Did Jesus Say We Are gods?

[Music] today we field a really good bible question from an international listener to the podcast dear pastor john hello and thank you for this podcast my name is beatrice and i live in malaysia my question for you is about what the bible means when it says you are gods it says this in psalm 82 verse 6 and then jesus quotes it again in john 10 34 can you explain to me what this means here's the situation in john 10 jesus has just said in verse 30 i and the father are one and now the jewish leaders who hear him say this putting it together with everything else that he's been saying infer that he's blaspheming by making himself equal with god so in verse 31 uh it says the jews picked up stones to stone him now that's a crisis because the hour for jesus death has not yet come jesus is going to die when he has chosen to die and not a minute sooner no one takes my life from me i lay it down of my own accord and so he has to somehow defuse this critical moment where he's about to be stoned legally because the jews could stone people for blasphemy he's got to somehow get out of this situation so that he can make his way in his own time to the kind of death he intends to die so jesus is going to deflect this threat in a couple ways first he says for which of my good works are you stoning me and they answer it's not for your good works that we're stoning you but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself god in other words from all the things that jesus has said including calling god his father and saying that he and the father are one and by implication therefore he's the unique son of god they infer and they infer rightly that he's treating himself as the son of god in a unique way only they call it a blasphemous way and now jesus is going to diffuse the situation a second way and make his escape which is what he does in verse 39 he escaped from their hands how did he do that he does it by quoting psalm 82 6. he says is it not written in your law i said you are god's if he called them gods to whom the word of god came and the scripture cannot be broken do you say of him whom the father consecrated and said into the world you are blaspheming because i said i am the son of god so what's he doing let's go back and read psalm 82 it starts like this god has taken his place in the divine assembly in the midst of the gods he holds judgment now who who are they these are so-called gods and are angelic beings which the new testament calls principalities and powers in the heavenly places and god is about to pronounce judgment on them because they are using their authority behind the authorities of the world in order to support injustice rather than justice so verse 2 of the psalm says how long will you judge unjustly this is god talking to that assembly of gods how long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked give justice to the weak and the fatherless maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute and then after the indictment which just gave comes the condemnation from god in verse 6 which is one jesus quotes and he says i said you are gods sons of the most high all of you nevertheless like men pause there that means he's not talking to men he's talking to angelic beings nevertheless like men you shall die and fall like any prince in other words even though you have a very exalted status as gods principalities powers angels you're gonna come crashing down just like human rulers come crashing down who abuse their authority so when jesus says that god called them gods he's not talking about us this is the answer to beatrice's question in fact he's not talking to any ordinary human beings he's talking about and two angelic beings who are sometimes called gods in the old testament just like when uh satan you remember comes before god in the first chapter of job it says the sons of god came to present themselves to god among whom was satan that's the sense in which gods is being used here and sons of god so the answer to beatrice's question is that in this text both in psalm 82 and in john 10 we are not called gods angelic beings are called gods and jesus isn't going into any elaborate argument here about the meaning of this psalm he is simply using this text as a shrewd escape maneuver from being about to be stoned they have just accused him of blasphemy because of calling himself the son of god and he deflects the accusation of blasphemy by calling attention to the fact that in the psalms the very term sons of god is used for beings less than god and nobody accuses the psalmist or god himself of blasphemy so back off if if you think this means and we might be tempted to think this means that jesus is arguing that he is only a god-like angelic being like those gods that would be a big mistake he doesn't equate himself with those gods in psalm 82 in fact he uses very exalted language and says do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world you are blaspheming because i said i am the son of god so he doesn't defuse the situation by reducing his claim to deity he defuses the situation by complicating the term son of god for his accusers so that they have to get rocked back on their hermeneutical heels in order to think for a minute about how to handle what he had just said from psalm 82 and when that happens he's gone verse 39 says he makes his escape so there are interesting and important things to be learned here in jesus use of psalm 82 but that we are gods is not one of them yeah thank you for that clarity pastor john and thank you for listening and a special thank you to our international listeners around the globe who tune in we are humbled that you listen and uh send us questions of your own thank you and if you want new episodes to this podcast delivered to you subscribe to ask pastor john in your favorite podcast app in spotify or by subscribing to dg's youtube channel to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us from anywhere in the world do that online at desiringgod.org forward slash ask pastor john well how do we battle imposter syndrome yes imposter syndrome the feeling that all my success is a fraud that we're fakers especially at work this is no small question in the lives of many and pastor john is going to address it on the other side of the weekend imposter syndrome coming up on monday i'm tony reinke and we'll see you then you

Channel: Desiring God

Views: 46,996

Keywords: Desiring God, John Piper, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Christian Hedonism, Ask Pastor John, APJ, gods, Bible Interpretation, Deity of Christ, John 10, Psalm 82, Human

Id: mD8NMCNG9V0

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020