Who Do You Say That I Am, James Talarico? Part I: Two Key Reasons Why Talarico Has Missed the Divine Jesus
Series Introduction: James Talarico is not the first politician to invoke the Christian faith or the Bible to score political points. He is, however, the first I am aware of who has been enrolled in seminary while running for office. Talarico is certainly popular among prospective voters, but he has received significant scrutiny by pastors and academics because of his theological statements. He may be a faithful representative of his denomination, but he has brought the views of that denomination into the limelight due to the widespread publicity of his senatorial race.
We do not elect political candidates for their religious beliefs, though we may have reason to support or oppose a candidate when their religious beliefs affect their policy positions. Talarico is a politician and not a pastor, and the focus of his campaign is certainly not doctrinal precision. He has, however, positioned his faith and seminary background as a foundational driver behind the policies he supports. If you visit his campaign website or watch almost any of the interviews he has given in the last year, it is one of the first things you will hear. He speaks with Christian conviction and presents himself as an authority on biblical teaching.
Despite his tone of authority, James Talarico badly misunderstands or misrepresents biblical truth. While I am concerned about several of his policy positions, I will concentrate this series on the unbiblical doctrines he holds that inform those positions. Nearly every book of the New Testament warns that we must be wary of false teaching. As Jude aptly put it, we are to “contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). Doctrinal clarity and precision matter. This is not just about the current political moment in Texas and the nation; it is about an accurate understanding of the gospel and the eternal destiny of souls.
Article Introduction
During a rebuke against Christian nationalism posted on Oct 27, 2024, Talarico said, “not once in the entire Bible did Jesus ask us to worship him. All he asks is that we follow him.”[1] While the context of Talarico’s statement dealt with perceived abuses by the religious right, the result reaches far beyond his original target. If Jesus does not warrant worship, then the implication is that he is not divine. Even in later interviews, Talarico says little to correct this. He told Joe Rogan that the incarnation is not limited to Jesus but extends to all since “everybody bears the image of the sacred,” confusing the proper meaning of being made in God’s image with God himself literally taking on human form.[2] Whatever he actually believes, his statements imply that Jesus is in essence the same as everyone else. This contradicts the core confession of the church since its beginning (e.g., Rom 10:9; Phil 2:6), and, as we will see, is inconsistent with Jesus’s own self-understanding in the Gospels. His use of the Christological titles as well as his exercise of divine authority in several spheres demonstrates that Jesus of Nazareth believed he was none other than God himself.[3]
The Christological Titles
The “Christological Titles” refer to the important labels attributed to Jesus that define his identity. Normally, three are discussed: Christ, Son of God, and Son of Man. However, given that χριστός (christos) by itself does not necessarily communicate anything more than an earthly Messiah, and since Jesus’s messianic identity will be dealt with in a future installment in this series, we will focus greater attention on Son of God and Son of Man.[4]
Son of God: Although “Son of God” could be taken as analogous to Christ—i.e., God’s appointed king, just as Solomon is referred to as God’s son in 2 Sam 7:14—Jesus uses the title in a unique way that expresses an extraordinarily close relationship with the divine compared to what a human king could ever realistically claim. This can be seen clearly in Jesus’ words in the Parable of the Tenants in Luke 20:9–15 (cf. Matt 21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12). Jesus often taught about God and the Kingdom in parables, but on this occasion, he used a parable to make a dramatic point about his relationship to God in contradistinction to the religious leaders in Israel:
“A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.” (Mk 12:1-8, ESV)
The parable alludes to Isa 5:1–7, in which the planter of the vineyard is God and the vineyard represents Israel. In the parable, the servants represent God’s prophets, and the tenants are the religious leadership.[5] Given the context of Luke 20:9–15 and Mark 12:1-8, Jesus is undeniably equating himself with the son who is sent last, the Son of God himself. The force of this attribution is startling; if God is divine and Jesus is his unique son—not just a servant but a son—what does that say about Jesus?
