? 'A Great Personal First Cause, who thinks and loves, the moral and intelligent Governor of the Universe?'—to whom Jesus and the Holy Spirit are related in the way described in the Athanasian Creed, so that the operations of the three together produce what the Westminster divines call 'the Contract passed in the Council of the Trinity,' and what we, for plainness, describe as the fairy tale of the three supernatural men? ”

“ It is not ourselves that we proclaim; we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants, for Jesus’ sake. For the same God who said, “Out of darkness let light shine,” has caused his light to shine within us, to give the light of revelation — the revelation of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Have we not rather a product of the unrestrained imagination of some religious sect or conventicle, to whom Jesus was from the start, not a man, but a supernatural, divine being, and in whose ecstatic visions mythical and prophetic elements grew into the frenzied figures which we have in Revelation? ”

“ There was, is, and never can be but one God, one Christ, one Jesus of Nazareth. Whoever in any age expresses most of the spirit of Truth and Love, the Principle of God's idea, has most of the spirit of Christ, of that Mind which was in Christ Jesus. ”

“ Said Jesus, about the last thing when he was leaving the earth—"Father, I pray for those whom thou hast given me, and not for these only, but for all who shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, even as I and the Father are one, that they may be one in us"—one in sentiment, feeling, desire and action for the accomplishment of the purposes of God, whether in the heavens or upon the earth. ”

“ Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that Thou art that Christ, the son of the living God.” From these words he preached several discourses of great power showing that Jesus was the Christ, and that there was no one else to whom we could go. ”

“ We have demonstrated a theory, which we do not claim to be our own, to account for the fact of Jesus Christ. It shows him incontrovertibly, from the documents in the case, as well as from experience, to be God—and if God, then the only God of heaven and earth—Jehovah manifested in the flesh. ”

“ So we ate and drank as we were bidden, even like children that have no understanding; nor did we then discern the meaning of his words. Howbeit, even at that time we understood somewhat of his purpose; for we perceived that Jesus was pouring his love, yea, and his life, into our hearts; and our souls stretched out as it were toward the truth, namely, that Jesus, in this testament of his, was bequeathing himself to us his disciples, to be our possession for ever. ”