"Jesus is Worshipped, so He Must Be God" Really?
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The claim "Jesus must be God, because he is worshipped" is:
2. ironically, the claim that “Jesus is worshipped, he must be God”
is anti-Christ, since it is a denial that Jesus Christ is a man. Those making
the claim insist they will only worship God. They won’t worship a man. They refuse
to bow before God's appointed human Messiah.
“Deity of Christ” believers contradict themselves. They want to
insist that Jesus is “fully man”. If Jesus is “fully man” as Trinitarians
claim, then they themselves are worshiping a man. But then they turn around and
deny that they are worshipping a man. Deity of Christ believer: are you
worshipping someone who is fully man, or not? Make up your mind.
Let’s look at these two points a bit closer.
Biblically Ignorant
First, the claim "Jesus must be God, because he is
worshipped" is biblically ignorant. A lot depends on how we interpret the term "worship". We don’t
want to just make up our own definition. How is the word “worship” used
in the Bible, and who is worshipped? And here is an important question: Why
are they worshipped? Can they be rightly worshipped and not be God? Can they be
worshipped for different reasons? Can God’s Messiah, for example, be worshipped
not because he is God, but because he is God’s Messiah? Is it correct biblically
to claim: “only God can be worshipped”?
I have to say, this claim that “Jesus is God because he is
worshipped” frustrates me a bit because the claim is so obviously, biblically,
wrong. OK, because of the ambiguity of the term “worship” in English, and the
presuppositions of English Bible translations, we have to give some slack to
the average person who has heard this claim and is just repeating what they
have heard.
But to claim “Jesus is God because he is worshipped” is inexcusable
for a pastor or Bible teacher who knows a little bit of Greek or Hebrew. And
unfortunately, I’ve had seminary students and pastors who have finished
seminary tell me that “If Jesus is worshipped, he must be God.” My reaction is a head scratching, “Really?
Just do a little Bible study. Find out what Hebrew and Greek words are
translated as “worship” in the Bible, and see to whom those words are applied.
Is there anyone else in the Bible who is rightly worshipped and is not God?”.
The answer to that question is “YES, MANY people”. There are many people, human beings, that are
rightly bowed down to, yes, “worshipped” in the Bible. So, it is patently
false, one can even say a lie, to claim that “Jesus is worshiped so he must be
God”.
So let’s take a look at the word for “worship” in the Bible that is
applied to Jesus. Is this word translated “worship” applied appropriately to
any other human beings? It doesn’t take much Bible study to see that the words
in Hebrew and Greek for “worship” are rightly applied to human beings in many
contexts.
The main word involved in the claim “Jesus is God because he is worshipped" is the Hebrew word shahah [1]הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה and its Greek counterpart, proskyneō προσκυνέω .
shahah שחה הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה
(BDB): “bow down, prostrate oneself, before a monarch or superior,
in homage”
(HALOT): Bow down 1. before a higher person: a beggar 1S 2:36,
supplicants before someone in authority Gn 33:7, Absalom 2 Sam. 14:33 before
David, bride before the king Ps 45:12, woman before man 1 Sam. 25:23, before
prophet 2K 4:37; the nations before Israel Gn 27:29; Bow down in worship: before the stars Dt 4:19, before ls,P, Ex 20:5; before
Rimon in the temple 2 Ki. 5:18, before the holy mountain Ps 99:9, generally as
attitude of prayer
proskyneō προσκυνέω
(Gingrich New Testament Lexicon) (fall down
and) worship, do obeisance to, prostrate oneself before, do reverence to,
welcome respectfully
In general, these Hebrew and Greek terms mean "to bow
down" and “pay homage” to a superior whether the superior is human or
divine.
