Jesus-God perfectly represents Father-God in all that He says and does. If you want to know what God the Father is like, get to know Jesus. God the Father healed the sick, cleansed the lepers, opened the eyes of the blind, fed the multitudes, had compassion for the multitudes and it was He who sent Jesus to become Man so He could pay sin’s penalty in His own flesh on the cross for us in our place. This is who God is and what he is like: Jesus! Jesus tells us in John 5:19,

"Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner."

Jesus does nothing except what He sees God the Father doing, so to see Jesus is to see the Father; that is whatever Jesus is doing is what the Father is doing. To know what Jesus is like is to know what the Father is like. To know what Jesus is doing is to know what God the Father is doing and thus to know what God is like. Do You want to know what God is like? Study the life, character and deeds of Jesus. This is who and what God is like and what God is doing: Jesus Christ!

*Jesus Is Yehovah — "I AM" — hw:hoyÒ

As we have already discussed the significance of the name Jesus is that it means Yehovah is Savior. Yehovah is the name God gave to Moses in Exodus 3:14. Moses asked God what answer he was to give to the Israelites when they would ask him who had sent him to lead them out of slavery from Egypt. The answer was to tell them that Yehovah had sent him. Yehovah is a form of the Hebrew verb to be and means "I am that I am." God told Moses to tell the Israelites that I AM has sent you. God speaking through Isaiah in Isaiah 43:10-13 tells us about Himself,

"You are my witnesses," declares Yehovah, "And My servant whom I have chosen, In order that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was NO EL¹¹⁷ formed⁴¹ and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am Yehovah; and there is NO SAVIOR besides Me. . . . So you are My witnesses," declares Yehovah, "And I am El. Even from eternity I am He."

Yehovah God tells us several things about Himself in this passage:

1. Before Him there was no God formed.

2. Two, there will be no God formed after Him.

3. Three, that there is no Savior besides Him.

4. Four, that His existence is from eternity past.

This passage forever dispels the myth that a created man can become God as is taught by Mormonism and other religions. Yehovah God tells us through Isaiah that He is the Only God, that there was no God formed before Him and that there will be no God formed after Him. Yehovah God tells us that He is the only God that exists, that He is the only God who has ever existed and that He is the only God who will ever exist.

Yehovah tells us something else about Himself. He states, "...there is no Savior besides me." Yehovah God tells us that He also is the only Savior that exists.

The Angel of the Lord tells Joseph to name the child Jesus because he will Save man from his sins. Matthew and the angel of the Lord tell us that Jesus is Yehovah God who will save us from our sins. Jesus is God and Jesus is Savior. Jesus is Yehovah God of the Old Testament who became human flesh, man, to save us from our sins. Yehovah God tells us that He is from eternity and Isaiah in Isaiah 9:6 tells us that Jesus is the Father of eternity. Jesus is Yehovah God because only Yehovah God is Savior and Jesus is our Savior. Yehovah God of the Old Testament and Jesus Christ of the New Testament are one and the same person. Jesus is Yehovah God our creator and Savior. That is the meaning and significance of the name Jesus.

We have already established that Jesus is the one through whom all things that exist were created. Jesus is our creator. Jeremiah the prophet records about Yehovah,

"Ah Lord Yehovah! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! Nothing is too difficult for You." (Jer 32:17)

Yehovah God later states in Response, "Yehovah who made the earth, Yehovah who formed it to establish it, Yehovah is His name." (Jer 33:2). Isaiah the prophet records Yehovah God as saying, "But now, thus says Yehovah, your Creator. . . . I am Yehovah your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior." (Isaiah 43:1, 3). Jeremiah and Isaiah tell us that Yehovah God is the Creator and the Savior and since Yehovah God tell us that He alone is God and Savior, for Jesus to claim to be the Creator and Savior of man is for Jesus to claim to be Yehovah God, the Creator and Savior, in the flesh.

Jehovah Witnesses will tell you that Yehovah created through Jesus, but that Jesus is not Yehovah. However, Yehovah speaking through Isaiah in Isaiah 44:24 states: "I, Yehovah, am the maker of all things, Stretching out the heavens by Myself, and spreading out the earth all alone.’" Yehovah makes plain He created all things by Himself, not through anyone. Jesus is Yehovah God, the second Person of the Trinity, our Creator and Savior.

The second thing Paul said about Jesus in Colossians 1:15-16 was that He is the firstborn of all creation. Some people try to say this proves Jesus had a beginning, that He was created just like you and I. It is true that Jesus’ humanity had a beginning. This is clearly recorded for us in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But Jesus the Logos, God, did not have a beginning.

