Lisa Fields: Hello. Welcome to the Jew three Project podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Fields. I’m the founder of the Jew three Project. Well, thank you for watching another episode of the Jude three Project podcast. As always, I’m your host, Lisa Fields, the founder of the Jude three Project. And today, I’m joined by another special guest, doctor Mikel Del Rosario. Did I get that right? Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for joining us. Tell our audience a little bit about who you are.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. I’m I’m doctor Michel Del Rosario. I’m a professor of bible and theology at the Moody Bible Institute, and I have a podcast called the Apologetic Sky Show. And a big passion of mine is helping Christians find clear answers to tough questions about God, Jesus, and the bible, and then helping them also to better explain their faith with both courage and also compassion.
Lisa Fields: Yes. That’s awesome. I’m glad to have you on the podcast. I remember seeing your book some time ago and thinking, man, I wanna get him on the podcast. Your book is Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? And, that’s a a very critical and important question for for believers. There’s a lot of talk in, just cultural spaces. I think about there was a hip hop artist. I wanna say his name is NLE Chopper, an NBA Youngboy who was on a popular podcast, show recently and was making the claim, he didn’t understand the idea of Jesus being God. And so there’s a lot of cultural conversation. I’m seeing a lot of clips on social media pop up about this claim, and people not understanding the divinity of Jesus, having a low Christology as we would as we would say in seminary, theological language. Talk about why you wanted to tackle this subject
Mikel Del Rosario: first. Yeah. It really is, such a big question. I’ve got it from a lot of people. And, one time there was a person, I’ll just give you one example, who attended church regularly, but yet wanted to raise this idea of where where do we even get this idea that Jesus is God? And I had my bible out of the table, and I started to talk about who Jesus claimed to be. And she takes my bible, and she says, according to this, Jesus never claimed to be God. And this is so surprising. At least it was surprising to me because a lot of people in the church are reading skeptical scholarship or being led astray by new religious movements and, believing that Jesus isn’t God. In fact, Lifeway Ligonier Ministries did a study, in 2022. It came out that forty three percent of people who identified as evangelicals and went to church, regularly according to the poll, agreed that with this statement that Jesus is a great teacher, but he is not God. 43%. That was just blew my mind. And so, this is a very important topic now, not only just personally with people who ask me questions, but as we’ve seen even in in the polls that, there is a need in the church today to help people be able to understand, not only how Jesus claimed to be God in scripture, but how we can engage with those who aren’t sure if the Bible is giving us real history, and maybe they’ll say, well, maybe the Bible says it, but I’m not sure if that is actually what Jesus said. Like this woman said, if Jesus really said things like we see in John, like I and the father are one, in John 10, or before Abraham was, I am in John eight, then why don’t we see anything like that, any hint of a divine claim in the earlier gospels? So this is the kind of thing that skeptical scholars will sometimes try to pit the gospels against each other. So it’s really important that we help people learn how to engage on a historical level, as well as understand how Jesus claimed to be God in scripture.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. So let’s let’s get into it. Jesus being God, why the controversy or the skeptic?
