That Jesus Christ was God is the testimony of the men who lived in intimate communion with him and knew him best.
John leaned on his breast at supper. John heard and knew the beating of the Master’s heart, and John says:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (God was the Word). The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.”
Again this same John writes:
“Jesus Christ . . . THIS IS THE TRUE GOD.”
Writing to the Philippians, Paul declares, that Jesus Christ was in the “form of God,” laid aside his glory as such, took upon him the “form” of sinful man, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, carried his humanity through hades and the grave, rose out from among the dead, and took that humanity to the throne of the highest. There God the Father reclothed him with the unbegun and uncreated glory which he had laid aside, gave him a name which is above every name, even the name of Jesus, and has highly and eternally ordained that every knee in the wide extended universe shall bow, and every tongue confess, that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
In his epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul announces that this “same Jesus” is the “image of the invisible God; by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities or powers; all things were created by him, and for him.”
To the same Colossians he further writes:
“In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
To the Hebrews he says: “He is the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the express image of his person” (the word “image” is χαρακτὴρ and signifies an “engraving,” the very engraving of God in the flesh, the engraving of God in humanity) and upholding all things by the word of his power. “Upholding all things!” this earth in its orbit about the sun; the sun in its orbit about some other sun; all suns and systems in their orbits of splendor, whirling onward in ever-widening distances over highways of infinite spaces, through extensions that are measureless, and where time does not count. In that unmeasured expansion where the points of the compass are lost and “dimension” is a meaningless term; in that incomprehensible and indefinable vastness, filled with the might and the majesty of form, of weight, of motion and limitless power—all things—are hanging on his word and obeying his will.