Jesus’s use of filial language is another key factor in interpreting the Son of God title, and a characteristic of his ministry was his frequent reference to God as “Father.” There was some precedent for thinking of God as a Father in the Hebrew Scriptures. He was understood as the father of all creation (e.g., Deut 32:6), and he certainly served in a paternal role to the nation of Israel who protected but also disciplined his children (Deut 1:30–31, 8:2–5, 14:1; Jer 31:9; Isa 63:16–17, 64:8). But Jesus uses the term in a much more intimate way and amplifies the relationship beyond what a mortal could say. Consider Matt 11:27: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Similarly, in John 14:6 Jesus remarks that “No one comes to the Father except through me.” What kind of relationship does Jesus have with God if he as the Son is the gatekeeper of all knowledge and access to Father? Jesus makes another startling claim of unity with the divine in John 10:30, stating plainly that “the Father and I are one.” The gravity of this remark was clearly understood by the Jewish leaders, who attempted to stone Jesus for saying it (John 10:31–33; cf. John 5:16–18). They understood exactly who he was claiming to be, and—contra Talarico—it certainly was not an ordinary image bearer.
Son of Man: Next, we consider “Son of Man.” This was Jesus’s favorite designation for himself. It appears roughly eighty times across the four Gospels, and it is only once invoked as a confessional title by anyone elsewhere (by Stephen just before he is martyred). Barring that single exception, it only appears on the lips of Jesus himself.[6] Some have argued that Jesus is simply using an idiomatic expression to say that he is just a human (a son of man, or the son of a man), thus dispensing with any allegations of divinity (cf. Ezek 2:1, 3, 6, etc.).[7] But that cannot be the case here; its use in context with the Greek article suggests Jesus is using the phrase in a monadic, one-of-a-kind sense.[8] The Son of Man is a title.
Dan 7:13–14 provides the primary background for Jesus’s Son of Man sayings:
“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”
Far from describing an ordinary man, this Son of Man is an eschatological figure who is given glory, power, and complete dominion over all creation directly from the Ancient of Days—that is, from God. Bock notes that “this figure, who shares God’s authority, is a regal-like representative for the nation [of Israel] who is given judging authority and divine prerogative, even though he is described in comparison to a human figure.”[9] This fact warrants significant emphasis; the OT teaches on more than one occasion that God will never share his glory with another, and yet this figure does share in his glory (e.g., Isa 42:8, “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other”). The implication is that the Son of Man is himself divine.[10]
That his Son of Man sayings should be understood as allusions to the Danielic vision is clear in the Jewish examination of Jesus just before his crucifixion found in Mark 14:61–64 (cf. Matt 26:62–66 // Luke 22:66–71):
“But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’ And the high priest tore his garments and said, ‘What further witnesses do we need? You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?’ And they all condemned him as deserving death.”
Note the similarities between Christ’s words and Daniel 7. Jesus as the Son of Man will come upon the clouds just as the figure did in Daniel’s vision. Even this by itself is significant: In the ancient world, no one rides upon the clouds except for the divine.[11] Furthermore, Jesus claims the same authority as the eschatological Son of Man in his juxtaposition of Dan 7:13 alongside Ps 110:1: “The LORD says to my Lord; sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The “Power” that Jesus refers to in Mark 14:62 is a reverential circumlocution—a euphemism—that replaces the original “YHWH” in the psalm (cf. Caiaphas using the euphemism, “the Blessed” to refer to God in v. 61).[12] Thus, Jesus claimed that as the Son of Man, he would sit at the right hand of God and share in his authority and glory. Not just anyone can sit in God’s presence; only a few mortals are ever given the privilege to even enter God’s physical presence (e.g., Adam, Abraham, Moses), and they would never be said to sit at God’s right hand. As Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace observe, the Jewish priests could not even enter the earthly Holy of Holies (i.e., the inner sanctum of the temple) except on a specific day in the year—the day of Atonement. By contrast, Jesus is claiming to enter the heavenly Holy of Holies, the very presence of God himself, and sit down.[13] Thus, Bock says that “it is the juxtaposition of seating and coming on the clouds that makes clear the transcendent function Jesus gives himself here. . . making it apparent that more than a purely human and earthly messianic claim is present.”[14] This incredible scene brings together all three of the Christological titles in a powerful and shocking way. And none of this was lost on Caiaphas. Jesus’s claim to possess divine authority is so explicit that the high priest tears his robes, cries blasphemy, and condemns him to death.