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. For the well, I find that there’s, like, three different kinds of, directions people could go with that if somebody raises the question with me. I wanna ask them a question back and kinda find out where they’re coming from. Mhmm. So for some people, it’s a literary question. Like, I don’t just I just don’t know where in the bible Jesus claimed to be God. It might be more adversarial, like, well, why don’t you show me a place in the bible where Jesus says I am God. As if if you found a quote like that, that there’s some kind of respect that’s paid to the the scriptures, so it might be from a Muslim friend or from a Jehovah’s Witness, as if to say if we found a verse like that, well, then I would believe it. Right? But then that’s a literary question. There’s a historical question, though. So some people might say, well, maybe you can show me something in the Bible where Jesus is claiming to have divine authority, where he’s claiming to be God. But, I don’t know if that’s really giving me real history. So there might be a historical challenge that they have, and they’re just not sure if the Bible is telling us the truth about what Jesus actually said and what Jesus did. And then there’s a third category, which is the theological. There might be theological misunderstandings. For example, someone might say, if I see a bible verse where Jesus is hungry, or he got tired, or he got hurt, well then he can’t be God if he’s a man. But that’s not what the historic church teaches. The, the historic Christian teaching is Jesus is fully God and fully man. But sometimes there’s also on the other side where people will say, well, if I can’t find a a bible verse where Jesus is claiming to be God the father, well, then he never claimed to be God. See? And there’s another theological misunderstanding because the historic Christian church never taught that Jesus was claiming to be God the Father. In fact, there’s a distinction but a unity between God the Father and Jesus. Of course, that’s part of what we call the doctrine of the Trinity. So those are some of the misunderstandings people can have, and it’s important for us to know if they’re asking a literary question, a historical question, or if they have a theological, misunderstanding that we need to clear up for them.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. When when we talk about the theological misunderstanding, I mentioned, earlier, low Christology, high Christology. Can you just explain that for our audience?
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. So a high Christology would be seeing, so Christology is a study of Christ, the Messiah, the idea that Jesus is, as the historic church has always taught, that Jesus is fully god and fully man. And then the lower Christology would be to say, somehow god is less or sorry, Jesus is less than God. Somehow, he is, maybe a miracle worker, maybe a prophet, but, certainly not God almighty. And so that would be the the distinction to to make there between what we call high Christology, a recognition of Jesus’ full deity, and a lower Christology with something less than divine.
Lisa Fields: Yes. And this has been an ongoing conversation, in church history. I think of Arianism. Is it Sabellianism? Is that am I saying it right? I think I I I am. Yeah. Sabellianism. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to pull out my, seminary, teachings in my head. But as do you cover that in your book, that those kind of past controversies?
Mikel Del Rosario: Those don’t really come into play in the main part of the book. Later on, I do talk about some misunderstandings about Jesus. But in the book, I’m mostly focusing on, key events and key sayings in Jesus’ life the way a historian would approach it. So So before we even get into these theological controversies, that came later on, how did the Jewish enemies of Jesus hear what he said? How did they understand the things that he said? Because it wasn’t just his disciples actually who believed that he was making a divine claim. Even his enemies believed that he was claiming to be divine. And that’s something that I like to point out in my book and the angle that I like to take because a lot of studies really look at what Jesus’ disciples believed and then the theology of the early church and the creeds. But I wanted to look at let’s go back to the earliest miracle story and the earliest gospel when the scribes were there. What did they think when they heard Jesus claiming to forgive sins, for example? So historians love to find those kinds of things where someone who’s not even, part of the movement, not trying to make Christianity look good, what are they, asserting about what Jesus said? How did Jesus come across both to his, Jewish followers, but also to his Jewish adversaries? And I think that really helps us make that link between Jesus, the belief the early Christian belief in Jesus as a divine figure and the things he actually said about himself. Because there’s a connection there that we can demonstrate historically, because certain things that Jesus said and did were perceived by his Jewish adversaries as being unparalleled claims to have divine authority.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. No. I think that’s really helpful. I I think when people read the text, they they’re thinking through, their own lens. And so they they don’t see in some some criticism, they don’t see divine claims because they’re not reading it through Jewish lenses. Let’s talk about how it would hit the audience that Jesus was talking to back then. Can you walk us through some of those those verses that you think are really critical for us to understand?
