The Comment Section: Asking the Right Questions About Jesus

A shorter, informal exchange on sourcehood, divinity, worship, and why definitions matter.

Every once in a while, a comment shows up under one of my articles that is worth expanding on, because a valuable exchange can get buried in the comments.

My intention here isn’t to use my platform to prove my point.

A lot of people mistake dialogue for trying to prove who is “right” and who is “wrong,” when in reality, I would rather let people reach their own conclusions.

If we are Christians desiring to serve God, then we are not really on opposing teams in the way denominational division has often made it seem.

So my goal here is simpler: I want to clarify where I think the actual tension is.

A reader recently left a thoughtful comment on one of my articles about the Trinity, and I appreciated the spirit of it. He wasn’t dismissive. He wasn’t throwing labels around. He was basically saying, “I think some of this comes down to definitions.”

And I largely agree.

A lot of these conversations get tangled because we use the same words, but we don’t always mean the same things by them.

God.
Divine.
Being.
Essence.
Son.
Worship.
Trinity.

Each of those words carries weight. But each also carries assumptions.

Sometimes the disagreement is not only about what Scripture says, but about what we think those words already mean before we come to Scripture.

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The questions he raised

The reader asked several fair questions.

If Jesus was not merely human, and not an angel, then what was He before creation?

What was His essence?

If a human father has a human son, why would God’s Son not be God?

And if Jesus is worshipped, why would the Father approve of that, since worship belongs to God?

Those are not throwaway questions.

They are the right kinds of questions to ask if someone rejects the classical Trinity but still wants to take Jesus seriously.

And that is where I want to be clear.

I am not saying Jesus is merely human. I am not saying He is just a prophet. I am not saying He is an angel. I am not saying He is optional.

I dealt with this more fully in my article on Jesus, but the short version is this:

I believe Jesus is preexistent, uniquely from the Father, central to creation and salvation, the image of the invisible God, and the one through whom all things were made.

So the disagreement is not about whether Jesus is high, holy, exalted, divine, or worthy of honor.

I believe He is all of those.

The disagreement is about sourcehood.

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The hinge for me

This is the distinction I keep coming back to:

God is not from Jesus.
Jesus is from God.

God does not receive life from Jesus.
Jesus receives life from the Father.

God is not exalted by Jesus.
Jesus is exalted by God.

That is what I mean by sourcehood.

I unpacked this more in the Jesus article, and I plan to slow down even further in my article on God, but sourcehood is the hinge for me.

When I say God, in the highest sense, I mean the uncaused source of all reality.

The one from whom all things come.

And when I say Jesus is divine, I do not mean that in a thin or symbolic way. I believe He truly shares in what belongs to God.

But I do not understand Him as self-originating.

That distinction is doing a lot of work in my thinking.

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Where the Trinity definition gets slippery

The reader said something I found especially helpful.

He said the Trinity is not about the “entity” of God, but the “essence” of God. He also described the Father, Son, and Spirit as separate beings of one essence, similar to how we are separate human beings.

And I think that is where the tension becomes clearer.

Because if three human beings share human nature, they are still three human beings.

So if the Father, Son, and Spirit are three separate divine beings who share divine essence, then I struggle to see how that avoids becoming three gods.

Unless the word “God” no longer means “divine being,” but something else.

And that brings us right back to definitions.

For me, Scripture does not preserve monotheism by saying multiple divine beings share one divine essence.

It preserves monotheism by identifying one ultimate source:

the Father, from whom are all things.

And then it identifies one Lord:

Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.

Those are both incredibly high statements.

But they are not the same statement.

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Why I appreciated the exchange

I appreciated the comment because it clarified something important.

Sometimes people hear, “I do not affirm the Trinity,” and assume I must believe Jesus is only human.

I don’t.

Others hear, “Jesus is divine,” and assume I must believe He is God in the same ultimate sense as the Father.

I don’t believe that either.

That is why these conversations can be difficult. There are more categories than people often allow.

And maybe that is part of the problem. We inherit labels, then argue over them before we have clarified what we mean.

So I am trying to slow down.

I am trying to say plainly what I believe, without pretending I have answered every question.

Jesus is not merely human.

Jesus is not the Father.

Jesus is not a second independent God.

Jesus is the preexistent Son of God, uniquely from the Father, divine, exalted, central to creation and salvation, and worthy of the honor God Himself has given Him.

That may not answer every tension.

But it does clarify the distinction I am trying to preserve.

God is the source.

Jesus is the Son from that source.

And every conversation about God, Jesus, worship, essence, divinity, and the Trinity seems to come back to whether that distinction holds.