“In the beginning was the Word . . . . All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:1, 3*
The doctrine of the deity of Christ asserts that Jesus is fully God, and therefore He is coeternal and coequal with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. How do we know? Colossians 1 declares that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” (v. 15) because by Jesus “all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth” (v. 16). Jesus (the Word) not only precedes the creation of the universe, but the very first verse of Genesis also proclaims that “God created the heaven and the earth” (KJV) in the beginning, as does the first verse of John’s Gospel where Jesus made “all things.” Henry M. Morris reminds us that Christ is both the Son of God and Creator.1 And Jesus Christ (Christos, the Anointed One) tells us, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). Clearly, Jesus Christ is God of all creation.
Everything that was made by Him, visible and invisible, came forth in speech (“Then God said, ‘Let there be . . . ’”) during the first six days of creation approximately 6,000 years ago. Accordingly, we have reliable evidence that Christ is God, who revealed His divine essence (Godhead) and established His laws (eternal power) that govern “heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is” (Exodus 20:11, KJV). The universal laws (motion, energy, and entropy) were created and operational during each 24-hour day of the creation week, and they remain operational today.1
The functionality of life on Earth today requires a diversity of interconnected organisms and environments that are steadily maintained by the same universal laws. For example, neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. From a biblical perspective, this makes sense. The Creator of the universe engineered every distinct species of cellular life on this planet and the innate chemical systems sustaining them.2 He gave them mandates to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters, the firmament, and the earth (Genesis 1:20–25). We inhabit a functionally closed system from our perspective, and His.
Even so, the world doesn’t accept the limitations of a closed system. They perceive that given enough time and energy, nature ordered itself into an open, flexible chemical system of atoms that not only produced the elaborate codes of life (RNA and DNA) but also the very first unicellular and multicellular forms of life. With that momentum, every living organism on Earth has somehow arisen by means of natural selection over immeasurable time. Importantly, this story is not testable, refutable, or falsifiable with any of the “highly sophisticated” tools of the conventional science industry that wrote it. Thus, the evolutionary worldview reflects the reprobate mindset of all “who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18, KJV). In addition to such unrelenting pseudoscience (1 Timothy 6:20), another story reflects a similar mindset that led to Israel’s aimless wandering and dispersion for several millennia.
God’s chosen people were given a promise, an abundance of land, protection, and even deliverance from captivity by other nations (Genesis 15:13–14; 2 Chronicles 36:20). Yet time and time again, they shunned the advice of preincarnate Christ (the eternal Son of God). With each major episode of disobedience, He reminded them again of who He is by turning their attention to His created acts: “He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion” (Jeremiah 10:12, KJV). Moreover, Christ reminds us every day of His unlimited power over the earth by His precise engineering of the global hydrological cycle supporting every cell in our bodies (Psalm 135:6–7)—the same bodies that are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).
The proofs that Jesus is fully God are abundant.3 He is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 90:2). He knows the number of stars and calls them by name (Psalm 147:4). He set the foundations of the earth (Psalm 104:5). He commands the morning to reveal the ends of the earth (Job 38:12–13). All things were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16). He is the only way to come to God the Father (John 14:6). And since the Father and Jesus are both proclaimed as King and Lord of Glory, Jesus Christ is fully God (Psalm 24:8; Acts 7:2).
References
- Morris, H. M. 2006. The New Defenders Study Bible: King James Version. Nashville, TN: World Publishing, Inc., 1563.
- Guliuzza, R. J. 2024. Why Biology Needs a Theory of Biological Design—Part 1. Acts & Facts. 53 (2): 4–7.
- In fact, nowhere in all of Scripture do we ever read that Jesus is not God. See Daniel, C. D. 2003. 100 Proofs That Jesus Is God. Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books.
Stage image credit: NASA
Dr. Boyle is a research scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in zoology from University of Hawaii at Manoa.
*KJV