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. In the book, I start out with the earliest miracle story and the earliest gospel to be written, which most scholars believe is the gospel according to Mark. And so especially for those critical scholars who don’t see the Bible as the word of God, what it does in the minds of historians when we go back to these things, is it for them, it says, well, there’s less chance for legend to creep in and begin changing the details of the story. So, okay, let’s take a look at that. And, again, if this is great for those who who don’t see the Bible as God’s word because you can approach it like a historian, and they might say, you know, I’m not religious, but I’m into history. So I’ll think about that historically, and it might be a nice little way in. So Jesus is, teaching in a house here, Mark chapter two, and all of a sudden his teaching is interrupted. Your listeners might be familiar with the story, and, there’s these four friends who lower one of their friends on a mat, and the man is paralyzed. And the scribes are there too, and they’re looking everybody’s looking on, like, what’s Jesus gonna say now? And Mark chapter two verse five, Jesus comes up to him, and obviously, he’s there for healing, but Jesus says, son, your sins are forgiven. And this is such an important claim, a saying of Jesus that’s well attested, and it’s saying that Jesus can actually do the things that God can do. So the scribes who were there thought he was blaspheming. Why does this man speak like that? He’s blaspheming. Who can forgive sins except God alone? So to them, what Jesus was doing was taking a divine prerogative, making himself too close to God by saying he could do the things that God does, acting like God and speaking like God. And then Jesus says, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins, tells the paralytic, until you get up and walk. And when the paralytic gets up and walks, it’s actually evidence that Jesus does have authority on Earth to forgive sins, evidence that the scribes, knew that was just a thing that God did, that only God has the authority to forgive sins. No prophet ever said that, no priest ever said that, even these Greco Roman miracle workers, there’s no evidence of any of them even purporting to forgive sins. So this is pretty novel, pretty outstandingly unique in Jewish, history and in Jesus’ time period, even in the the Greco Roman world. So Jesus is acting like God does, and he’s speaking like God does. Here, he’s claiming to have implicitly, he’s claiming to have authority on Earth to forgive sins, and that’s not a human thing. That’s a divine claim.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s important to note for our audience, like, that Jesus is making divine claims about himself, when some people that are critical are like, let me see verses where Jesus said, I am God. You know, they wanna see it explicitly. How do you respond when that is what they are looking for?
Mikel Del Rosario: Mhmm. Well, first, we wanna ask, well, why does Jesus have to say it like that? As if that’s the only way to say it. Maybe that’s the way you would claim to be God if, you were gonna say, I am God in you know, as an American or as a a twenty first century person. But that’s not Jesus’ context. And he went about revealing his identity in a different way. We shouldn’t confuse the existence of a claim with the directness of a claim. So, like, in the later, sayings in John where Jesus says, I and the father are one, or before Abraham was, I am, these kinds of things where the Jews are picking up stones to stone him, and they are the ones who are saying, you, a mere man, claim to be God. So clearly, the Jewish people who heard him got the message loud and clear. And Jesus didn’t correct them. He was like, guys, I didn’t really mean it like that. No. I was just claiming to be a prophet or a priest or something like that. But I think that Jesus didn’t say these words, these direct words, I am God. Because one, he didn’t want to be confused with, being a rival deity to God the Father. He did not want to claim to be the same person as God the Father. He’s introducing slowly the concept of what we would call today divine persons within the Godhead, in this the Jewish, view of God. He’s introducing this idea there’s unity, but there’s also a distinction between him as a divine person and the father as a divine person. But he’s doing it implicitly, so we need to appreciate how Jesus is working in the gospels and how implicit claims were heard loud and clear by his Jewish audience. So, for example, today, one example I’d like to give is if I told you, Lisa, I’m married, that would be a very direct claim to be married. But I could also say, you know, Lisa, it was our twenty sixth wedding anniversary, and then we went and did this. Well, that’s an implicit claim to be married. I could even just wear a wedding ring and not say anything. By wearing a wedding ring, I’m acting like a married person. If I tell you about our twenty sixth wedding anniversary, I’m speaking like a married person. And that’s what Jesus is doing. He’s speaking like God. He’s acting like God. In the Jewish mind, you know who does the things God does? Only God. So for example, here, Jesus is forgiving and healing, the healing of the paralytic. He forgives the man’s sins. Note he does that first, actually, which is kind of cool. He prioritizes the man’s spiritual state before physical healing. But he forgives and heals. And in Psalm 103 it says, blessed be the Lord who forgives all your sins and heals. He’s acting just like God does, so that’s how He’s showing His deity.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. No. I think that’s that’s really helpful. There’s this, trying to I think it’s the the idea of the trinity, and God is confusing to a lot of people. Right? That’s where this conversation comes out of. Like, are you saying there are three gods? You know, that’s a critical thing. Are you saying Jesus is another god? Is this polytheism, not monotheism? Mhmm. All of that kind of comes into the conversation when we’re talking about Jesus’ divinity. Yeah. Did did you wanna say anything to that?
