DAY 263
CHALLENGE
“Scripture teaches men can become gods. Jesus said, ‘You are gods’ (John 10:34).”
DEFENSE
Men do not become gods the way Jesus is God.
The Hebrew word ’elohim normally refers to either the one true God or pagan gods (see Day 227). However, it has other, lesser-known meanings.
Thus it can refer to angels. Psalm 8:5 says God made man lower than ’elohim, and the Septuagint translated this as angelous (a plural form of the Greek word angelos, “angel”). This understanding was endorsed by the New Testament (see Heb. 8:7).
Similarly, some Aramaic translations of Old Testament passages rendered ’elohim using the word for “judges” (dayyān).
In John, when Jesus asks why a group is about to stone him, they reply, “Because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:33). We then read:
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came . . . 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’?” (John 10:34–36).
Here Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6, which is part of a psalm where God condemns “gods” for judging unjustly, showing partiality to the wicked, denying justice to the weak and fatherless, and so on. Scholars have often taken this psalm as using ’elohim in the sense of “judges,” and Jesus may have this in mind.
It is clear, though, he identifies these “gods” as those “to whom the word of God came.” They are thus men linked to the divine or divineized by contact with God’s word. However, the structure of Jesus’ argument indicates he is God in a unique sense.
Jesus uses an a fortiori argument, according to which if one thing is true then another thing is even more true: Thus, if Scripture can apply the term “gods” even to men who have come into contact with God’s word, Jesus has a much greater claim for he’s the one who “the Father consecrated and sent into the world.” Jesus is thus God in a unique sense that transcends the way men can be (see Day 245).
TIP
For more on how John’s Gospel teaches Jesus’ divinity, see Day 12.