Did Jesus Say We Are gods?

00:00:00.000 | Today, we field a really good Bible question from an international listener to the podcast.

00:00:08.840 | "Dear Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.

00:00:12.840 | My name is Beatrice and I live in Malaysia.

00:00:15.720 | My question for you is about what the Bible means when it says, 'You are gods.'

00:00:21.680 | Says this in Psalm 82, verse 6, and then Jesus quotes it again in John 10, verse 34.

00:00:27.860 | Can you explain to me what this means?"

00:00:30.840 | Here's the situation.

00:00:32.400 | In John 10, Jesus has just said in verse 30, "I and the Father are one."

00:00:40.720 | Now the Jewish leaders who hear him say this, putting it together with everything else that

00:00:45.520 | he's been saying, infer that he's blaspheming by making himself equal with God.

00:00:52.480 | So in verse 31, it says, "The Jews picked up stones to stone him."

00:01:00.560 | Now that's a crisis because the hour for Jesus' death has not yet come.

00:01:06.300 | Jesus is going to die when he has chosen to die and not a minute sooner.

00:01:11.640 | No one takes my life from me.

00:01:13.000 | I lay it down of my own accord.

00:01:15.620 | And so he has to somehow defuse this critical moment where he's about to be stoned legally

00:01:23.060 | because the Jews could stone people for blasphemy.

00:01:28.180 | He's got to somehow get out of this situation so that he can make his way in his own time

00:01:34.780 | to the kind of death he intends to die.

00:01:38.420 | So Jesus is going to deflect this threat in a couple ways.

00:01:44.380 | First, he says, "For which of my good works are you stoning me?"

00:01:49.660 | And they answer, "It's not for your good works that we're stoning you, but for blasphemy,

00:01:55.560 | because you being a man make yourself God."

00:01:57.620 | In other words, from all the things that Jesus has said, including calling God his Father

00:02:04.900 | and saying that he and the Father are one, and by implication, therefore, he's the unique

00:02:09.460 | Son of God, they infer, and they infer rightly, that he's treating himself as the Son of God

00:02:15.620 | in a unique way, only they call it a blasphemous way.

00:02:20.580 | And now Jesus is going to defuse the situation a second way and make his escape, which is

00:02:28.780 | what he does in verse 39.

00:02:31.820 | He escaped from their hands.

00:02:34.660 | How did he do that?

00:02:35.940 | He does it by quoting Psalm 82.6.

00:02:39.980 | He says, "Is it not written in your law, I said, 'You are gods'?

00:02:44.260 | If he called them gods, to whom the Word of God came and the Scripture cannot be broken,

00:02:51.980 | do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming'?

00:02:58.040 | Because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?"

00:03:00.220 | So what's he doing?

00:03:01.220 | Let's go back and read Psalm 82.

00:03:03.480 | It starts like this, "God has taken his place in the divine assembly.

00:03:09.100 | In the midst of the gods he holds judgment."

00:03:13.300 | Now, who are they?

00:03:15.920 | These are so-called gods and are angelic beings, which the New Testament calls principalities

00:03:25.580 | and powers in the heavenly places.

00:03:28.280 | And God is about to pronounce judgment on them because they are using their authority

00:03:35.260 | behind the authorities of the world in order to support injustice rather than justice.

00:03:41.260 | So verse 2 of the Psalm says, "How long will you judge unjustly?"

00:03:45.500 | This is God talking to that assembly of gods.

00:03:48.980 | How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked, give justice to

00:03:54.780 | the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute?

00:04:00.620 | And then, after the indictment, which he just gave, comes the condemnation from God in verse

00:04:08.260 | 6, which is one Jesus quotes, and he says, "I said, 'You are gods, sons of the Most

00:04:16.980 | High, all of you, nevertheless, like men.'"

00:04:21.100 | Now, pause there.

00:04:23.040 | That means he's not talking to men.

00:04:25.780 | He's talking to angelic beings.

00:04:28.380 | "Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince."

00:04:35.700 | In other words, even though you have a very exalted status as gods, principalities, powers,

00:04:42.580 | angels, you're going to come crashing down just like human rulers come crashing down

00:04:47.360 | who abuse their authority.

00:04:50.580 | So, when Jesus says that God called them gods, he's not talking about us.

00:05:00.560 | This is the answer to Beatrice's question.

00:05:02.820 | In fact, he's not talking to any ordinary human beings.

00:05:07.280 | He's talking about and to angelic beings who are sometimes called gods in the Old Testament,

00:05:13.720 | just like when Satan, you remember, comes before God in the first chapter of Job, it

00:05:19.280 | says, "The sons of God came to present themselves to God, among whom was Satan."

00:05:25.280 | That's the sense in which "gods" is being used here, and "sons of God."

00:05:31.480 | So the answer to Beatrice's question is that in this text, both in Psalm 82 and in

00:05:39.680 | John 10, we are not called gods.

00:05:44.480 | Angelic beings are called gods, and Jesus isn't going into any elaborate argument here

00:05:51.400 | about the meaning of this psalm.

00:05:53.280 | He is simply using this text as a shrewd escape maneuver from being about to be stoned.

00:06:02.460 | They have just accused him of blasphemy because of calling himself the son of God, and he

00:06:07.960 | deflects the accusation of blasphemy by calling attention to the fact that in the Psalms,

00:06:15.040 | the very term "sons of God" is used for beings less than God, and nobody accuses

00:06:20.000 | the psalmist or God himself of blasphemy, so back off!

00:06:25.080 | If you think this means—and we might be tempted to think this means—that Jesus is

00:06:30.360 | arguing that he is only a godlike angelic being, like those gods, that would be a big

00:06:36.960 | mistake.

00:06:37.960 | He doesn't equate himself with those gods in Psalm 82.

00:06:42.200 | In fact, he uses very exalted language and says, "Do you say of him whom the Father

00:06:50.380 | consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming because I said I am the Son

00:06:58.400 | of God'?"

00:06:59.400 | So he doesn't diffuse the situation by reducing his claim to deity.

00:07:05.240 | He diffuses the situation by complicating the term "son of God" for his accusers

00:07:11.760 | so that they have to get rocked back on their hermeneutical heels in order to think for

00:07:18.440 | a minute about how to handle what he had just said from Psalm 82, and when that happens,

00:07:24.880 | he's gone.

00:07:25.880 | Verse 39 says he makes his escape.

00:07:28.800 | So there are interesting and important things to be learned here in Jesus' use of Psalm

00:07:35.280 | 82, but that we are gods is not one of them.

00:07:39.920 | Yeah.

00:07:40.920 | Thank you for that clarity, Pastor John, and thank you for listening.

00:07:43.920 | And a special thank you to our international listeners around the globe who tune in.

00:07:48.080 | We are humbled that you listen and send us questions of your own.

00:07:52.440 | Thank you.

00:07:53.440 | And if you want new episodes to this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor

00:07:56.640 | John in your favorite podcast app, in Spotify, or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel

00:08:02.280 | to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us from anywhere in the

00:08:06.200 | world.

00:08:07.200 | Do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:08:11.600 | Well how do we battle imposter syndrome?

00:08:14.480 | Yes, imposter syndrome, the feeling that all my success is a fraud, that we're fakers,

00:08:20.400 | especially at work.

00:08:21.400 | This is no small question in the lives of many, and Pastor John is going to address

00:08:25.360 | it on the other side of the weekend, imposter syndrome, coming up on Monday.

00:08:30.000 | I'm Tony Rehnke, and we'll see you then.

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Did Jesus Say We Are gods?

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