A few examples:
Genesis 22:5 Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here
with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come
again to you." (Gen 22:5 ESV)
נִֽשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֖ה προσκυνέω
Genesis 23:7 Abraham got up and bowed down to the local
people, the sons of Heth. (Gen 23:7, 12)
וַיִּשְׁתַּ֥חוּ προσκυνέω
Abraham is performing the same act both before YHVH and before the
sons of Heth. Now of course the sons of Heth and Yahweh are worshipped for
different reasons. Abraham worshipped the sons of Heth because of who they
were. Abraham worshipped YHVH because
YHVH is God. But the same verb applies.
I think this is one reason I was a bit surprised when friends wrote
me and said “Jesus is God because he is worshipped”. I had been reading
the Bible in Hebrew for over 30 years by then, and that kind of claim was very
strange, even foreign to me, because I could see that the word often translated
as “worship” was rightly applied to others, not just God.
There are many other examples of people who are rightly worshipped
in the Bible (Joseph’s brothers worshipped him, e.g.), but I’m going to jump to
David. Do you know that David worshipped Saul?
1 Samuel 24:8 Afterward David also arose and went out of the cave,
and called after Saul, "My lord the king!" And when Saul looked
behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage.”
The “paid homage” is וַיִּשְׁתָּֽחוּ. Of course the Bible isn’t saying that David worshipped Saul as
God. Rather, David is honoring Saul because Saul is God’s Messiah.
Many people worshipped David in the Bible. They better have, since David
was God’s appointed Messiah King.
Abigail is one example, 1 Samuel 25:23 “When Abigail saw David, she
hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed
to the ground.” ESV
The phrase translated “bowed to the ground” is our word shahah, proskyneō. Also, I
like to note that Abigail called David “Lord” 13x in that one chapter. She was a wise woman. She called King David “Lord”
and she worshipped him.
Here is a kicker. King David was worshipped along with YHVH in 1
Chronicles 29:20.
“Then David said to all the assembly, "Bless YHVH your
God." And all the assembly blessed YHVH, the God of their fathers, and
bowed their heads and worshipped YHVH and the king”
The Hebrew word, וַיִּשְׁתַּחֲווּ
applies to both YHVH and King David.
It’s funny, actually tragic, to see what the English translations
do to this verse. All the other times where shahah, proskyneō apply
to Yahweh, translators use “worship”. But all of a sudden, in this verse,
ESV they “bowed their heads and paid homage to the LORD and
to the king.”
NET they “bowed down and stretched out flat on the ground
before the LORD and the king.”
NIV “they bowed low and fell prostrate before the LORD and
the king.
This is not being truthful in translation. This is being deceitful
in translation. No worship here?
RSV even adds another verb: “worshiped the LORD, and did obeisance
to the king.”
If you have to hide behind a curtain of translation to keep your
pet theology propped up, your pet theology will eventually crumble, and you
will be found out.
Then how about Psalm 72, which is a coronation Psalm for King Solomon. In Psalm 72:11 the Psalmist says of Solomon, “Yea, all kings will bow down before him: all nations will serve him”. The Hebrew word for “bow down” is the same word שחה that is translated “worship”.
Speaking about the people of Israel, Isaiah 45:14, “This is what Yahweh
says "The profit of Egypt and the revenue of Ethiopia, along with the
Sabeans, those tall men, will be brought to you and become yours. They will
walk behind you, coming along in chains. They will יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ bow down to you and יִתְפַּלָּלוּ pray to you: 'Truly God is with you; there is no
other, there is no other God!'"
There are 10s, probably hundreds of examples of people being rightly worshipped in the Old Testament. How about the New Testament? Is the Greek word proskyneō confined only to the worship of God?
But the truth is, th
Denying the Humanity of Jesus
To say that if Jesus is worship, he must be God, is to deny that
Jesus is a human being. This is the spirit of anti-Christ.
Will we bow down before God’s human Messiah King, or are we ashamed
of God’s human Messiah? Do we refuse to bow down before God’s Anointed human
King, saying in our heart, “No God, we don’t accept this human Messiah, this
man Jesus of Nazareth. You need to provide a different Messiah. God, you die”?
