Jesus is God

Have you ever had the Jehovah Witnesses come to your door. Here is a great truth you could share with them to demonstrate that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament, the creator and covenant making God.

Most of our English translations use the spelling LORD (in all capitals) to represent the divine name of God found in the Old Testament. This name is generally spelled Yahweh or Jehovah. Anywhere you find the spelling LORD in the Old Testament, it signifies that the divine name of God appears in the Hebrew text.

The Jews at some point came to regard the name as too holy to pronounce and did not want to ever use it in vain, so they began using the Hebrew title Adonai, which means Lord (not all capitals), as one way to refer to God. This practice carried over into the Septuagint and into the New Testament.

Matthew 3:3 quotes from Isaiah 40:3 "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord.'" Matthew applies this verse to John the Baptist as the voice calling in the desert, and he is preparing the way for the Lord, meaning Jesus. When we look at Isaiah 40:3, we find the phrase "prepare the way for the LORD" (all capitals). This means that Matthew regarded Jesus to be Jehovah of Isaiah's prophecy. Mark (1:3), Luke (3:4), and John (1:23) use the same quotation. Thus all four gospel writers associated Jesus with Jehovah of Isaiah's prophecy.

The Apostle Paul makes a similar kind of quotation in Rom 10:13. There Paul quotes, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." This quote comes from Joel 2:32 where again we find LORD spelled in all capital letters signifying that whoever calls upon the name of the LORD Jehovah will be saved. A few verses earlier, Paul stated that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord...you will be saved. Paul thus equates Jesus with Jehovah God of the Old Testament.

Jesus is not a person who became a god, but rather, five writers of the New Testament clearly affirm that Jesus is the Jehovah of the Old Testament Scriptures.

To take this a step further, the Holy Spirit is also equated with Jehovah. Hebrews 10:15 states, "The Holy Spirit also testifies." Verse 16 then goes on to quote from Jer 31:33, "This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord." In Jeremiah, the spelling is again LORD in all capitals. Thus in Jeremiah, Jehovah is speaking, but the author of Hebrews says the Holy Spirit was speaking. Earlier, Hebrews attributed this quote to God (Heb 8:8, 10)

Jehovah Witnesses would have us believe that the Holy Spirit is simply a force, but Hebrews identifies the Holy Spirit as Jehovah.

Sword of the Spirit

In an earlier post, I talked about word studies. In this post, we will look at the value of phrase studies. In some cases, the greater meaning is in the phrase rather than in the individual words. One such example appears in the Armor of God list in Ephesians 6. In verse 17, Paul says to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Most commentaries are written by non-Pentecostals, and thus most commentaries explain this reference to the word of God as a reference to Scripture--the Bible. In spiritual warfare, we should quote Scripture against the devil and his temptations just as Jesus did. Seven times, Paul uses the phrase logos of God (word of God), and uses this term to refer to the Scriptures and the Gospel message. In Ephesiasn 6:17, however, Paul uses the phrase rhema of God (word of God).

The only other place this phrase appears in the New Testament is in Luke 3:2 where the word of God came to John the Baptist, and this marks the start of John's prophetic ministry. This phrase also appears many times throughout the Old Testament in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. Here also the phrase "word of God" or "word of the Lord," using the the word "rhema" relates to the prophetic word coming to the prophet.

The result of this study indicates that Paul is not admonishing believers to quote Scripture in the midst of spiritual warfare, but rather to come in line with the Spirit of God and speak to the situation in a prophetic voice--a "Thus saith the Lord." Genesis 15:1 is the first occurrence of this phrase in the Septuagint where the word (rhema) of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, and God assured Abraham that He was Abraham's shield and very great reward. Here was the prophetic word encouraging Abraham to move forward in the way God had been leading him.

Certainly quoting Scripture is an effective weapon in spiritual warfare, for Scripture has been given by the inspiration of the Spirit, but I believe Paul has something much more Pentecostal in mind when he admonishes the church to take up the sword of the Spirit.