DID JESUS SAY HE IS GOD THE FATHER?

If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him. Philip said to Him, “Lord show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me Philip?  He who has seen Me has seen the Father, so how can you say, “show us the Father” (John 14:7-9, NKJV)?

Some Christians, especially Modalists, have taken this passage as one of those which prove that God and His Son, Jesus Christ, are one and the same person. In other words, they are not two separate persons. 

As Christians, our objective should not be to establish our own doctrines but have the desire to seek God’s truth in order to know it. And if we will know the truth, we must understand that biblical interpretation must be based on the immediate and the wider contexts of the word or subject being studied. All the proven rules of biblical interpretation are important to our study of the Scriptures. And these rules should not be selectively applied. We must faithfully, truthfully and consistently apply the rules so that we may know the truth and correctly apply it to our lives in all that we do or teach. 

Both the immediate and the wider contexts of John 14:7-9 does not support the teaching that God and Jesus Christ are one and the same person. The immediate context in which our Lord made the statement was at the last supper He had with His disciples before His betrayal and crucifixion. The context runs from John 13:1 to John 17:26. Looking at this immediate context alone, there are many statements made by our Lord Jesus Christ which completely rubbish this interpretation. I state some of them below, from the NKJV. 

“You believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1) – 2 persons. 

“I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). You must pass through Me to get to the Father. I am His receptionist. If I don’t open the door, you cannot get to Him – 2 distinct persons. 

“I will pray the Father and He will give you another Helper” (John. 14:16). No one prays to himself. The Father is the one I pray to because He is greater than I. 

“if you loved Me you would rejoice because I said “I am going to the Father,” for My father is greater than I” (John 14:28). The words “greater than” evidently implies two different persons; no one can be greater than himself. 

Symbolically, “I am the true vine [I am the tree that produces wine] and My Father is the vinedresser” (John 15:1). The farmer and the plant (tree) are never the same person. 

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you” (John 15:9). Just as Christ and His disciples are not one person, so is He not one person with the Father.

“He who hates Me hates My Father also” (John 15:23). Note the word “ALSO” which means He and the Father are two separate persons. 

“Now they have seen and also hated BOTH Me and My father” (John 15:24). The word “both” is used for two persons or things considered together.

“And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God AND Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). We know that the SENDER and the SENT (or Messenger) are not the same person. Note the word “AND” used by our Lord to distinguish between God and Himself.  

“And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one just as WE ARE one” (John 17:22).

There is a plethora of other scriptures, outside the immediate context, which explicitly and convincingly prove that Jesus Christ is a separate and distinct person from God, the Father. Let us consider a few of them: 

1. Angels are called the sons of God (Gen. 6:2,4; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). Adam is also called the son of God (Luke 3:38). They are called sons of God because God gave them life. He brought them into existence by creating them and they are not one and the same with God who brought them into existence. Our Lord Jesus Christ is also called the Son of God (Matt. 16:16; 14:33; Mark 1:1; John 1:34; 10:36; Rev. 2:18; etc). His Sonship stems from the same fact that He derived His life or existence from God. Like Adam and the angels, Jesus Christ is also a separate and distinct person from God. 
2. Jesus Christ Himself called the Father His Father and His God (John 20:17). This statement was affirmed by His apostles. Peter said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:3). John said, “and He [Jesus Christ] has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father – to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:6, NASB). Paul said, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing… “(Eph. 1:3, NASB). Then in verses 16 and 17 he said, “[I] do not cease giving thanks for you, while making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.” It is illogical and indefensible to say that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same person with the one who is His God and Father.
3. Paul said, “But I want you to understand this: The head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman [wife] is the man [husband], and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). Christ and man are not one and the same person, neither is the husband and his wife one and the same person. So also, God and Christ are not one and the same person. In this analogy, in each case, one is the superordinate while the other is the subordinate. 
4. Paul also wrote, “As the scriptures says, ‘God put everything under his [Christ’s] control: When it says that “everything” is put under him [Christ], it is clear that this does not include God Himself. God is the one putting everything under Christ’s control. After everything has been put under Christ, then the Son himself will be put under God. God is the one who put everything under Christ. And Christ will be put under God so that God will be the complete (overall) ruler over everything” (1 Cor. 15:27-28, ERV). 