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. I think there’s the the theological side now. If people have a theological misunderstanding about what the trinity is, is it three gods and one god, or is it one person who’s also three persons? It seems pretty contradictory. I think we just need to help them clarify what the Bible actually teaches. And this is where the historic creeds come in, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Right? Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the father, all of that, right, that we learn about in seminary. So if we wanna be very technical about it, we could say God is an infinite, undivided, divine essence, eternally existing as three persons, the father, the son, and the holy spirit. But if you don’t necessarily want to get all technical with people with the substance and person language, you can just show them in scripture, Jesus’ baptism, for example. Here’s a great example. You have Jesus being baptized, you have the voice from heaven saying, this is my son, and then you have the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. The Father is not being baptized, Jesus is not descending, so they’re not each other, they’re distinct, and yet we only have one God, where the Holy Spirit is called God. Acts chapter five, for example, where Ananias and Sapphira, you’ve not lied to men, you’ve lied to God. Right? So we have verses like that that talk about the deity of each one, of the persons. Paul can outright call Jesus God. Titus two thirteen. He can talk about our great God and savior, Jesus Christ, or Romans nine five, he can say, Christ who is God overall. But there’s also a distinction to be made there between the father and Jesus, and I think Paul and even Peter, do this really well by reserving most of the time, the word Lord, Kyrios for Jesus, and Theos, these are Greek words for God, Theos, and then Kyrios for the Lord, and Kyrios for Jesus, and then Theos, God for the Father. And that’s not like to demote Jesus to a different word because Kyrios, the Lord, is how the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, translates the divine name YHWH from the Old Testament. So when we say Jesus is Lord, you think about Christmas time, we sing, Oh come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord, the profundity of that is actually pretty mind blowing if you think about what you’re saying because Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, is Yahweh. That you’re saying Jesus, the Messiah, is God. That’s who the Lord is, Kyrios. And so Peter does that. I could just go on and on here. You know, the first very first sermon ever preached on the day of Pentecost, Peter’s quoting Joel. He says, everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, then he calls Jesus Lord. Jesus is the Lord that you have to call upon, and then 3,000 people got saved. So pretty amazing, the first apologetic sermon for Jesus as Lord and Messiah.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. When we think about this, I think people don’t realize when they’re believers, if they deny divinity of the divinity of Jesus, what they lose. Talk about the the Christianity hinges on Jesus being God. To do this the the work of salvation, their niece he there’s a necessity for him being God. Just can you break that down so people can understand the importance? Because I think some people are like, oh, this is a theological idea. It doesn’t matter if I believe it or if I don’t. I could still be a Christian. Talk about the essentialness for it as a believer. And then I guess we could go into after that, what what come what false teaching comes from that? Because a lot of, false teaching comes from that. A lot of, what we would say, different, I guess, offshoots of Christianity that have Christian language like a, Jehovah Witness, or we would call that, a Christian cult in some spaces or Mormonism, all kind of have offshoots, but those offshoots come from the misunderstanding of Jesus’ divinity. So
Mikel Del Rosario: can we talk about that? Yeah. Let’s start with the importance of Jesus, deity for salvation. First of all, I told the story about the healing of the paralytic. Jesus claims to have authority on earth to forgive sins. Mhmm. To come to faith, you at least at minimum have to believe that Jesus has authority to forgive your sins. Yes. And who does that? Only God can forgive sins. This is what the scribes were talking about. There’s no such thing as third party forgiveness in the Jewish tradition and even outside in the Greco Roman world. And what I mean by that is, Lisa, if I did something to you, I could say, hey. I’m really sorry, Lisa. Can you forgive me? Please forgive me for that. And you could do that, but I can’t ask you to forgive me for something I did to my son. That’s not how that works. Right? So it’s only the one who’s offended who can forgive. Now, ultimately, all sin is an offense against God. So, ultimately, God is the one who does that kind of forgiving of all sins, sins in general, just like Psalm one zero three says, blessed be God, who forgives all your sins and heals. And Jesus is doing both here in Mark chapter