The Word Became Flesh? Why John 1:14 Does NOT Say that God Became Man

   Agency in the Bible.

The human person Jesus Represented the Father and Virtually was the Father.

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In the Bible, God is often represented by the messengers he sends. Even beyond just representing God, God’s very presence was in and with the messenger. When God gave words to his messengers to speak, it was God speaking. When God gave authority and power to his messengers to perform miraculous deeds, it was God performing those miraculous deeds. When the messenger was at the scene, it was to be understood that God was at the scene. These realities are known as the principle of agency. In certain ways the messenger “is” the sender since the person’s agent is to be regarded as the sender himself.

 

Many Christians seem to be unfamiliar with the reality that “the one who is sent is to be regarded as the personal presence of the one who sent him.” God’s messenger is to be regarded as God himself. The agency principle provides a more consistent way to understand biblical passages that are often used by deity-of-Christ proponents as proof-texts to argue for multiple persons who are God.^[1]

 

Deity-of-Christ believers search the Scriptures for evidence of a “second God-person.” They look throughout the Old Testament for someone they presume to be a pre-incarnate Jesus, an additional God-person distinct from the Father. For instance, they point to appearances of an angel of Yahweh who speaks and acts with divine authority, and then claim this messenger (or these messengers) are evidence of another person who is God but not the Father.

 

An example of this is Genesis 18-19, where pre-incarnate-Christ believers suggest that one or all three men who appeared to Abraham were literally Yahweh. Similarly, they argue that the angel of Yahweh who appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exo. 3:2) was a pre-incarnate-Jesus.

 

Then after having supposedly discovering that Yahweh’s angel messengers are actually a second God-person, deity-of-Christ believers insist that this is evidence of a mysterious multiplicity of persons who make up the one God. They claim it is a mystery how God can be two (then eventually three) persons, yet still be only one God. The God who appears to humans is touted as “God the Son”, and the God who does not appear to humans is God the Father (or God the Spirit).[2]

 

But properly understanding the reality of agency resolves this man-made confusion surrounding the so-called “mystery of multiple persons who make up one God”. There is and will be a cost for this confusion in the deity-of-Christ world. The agency framework lifts the fog of confusion and provides a clear understanding of these biblical texts. Clarity conquers confusion.

 

The Principle of Agency

 

Understanding agency is crucial to understanding how many “persons” God is. Agency, both as a concept and a reality, means that a person’s agent—the one sent—is regarded as the sender himself (Berachot 5:5, Nedarim 72b; Kiddushin 41b, see biblical examples following). The statement bears repeating: “A person’s agent is regarded as the person himself.”

 

Another proverbial Hebrew statement about agency is “השליח שווה לשולחו The one sent is equal to his sender.” The equality of the sent one to his sender is neither an equality of essence nor of individual one-to-one identity. Everyone understood that the agent was not literally the same person nor the same being as the sender. Rather, the agent was given the sender's full authority to speak and act on his behalf. The agent carried the given equal authority from and of the sender and was therefore to be regarded as the sender himself.

 

Old Testament scholar John Walton highlights aspects of agency in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary when discussing the first appearance of the angel of Yahweh in Genesis 16 (to Hagar in the wilderness). Walton explains:

In the ancient world direct communication between important parties was a rarity. Diplomatic and political exchange usually required the use of an intermediary, a function that our ambassadors exercise today. The messenger who served as the intermediary was a fully vested representative of the party he represented. He spoke for that party and with the authority of that party. He was accorded the same treatment as that party would enjoy were he there in person. While this was standard protocol, there was no confusion about the person’s identity (emphasis mine).[3]

 

A king seldom visited directly with another king. Instead, the king would send a messenger, an ambassador, who was invested with the power and authority of the king himself. The messenger was to be treated as if the king himself was there. To receive or reject the messenger was to receive or reject the king himself. But there was no confusion about the literal identities of the messenger and his sender.

