Is Jesus God?
While a Shincheonji person would declare that Jesus is the Son of God, they do not believe that Jesus is God in flesh, but instead a “Promised Pastor”, a prophet, or in Shincheonji’s terms a pastor prophesied about in the Old Testament.
They would still agree with the Christian that Jeremiah 31 and the “new thing” is indeed referring to Jesus, that he was born of a virgin and conceived by the Holy Spirit; although, they also have a different definition for “Holy Spirit” as well.
In this article, I will dissect whether or not Jesus is God according to the Bible.
God makes it clear that only he can accept worship since he is a jealous God, otherwise it is idolatry (Exodus 20:4-5). In fact, there are multiple verses throughout the Bible that make it clear that we are to only worship one God, and nobody else, otherwise that is idolatry. Some of these verses include: Leviticus 26:1, Deuteronomy 30:17-18, Isaiah 42:8 to list a few.
What is idolatry? According to the Webster dictionary, it is the worship of a physical object as a god.
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus was worshiped on multiple occasions. Some examples include Matthew 2:19 where Jesus was worshiped by the Magi who visited him as a baby, Matthew 28:8-9 where the women at the Tomb saw Jesus and worshiped him, Hebrews 1:6 and the angels worshiping Jesus, and Revelation 5:10-13 with the Lamb receiving worship at the right hand throne of God.
If Jesus isn’t God but only a created being then why would God allow such an idolatrous event to occur? This would directly contradict Isaiah 42:8.
The proper way that Jesus should have handled worship were to be to rebuke those who worshiped him, just like what the Angel did in Revelation 19:10 when the Apostle John began to worship him, or what Peter did in Acts 10:25-26 when Cornelius began to worship Peter, Peter told him to get up and reminded Cornelius that he is only a man.
Jesus is even directly referenced as God, as we can with Thomas’s testimony in John 20:28, where even in the Greek a more direct translation would be: “The Lord of me and the God of me”.
Even Paul believes that Jesus considers himself equal to the Father God, as seen in Philippians 2:5-8.
Throughout the New Testament, there are multiple references of Jesus either being worshiped, considering himself equal to God, or even being referred to as God. If we were to deny Jesus’s deity, then Jesus would have committed a grave sin of idolatry, and that would also make Jesus a liar and a madman.