I understand Paul saying here that in the eternal kingdom of God, Christ will rule over all of God’s creation as their king, but God will be the Supreme King over Christ and His subjects. This makes God the Supreme King in the eternal kingdom while Jesus Christ will be His deputy (Eph. 5:5; Rev. 3:12; 11:15; 21:22- 22:5).

• In the vision given to Daniel (Dan. 7:9-13), Stephen (Acts 7:55-56) and John (Rev. 5:6-8), they saw God and His Son as two separate and distinct persons. They have never been one and the same person.
• There are about 25-times it is recorded in the Bible when Jesus Christ prayed to God. His prayers would have been absurd if He were the Father. He is called the holy servant of God (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27,30). He called the Father “my God” while on the earth and after His glorification (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15: 34; John 20:17; Rev. 3:12). It is evident that if the Father is His God, He cannot be the Father who is His God. 

To set these biblical facts aside and conclude from John 14:9 that Jesus Christ is the same person as the Father would amount to grievous misinterpretation of scripture.

John 14:7-9 Explained  

Now, what did our Lord Jesus mean when He said, “whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” and therefore Philip should not have requested Him to “show us the Father”?  

By taking John 14:7-9 literally and without comparing scripture with scripture, many people have made the wrong conclusion that Jesus Christ claimed in this place to be the same person as God the Father. But Jesus was not saying that He was the Father manifested in the flesh. The Father was not the one who became flesh or human being. It was the Word (Jesus Christ) that became flesh (John 1:14).

“When Christ came into the world, he said to God, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a [physical] body to offer” (Heb. 10:5, NLT). 

Jesus Christ obeyed the Father with complete obedience. He did and taught only what the Father told Him to do and teach (John 5:19, 20, 30; 12:48-50). The spirit of the fear of God which the Father had put in Him (Isa. 11:2) made Him obey God with perfect obedience. From His lips Jesus said, “I always do what pleases the Father” (John 8:29). On another occasion Jesus said, “The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does His work through me” (John 14:10, NLT). It follows therefore that if the Father were to be physically present on the earth, He would not do or teach anything different from what His only begotten Son had done or taught. This is what made our Lord Jesus Christ say what John recorded in John 14:7-9. If He had meant in this place that He was God the Father, He would have contradicted the numerous statements He made in which He showed that He is the Son and Servant of God. Conclusively, Jesus Christ did not mean in John 14:7-9 that He is the Father who is both His God and Father. 

This type of phraseology is often used by people when talking about two or more people who are almost identical either in looks or in their ways of talking or doing things, especially when their reasoning is the same. It is also used when one has so much influence on the other. The example given below is typical of the statement made by our Lord Jesus Christ in John 14:7-9. 

In the mid 1960s, my late brother Alfred went to the house of a cousin, Goodluck, to borrow his fishing lines. He met Goodluck’s mother at home and told her the purpose of his visit. The woman refused to grant Alfred his request. When Alfred got back home, he told his mother (my father’s third wife) that Goodluck’s mother refused to give him the fishing lines. He told his mother that he would go back to make the request directly to Goodluck. But his mother quickly told him not to waste his time going back there. She said, “Once you have seen Goodluck’s mother, you have seen Goodluck already. Two of them have the same mind. Never expect him to give you the lines after his mother has declined your request. I know them very well.”

It is in this sense that Jesus Christ made the statement which John recorded in John 14:7-9. A Christian will be guilty of doing selective and faulty study of the Bible if he or she neglects the numerous passages which distinguish between God and Jesus Christ, bite into John 10:30 and John 14:7-9 like an alligator and come up with the fallacious theology that God and His Christ are one and the same person. 