If what the Trinitarians claim is correct, that “only God can be worshipped’,
and Jesus is worshipped, then Jesus is not a human being.
Jesus is worshipped, so according to the deity of Christ claim, he can’t
be man. He can’t be a
human person, nor could he even have the abstract “human nature”. If a human
person should not be worshipped, certainly non-personal human nature shouldn’t
be worshipped. The deity of Christ claim
denies that Jesus the Messiah came as flesh, and that Jesus the Messiah is
flesh, since neither a human person nor abstract human flesh would be worthy of
worship.
Said in another way, if you claim that no one should bow down or
worship a human, you are saying that Jesus is not a human.
As much as Trinitarians want to insist that Jesus is fully man and
fully God, this claim “Jesus must be God because he is worshipped” denies the
humanity of Jesus.
It’s pretty simple. If Trinitarians say they cannot and are not
bowing down to a human, they deny the humanity of Jesus. Once again, deity of
Christ believers speak from both sides of their mouths. They want to say that
Jesus is “fully man” but then they turn around and say that you can’t bow down and
worship a man. Make up your mind. Is Jesus fully man? If he is, you are
worshipping a man.
Not a Biblical Claim, but rather a claim of Tradition
It must be emphasized that this claim “Jesus is God because he is
worshipped” is only an inference. This idea is not a claim the Bible makes for
Jesus. Neither Jesus, nor any New Testament author makes this “argument”,
saying “Jesus must be God since he is worshipped”. It is a claim from after
New Testament times made by later commentators. It is a claim set up on a false
philosophical premise and ambiguity of language. The claim really amounts to this: “worshipping
Jesus breaks my false unbiblical theological premise.”
What about the two times in the Book of Revelation that
John is going to bow down before his angel guide, and the angel says, “Don’t do
that, I am a fellow servant”? If John the Revelator thought like modern Trinitarians, he must have thought that the angel who guided him was God, since "only God can be worshipped". The truth is that John the Revelator bowed down to pay the angel homage.
But the angel tells John that now, with the exalted man Jesus at God’s right hand, authority has been restructured. Jesus, a human, and as humankind’s representative has authority over all angels. “Let all God’s angels worship (bow down) before him.”
A Better Way
So here is a better biblical understanding of worship:
There is only one God, יהוה, The Father.
We worship God as God. We worship no one else as God other
than יהוה, The Father.
We worship Jesus as the Messiah who gave his life for us, and the
one to whom God has given all authority in heaven and on earth, not only in
this age, but also in the age to come.
Summary
The claim "Jesus must be God,
because he is worshipped" is:
1. biblically
ignorant. There are many humans in the Bible that are properly worshipped.
2. anti-Christ,
a denial that Jesus Christ is a man. The claim “Jesus must be God if he is worshipped”
is in effect: "We will not have this one, this man, rule over us".
3.
Contradictory: On the one hand: “Jesus is fully man” but on the other hand:
“I’m not worshipping a man.”
4. Not a
biblical claim. The Bible never says, “Jesus is worshipped so he must be God”.
Rather the claim is based on a misunderstanding of word meanings and wrong
philosophical speculation.
Podcast and notes/word study of “worship” by Sean Finnegan
http://restitutio.org/2016/03/04/should-we-worship-jesus/
Brother Kel article on the word “worship” in the Bible
https://www.angelfire.com/space/thegospeltruth/TTD/terms/worship1.html
[1] Most
take the root meaning of the word to be שחה which is
related to “make oneself low” or “bow down”. It is not infrequently connected
to a phrase like “with the face to the ground” “with the nose to the ground”.
But others (TWOT) take the root as חוה, exclusively in the Eshtaphal stem, hishtah¦wâ "to prostrate oneself "; "to worship"ת cognate with the Ugaritic hwy "to bow down".
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