Evidence From Acts of the Apostles
Jesus performed many miraculous wonders, and he without
doubt said a lot of wonderful things about himself. Some people use what
he said and did as proof that he was God. But his original disciples who
lived and walked with him, and were eyewitnesses to what he said and did, never
reached this conclusion. The Acts of the Apostles in the Bible details the
activity of the disciples over a period of thirty years after Jesus was lifted
up to heaven. Throughout this period they never refer to Jesus as God.
They continually and consistently use the title God to refer to someone
other than Jesus.
Peter stood up with the eleven disciples and addressed
the crowd saying:
“Men of Israel, listen to this:
Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited to you by God with miracles, wonders and
signs which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know” (Acts
It was God, therefore, who did the miracles through Jesus
to convince people that Jesus was backed by God. Peter did not see the
miracles as proof that Jesus is God.
In fact, the way Peter refers to God and to Jesus makes it
clear that Jesus is not God. For he always turns the title God away from
Jesus. Take the following references for example:
raised this Jesus . . .” (Acts 2:32).
“God has made
this Jesus both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).
In both passages, the title God is turned away from Jesus.
Why? —if Jesus is God.
To Peter, Jesus was a servant of God. Peter said:
up his servant", where the title servant refers to Jesus (Acts 3:26).
This is clear from a previous passage where Peter
“The God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant
Jesus” (Acts 3:13).
Peter must have known that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never
spoke of a Triune God. They always spoke of Jehovah (i.e. Yahweh) as the
only God. Here, as in Matthew ch. 12, v. 18, Jesus is the servant of
Yahweh. Matthew tells us that Jesus was the same servant of Yahweh spoken
of in Isaiah 42:1. If Matthew and Peter are right, then Jesus is not
Yahweh, but Yahweh’s servant. This proves that Jesus is not God. The
Old Testament repeatedly says that Yahweh is the only God (eg. Isaiah 45: 5).
If Yahweh is the name of a triune God, then Jesus is excluded from the
Godhead since in that case he would be the servant of the triune God. If,
on the other hand, Yahweh is the name of the Father only, then the Father alone
is God (since Yahweh alone is God) and Jesus is therefore not God. Either
way, Jesus is not God. Peter and Matthew were both right about this.
All of the disciples of Jesus held this view. In
Acts ch. 4, v. 25 we are told that the believers prayed to God saying:
Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.”
And it is clear that the one they were praying to was not Jesus, because,
two verses later, they referred to Jesus as “your holy servant Jesus whom you
anointed” (Acts ch. 4, v. 28).
If Jesus was God, his disciples should have said this
clearly. Instead, they kept preaching that Jesus was God’s Messiah.
We are told in Acts:
day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching
and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah” (Acts ch. 5, v. 41).
The Hebrew title Messiah (Christ in Greek) is a human
title. It means “Anointed.” See Isaiah ch. 45, v. 1, where Cyrus
the Persian is called God’s Messiah.
If Jesus was God, why would the disciples continually
refer to him with human titles like servant and messiah of God, and consistently
use the title God for the one who raised Jesus?
Did they fear men? No! They boldly preached the
truth fearing neither imprisonment nor death. When they faced opposition
from the authorities, Peter declared:
“We must obey
God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus . . .” (Acts
Were they lacking the Holy Spirit? No! They were supported
by the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:3; 4:8; 5:32). They were simply teaching
what they had learnt from Jesus — that Jesus was not God but, rather, God’s
servant and Messiah.
The Qur’an confirms that Jesus was the Messiah, and
that he was God’s servant (Qur’an 3:45; 19:30).