Let us look at the top 10 verses from the New Testament (NT) that show that Jesus is not God!
Many trinitarians are not aware that there are so many verses in the New Testament which clearly show that \’Jesus is not God\’!
For One God Believers, verses like these solidify our own understanding of who God and Jesus are. They also can be good to point out in discussions with those who have contrary ideas about who Jesus and God are. There are indeed many verses in the NT that clearly show:
- That Jesus is not God
- That indeed Jesus is a real human being
- That Jesus is a real human person somebody distinct from God
- That these are the facts that the authors of the New Testament are presenting
Therefore, it was not easy to pair down to 10! (To be honest, I listed more than ten verses. However, the top ten sounds better!)
These selected verses have been chosen because they are particularly to the point in my opinion. I am not even going to look at some verses from the Old Testament (AKA Hebrew Bible) which show thoroughly that God is one individual person or one individual self. For example, in the Ten Commandments, it declares “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:2-3, Deut. 5:6-7)
If one wants to have three persons in the godhead then that is plural! Three persons would be plural. It should read “we are Yahweh your God.”
In Isaiah 44:24 it reads “thus says Yahweh your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb. I am Yahweh who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” It does not read ourselves! If one needs three persons in the godhead one has to use the plural pronoun. Even trinitarians must say that with the coming of Jesus somehow there is a new revelation that God is not just one individual self, rather we now understand that there are three selves in God. Even trinitarians know that the Hebrew Bible is not presenting God as a Triune being.
So, I will leave the Hebrew Bible verses for now but what about the New Testament? Isn\’t this supposed to be the place where we have this great revelation that God is all of a sudden, three persons in one?
Well let us go to the number 10 verse that shows that Jesus is not God.
10) 2 Corinthians 1:3
This verse is a representative of many more verses that declare the following facts:
- That the Lord Jesus Christ has a God
- That the Lord Jesus Christ is not God
- There is only one God
- If you have a God you are not the one God
- Anyone who has a God is not God
This verse reads:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.”
Again, this verse is representative of many more scriptures in the New Testament that declare that the Lord Jesus Christ has a God and that the Lord Jesus Christ is not God. This verse shows that Jesus Christ is not God; that he is differentiated from God.
The Lord Jesus Christ
Many Christians think the title Lord means that Jesus is God. Obviously, this is not the case, because here the Lord Jesus Christ has a God! These kinds of greetings which are in all of the epistles, start out by differentiating Jesus from God. Therefore, these verses show that Jesus is not God.
For example, see Ephesians 1:3, 1 Peter 1:3, Romans 15:6. All these specifically differentiate God from the Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 1:17, Paul says “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation.” So here again God is differentiated from the Lord Jesus Christ and God is the God of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only one God and the God of our Lord Jesus Christ is the one God and our Lord Jesus Christ is not that one God.
Let me also add to this category of verses, the words of the resurrected, glorified Jesus as recorded in the Book of Revelation 4:12. Four times, Jesus makes the statement about “my God.” The resurrected Lord Jesus Christ has a God! Jesus said “the one who conquers I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God which comes down from my God.”
So the declaration in many New Testament scriptures like 2 Corinthians 1:3, that the Lord Jesus Christ has a God, is a direct declaration that Jesus is not God. To insist on the deity of Christ in the face of these scriptures, either one must just ignore the scriptures or come up with some kind of a secondary backdoor explanation as to how and why the Lord Jesus Christ has a God.
One has to really do some verbal gymnastics to explain that. Gymnastics such as “well that is only the human Jesus.” My response to that claim that this is only the human Jesus is that the New Testament never ever distinguishes between a God Jesus and a human Jesus. Such speculation is non-biblical and beyond that, this claim “well that is it is only the human Jesus” is a terrible explanation. Because, now you are making Jesus into a schizophrenic, dual personality, double tongued liar!
