God is worthy of all worship. For God to share His worship with one who is not God would mean that God is not worthy of all worship. Of all blessing. Of all glory. And He does not give all glory to another (Isaiah 42:8). And yet here is this Lamb, distinct from the One on the throne, to Whom all creation will erupt in glorious song to give Him exactly the same worship as they give to God. You can do the divine math.

Maybe you’ve heard it before, “Jesus never said that he was God.”

Whether it’s a modestly dressed Mormon pair at your door or a Muslim co-worker, unbelievers regularly challenge Christians on the deity of Christ.

How do you respond?

Of course, you can take them to John 10:30-33 where Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and the Jews say, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” You could pull out the seven “I AM” statements of John’s gospel – the bread of life (6:35), the light of the world (8:12), the door (10:7), the good shepherd (10:11), the resurrection and the life (11:25), the way the truth and the life (14:6) and the true vine (15:1) – in which Jesus identifies himself as Yahweh, the God of the burning bush. Or you could turn to other ascriptions of Jesus’ deity in the New Testament, as in Paul’s phrase “the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Or you could show any of Jesus’s display of power reserved for God alone, as in the calming of the storm (Psalm 107:29; Matthew 8:23-27).

Those are all good and glorious arguments from Scripture for the deity of Christ. I’d like to offer another: the worthiness of Christ.

In Revelation 4, John is transported to the throne room of God. In the Spirit, on the Lord’s Day, John is given access to a scene in the future that makes clear exactly who Jesus is, and it starts with someone else on the throne. John writes,

At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald.
—Revelation 4:2-3

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