 

Walton continues:

This explains how the angel in this chapter [Gen. 16] can comfortably use the first person to convey what God will do (16:10).[4] When official words are spoken by the representative, everyone understands that he is not speaking for himself, but is merely conveying the words, opinions, policies, and decisions of his liege (ed., sovereign). So in Ugaritic literature, when Baal sends messengers to Mot, the messengers use first person forms of speech. E.T. Mullen concludes that such usage ‘signify that the messengers not only are envoys of the god, but actually embody the power of their sender.'

 

Three, yea Verily Four Aspects of Agency

 

Let’s highlight three, yea verily four aspects of the principle of agency that help us understand how God’s agents relate to God. Gods messenger:

1. Spoke the words of God
2. Performed the deeds of God
3. Was to be regarded as God who sent him, was to be regarded as God himself, was an active extension of God’s personality and as such, was God “in Person.”
4. The fourth aspect of agency is contained in all of the other three. As mentioned above, “the one sent is equal to his sender.” The equality is not that the agent is the identical person or being as the sender, but the agent has a recognized “legal” equality granted to the messenger by the sender.

 

Spoke the words of God - The word that I speak to you is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me

 

The messengers of Yahweh often speak for Yahweh but then are said to be Yahweh in the very same text. The messenger who was sent by Yahweh speaks in the first person as if he was God himself, sometime declaring in the first person, “I will do this or that.” However, it is understood (or should be) that the messenger is not speaking on his own behalf. There are two distinct “beings” involved:

1. Yahweh
2. The messenger sent by Yahweh

The messenger, who is a distinct being from God, speaks with the authority of God but is not literally God himself.

 

Performed the deeds of God - The Father who dwells in me does His works

 

Sometimes the messenger is empowered and authorized to not only deliver a message but also to act or perform a specific task. The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion (R.J.Z. Werblowsky, G. Wigoder, 1986, p. 15) explains: “Therefore, any act committed by a duly appointed agent is regarded as having been committed by the principal…”

 

The agent carries out the act, but the act is attributed to the one who sent him. This reality should be easily understood by us moderns. For example, we say, “Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.” We do not confuse the pilot of the airplane, Paul Tibbets, or the bombardier, Thomas Ferebee, with Harry Truman. Yet, we recognize that Truman was ultimately responsible for the action and provided the authority, power, and means for those he sent to perform the action.

 

was God “in Person” - Whoever has seen me has seen the Father

 

In addition to speaking and acting for, and as the one who sent the messenger, the presence of the messenger was considered to be the very presence of the sender. In his book The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God, Aubrey Johnson explains:[5]

 

“In short, the מלאך (‘messenger’), as an ‘extension’ of his master’s personality, not merely represents but is virtually the אדון (‘lord’). Pg. 5

 

“In other words the מלאכים (‘messengers’), as extensions of their master’s personality, are treated as actually being and not merely as representing their אדון (‘lord’).” Pg. 6

 

“The true prophet…was the ‘Messenger’ (מלאך) of Yahweh…the prophet, in functioning, was held to be more than Yahweh’s ‘Representative’; for the time being he was an active ‘Extension’ of Yahweh’s personality and, as such, was Yahweh – “in Person’.” Pg. 33

 

The messenger was regarded as being God. In a certain sense the messenger was Yahweh. The one sent was considered to be the very “in-person” presence of the one who sent him. Today the person granted power of attorney signs documents as if the one granting the authority is present. An ambassador represents and stands for the presence of the president who sent him. The agent is to be regarded as the sender himself.

 

If we can understand these aspects of agency then all the confusion and so-called mystery of how many persons God is dissipates from the biblical passages. God, the Father, the only God, is understood to be personally present, speaking and acting through his agents.

 

Agency Representation of God in the Old Testament

 

In the Bible there is no mystery of a multi-person unity of one God – no mystery about one person of God who is seen who is the same God as a different unseen God person. That's all unnecessary, confusing, non-biblical speculation.  Instead, Yahweh gives His messengers the authority and the power to speak and act for Him. The messengers are to be regarded as the personal presence of Yahweh.

 

Understanding agency clears up all the confusion that the Trinitarian and Oneness world has brought to the passages like Genesis 18 where three messengers of Yahweh come to Abraham and speak and act with the authority of Yahweh in the first person. The messenger declares: “I Yahweh say and do this”. We know from the text that these are Yahweh’s messengers (“men” 18:2, “messengers/angels” 19:1, 15) and that Yahweh is present, speaking and acting through these messengers.

