The subject on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ as God, as we know, is one that requires more than mere bible knowledge to grasp. Jesus hinted to it when He said that “No man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him” (Luke 10:22). Even after you would think to have understood it, one can easily slip right back into those conflicting debates of the mind, because of our mental knowledge of Him as man who once walked the earth. Only by a personal relationship to Jesus, through experiential knowledge of Him based on the word of God, can our understanding finally take root.

Jesus speaking to a gathering of the Jews at a feast in Jerusalem declares, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). To all of His other statements during the speech, the people were calm to listen until this one. Why? Because they understood the clear implication of it: He was God in the flesh! He and the Father are never divorced from each other; they are one and same Spirit! Even for us today, this statement can remain a mystery until we come to understanding the logic of it. Jesus later clarifies it to His disciples in John 14. He had to go extra miles in John 10 to explain it to the people in terms they could relate with because John 14, as it turned out, would require more spiritual understanding to discern. He quoted Psalms 82:6,7: “I have said, ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men.”

Note carefully, then, that the psalmist is emphatic here of the fact that though these were humans, living in perishable flesh, yet they are spirits as God after whose likeness they were made. “But ye shall die like men,” though ye are gods! Jesus puts it very straight to them – “Is it not written in your law, I said, ye are gods?” “If he called them gods, unto whom the word came, and the scripture cannot be broken;” He continued. Which is to say, how could it not apply to me likewise? “Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” It’s very clear what Jesus is saying here. Literally He was saying, if God who understood very well your state as fallen men should ascribe sonship to you, how much more me, who am in good standing with Him? Though tempted in every way as you, yet I remain in obedience to the Father. Who is more justifiably so a son and therefore god as He is God, you or me? If so be that God is a Spirit, then are ye spirits, and therefore gods: and a dog cannot begat a rat. But “Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High God!”

Now, let’s turn to John 14 and see how Jesus preferred to talk to His disciples on this matter.  Here the disciples too were still in doubt of who the Father is. And Jesus was again to paint another picture of His oneness with the Father. For “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou, shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” (John 14:9-10).  He went on to tell them how that by the regeneration, anyone could enter into that oneness with Him and the Father, vs. 12-14. That is, whosoever shall be sanctified enters into the unity (or rest) of the Father, and therefore has access to all there is in it (vs. 12): but of course, by playing according to the rules, giving honor to who honor is due. For there to be order evidently, there must exit a hierarchy, and therefore a chain of command. For which reason also certain information is retained with the Father alone, as is in the case regarding the time of the end (Mark 13:32).

Further, in vs. 19 and 20, He makes it even clearer to them. For “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also [again, by the regeneration]. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Here He makes it clear that the qualification into the oneness is by the spirit of regeneration, which He would send after Himself. It is important to note how He has switched to using spiritual things in explaining the same thing to them than He did in John 10. For “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

As though they would not get it, He went on in Chapter 17, in a prayer to the Father to keep His disciples while He leaves them to return to Him. The emphasis in this prayer is that they be preserved in the unity of the Father, as He is in the Father. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” vs. 16. “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their words,” He added in vs. 20. Thus, by the spirit of sanctification, they that should believe afterward also enter into that oneness with the Father. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” vs. 21. Recall then at this point the basis on which Jesus claimed to be one with God in Chapter 10 — “The Father is in me, and I in Him.” The implication of this infuriates the unbelieving Jews. How could these thirty-three years old equal Himself with God? They raged. Why? Because He said to be one with the Father: no less different indeed from His disciples, being one with them through the spirit of regeneration. Next here.