Sunday, January 7, 2024

Acts 2:22-24 -- Jesus of Nazareth and God (Working on)

Acts 2:22 - "You men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, even as you yourselves know,
Acts 2:23 - him, being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed;
Acts 2:24 - whom God raised up, having freed him from the agony of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it.  -- World English.

Some trinitarians and some others may present Acts 2:22-24 as proof of the trinity, or as proof that Jesus is God Almighty, or possibly as proof of the alleged dual natures of Christ (hypostatic union). As yet, we haven't actually found any explanation as to how the words recorded in Acts 2:22,23 offers any proof that Jesus is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or that God is more than one person, or that Jesus is fully God (Supreme Being) and fully man (human being) at the same time.

In reality, "God" is presented as being only one person in these verses and Jesus is not presented as being "God" but rather the man through whom God performed miracles.

Evidently, the claim is that Acts 2:22 means that God is in Christ, and from this it is evidently imagined and assumed that Acts 2:21 is referring to their imagined and assumed assertion that Jesus is both fully God and fully man (dual natures of Christ, hypostatic union). 2 Corinthians 5:19; John 10:37,38 and John 14:7-11 are cited to support this imagined and assumed assertion. Of course, any idea of that Jesus had two natures at the same time has also to be imagined and assumed and then added to what is written in all the scriptures, since no such idea is presented in any of the scriptures cited.

In 2 Corinthians 5:18,19, "God" is only one person, and Jesus is the instrument that God uses to reconcile the world to Himself. John 10:37,38; 14:10,11 shows that Jesus is in God and that God is Jesus. However, said that his disciples are in him and that he is in his disciples, and prayed for his followers to be one in himself and his Father (John 17:21) He was not saying that his followers would be God Almighty as he is [allegedly] God Almighty. See our study: "God in Christ".

God willing, we will add an examination of claims related to "it was not possible that he should be held by it" later, and possibly some other claims.

Related to the scriptures above, some trinitarians will begin to cite many scriptures which they claim shows Jesus to be God Almighty, such as Mark 2:7;  John 1:1; John 8:58; John 20:28;  Hebrews 1:6; Hebrews 1:10, and many other scriptures. Of course, in none of these scriptures do we find that Jesus is identified as being Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As usually, one has created many assumptions beyond what is written and then add to those assumptions to, and read those assumptions into the scriptures in order to make the scriptures appear to be saying that Jesus is Jehovah, or that Jesus is a person of Jehovah, etc. Since we have examined most, if not all, the scriptures often presented elsewhere, we will not do such again here, but we refer one to our resources pages related to "Is Jesus God?"

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