 

Deity-of-Christ believers: Are you claiming that Yahweh, the God of Israel is literally an angel, literally a messenger? That is what Arians like Jehovah Witnesses claim, whom you condemn.

 

Note a concrete example of the prophet Isaiah being Yahweh’s agent, and virtually being Yahweh. Isaiah the prophet is speaking to Ahaz king of Judah. But actually, it is Yahweh the God of Israel who is speaking to King Ahaz. Isaiah 7:10, “Again, Yahweh spoke to Ahaz”.

 

Yahweh spoke to Ahaz? Was Yahweh the God of Israel literally standing there physically, a human being speaking to Ahaz? Was Isaiah the prophet a pre-incarnate appearance of God in flesh? We all can understand that Yahweh spoke to Ahaz by means of his messenger, the prophet Isaiah. Yahweh is speaking, but the throat and the voice were the human person Isaiah’s. The words that came out of the mouth of the human person Isaiah were Yahweh speaking. Isaiah is the God of Israel's messenger and therefore when he speaks it is the God of Israel speaking. Yahweh was personally present where his messenger Isaiah was present. When Ahaz heard Isaiah, Ahaz heard Yahweh.

 

Clarity, no confusion, no mystery about how many persons Yahweh is. By means of a second being, a human being who was not literally God, Isaiah the prophet was Yahweh speaking to King Ahaz.

 

Messengers מַלְאַ֥כים malachim in the Bible are often Human Beings

 

We should be aware that often in the Bible the angel of Yahweh, the angel of the LORD, the messenger of the LORD, was a human being. The word for messenger and angel is the same in Hebrew (malach - מַלְאַ֥ךְ) so it is up to the translator to determine if a supernatural “angel” or a human “messenger” is involved. In some cases, I believe translators have errored because of their presuppositions, translating as “angel” rather than “messenger.”

 

Prophets were God’s messengers/angels. We just noted how when the prophet Isaiah spoke, Yahweh spoke. The prophet Haggai is specifically said to be the messenger/angel of the LORD (Yahweh). Haggai 1:13: “Then Haggai, the messenger of the LORDמַלְאַ֧ךְ יְהוָ֛ה  spoke to the people with the LORD's message, saying, ‘I am with you’, says the LORD.”

 

And not only prophets, but the priests, the cohanim, are specifically the messengers (malachim) of Yahweh, the “angels” of Yahweh. In Malachi 2:7 Yahweh declares, “For the lips of a priest (cohen) should guard knowledge and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the angel of Yahweh of Hosts.  כִּֽי־שִׂפְתֵ֤י כֹהֵן֙ יִשְׁמְרוּ־דַ֔עַת וְתוֹרָ֖ה יְבַקְשׁ֣וּ מִפִּ֑יהוּ כִּ֛י מַלְאַ֥ךְ יְהוָֽה־צְבָא֖וֹת הֽוּא׃

 

Many Christians tend to think, erroneously, that the messengers/angels of Yahweh are supernatural beings; but, many times in the Bible they are human beings who represent God.

 

Agency Representation in the New Testament

 

In the New Testament, the human person Jesus was uniquely sent by God. He was uniquely God’s agent in the three ways outlined above. He spoke God’s words (John 8:40, 14:10), God performed miracles through him (Acts 2:22), and, the presence of the human person Jesus was the presence of God (John 12:44-45, 14:9-10, 2 Cor. 5:19). As God’s Son the King of Israel, Jesus was uniquely given the authority and power to speak and act for God, even as God.

 

The New Testament is full of statements that declare the reality of Jesus being God’s sent one, God’s agent. Each one of the four Gospels record that Jesus said: “Whoever receives me receives him who sent me” (Matt. 10:40, Mark 9:37, Luke 9:48, John 13:20). Jesus was a human being, not literally or ontologically God. But to receive God’s sent one, was to receive God.