Jesus’s examination by the Sanhedrin is not the only place where he draws on this imagery. In Mark 13:26–27, he speaks of the Son of Man riding the clouds in great glory and exercising dominion in gathering his elect from the four corners of the world. Luke 12:8–9 highlights the Son of Man’s eschatological authority in proposing that he will acknowledge and deny people before God and his council of angels, that his word can affect the standing of any person in God’s sight. In each case, context is clear that Jesus is talking about himself and not someone else. Therefore, we may safely conclude that his employment of the Son of Man epithet is not a humble insinuation that he is merely a human being. On the contrary, it more than either of the other Christological titles elevates his self-understanding through the roof of mortality and straight into deity. If anyone commands worship, it is the Son of Man.
Exercise of Divine Authority
In addition to the implicit claims to deity made through Jesus’ use of the Christological titles, we can also infer his divine self-understanding through specific actions involving the exercise of authority ordinarily reserved for God alone. Jesus’ appropriation of divine authority has been suggested already, particularly in connection with the Son of Man title, but there is more to be said by examining three particular types of authority that he demonstrated: (1) authority to forgive sins; (2) authority as a teacher; and (3) authority over people’s eternal destinies.
Authority to Forgive Sin: One of the most important and controversial ways in which Jesus exercised divine authority involved his statements concerning the forgiveness of sins. Any orthodox Jewish person knew that the prerogative to forgive sins rested with God alone, and so it is not surprising that Jesus’s statements elicited shock from his detractors.[15] The episode involving his healing of the paralytic in Mark 2:1–12 (cf. Matt 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26) provides a key example. Prior to his miracle of healing, Jesus told the paralytic that his sins were forgiven; indeed, Jesus suggests that the healing itself was only performed as a sign “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10). The miracle was confirmation of his divine prerogative. Though ignoring the sign, the significance of the claim was not lost upon the scribes present, who believed Jesus to be blaspheming by claiming authority that only God possessed. That, of course, was precisely the point.
Luke 7:36–50 recounts a similar exchange, this time in the house of Simon the Pharisee. While reclining for a meal, we are told that a woman who was labeled a “sinner” entered the home and anointed Jesus’s feet with expensive perfume, wiping them with her hair. Simon showed typical pharisaic indignation that Jesus permitted this, which, after a short dialogue, prompted Jesus to pronounce forgiveness for the woman’s sins both to Simon and to her directly (Luke 7:47–50). As in Mark 2, the significance of this was not lost on those nearby, who “began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’” Jesus’s authority to forgive sins strongly implies his deity. Talarico must fight an uphill battle to somehow explain how a normal image bearer could possibly possess the right to forgive sins.