Besides the fact that the very context of this statement, "...before all things," contradicts this interpretation, we must understand that in Hebrew culture the word firstborn has a much deeper meaning than to mean the first child to be born in a family. When a son was called the firstborn in Hebrew culture, it had nothing to do with whether he was the firstborn physically or not. The term was used to mean preeminence. For example, Jacob in the Old Testament would be called the firstborn even though His brother Esau was the actual firstborn physically. This was because Jacob was the one who received his father’s inheritance. Jacob had preeminence over Esau when it came to their father’s inheritance. David was the youngest in His family, but God declares in Psalm 89:27 that He places him as the firstborn, firstborn meaning preeminence in position, as the king of the earth. Therefore, when Paul tells us that Jesus was the firstborn of all creation he means that Jesus has preeminence over all creation. He further clarifies this when he tells us in this same passage following this statement, "For by Him all things were created." He further clarifies it in the next verse when he says, "And He was before all things." Note the word all. The word all, pavntwn¹⁶⁴ in the Greek in verse 17 is without the article and is therefore all inclusive. Jesus was not created and therefore existed before all things that were created. This is why he is the firstborn of all creation or rather has preeminence over all because he existed before anything created existed. Jesus is not a created being, He is from all eternity. Several Old Testament passages in the Bible also confirm Jesus’ Deity and eternal pre-existence:

"But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, little to be among the clans of Judah. From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity." (Micah 5:2)

The prophet Micah, writing in Micah 5:2, recording Yehovah’s words, gives not only the birthplace of Christ (which the Jews affirmed as being the City of David, Bethlehem), but he gives a clue as to His identity—namely God in human form. The term goings forth can be rendered origin.⁸⁸ The only one who fits this description, whose origin is "from everlasting" is God Himself. This is because He alone is the eternally existing One (Isaiah 44:6, 8).

Isaiah prophecies about Jesus when he says in Isaiah 9:6,

"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful¹⁵⁰, Counselor¹⁵¹, Mighty-El¹¹⁶, Father-of-Eternity¹⁵², Prince-of-Peace¹⁵³."

Here again Isaiah confirms Jesus’ Deity and eternal existence by telling us that Jesus is the Father of Eternity.

Jesus’ enemies claimed He claimed to be God. In John 5:17-18 Jesus said,

"‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.’ For this cause therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself EQUAL with God."

The Jews would know. Jesus was a Jew speaking their language and they understood Jesus to say clearly that he was of the same substance as God the Father, thus equal with God, thus God himself.

Jesus said, recorded in John 8:58, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM." Jesus said, recorded in John 8:23-24,

"You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins; for unless you believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins."

Jesus tells the Jews in these passages that their origination is on this planet Earth; but concerning Himself, Jesus states that His origin is not from this Earth. He states that He is from above, Heaven.⁸⁴ Then Jesus tells them that unless they believe that He is the I Am that they will die in their sins.

What does Jesus mean by I Am? To understand this we have to go into the Greek. What is the word in Greek for I am? The word is eijmiv. But what is the Greek words John uses here? The words John uses for I Am are ejgwv eijmiv. John uses two words. The first word ejgwv from which we get the word ego is the word for I in Greek. What is the significance of John using these two words together instead of just the Greek word eijmiv which by itself alone means I am? It goes back to the translation of the Old Testament into what is called the Greek Septuagint. The term Septuagint means seventy.

During the reign of King Ptolemy Philadelphia of Egypt (285-246 B.C.) the Jews were a scattered people. F. F. Bruce in his work, Revelation and the Bible, explains how the Greek Septuagint came about:

"Demetrius of Phalerum, the Librarian of King Ptolemy, convinced the King to send a delegation to Eleazer, the Jewish High priest at the time. The High Priest picked six translators from each of the twelve tribes of Israel and sent them with an accurate parchment of the Torah. They were given residence in a house on the Island of Pharos where in seventy-two days they completed their task of translating the Pentateuch into Greek. As a result they presented a version that had been agreed upon as a result of conference and comparison"^85/146-147

When these scholars translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek Septuagint, whenever they came across the word Yehovah, to signify that this was the name for God in the Greek, instead of translating it just eijmiv they would translate it ejgwv eijmiv so the reader would know it was referring to Yehovah. In other words, when Jesus said to the Jews in Hebrew, "Unless You believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins," He wasn’t referring to the fact that He was the promised Messiah, but rather unless they believed He was Yehovah Himself, Moses’ God in the flesh, they would die in their sins.