two. But if Jesus isn’t really, fully human, then He can’t be our representative, and if He isn’t fully God, then He can’t save us because He would owe His own debt to God for, for His own sins, right? And so we need the holiness of Jesus, His full humanity to represent us, and then His full deity because the only person who can pay the debt pay an infinite debt in a finite period of time is a person who is infinite. We’re not infinite, and so it is only God actually who is infinite. And so since, we are the ones who sinned, not God, this is why Jesus took on a human nature so he could be the new representative of mankind, live a sinless life, and then in a short period of time, actually pay back an infinite debt to the infinite, being that, you know, we have offended. So Saint Anselm of Canterbury wrote about this in a little book called Kordeus Homo or Why the God Man? Why did Jesus have to become a man? Why did God have to become a man in, talking about Jesus here? And it’s because, and, yeah, in his view, it has to do with the being that you offend. So if you, you know, commit a crime against somebody, you’ll have to pay back. Let’s say you, ran over somebody’s pet or something, you would have to pay a certain fee fine for that, pay damages to them. If you murdered a person, you might get the death penalty. There’s nothing else greater you can give but your own life. Well, what if you offend an infinite God? How could you possibly pay back an infinite debt? Even if you got infinity years away from God, you would never pay that debt off. And so that’s why we have Jesus, who is himself infinite, who could pay that penalty in a finite period of time, and the resurrection is proof that the debt has been paid. Peter, in his Pentecost speech, he he shows that the, the resurrection and ascension, almost like one event to him, is a vindication of Jesus’ claim for himself, that Jesus claims to be divine, and that is vindicated in the resurrection and the ascension. He is at the right hand of the father, like he said he would be. He’s pouring out the Holy Spirit, and he is the Lord that we need to call upon to be saved. So the resurrection is the vindication of Jesus’ divine claim. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. And as we think about the when we strip Jesus of his divinity in our own mind, it produces, it leads us into air. Right? Mhmm. Around faith. This is when we talk about, Mormonism or Jehovah Witness or maybe Hebrew Israelism. Just different different, beliefs that usually get the divinity of Jesus wrong. Mhmm. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Mikel Del Rosario: Sure. Let’s take, Jovah’s Witnesses just as an example, a case study. There’s a lot of Jovah’s Witnesses here out on the Mag Mile. I’m down here in Downtown Chicago on the Magnificent Mile. There’s, maybe people have seen these, magazine stands that they have, or they come knocking on your door wanting to talk about Jesus as the greatest man who ever lived. In fact, there’s a little pamphlet that they have or a little booklet called Jesus the Greatest Man. But we believe he’s more than a man, not just a human being. Some might say he’s Michael the Archangel. It’s probably the higher way that the some Watchtower people talk about him, Jehovah’s Witnesses talk about him. And so when witnesses come to the door, I live in a in an apartment now, but when I was visiting, a relative out in California, these, Jovis witnesses came to the door to talk. And I have this approach called the honesty approach, where I just am completely honest with them, and your viewers can do this too. And I tell them, you know, I never I don’t see myself as ever even considering joining the Watchtower. I can never see myself becoming a Jehovah’s Witnesses, or joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness because after reading the Bible, I just have too high of a view of Jesus. And can you help me understand how it is that your organization teaches that Jesus is less than Almighty God, when it seems like the scriptures teach that he is almighty God? And then we take a look at some texts, and I just wanna hear, how it is that their church can can teach that. And one text that, we look at is in Romans, or sorry, not Romans, or Revelation, the beginning of Revelation where God says, I’m the alpha and the omega, and that’s that’s just Jehovah if you ask them who that is. But then when you go to the end of Revelation, again, God is saying, I am the alpha and the omega and the First and the Last. Is there any other No, it’s just Jehovah, so you ask them to clarify this. But but then the speaker goes on to say, I, Jesus, have sent my angel. And so that is a difficult text for them to kind of explain, why it is that Jesus, here is speaking when it says, I’m the Alpha and the Omega. So, but the problem is that Jesus is being demoted to less than almighty God here, and that’s that low Christology that we’re talking about. Again, if he’s not fully God, he can’t save us, and if he’s not fully human, he can’t be our representative. And so we need to defend both and be prepared to engage with both of those challenges, for Jesus’ deity and his humanity.
