God and Jesus same person? Help me understand

[LoveSummerLife]

Can anyone explain the basis for the belief in God and Jesus being the same person? Which bible verses indicate this? I was brought up C of E but my faith has lapsed over the years and part of the reason is I can’t get my head around this. The Son of God made flesh and sacrificing himself to gain salvation for us, okay, but the actual same person? Is there a biblical basis for it or has the church (as an institution) concluded it?
Is it all based on John 1:1? What about other verses where Jesus was referring to his Father in a different way such as John 14:28.
Sometimes John 10:30 and 38 are used to explain it but I think of those verses as being more about unity, a husband and wife are distinct people but might refer to themselves as being “one” on certain issue’s as they are in unity.

TYIA for trying to help me understand

Google YouTube, Dave Allen, first day at school.

That'll sort it.

hope this works Can't preview on iPad!

Miljah

It's brilliant.

Thats so funny. In the name of the father, the son and into the hole he goes.

LoveSummer i cant explain the basis for the belief. Im not hot on the bible but would be interested in a proper answer.

I think the concept of God is just impossible to convey as language. The Trinity is a way of explaining. I once heard the explanation that the Trinity is much like the jewish YHWH. I am what I am. Its trying to convey in limited human language a state of being that is far beyond our understanding.

Brilliant thread and brilliant answers.

It's difficult to explain. But it does make sense to me and strangely is comforting in that God has never been alone since he was always three in one.

Greetings of peace to everyone.
I am Muslim and too would like to know the answer in a clear and unconfusing way.
In lslam, Jesus (Essa in Arabic) peace be upon him, is one of the mightiest Prophet of God. I cannot be a Muslim if I have any doubt whatsoever about Jesus. He existed, he did not have a father and was born to virgin Mary. He spoke in his cradle to remove the slander from his mother. He never claimed divinity and unfortunately our Christian brethren mistakenly taken Jesus as son of God.

In the Qur'an God revealed the true story of Jesus, his birth, his crucfiction and his retuning back to earth at the end of time to clarify the false attribution of people and kill the anti christ.

The similartitude of Jesus is like Adam, peace be upon them both. Adam did not have neither mother nor a father so does that make him a greater God than Jesus?

Qur'an says, no. There is and always was and will be one true God. Everything belongs to God and everyone is a servant of God.

God has manifested His signs for those who are sincere and truly seeks God.

Human being have the freedom to believe or not to believe and God will judge between his servant on the Judgement day.

There is no reason to fight between us, everyone equal. God distinguishes between good and bad by those who believe and those who don't believe.

You believe because you can and witness God's signs everywhere and you reason while and not just have faith.

Thank you @GreatNews that's lovely. Its a very conciliatory message from a different faith background.

I struggle with putting the Christ into Christianity but equally I have faith. I see signs of the resurrection in our world and it keeps me going.

My understanding of the trinity (God the father, God the son and God the holy spirit) comes from the face that God is love. How can a person or thing embody love on its own in isolation? Love is a relationship. So God is in three parts existing in a relationship of perfect love.

Jesus was a real man who walked on earth but he is also part of the trinity and he said that he was the son of God (this is why he was killed because he said that he was God e.g. he could forgive sins and the only way to God the father was through him so the Jews therefore wanted him to be crucified for blasphemy for claiming to be God). He had a perfect love relationship with God the father. The Bible says that he didn't see equality with God the father something to be grasped but submitted himself to God the father's will in love.

I don't know if any of that helps. It is a very difficult concept to grasp. There is s book called The Shack which really helped me to understand. It has a slightly irreverent and metaphorical take on it e.g. In the book God the father is a large black woman, Jesus is himself and the Holy Spirit is represented by a sort of ethereal spirit lady. It helped me understand in a very different way.

I like to look at it as similar to how I'm a mother, a daughter & a friend. All those relationships are different & I'm a different person in each of them but I'm also still just me.