Some people try to say that if You just believe in the person of Jesus without believing in His Deity as well you can still be saved. Not according to Jesus. Jesus made it plain that His Deity was not up for debate. It is a necessary part of the faith confession for salvation. To say that You believe that Jesus is the Son of God come in the flesh is to say that You believe that Jesus is Yehovah God in the flesh. The Apostle John wrote in 1 John 4:1-3

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God."

In John 10:22-42 the feast of dedication is taking place in Jerusalem. Jesus is in the temple at this time and the Jews surround him and say to him, "If You are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus tells them in response, "I told you and you do not believe; the works that I do in My Father’s name, these bear witness of Me." His first indication to the Jews that He is claiming to be God is that he calls God his Father. He does not say "Our Father," He says "My Father." Jesus then goes on to tell them that he can give a man eternal life (v. 28), but the real clincher comes in verse 30, "I and the Father are one." The word one in Greek is the neuter hen (e{n) not the masculine heis (ei;") as is used in Galatians 3:28 when it says we are one in Christ. Jesus using the neuter term strengthens the emphasis of one essence with the Father. How do we know this is true? Because of the response of the Jews that followed:

"Jesus said, ‘I and the Father are one.’ The Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, ‘I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?’ The Jews answered Him, ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because you, being a man, make yourself out TO BE GOD.’" (John 10:30-33)

Again, we have to understand that Jesus a Jew was talking to Jews in their language and they understood Jesus to say not just one in philosophy with the Father, not just one in purpose, but literally one (e{n) in essence; thus, Yehovah God Himself in the flesh.

Is this confirmed in other Gospels? Yes. Matthew records the following in Matthew 21:15-16,

"But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he had done, and the children who were crying out in the temple and saying ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they became indignant, and said to him, ‘Do You hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read "Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have prepared praise for YOURSELF?"’"¹⁶⁰

What has Jesus just said? Jesus quoted this passage from Psalm 8 where the passage is prefaced with, "Yehovah, our Adonai [Lord]..." The passage Jesus claimed for Himself in Psalm 8 is referring to Yehovah God. Often Jehovah Witnesses will claim that there is no direct statement of Jesus claiming to be Jehovah-God. Matthew 21:15-16 is a clear statement of Jesus claiming to be not just a god, but Jehovah-God. The Jews were understandably infuriated with Jesus, that is if Jesus where only a man. In this passage Jesus gave them a straightforward claim to be their Yehovah-God before them in the flesh. Another passage where Jesus made a straightforward statement to be Yehovah-God in the flesh is John 5:46-47. In this passage Jesus claims that Moses is writing about Him in His books: Yehovah-God.

Another Gospel passage is found in Luke Chapter 8. Jesus has just delivered a demoniac from demon possession and has healed the man. The man is so grateful that He asks Jesus to allow him to be one of His disciples and to go where He goes. Jesus said to the man in response, "Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you." Luke then adds, "And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him." (Luke 8:39, Mark: 5:18-20). Jesus told him to tell everyone what great things God had done for him. What does he do in response? He tells everyone what great things Jesus, God, has done for him.

"All things came into being by Him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being." (John 1:3).

The Apostle John tells us that Jesus is the creator of all that is. We owe our existence to Jesus. John tells us that there is nothing that exists that Jesus did not create. This is confirmed over and over again throughout the New testament. We already quoted Colossians 1:16 which tells us that not only did He create all things but that all things were created for Him and His pleasure. The writer of the Book of Hebrews tells us,

"God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages." (Heb 1:1-2)

Getting back to the passage in Colossians, the last thing Paul tells us is that in Jesus "...all things hold together." The writer of the Book of Hebrews reaffirms this in Hebrews 1:3. He states that Jesus, "...upholds all things by the word of His power." I have a degree in Electronic Technology. While going through this degree we studied the atom. The atom is composed of electrons, neutrons and protons basically speaking. Protons are of a like charge.

Like charges cannot co-exist together because they repel each other. As our teacher was explaining this to us, he said, "Science cannot explain how this is possible." I could not help myself. I rose my hand. He said , "Yes Dale?" I said, "I know what holds the nucleus of the atom together!" With a snicker and a mocking smile, he said, "Oh! And what is that Dale?" I answered, "The Bible states that Jesus holds the nucleus of the atom together." "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" I love being a fool for Jesus. They had a good laugh, but it is the truth. If Jesus where to take His mind off the atom for one second, the universe, you and I would disintegrate into trillions of protons and neutrons and electrons. Life would end as we know it. It makes sense that if Jesus created all things then He must be the glue of the atom that holds it together.

With what kind of power does Jesus hold this nucleus together? Have you ever seen a nuclear explosion take place and know what it takes to create a nuclear explosion? John goes on to tell us in John 1:10-11, "He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him."