I  Am In The Father And The Father Is In Me 

According to John, our Lord Jesus Christ used the phrase “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” four times (John 10:38; 14:10,11; 17:21). Modalists have said that this phrase has placed an irrefutable seal on the fact that the Father and Son are one and the same person. 

On their part, Trinitarians like Matthew Poole (1624-1679) wrote “it means the most perfect and intimate indwelling of one of the persons in the Holy Trinity in the other.” Many other teachers of the Bible interpret the phrase as denoting the oneness of essence or divinity of the Father and the Son. John Gill (1697-1771) wrote “that they are one in nature, distinct in person, equal in power, and have mutual inhabitation and communion in the divine essence, all which is manifest, by doing the same works, and which are out of the reach and power of any mere creature”.

All the above interpretations by Modalists and Trinitarians are mere conjectures. The same phrase has been used by our Lord Jesus Christ as subsisting between God, Christ and believers. In John 17:21 Jesus prayed that “they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” Later, Apostle John used the same phrase when He wrote, “All who obey God’s commands live in God and God lives in them” (1 John 3:24, ERV). 

If “being in one another” means a claim to oneness of essence or nature or equality in power, can anyone dare say that this is true of the believers’ relation with Christ and God? Can we say that we are one in essence with God and Christ and equal in power with them, since we dwell in them and they in us? Of course the answer is NO! 

What the phrase means is that God and Christ have an intimate relationship with each other and they always have unity of mind. The prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in John 17:11,21 is that this intimacy or affection and unity of mind should exist among those who are His followers. And this intimacy or affection, though an abstract thing, is made visible when anyone gives perfect obedience to God’s commands just as Christ always obeyed the Father. 

In 1 John 1:3, Apostle John call this affectionate relationship and unity “fellowship” when he wrote, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ” (NIV). This “fellowship” is not the mere gathering of people together in one place for any religious ceremony or rite. If the physical, periodic congregation of people for religious purposes were fellowship, then it is not possible to have fellowship with God and the resurrected Christ. 

Conclusion  

The Modalists’ view of Christ and God being one and the same person is not supported by the statement made by our Lord Jesus Christ in John 14:7-9. What Jesus Christ meant was that as long as He was teaching and doing exactly what God wanted Him to teach or do, it was pointless for Philip and his fellows to desire seeing the invisible God who dwells in unapproachable light that no mortal being has ever seen or can see.  To see God would make no difference at all as Christ was doing exactly what God, the Father, would have done if He were physically present with the disciples. Jesus Christ did not mean that He was God, the Father of all beings. We have seen that God, the Father, is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is obvious, therefore, that Jesus Christ cannot be God, the Father, the very One who is His God and Father.

Equally untrue is the Trinitarian idea of our Lord Jesus Christ being coequal with God, the Father. That false theology is not supported by any text of the Bible. Christ’s repeated reference to the Father as “my God” completely annuls that theological fallacy which was smuggled into Christian teaching in the fourth century AD – long after the apostles of Jesus Christ had all died. There are so many foolproof refutations of this fallacious teaching that one need not dissipate any effort on its rebuttal. 

With every sense of concern, I shudder to see the alarming rampancy with which men, either ignorantly or deliberately, distort almost all scriptures to make them conform to their chosen belief. But every sincere and truthful Christian should assure himself or herself that whenever the teachings of men contradict the clear and explicit words of Jesus Christ, the only one who came from God in heaven, the words of Christ must be held as preeminent in our hearts. This must be our disposition because Christ taught exactly what God instructed Him to teach (John 7:16; 12:48-50). Those who teach doctrines which are at variance with the doctrine of Christ are proud, yet they know nothing (1 Tim 6:3; 2 Pet. 3:16). Those who truly believe in Jesus Christ cannot set His teachings aside in order to align themselves with the unbiblical, illogical and manipulated teachings of their denominations or leaders. May God deliver the church from the manipulating influence of Satan. Amen.