In my mind, God the father is like my parents who created me. Now I'm an adult & we keep in touch but don't live in each others pockets. Jesus is like my siblings who played a part in my life growing up & who I've become. Again, we keep in touch & still love each other but we don't live close to each other anymore so contact is limited to an extent. The Holy Spirit is like my best friend who I spend a lot of time with. We see each other regularly & she'll be the first one to tell me I'm being an idiot, or to celebrate with me when I'm happy, or cry with me when I'm sad.

It's not a perfect analogy because, obviously, they're all separate people but despite their individual roles in my life, they play different parts in other people's lives. My friend will never be a "mother" to me, but she's a great one to her DC. I see the trinity as like all those relationships being with the same person which is what "God is love" means to me - He has so much capacity to love that He can be parent/sibling/friend all rolled into one.

I liked what KingaRoo said about love being a relationship & you can't have a relationship consisting of one person. That's an interesting point. I'd always thought the reason for our creation was to give God something to love/nurture but that didn't sit right with me because that would imply God wasn't complete before He created us. The idea that God could be in a loving relationship with Himself in a way that humans never could seems like a better fit... I'm going to have to think more about this sometime when I'm not ridiculously tired!

Whole plant is God - 3 leaves represent God the father God the Son and God the holy goat Ghost. Trinity: 3 for the price of one

I've always thought of God as being a bit like a triangle- it needs 3 separate sides to be complete. So father, son and holy ghost are not the same as each other but are all needs to make God.

GreatNews

. God distinguishes between good and bad by those who believe and those who don't believe.

How can you accept that? It is a crazy way to judge people.

So someone can have a faith in god and do bad things, but they will be considered good, while an atheist who does good will be a bad person?

Can you not see flaws in such a judgement?

speakout

So someone can have a faith in god and do bad things, but they will be considered good, while an atheist who does good will be a bad person?

Do you know anyone whose entirety of actions are purely good or bad? What governs action? Where does the action stem from?

What governs action? Where does the action stem from?

What are you suggesting by this ?

Nothing. It's a question.

I don't understand the question. Action is motivated from all sorts of sources. You don't need me to tell you that.

Your question is irrelevant and redundant.

Your question is irrelevant and redundant

It is not because intent is certainly relevant in law.

Action is motivated from all sorts of sources.

So, it follows, that actions cannot be purely indicative of whether someone is a 'good or bad person' as you talked about in your 6.26 post.

I don't think it's about us being "good" or "bad." We're all pretty crappy people at times really. To me it's more like if you won the lottery & suddenly someone who wouldn't speak to you before wants some cash - you're not likely to be buying them a house but you might do for your friend. Even a relatively new friend who hadn't had opportunity to do anything to support you yet but who you know would be there for you if you needed them. It's not about what we've done for God but the relationship we have with Him & the grace he can show us.

Agnu, I think that it is that, with the giving and receiving of gifts, the person on the receiving end can choose to accept the gift and utilise it or not. They might leave it shoved away in a cupboard or they might throw it away. They might alternatively put the gift to good use.

In terms of God and Jesus being the same I think it is understandable in terms of Jesus replicating everything God is, He said what God would say, did what God would do. Like if we are the employee of a company and we represent that company perfectly, people could say our action's and what we say are the company's actions and could quote our speech as the company's. So it could be said the company did this or that or the company says this or that.

From my conversations with my Christian brethren, no one could show me any unambiguous direct quotes from Jesus saying anything about He, Him self is God or is a son of God?

Surely, it is such a grave issue for all human on earth and is a matter of life and death for the whole of eternity that Jesus failed to make it clear who he is and instead left it for others to interpret his mission on earth?

It is for our Christian brethrens to decipher what exactly Jesus said and done as there are lot of contradiction regarding him and who he really was.

As Muslims (meaning, someone who submits to the Will of God) we believe Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the final Testament that God sent to Him, the Qur'an. {note} The Qur'an is only in Arabic, everything else is just an translation. Muslims must believe in every single Messengers that God have sent to different nations over a period of time.

