The formula of baptism: Mat. 28:19—“baptising them into the name of the father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; cf. Acts 2:38—“be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ”; Rom. 6:3—“baptized into Christ Jesus.” “In the common baptismal formula the Son and the Spirit are coördinated with the Father, and εἰς ὄνομα has religious significance.” It would be both absurd and profane to speak of baptizing into the name of the Father and of Moses.
The apostolic benedictions: 1 Cor. 1:3—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; 2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” “In the benedictions grace is something divine, and Christ has power to impart it. But why do we find ‘God,’ instead of simply ‘the Father,’ as in the baptismal formula? Because it is only the Father who does not become man or have a historical existence. Elsewhere he is specially called ‘God the Father,’ to distinguish him from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit (Gal. 1:3; Eph. 3:14; 6:23).”
Other passages: John 5:23—“that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father”; John 14:1—“believe in God, believe also in me”—double imperative (so Westcott, Bible Com., in loco); 17:3—“this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ”; Mat. 11:27—“no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”; 1 Cor. 12:4-6—“the same Spirit ... the same Lord [Christ] ... the same God” [the Father] bestow spiritual gifts, e. g., faith: Rom. 10:17—“belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”; peace: Col. 3:15—“let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” 2 Thess. 2:16, 17—“now our lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father ... comfort your hearts”—two names with a verb in the singular intimate the oneness of the Father and the Son (Lillie). Eph. 5:5—“kingdom of Christ and God”; Col. 3:1—“Christ ... seated on the right hand of God” = participation in the sovereignty of the universe,—the Eastern divan held not only the monarch but his son; Rev. 20:6—“priests of God and of Christ”; 22:3—“the throne of God and of the Lamb”; 16—“the root and the offspring of David” = both the Lord of David and his son. Hackett: “As the dying Savior said to the Father, ‘Into thy hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23:46), so the dying Stephen said to the Savior, ‘receive my spirit’ (Acts 7:59).”
(g) Equality with God is expressly claimed.
Here we may refer to Jesus' testimony to himself, already treated of among the proofs of the supernatural character of the Scripture teaching (see pages [189], [190]). Equality with God is not only claimed for himself by Jesus, but it is claimed for him by his apostles.
John 5:18—“called God his own Father, making himself equal with God”; Phil. 2:6—“who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped”—counted not his equality with God a thing to be forcibly retained. Christ made and left upon his contemporaries the impression that he claimed to be God. The New Testament has left, upon the great mass of those who have read it, the impression that Jesus Christ claims to be God. If he is not God, he is a deceiver or is self-deceived, and, in either case, Christus, si non Deus, non bonus. See Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 187.
(h) Further proof of Christ's deity may be found in the application to him of the phrases: “Son of God,” “Image of God”; in the declarations of his oneness with God; in the attribution to him of the fulness of the Godhead.
Mat. 26:63, 64—“I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou art the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said”—it is for this testimony that Christ dies. Col. 1:15—“the image of the invisible God”; Heb. 1:3—“the effulgence of his [the Father's] glory, and the very image of his substance”; John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”; 14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; 17:11, 22—“that they may be one, even as we are”—ἕ, not εἰς; unum, not unus; one substance, not one person. “Unum is antidote to the Arian, sumus to the Sabellian heresy.” Col. 2:9—“in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”; cf. 1:19—“for it was the pleasure of the Father that in him should all the fulness dwell;” or (marg.) “for the whole fulness of God was pleased to dwell in him.” John 16:15—“all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine”; 17:10—“all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine.”
Meyer on John 10:30—“I and the Father are one”—“Here the Arian understanding of a mere ethical harmony as taught in the words ‘are one’ is unsatisfactory, because irrelevant to the exercise of power. Oneness of essence, though not contained in the words themselves, is, by the necessities of the argument, presupposed in them.” Dalman, The Words of Jesus: “Nowhere do we find that Jesus called himself the Son of God in such a sense as to suggest a merely religious and ethical relation to God—a relation which others also possessed and which they were capable of attaining or were destined to acquire.” We may add that while in the lower sense there are many “sons of God,” there is but one “only begotten Son.”
(i) These proofs of Christ's deity from the New Testament are corroborated by Christian experience.