Lisa Fields: Yes. I would also like you to, for people who are engaging Mormonism, talk about the low Christology, in Mormonism as well.
Mikel Del Rosario: Yeah. Well, you want to ask the, Mormon missionary who comes to your door, who Jesus is. I love to take all these questions back to who is Jesus because that’s, that that is really the most important question in the world. And, the the answer to that could lead you to heaven. So I want to not bother with, you know, like with witnesses, should you celebrate your birthday or salute the flag or anything like that. Let’s talk about who Jesus is. And so when when Mormons wanna talk to you about who Jesus is, they it’s important to note that we use, similar language where we might talk about God and Jesus, but, ask them who Jesus is because you’ll find that we have a very different Jesus, Jesus who is the spirit brother of Lucifer in the Latter day Saints, worldview, God who is a man who became God, who had a father before him and a father before him and so forth, you know, into this, infinite regress of of, men who who became God. It’s really a very different, different thing. So, also, the the trinity is denied, so God the father and Jesus are separate beings. So we wanna make sure that, we understand the difference between when we say Jesus and when they say Jesus, so we wanna clarify that, Jesus is fully God, he’s fully man, and that there is only one God. We’re not polytheistic in our view of who God is. But according to the, the Mormon doctrine, we can all become gods just like, our heavenly father was once a man who became God, they will say. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. And so, I think those are critical conversations we must have in knowing who Jesus is. That’s why it’s so important to have the foundation, of understanding that Jesus is God in order to have these conversations with, these groups that believe differently around the divinity of Jesus. Like we like I communicated earlier, we cannot be saved without understanding Jesus’s divinity or accepting Jesus’s divinity. Like, that’s that’s a that’s a key component and essential. Mhmm. And so when people claim to be Christian with a low Christology, it it it really then we have to go back and reevaluate, like, their understanding of the belief altogether, and how salvation works. And so I think that’s that’s why this conversation is so critical in light of the data we’re seeing about Christians who don’t believe that Jesus died.
Mikel Del Rosario: Mhmm. So Jesus claimed to be, divine through a combination of his words and his deeds. So it’s not just looking at the things he said, but also looking at what he did. So just like healing the paralytic, and then forgiving sins. If you fast forward to the end of Jesus’ ministry, the passion week, he’s before Caiaphas, the high priest in Mark chapter 14, and he’s asked straight up, are you the Messiah? These false witnesses couldn’t, make sense together, and so Caiaphas just asked, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed? And Jesus’ answer is so important here. He says, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven. This is important for us to get because here Jesus is claiming to have divine authority to judge sins in heaven. Because, again, just like healing, and forgiving, if they’re thinking, well, only God can forgive sins, this is a divine claim. The Jewish council is thinking, who can judge sins? Only God can judge sins. This is another divine claim. So he’s claiming to even judge the sins of Caiaphas and the high priest, or who is the high priest and the council. And so Jesus is combining Daniel seven language here where, Daniel has this night vision where one like a son of man comes, and he he is given authority by the Ancient of Days, and all the nations of the world would worship him, and his kingdom will be unstoppable. Who is this person? It’s something that Jewish people are thinking about, this son of man, and Jesus likes to call himself the son of man. And he’s combining that with Psalm a 110 where, the Jewish king says, sit at my right hand, or rather the Lord says, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. It was a coronation Psalm for a Davidic king, but later it began to point to the ultimate eschatological King who is the Messiah. So he’s putting these things together and Caiaphas is thinking, and who are you? You’re going to judge us? Right? How dare you? Like, who can judge us? We’re God’s representatives on earth. But when Jesus claims to have divine authority in heaven to judge sins and on Earth to forgive sins, he’s claiming to have authority over all of reality. He is on the creator side of the creator creature divide. And this is one way Jesus claims to be God, by the way he speaks and the things that he does.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. No. That’s really, really important for us to know and helpful, for us to grow as believers in our understanding and being able to articulate and defend our faith. What in the book have we not discussed that you wanna highlight to our audience that you think is important for them to know?
