Did Jesus Claim to Be God in John 10.30?

Did Jesus Claim to Be God in John 10.30?



Ask most Christians who know the Bible, “Where does the Bible say Jesus claimed
to be God?” and they’ll likely answer, “He said in John 10.30, ‘I and the Father are one.”
But that is a far cry from saying, “I am God,” or the like. One is struck with the thought,
“Is that the best evidence Christians can provide that Jesus claimed to be God? If so,
perhaps he never made such a claim.”
This is a very important issue for Christians. Most of them assert that a person must
believe that Jesus is God in order to be a genuine Christian and thus possess salvation and
the hope of eternal life. That’s what the institutional church has always insisted. But
interpreting Jesus’ saying in John 10.30 as a claim to be God ignores its context.
Jesus was attending the Feast of Dedication at the temple in Jerusalem. We read,
“The Jews therefore gathered around Him, and were saying to Him, ‘How long will You
keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.’” (John 10.24). Jesus
responded by mentioning his marvelous works that he had been doing and how they
testify to his intimate relationship with God (vv. 25-29).
So, when Jesus then said that he and God the Father were “one,” he meant that they
were unified, being in complete harmony regarding Jesus’ mission of doing good works
and drawing disciples to himself. This is confirmed by Jesus’ so-called “high priestly
prayer” he made the night he was betrayed and arrested. It, too, is recorded only in the
Gospel of John. In anticipation of his crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension,
Jesus prayed to the Father concerning his eleven apostles, “Holy Father, keep them in
Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are”
(John 17.11). And he soon added, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to
them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may
be perfected in unity” (vv. 22-23). So, Jesus asked the Father for the same oneness for
himself and his apostles that he said, in John 10.30, he and the Father had. To say that
“one,” there, means Jesus is God requires that it means the same here, which is ludicrous.
Yet Jesus’ antagonistic listeners thought like many Christians later have, that he
claimed to be God when he said he and the Father were “one.” When Jesus asked them
why they were picking up stones to stone him to death (John 10.31), they replied, “For a
good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make
Yourself out to be God” (v. 33). That is, they thought Jesus was claiming to be God by
declaring that he was “one” with God.
The Roman Catholic Church’s prestigious Pontifical Biblical Commission rejects
this common interpretation of John 10.30. In its very important and excellent document
on Christology, Bible et christologie (1983), this elite group of twenty Catholic scholars
allege that those who espouse classical (Nicene-Chalcedonian) Christology tend to be
obstinate, “not being open” to critical investigation, resulting in their appeal to Scripture
only defensively. These scholars chose venerable American Catholic Joseph A. Fitzmyer
to produce a commentary on this document. In it he explains, “the Commission is
pointing its critical finger at Catholic fundamentalism, often associated with this
approach to Christology. An example of this sort of use of the NT would be the appeal to

Jn 10:30, ‘I and the Father are one,’ to establish the divinity of Christ.” Fitzmyer means
that he and the commission members do not believe Jesus here claimed to be God.
Jesus then asked his interrogators, “do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified
and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”
(John 10.36). John A.T. Robinson insists that Jesus here made the following important
points: (1) he implicitly denies the Jews’ allegation that he said he was God, (2) he
distinguishes himself from God, and (3) he affirms his true identity as Son of God.
Now, Jesus never went about declaring publicly that he was the Son of God. But he
often implied it by calling God his “Father.” Until then, Jews had recognized their God
Yahweh corporately as the father of the Jewish nation; yet individual Jews rarely or
never had identified God personally as their father, as Jesus regularly did.
Then Jesus clarified what he meant by him and the Father being one. He declared,
“the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” (John 10.38). Later, Jesus affirmed it again by
telling his apostles, “Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me” (14.11).
Scholars call this concept “the Mutual Indwelling.” It clearly represents a disavowal
that being one with God means that Jesus claims to be God. Rather, Jesus here affirms
God-in-Christology as contrasted with the traditional, incarnational, Christ-is-God
Christology that Christians later developed. The Apostle Paul explained half of this
concept, “that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5.19).
Jesus’ opponents seem to have accepted this clarification about being one with the
Father, in which he denied claiming to be God, because they never brought this charge
against him during the interrogation of him by the Jewish Sanhedrin (Council).
In sum, when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” he did not mean that he and God
the Father were one in essence, making himself God, but one relationally, resulting in a
functional unity. If this brief saying of Jesus in John 10.30 is the best that traditionalists
can muster to support their assertion that Jesus claimed to God, we can be pretty sure that
Jesus never made such a claim.
In my extensive book, The Restitution of Jesus Christ (2008), I devote ten pages to
explaining what Jesus meant in John 10.30 when he said, “I and the Father are one.” And
in doing so, I cite forty-four scholars and four church fathers.

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