Did Jesus Say He Is God? Examining the Unmistakable Claim of Divine Self-Identity

Written by Dan Lacich, Speaker at OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics

I did not grow up in a church-going Christian family, so what I knew of Jesus was somewhat mysterious and superstitious. He was clearly an interesting character, and there was an aura of wonder about him. But I am fairly certain I never thought of him as being God. After committing my life to follow Jesus in my late teens, I embarked on a life-long study of Him and Christianity, including a couple of degrees focused on theology and biblical studies [1]. 

In this article, we explore how Jesus self-identified, particularly the weightiest claim of all: whether he asserted himself to be God. 

It is safe to say that no other historical figure has been written about, spoken about, or argued about more than the first-century Jewish teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. A recent book entitled Who’s Bigger? examines a number of metrics to discover which figures have generated the most discussion and have had the biggest impact on history. While Napoleon, Mohammed, Shakespeare, and Lincoln rank 2 through 5, respectively, Jesus ranks first, and the competition for the top spot is not even close [2]. 

The sheer variety of ideas about Jesus—prophet, wandering rabbi, social revolutionary, Messiah, or God—can leave your head spinning. While Christians believe he is not just a historical figure but was and is both human and divine, the core question is: Who did Jesus think he was? And if Christians believe Jesus is God, where, if anywhere, did Jesus say that he was God? The difficulty of this question is magnified by the fact that Jesus was speaking to a culture of devout monotheists—first-century Jews for whom the declaration, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4), was the very cornerstone of existence. To claim deity in that environment was not just audacious; it was treasonous. 

Who is Jesus: Re-framing the Question of Identity 

It is a fairly simple task to look through all the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. If you examine every one of those “red-letter” words, you will never find Jesus saying the exact phrase, “I am God.” 

This might seem to be the end of the argument. If he was God, why would he not state it explicitly? 

But what if the question is flawed? The core inquiry is the nature of Jesus’ self-identity. Rather than asking, where does Jesus say he is God, perhaps we should ask: where does Jesus imply that he is God? Is there any place in all those red-letter words where Jesus clearly claims to be God without using those precise, modern terms? 

We can communicate an identity beyond any shadow of doubt without using a specific title. If I said, “Barbara and I will be celebrating our wedding anniversary by taking a cruise this summer,” you would understand clearly that I am claiming to be Barbara’s husband. The context and the implied authority within the statement are what matter. 

In the same way, while Jesus never used the precise words, “I am God,” he communicated clearly and often that he believed himself to be God by utilising language and performing actions that, within his first-century Jewish context, were understood as claims to divinity—claims that led directly to his condemnation. 

Claim I: The Unchallengeable Authority to Forgive Sins 

One definitive way Jesus claimed to be God was by performing actions that both he and his first-century Jewish audience agreed that only God was permitted to do. 

This confrontation is documented in the Gospel of Mark (the earliest written account of Jesus’s life) chapter 2, verses 1-11 [3]. A paralysed man was brought to Jesus. At that time, many Jews operated under the assumption that severe physical affliction was a direct result of serious sin. The two were inextricably linked. 

Jesus, seeing their faith, did not immediately address the physical condition. Instead, he looked at the man and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” 

The Jewish religious leaders were stunned. Their thoughts, as Mark records, were: ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ The charge of blasphemy was legally correct; they recognised that for Jesus to unilaterally declare divine forgiveness was to claim the authority of God. 

Jesus acknowledged and validated their premise — that only God can forgive sins. He then demonstrated that he possessed that ultimate authority, proving the divine legitimacy of his claim: “But I want you to know that the Son of man has the authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the man, ‘I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.’” The man immediately stood up and walked. Jesus linked his power over the physical consequence (paralysis) to his divine power over the spiritual cause (sin).

S. Lewis, the former Oxford Don, argued that this action is unique in history and serves as powerful evidence of Jesus’s self-perception. In Mere Christianity, he observed :

“We can all understand how a man forgives offences against himself… But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did… He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if He really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.” [4] 

Lewis’s point is unassailable: Jesus can forgive your sins, even your sins against other people, because, as God, ultimately, all sin is committed against Him, the source of the moral law. 