Does Jesus have a God or not? Ask Jesus, Do you have a God? Is one Jesus going to say “No, I don\’t have a God, I am God!” And the other Jesus is going to say “Yes I have a God”. Such responses come about because of a proposed dual-nature doctrine nonsense! Come on! With such responses, one would make Jesus into a liar!
Let us go to the number 9 New Testament verse that shows that the Lord Jesus Christ is not God.
9) John 20:17
This is where Jesus, after he had been raised from the dead, told Mary Magdalene to tell his brothers. He called the apostles ‘his brothers.’ He said, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” So, here is another verse where Jesus specifically declares that he has a God and that his God is the Father; but he also says that the apostles’ God is the same as his God! Jesus says “my God and your God my Father and your Father.” So the God of Jesus is the same God that the apostles have. This God is also called the Father.
We cannot say that Jesus’ God is different from our God because then there would be two Gods! Impossible! For the very same reasons then, we can also see that there is no possibility that Jesus\’s God is the Trinity!
The God of Jesus is the Father and his God is the same God as our God. Our God is not a Triune being. Our God is the Father.
8) Mark 12.28-34
Number 8! Let us now consider a verse from the Hebrew Bible (AKA the Old Testament, AKA the Tanach), from the Torah (the first five books), because it is quoted in the New Testament and there is a discussion about this verse between Jesus and a scribe. The Shema, Hear O Israel, from Deuteronomy 6:4 which will be quoted in Mark 12:28-34. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is, “Hear O Israel, Yahweh Our God, Yahweh is One, and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.”
This verse, quoting Deuteronomy 6:4, declares
“the Lord Our God, the Lord is One.”
Now did you know that there was a point in Christian history when an emperor by the name of Justinian around 500 AD banned this verse because if somebody said it, such a person was being anti-trinitarian! Again, it is the kind of verse that if you are going to say that God is not one self, not one person; you have to come up with subsidiary, smoke and mirror explanations, to explain how Jesus could believe and say the Shema if God indeed was really three essences. These verses in Mark do not fit trinitarian presuppositions nor trinitarian theology.
Jesus presented the Shema – Deuteronomy 6:4ff to the scribe as the greatest commandment and the scribe agreed with Jesus in his explanation! The scribe said, “You are right, Rabbi, that He is one and there is no other but He and to love Him.” So again we are talking about singular personal pronouns. We are not talking about a multi-person being. Here we are talking about a singular being, a singular personal being, ‘He Is One!’ Jesus included himself as being obligated to obey this commandment by saying “the Lord our God.” Yahweh is Jesus\’s God. So Mark 12:28 to 34 which is quoting Deuteronomy 6:4 is our number eight New Testament scripture that show us that Jesus is not God
7) John 8:40
Number 7! Jesus is having a discussion with people in Jerusalem and he says “but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.” This is an important verse because it is from the Gospel of John, the gospel that people claim is the one that is most clearly claiming that Jesus is God! But here is the testimony of Jesus himself in this gospel where he says that ‘he is a man who told you the truth that I heard from God!’
- So Jesus differentiates himself from God!
- He is a man!
- He heard the truth from God!
It is clear! Jesus says that he is a man who told us the truth that he heard from God and God in the Gospel of John, actually in the entire New Testament, is the Father! For Jesus, God and Father are the same. God is the Father and the Father is God. It is not that the Father is just one member of a tri-personal deity. No! For Jesus, the Father is God, and Jesus heard the truth from the Father. This verse is also important because it is just a few verses before the statement that so many trinitarians think that Jesus is claiming to be God when he says before Abraham comes to be, ‘I am’. Yet in the very same gospel written by John, here we read that Jesus says that he is a man. If you want more information on John 8:58 here is a post regarding it.
6) Romans 5:15
Number 6 of the top 10 New Testament verses that show that Jesus is not God.
“But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man\’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”
So this is the Apostle Paul writing and he says that as through one man\’s trespass, because of one man’s sin, many have died; death has come. This is of course talking about Adam. Through the sin of Adam, that is, one man, one human being, not a divine being; but a human person, a human being. Yet much more has the grace of God and the gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.
