Bible Synapse
Is Jesus equal with God, or is the Father greater than he?
Hard question · Who God is · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“I and my Father are one”; his hearers take up stones because, they say, he makes himself God (10:31–33).
I and my Father are one.
At the Last Supper: the disciples should rejoice that he goes to the Father, “for my Father is greater than I”.
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
Christ, “being in the form of God”, did not cling to equality with God but took “the form of a servant”.
Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
Of the day and hour of the end no one knows, “neither the Son, but the Father”.
But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
The parallel in Matthew: “of that day and hour knoweth no man”, but the Father only.
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
Jesus’ opponents understood him to be “making himself equal with God”.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.
The objection
Jesus said, “I and my Father are one”, and Paul says Christ was “equal with God” (Philippians 2:6). Yet Jesus also said, “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), and that no one knows the day and hour of the end but the Father. If the Father is greater and knows what the Son does not, the Son does not seem to be equal with God.
The answer
Christians answer that both are true, because the Son is fully God and, since he took our human nature, also fully man, who took a servant’s place. Philippians 2:6–7 itself holds both together: being “in the form of God”, Christ did not cling to his equality, but “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant”.
‘I and my Father are one’ uses the neuter Greek word hen, ‘one thing’, not ‘one person’: Jesus does not say that he is the Father, but that he and the Father are one in nature and work, and his hearers took it as a claim to be God (10:33). ‘Greater’ in John 14:28 (Greek meizōn) is then read as a matter of position, not of a different kind of being. Jesus was about to suffer, and he told his disciples to rejoice that he was going back to the Father, to the glory he had had with him before the world was (John 17:5).
On the day and hour of the end, Mark 13:32 (and many early manuscripts of Matthew 24:36, followed by the BSB) says that even the Son does not know it. Within the limits of his human life and his servant’s role, the Son did not claim knowledge that the Father had kept in his own authority (Acts 1:7). From the early church on, Christians have read these sayings as words about his humanity and his mission, not as a denial that he is God.
Other answers Christians give
Christ as mediator
Calvin thought that in John 14:28 Jesus speaks neither of his human nature nor of his eternal deity, but of his place as mediator, standing between God and us in order to bring us to the Father.
The Father as source
Some of the early church fathers read ‘greater’ as referring to the Father as the eternal source from whom the Son is begotten, with no difference of nature, as the Nicene Creed confesses the Son as ‘God of God, Light of Light’.
Still open
Whether the Son’s submission to the Father belongs only to his incarnate life or reflects an eternal order within the Trinity is debated among Christian theologians today. Both sides agree that the Son is equal to the Father in nature.
From the classic commentators
Not in person, for the Father must be a distinct person from the Son, and the Son a distinct person from the Father; and which is further manifest, from the use of the verb plural, "I and my Father", "we are one"; that is, in nature and essence, and perfections, particularly in powerJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible: John 10:30 (1746–63), at Bible Hub
Christ does not now speak either of his human nature, or of his eternal Divinity, but, accommodating himself to our weakness, places himself between God and usJohn Calvin, Commentary on John 14:28 (1553), at Bible Hub
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: John 10, at Bible Hub
- John Calvin, Commentary on John 14, at Bible Hub
- Matthew Henry, Concise Commentary: Philippians 2, at Bible Hub