If it will help, here are just few translations from the Qur'an regarding Jesus:

O Muhammad, these are the "unseen" things, We are revealing to you: you were not present there when the priests of the Temple were casting lots by throwing their quills to decide which of them should be the guardian of Mary nor were you with them when they were arguing about it. Quran 3:44

And remember when the angels said, "O Mary, God sends you the good news of a Command of His: his name shall be Messiah, Jesus son of Mary. He will be highly honored in this world and in the Next World and he will be among those favored by God. He will speak to the people alike when in the cradle and when grown up, and he will be among the righteous." Hearing this, Mary said, "How, O Lord, shall I have a son, when no man has ever touched me?" "Thus shall it be," was the answer. God creates whatever He wills. When He decrees a thing, He only says, "Be" and it is. (Continuing their message, the angels added,) "And God will teach him the Book and wisdom, and give him the knowledge of the Torah and the Gospel, and appoint him as His Messenger to the children of Israel." Quran 3:45-49

(And when he came as a Messenger to the children of Israel, he said,) "I have come to you with a clear Sign from your Lord: in your very presence, I make the likeness of a bird out of clay and breathe into it and it becomes, by God's Command, a bird. I heal those born blind and the lepers and I bring to life the dead by God's Command: I inform you of what you eat and what you store up in your houses. Surely there is a great Sign for you in all this, if you have a mind to believe. And I have come to confirm those teachings of the Guidance of the Torah which are intact in my time. Lo! I have come with a clear Sign from your Lord; so fear God and obey me. Indeed God is my Lord, and also your Lord; therefore worship Him alone: that is the straight way." Quran 3:49-51

Throughout the entire Qur'an, God tells us about Himself and His attributes and the following verse is one such. (meaning in English)

"Allah – there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently] before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of His knowledge except for what He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High, the Most Great." [al-Qur'an, chapter 2: verses 255]

So, Muslims have clear understanding of who God is, what He wants us to do and who are Prophets, why were they sent and what will happen to us.

Of course, everyone is free to believe, not believe. That's true freedom. As God tells all human beings in the Qur'an:

"There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong. So whoever disbelieves in Taghut and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold with no break in it. And Allah is Hearing and Knowing."

Peace be to all.

"The stories which We are relating to you are full of signs and wisdom. In the sight of God, the case of the birth of Jesus is like that of Adam, whom He created out of dust and said, "Be", and he was. This is the fact of the matter your lord is imparting, and you should not be of those who doubt it." Quran 3:58-60

This might not be correct but it's how I see it.
I see God as the main person, a God that can do anything. We can't understand everything about God as our minds/perception/understanding is limited to our human experiences and dimensions that we live in.
I see Jesus as the son of God, God created him but he is also so connected to God that God and Jesus can feel each other's emotions/thoughts/physical senses.
Holy Spirit to me is like a force sent from God.

Like I say it's just how I understand it.
I personally think we are very limited in our knowledge of the physical world so it's hard for us to comprehend what God can do as he is outside time and space and isn't limited by a physical presence on earth.

Hi GreatNews, really interesting points.
When applying textual criticism and context we do find that Jesus understood himself to be not only the Messiah or anointed one of God, but also the son of God and actually God himself. The biggest key to this is in Jesus' use of the phrase 'son of man' which was employed over 80 times if I recall correctly in the synoptics. Many mistakenly believe this to be a statement of his humanity only, but on a search of scripture its evident that it was used to describe God and God's anointed one (see Daniel 7 and more) in the OT. By using this phrase Jesus was making a very deliberate statement of identity and it's one reason he so enraged the Jewish leaders. His knowledge of his identity was also evident in the way he spoke to people about the forgiveness of sins - he knew that scripture claimed only God could forgive, and yet he told people their sins were forgiven (eg the paralysed man). He made a very obvious statement about his divinity.
There is much more...

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