The words for one and man are in the Greek text. Here, Jesus is one man just like Adam was one man. A verse like this is important because in Christendom there exists this idea that somehow sin requires that God had to die! Such a notion is a totally non-biblical, philosophical speculation. Sadly, this notion is in the mind of many Christians. This claim or this belief is that Jesus had to be God to be able to bring forgiveness for sin.
However, the New Testament says exactly the opposite! The New Testament says that Jesus had to be a human being and just like through one man’s sin, death came through one man, God is at work to bring the gift and the grace that He has in store for humankind through one man, the man Jesus Christ.
Romans Chapter 5 says exactly the opposite of what the modern trinitarian claim is. Romans 5 says directly that God\’s gift and grace come through one man. Not through a God. Not through a God-man. Rather, through one man, one human being. Romans 5 is not only evidence that Jesus is not God, it is also evidence that Jesus could not be God! Reader, ask yourself this, whilst reading Romans Chapter 5, ‘Was Paul really comparing Adam with Almighty God?’ Think about it.
Some Thoughts
As I mentioned earlier, it is a bit difficult to really determine which of all these verses that I have listed, are more important than another, and there are so many scriptures that prove or that are evidence that supports the fact that Jesus is not God. Trinitarians generally have a group of verses that they think claim Jesus Is God. Yet with their handful of verses, trinitarians do not really pay attention to the multitude of scriptures that are clearly saying that Jesus is not God. Unfortunately, when such verses are noticed, trinitarians then ‘kind of sweep them under the rug!’ It is about time for trinitarian deity of Christ believers to take a good honest look at the scriptures
- that show that Jesus is not God
- that show that Jesus is a real human person whom God has exalted to His own right hand.
Let us continue our countdown. Actually before I continue, I am going to give one more verse that will connect well with the previous number six verse. Again, partly because I was having trouble fitting these verses into 10 but look at
1 Corinthians 15:21. This passage aligns with the number six verse above in Romans which shows that through one man came sin and death and through one man Jesus Christ, came the gift and the grace of God.
1 Corinthians 15:21 is yet another verse that is important to one God believers. This verse is an important one for us to know about as we discuss with other people who God is and who the man Christ Jesus is.
1 Corinthians 15:21 Paul says,
“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.”
Now that verse is clear and explicit. There really isn\’t any way to get around what Paul believed. Paul did not say that Jesus had to be God to atone for our sins or something like that. He says quite the contrary. This is why I don\’t believe this philosophical speculation that somehow Jesus had to be God in order to be a sufficient enough payment for sin or something like this. Because Paul says exactly the opposite.
1 Corinthians 15:21 “For as by a man came death.” Of course, Paul is thinking of Adam. Again, through one human person, death has spread to all humankind. Paul continues, “By a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.” The resurrection of the dead has come not through a God, not through a God-man. Yes, God is involved because God raised Jesus from the dead, yet the resurrection has come by a man, Christ Jesus!
5) Acts 17:31
Verse number 5 that shows that Jesus is not God. Paul is preaching in Athens, Greece and he is calling on the people to repent and acknowledge who the true God is. He says in Acts, “because he”, that is God, “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.”
Notice a few things in this verse. If anybody could have grasped the idea that a God-man was necessary for the redemption and reconciliation of us to God, it would have been the people in Athens. Because in Greek mythology, they had all kinds of gods and godmen. Yet, here is what Paul says:
“The One, Singular Self, Individual God has fixed the day on which He will judge the world in righteousness not by a godman; rather by a man, by a human being, by a human person whom He has appointed.” That is, God has appointed a man and how do we know that God has given this authority to judge to a man? God has given us this assurance by raising the man Christ Jesus from the dead. God raised the human being, the human person, the man Christ Jesus from the dead. ‘A human being will be my and your judge!’