 

Jesus stated the principle of agency in another direction: “Whoever rejects me (the human person Jesus of Nazareth), rejects him who sent me (God)” (Luke 10:16). In this statement the human person Jesus is parallel to God.

 

Statements like these are the language of agency. The agent represents the power and very presence of the one who sent him. If one receives or rejects God’s agent, one receives or rejects God - even though the agent is not literally God. God’s sent Son was to be regarded as God himself.

 

Jesus cried out in John 12:44-45, “Listen, deity-of-Christ believers…” OK, of course Jesus didn't say that. There were no Israelites who believed in the deity-of-Christ then. “Jesus cried out and said, ‘He who believes in me believes not in me but in Him who sent me. And he who sees me sees Him who sent me.” Again, the human person Jesus is parallel to God. His declaration is not a claim to be deity but is a claim to be the authorized messenger who was the virtual presence of the only God, the Father.

 

In John 14:9, “Jesus said to him (Philip), have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me, has seen ‘God the Son.” Again, I'm being sarcastic. Pardon the sarcasm but this is what mainstream Christianity thinks Jesus said. But Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”  Jesus, the “me” in the statement is parallel to the Father. Jesus could make such a declaration because he knew he was sent by God, authorized and equipped to speak and act for God, and was God’s personal presence. To “see me is to see the Father” is a statement of agency.

 

The law of agency, even double agency, was stated by Jesus in John 13:20 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me" (cf. Matt. 10:40).

 

Agency is evident in the New Testament with other people besides Jesus. Compare Luke 7:1-10 with Matthew 8:5-13. In Luke a centurion in Capernaum communicates twice with a Jesus by sending agents, while Matthew records the event as if the centurion himself was personally present speaking to Jesus. For Matthew, the centurion’s personal presence was in the messengers he sent.[6]

 

Matthew 8:5-6 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, 6 "Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly."	Luke 7:2-3 Now a centurion had a servant who was sick and at the point of death, who was highly valued by him.  3 When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent to him elders of the Jews, asking him to come and heal his servant.
Matthew 8:7-8 And he said to him, "I will come and heal him."  8 But the centurion replied, "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.	Luke 7:6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.

 

Another example of the reality of agency in the New Testament is Galatians 4:14, where Paul wrote to the Galatians that “though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.”

 

Galatians 4:14 throws mainstream Christianity into a whirlwind of confusing discussion between deity of Christ believers who insist Jesus was literally God before he took on a human nature, and Arians who insist Jesus had a pre-incarnate existence not as God but as an angel. They are both wrong. As in other places in the Bible (e.g., Matt. 11:10; Luke 7:24, 9:52; James 2:25), the word “angel” ἄγγελος can refer to human messengers, not celestial beings. Jesus was God’s human messenger par excellence, and Paul is saying that the Galatians received Paul with the same honor as God’s greatest messenger, Christ Jesus himself.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion: agency, agency, agency. Christianity needs to do itself a favor and understand what the reality of agency is and how agency informs our understanding of the relationship between God and the ones God sends, particularly between God and his messenger par excellence, the human person Jesus Christ. We need to understand that in at least these four ways, Jesus, as God’s agent:

1.      spoke the words of God,

2.      performed the deeds of God,

3.      was to be regarded as the God who sent him, was to be regarded as God himself, as an active extension of God’s personality was God “in Person”,

4.      had an authorized “legal” equality to God in the authorities and powers God granted him.

As a trinitarian Christian who taught Bible to University and Seminary students, I was not familiar with these aspects of agency. Some mainstream Christian scholars know about agency, but it seems that Christianity tends to hide or ignore agency because once it is understood, a person can understand very clearly who Jesus was claiming to be. 

As regards point #4, “equality with God, John 5:18 is a passage that is misconstrued by deity-of-Christ believers as Jesus claiming to be a second God-person who has equal deity with the Father. John 5:18, “he was also calling God his own Father, thus making himself equal to God.”

 

Note that in the statement itself Jesus is differentiated specifically from God, that is, not the Father. Jesus is someone else other than God. If Jesus is equal to God, that means that he is not God, just like 3 plus 2 is equal to 5, but 3 and 2 are both different than 5.