Claim II: Asserting Equality Through Sonship 

The way Jesus spoke of his relationship with God was also seen by his contemporaries as a claim to deity. For a first-century Jewish audience, calling God one’s own Father was not merely a pious act but a claim of shared essence and equality. 

We see this explosive reaction in John chapter 5. After Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath, the religious leaders confronted him. Jesus responded that he was doing exactly what the Father was doing, because he and the Father were always working in concert. John records their furious reaction in verse 18: “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” 

The Jewish leaders understood the implication of the intimacy—the authority—with which Jesus spoke. He wasn’t merely a son of God in the general sense (as all righteous people were) but claimed a unique, substantive relationship that placed him on the same level as the Creator. They knew that by his words, he was claiming to be God. 

Furthermore, Jesus claimed authority over the Sabbath, declaring himself “Lord of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:28). The Sabbath was the ultimate sign of God’s covenant with Israel. Only God himself could claim ultimate jurisdiction over it. 

Claim III: The Declaration of the Divine Name: Ego Eimi 

Perhaps the most shocking claim of all was Jesus’s use of the Greek phrase, Ego Eimi, which translates simply as I AM. This declaration was not merely a statement of present existence; it was a thunderous theological assertion. 

In John 8:58, in a heated exchange with the Jewish leaders, they challenge Jesus’ authority by appealing to the patriarch, Abraham. Jesus drops the bombshell: “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!” [5] 

Notice the deliberate grammatical error. He doesn’t say, “before Abraham was born, I was.” Instead, he says, “before Abraham was I Am.” 

This assertion directly references the pivotal moment in the Book of Exodus, where Moses asks God for his name, and God replies with the word Yahweh, translated as “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). When Jesus used the divine, eternal “I am,” he was equating his existence with the uncreated, self-existent nature of Yahweh. The religious leaders had no doubt whatsoever that Jesus was claiming to be the God who spoke to Moses centuries earlier. That is why they immediately picked up stones to kill him—it was the prescribed punishment for blasphemy. 

Historical Vindications: The Resurrection and Scholarship 

The followers of Jesus initially struggled with this radical claim, but the definitive turning point came three days after his crucifixion. The Resurrection of Jesus became the central, non-negotiable event that vindicated his claims and proved them true. From that point on, his followers abandoned their strict monotheistic presuppositions only because they believed him to be God come to earth in the flesh. 

Scholars today validate the historical depth of this belief. Larry Hurtado, the former Professor of New Testament Languages at Edinburgh University, has shown that the earliest Jewish Christians treated Jesus as sharing identity with God [6]. This early, radical adaptation of Jewish monotheism is astonishing; it would never have happened had Jesus not already laid the groundwork through his own words and actions. 

Furthermore, Professor Dale Allison of Princeton Seminary argues that the crucifixion itself is best understood through Jesus’s claim to divinity [7]. Allison contends that Jesus’s claims—to be more than an earthly king, but one who would preside over the last judgment—implied a deity of some sort. This assertion of divine jurisdiction made Jesus an unavoidable threat to both the Jewish Temple authorities (who alone claimed religious jurisdiction) and to Rome (for whom Caesar was the only divine ruler). The claim to be God fits best as the reason for his execution. 

Conclusion: The Unavoidable Choice 

he question at the start was, did Jesus say he was God? The answer is that he did not use those specific, modern words, but he claimed to be God in ways that were perfectly clear to his first-century audience, staking his life on that identity. 

So, what does that mean for you today? C. S. Lewis, concerned that people too easily dismiss Jesus as merely a “great moral teacher,” argues that the claim to deity leaves us with only three options. This is the Lewis Trilemma : 

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” [8] 

By claiming to be God, Jesus forces a choice. He is either crazy, or demonic, or the Lord God he claimed to be. If the evidence leads to the latter, then he demands and deserves our utmost allegiance. 

References 

[1] Masterclass, Dan Lacich, June 2024. 

[2] Stark, Rodney, and James D. Woodberry. Who’s Bigger? Where Christian and Islamic Studies Meet and Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 

[3] Mark 2:1-11, The Holy Bible, New International Version. 

[4] Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. 

[5] John 8:58, The Holy Bible, New International Version. 

[6] Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. 

[7] Allison, Dale C. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. 

[8] Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.