Yes, that human being has been given that authority by the One God to judge as Jesus said in John 5:22,27; “God the Father has given to him the authority to execute judgement.” That authority is not innately in Jesus. Rather, the authority that Jesus has, has been given to him by God the Father, the one and only God! Just like Jesus said in Matthew 28:18, “all authority has been given to me.” That authority is not innately in Jesus. Rather, the authority was given to Jesus by God. These verses all align with our verse number five,
Acts 17:31.
4) Acts 2:22-36
Now number 4. I am going to take a couple of verses from Peter\’s sermon on the day of Pentecost, just after Jesus was raised from the dead and here is what Peter said to the people of Israel listening to him in Jerusalem:
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know.” Peter goes on to say, “You put him to death but God raised him from the dead.” Then Peter sums up that part of his sermon in verse 36, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Let us go back to verse 22. Peter says that Jesus of Nazareth is a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him. This is how Jesus did Miracles!
God the Father was at work in and through Jesus. Jesus is a man through whom God worked! Peter says let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain. Please listen to this. Peter starts out by saying Shema Israel i.e. Hear Israel! Listen Israel! Same with us Gentiles. We need to listen to what Peter says. ‘Know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ this Jesus whom you crucified.’ Now here is a man that God made Lord and God made Christ! Acts 2:36 pulls the rug out from any deity of Christ trinitarian speculations about who Jesus Christ was.
From the mouth of Peter, as well as from the book of Acts, we see an explanation of exactly who Jesus is! If we would just listen to the sermons of the apostles Peter and Paul in the book of Acts. If we would just listen to all their descriptions of who Jesus is in the book of Acts. One would see that there is no talk about God in the flesh or God-man or the deity of Jesus. There is no presentation that God is a trinity.
The people of Israel in that first century and the Gentiles in that first century heard nothing about a Triune God or a second divine figure who was equal with the Father. Rather, they heard about a man who is attested by God whom God worked through, a man whom God raised from the dead and made Lord and Christ and sat this man at God\’s right hand.
Imagine that a human person, a human being is at the right hand of God!
3) 1 Timothy 2:4-5
Number 3 New Testament verse that shows that Jesus is not God.
1 Timothy 2: 4-5, Paul says God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
I\’m going to stop there for a second. God wants all humans to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth and here is what the knowledge of the truth is. Paul says in the next verse, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Period! That is the truth! ‘There is one God and there is one mediator between God and men and that one mediator is not God! That one mediator is not a God-man! The one mediator is a man or the man Christ Jesus! That is who our mediator is!’
This eliminates a God-man Christ Jesus because the man Christ Jesus is not the God-man Christ Jesus. Those are two different persons, two different figures, one of them is an impostor. Those who believe in a deity of Christ, are fooling themselves because the man Christ Jesus is not the God-man Christ Jesus. One who believes that their mediator is God or a God-man has a different mediator than the man Christ Jesus who is declared as such in 1 Timothy 2:5!
2) 1 Corinthians 8:6
Number 2 verse from the New Testament that shows that Jesus is not God. 1 Corinthians 8:6: Paul says,
“Yet for us,” speaking about believers, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.” Now I will stop there for a second. Can Paul be any clearer? That for Christians, the one God is not a Triune being nor is the one God a two-person being! He says, ‘for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.’ Then he continues,
“and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
As we saw Peter declared that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ. Jesus is our human Lord, the human Christ, the top human being at the right hand of God. Jesus is differentiated from the One God. Paul says the One God for us is the Father and our one human Lord, the Lord of all human lords is Jesus Christ.
Christendom’s scholars take this verse and twist it and contort it into some other kind of declaration where they are trying to say that Paul was including Jesus into who the one God is! They are twisting and contorting and trying to fit somehow Jesus into the one God. They do this by ignoring everything else that Paul says about Jesus Christ being Lord.