 

Then note that many English translation poorly translate as “equal with God”. The word “with” is not in the Greek text, only a dative definite article, which is best translated as “to God”. Remember one of the aspects of agency is “the one sent is equal to his sender”.  The sent one is equal to his sender, but is neither the same person nor the same being as his sender. To the Hebrew mind, the equality of a son to his father fits well into the context of agency.

 

And most importantly, Jesus’s words in John 5 and throughout the Gospel of John are all about agency, of Jesus being sent by God (the Father), and having been given an authorized, functional equality to God as God’s sent human Son. As God’s unique sent Son, Jesus spoke and acted with an equality of authority granted to him by God. The human Christ Jesus, God’s Sent One, was to be regarded as equal to God.

 

If we understand that the human Son of God Jesus is God’s unique authorized and empowered agent, we can understand what Jesus meant when he said things like: “I do nothing by my own authority…I can do nothing by my own power… For just as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in himself and He has given him authority to execute judgment… I seek to do not my own will but the will of Him who sent me… The works that the Father has given me to complete, the very works that I am doing, testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me… the words you hear are not mine, but the Father's who sent me…he who receives me receives the one who sent me…he who sees me sees the Father… I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works.”

 

The Gospel of John declares some 40 times that Jesus was sent. The Christology of the Gospel of John, who Jesus is, is not that Jesus was literally God, but that God (the Father, the only true God, 17:3) sent the human Jesus and therefor Jesus was to be regarded and received as the Father Himself.

 

The sent agent is to be regarded as the one who sent him. The sent agent was an “Extension of Yahweh’s personality and, as such, was Yahweh – “in Person’ (see footnote #4). These realities should help us understand what the author of the Gospel of John meant when he wrote “the Word was God”.[7]

 

The Word, a metaphorical title for the human person Jesus of Nazareth, was God? Which God, or who, was the sent human person Jesus of Nazareth to be regarded as? Which God does the Gospel of John declare was seen or perceived when people saw Jesus? Mainstream Christianity insists it was “God the Son”, someone never mentioned in the Bible. The Gospel of John says Jesus was the Father because Jesus was God’s unique agent Son whose presence was to be understood as the virtual presence of God.

 

Agency, agency, agency.  The God that the human person Jesus was – again, not ontologically but as a sent messenger bearing the authority, power and very presence of the one who sent him – the God that the human person Jesus was -- was the Father. The Word, the human person Jesus was God the Father.

 

Bibliography and Resources:

 Johnson, Aubrey Rodway. The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God. 2nd edition. University of Wales Press, 1961.

 Macdonald, W.G. Christology and ‘The Angel of the Lord.’ Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation, ed. Hawthorne, Eerdmans. 

Salinger, T. Pre-incarnate Appearances of the Son of God in the Old Testament: Truth or Myth

https://letthetruthcomeoutblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/23/pre-incarnate-appearances-of-the-son-of-god-in-the-ot-truth-or-myth-part-1/

Zondervan. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Set: Old Testament. Edited by John H. Walton. SLP edition. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academic, 2009.

  

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[1]Modalist/oneness folks, who are also deity of Christ believers, believe in a one-self not a three-self God. For modalist/oneness believers, the one-self God has appeared in different modes, like an avatar. Oneness/modalist believers as well seem to either ignore or are unfamiliar with the reality of biblical agency.

[2]Attempts to explain why one God-person can be seen and other God-persons cannot be seen, fall flat. And, all such efforts directly contradict the Gospel of John’s statement that “no man has ever seen God”.

[3] Zondervan, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary Set. Grand Rapids, 2009.

[4] The angel of the LORD spoke in the first person, "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude", but it is the LORD (Yahweh) who is making the promise.

[5] Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God. University of Wales Press, 1961.

[6] Compare Matt.20:20-21 and Mark 10:35-37 for another example of agency. In Matthew’s account James and John’s mother appeal to Jesus. Mark records the incident as if James and John were personally present.

[7] Past tense: “was God”, not “is God”, because the author is declaring that the human Jesus represented God in the historical events he is about to describe.