Mikel Del Rosario: You know, this is not just an academic historical, or literary exercise. As you’ve already pointed out, it’s important to know who Jesus is, not only, factually, but spiritually as well for our own, our own salvation. And when we say Jesus is Lord, that’s a challenge not only to those who don’t see the Bible the same way, but it’s also a challenge to us as Christians. That when we say Jesus is Lord, we should ask ourselves what areas of our lives do we still have to give fully over to the lordship of Jesus. Mhmm. And that’s a thing we can do every day, and just, repent before the Lord and say, god, in this area of my life, I need to give you full lordship. And so it’s something that, I wanna show us there’s a personal dimension to this as well. Mhmm. So that’s on the personal side. On the evangelistic side, I think, the divine claim of Jesus is really important because when we talk about the resurrection, that’s actually the vindication of Jesus’ divine claim. Sometimes a lot of apologetics books will just focus on the resurrection, but not really give you the whole context and the backstory as to what the resurrection means. It means that Jesus really is who He claimed to be. He has authority in heaven and on earth over all of reality. And what we can show historically, we see Mark, giving us literarily a glimpse of what it looks like to have authority over all of reality. So in the opening chapters of Mark, he has authority over nature, he’s calming the waves, stilling the storm, only God does that in the Old Testament we see in the Psalms. God is the Lord over the waves and the wind. That’s why the people were saying, and who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? He has authority over nature, over demons, what human being can exercise a legion of demons and claim to bind Satan himself, over disease. He heals all kinds of people, and he even has, authority over death. And not just like, Elijah could pray to God and then he could heal a little girl who is dead and raise her from the dead. When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, he didn’t even pray, and he didn’t mention God. He just said, little girl, get up, Thaletha kum. And so this is what it’s like to have divine authority in heaven and on earth. He has authority over nature, over demons, disease, and death in all these different areas. That’s again what it looks like to have divine authority over heaven and earth. So there’s a a personal dimension to that. There’s a salvific dimension to that. So it’s not just for those who don’t know the Lord, but it’s also for us as well to be challenged to really give our lives over to the lordship of Jesus.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. No. That’s thank you so much for sharing. How can people get your book?
Mikel Del Rosario: Well, they can get it wherever they get books. Amazon.com is a pretty popular place to get it. It’s on Amazon, in print, in Kindle, and we have an audiobook as well there, on Audible. It’s also on Logos Bible Software if there are Logos users, and Christian book, Barnes and Noble, all the places.
Lisa Fields: Yes. So make sure you get, his book, Did Jesus Really Say He Was God? It’s an important question you need to be able to answer as a believer and be able to to be able to contend, and defend your faith. How can people get in contact with you on social media? Are you on social media? Go to yes. They can go to my website, apologeticsguy.com,
Mikel Del Rosario: to find more about my show and all the things. Also, on all social media platforms, I’m at apologetic sky. At apologetic sky on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, x, all the places.
Lisa Fields: Alright. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank y’all for tuning in for another episode of the G three Project Podcast. You can catch all our past episodes at g3project.org, on our YouTube channel, wherever you stream your favorite podcast. Remember, we cannot do what we do without generous support from people like you. So consider becoming a monthly partner, a one time giver by going to our website, ju3project.org/donate. We have courses, curriculum, all the things, available there. Until next time, grace and peace and God bless.