For the Apostle Paul, there is one God and that one God is not the Trinity, that one God is not Jesus. There are other important verses, a category of many scriptures that say that somebody other than Jesus raised him from the dead. Like 1 Corinthians 6:14 where Paul says, “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.” God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead! This shows us that in Paul\’s mind the Lord is not God, rather the Lord Jesus has a God. There are so many New Testament verses that declare that someone other than Jesus raised Jesus from the dead. That someone is namely, the One God, the Father. For example,
- Romans 10:9, ‘You have to believe in your heart that God raised him, that is, the Lord Jesus from the dead.’
- Acts 5:30, Peter declares, “the God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.”
So this whole category of verses, which include 1 Corinthians 6:14, Romans 10:9, etc, illustrate that the One God raised the Lord Jesus. These verses show therefore, that Jesus is not God. Peter says in Acts 3:13 that Jesus is the servant of the God of our fathers. Obviously then, Jesus is not the God of our fathers! Then there is Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32, where Jesus says about the time of his return, “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” Here is supposedly Jesus being God speaking and yet, he does not know when he is coming back! By the way, where is the Holy Spirit in these verses? Where is the so-called third person of the trinity?
Rather in these verses, Jesus says the angels do not know it, the Son does not know it but only the Father knows it! So if you think that Jesus is God co-equal and has omniscience like the Father, this then is a problem verse. What about when Jesus says in John 14:28, ‘the Father is greater than I’?
I mean what kind of a statement is that for a co-equal, co-eternal, divine being to have made? Somebody that is greater than Jesus, does not work for trinitarianism.
Then in John 5:19,30; Jesus says that he can do nothing by his own power. I mean what kind of a thing is this for God to say that he can do nothing by his own power? You see this is not a statement of Almighty God. Rather, this is a statement of somebody who is not Almighty God! This is a statement of somebody who has been sent by God and authorized and equipped and empowered by God. Jesus does nothing on his own, he does nothing by his own power. Jesus did the things he did and said the things he said because God empowered him to do so! Again, like Peter said in Acts 2:22, Jesus of Nazareth is a man who is attested by God through the things that God did through him and in him.
So, I am sure I am leaving some verses out but these are just a few examples of honorable mentions that probably could have fit somewhere in this list of 10. However, it is difficult to get it down to 10 actual verses.
1) John 17:3
The number 1 verse in the New Testament which shows that Jesus is not God?
Answer: John 17:3. Jesus is praying and he prays, Father … “this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God” …
In his prayer, Jesus appeals to the Father and he acknowledges that the Father is the only true God and he says that this knowledge relates to eternal life, that is, life in the age to come. Jesus says “this is eternal life that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Can one see how Jesus differentiated himself from the only true God?
Having eternal life, life in the age to come, involves the knowledge of two separate beings, one, the only true God the Father and secondly, Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, whom the only true God sent. Moreover, of course to be sent in the biblical meaning means to be authorized and be equipped and be empowered by God, just like for example, how God sent Moses and how God sent His prophets.
So again, we see from the Gospel of John, which is supposed to be the gospel that is the main one that shows that Jesus is God, contrary facts! Not only do we have Jesus calling himself a man, here we have John recording that Jesus says that the only true God is the Father. Jesus differentiates himself from the only true God. Jesus says he is sent by the only true God and this aligns with John\’s purpose statement in John 20:30-31.
John does not say that he wrote his gospel so that you would believe that Jesus is God. Quite the contrary! Rather, he said he recorded the signs, the miraculous deeds that Jesus did, so that his readers would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. John does not say he wrote down these miraculous signs so that you would believe that Jesus is God, that he is another divine figure that is eternally coexistent with the Father, that Jesus is one of the three divine persons who have always coexisted as a Triune being. No! John says he recorded the signs that Jesus did so that his readers would believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.
So, we have John 17:3 from the mouth of Jesus in the Gospel of John. We have testimony that the only true God is the Father. Will we listen to the Jesus of the Gospel of John? Or will we listen to later century interpreters who say differently than the Jesus of the Gospel of John?