Authority as a Teacher: Jesus’s divine identity can also be inferred from his authority as a teacher. Jewish teachers and interpreters of the Law did not speak on their own authority but only ever behalf of God or tradition. Recall the characteristic formula employed by the OT prophets: “Thus says the Lord,” (כֹּ֥ה אָמַ֖ר אֲדֹנָ֣י יְהוִ֑ה; kōʾ ʾāmar ʾădōnāy YHWH; e.g., Isa 7:7; Jer 7:20; Ezek 2:4). Later Jewish teachers like the scribes and Pharisees diligently abided by this practice of clearly delineating their words from words spoken on God’s authority.[16]
Notably, Jesus does not do this. He speaks definitively and of his own authority. Rather than saying, “thus says the Lord,” Jesus says, “ἀμήν (amēn, “truly” or “I am telling you the truth”), I say to you.” This elicited surprise in those who heard him. Consider passages Matt 7:28–29 (cf. Mark 1:21–22 // Luke 4:32): “And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.” There was a marked difference between the way that Jesus taught versus the traditional method of rabbinic teaching. Ben Witherington suggests that Jesus’s manner of teaching reveals that “he considered himself to be a person of authority above and beyond what prophets claimed to be. He could attest to his own truthfulness and speak on his own behalf, and yet his words were to be taken as having the same or greater authority than the divine words of the prophets.”[17]
Not only did Jesus’s style of teaching emanate authority, but so also did the content of his teaching. Jesus intensified previous instruction, even from the Torah. Several examples of this phenomenon are found in the Sermon on the Mount. In Matt 5:21–48, Jesus takes various traditional stipulations from the Law and pronounces enhancements of them. For example, not only is physical murder condemned but so also is uncontrolled anger (Matt 5:21–22), and even looking at another person with lust is labeled as adultery of the heart (Matt 5:27–28). The question his hearers were surely asking was simply this: Who is this man that he can define the proper interpretation of the Law on the basis of his own authority? A similar reaction would have been occasioned by his teachings on divorce, in which Jesus overturned the Mosaic statute that was in place (Mark 10:2–12; cf. Matt 19:3–12, also 5:31–32):
“And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’ They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.” And Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’” (Mark 10:2-9).
Who is Jesus that he can supersede Moses? Commenting on this pericope as well as the many other authoritative teachings recorded in Matthew, Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner writes, “No one can encounter Matthew’s Jesus without concurring that before us in the evangelist’s mind is God incarnate.”[18] In claiming authority to define and intensify the Torah, Jesus appeared to be arrogating to himself authority that belonged to God alone.
Authority over Eternal Destiny: Finally, Jesus’s implicit claim to divinity can be seen in his role as the arbiter of people’s eternal destinies. One of the most astounding of these sayings comes in Mark 8:38: “For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Multiple elements of this pronouncement are astonishing. First, if it is accepted that Jesus is referring to himself with this Son of Man epithet, then once again we have an allusion to the glorified divine figure of Daniel 7:13–14, as discussed in more detail above.[19] Second, we have a clear statement that eschatological judgments will be made based upon people’s reaction to Jesus (cf. John 5:22). Craig hits the nail on the head:
“Make no mistake: if Jesus were not divine, then this claim could only be regarded as the most narrow and objectionable dogmatism. For Jesus is saying that people’s salvation depends on their confession to Jesus himself.”[20]
The same sentiment can be seen in Jesus’s commissioning of the seventy-two in Luke 10:16: “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Again, Jesus indicates that one’s eternal destiny is tied to their identification (or lack thereof) with him, since rejection of “him who sent me”—God the Father—will certainly end poorly for the one doing the rejecting. Finally, consider this oft-quoted passage from the John 14:6–7: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also; from now on you know him and have seen him.” Not only is Jesus given delegated authority over judgment, but he also claims to be the exclusive mode of access to the Father. He, and he alone, is the ultimate arbiter of people’s eternal destinies. Operating within the Judaic worldview where there is only one God who passes judgment on the righteous and sinners, this could only mean one thing: Jesus was and is deity. Those sharing Talarico’s sentiment that Jesus never asked us to worship him ought to consider this carefully.
Conclusion
Jesus’s use of the Christological titles—Son of God and Son of Man—as well as his exercise of divine authority demonstrate that he regarded himself as not merely human, but divine. His manner of referring to himself in relation to the Father makes clear that he did not see himself as a “son of God” in a general sense, but in a unique way that no mortal—not even one made in the image of God—could claim. His use of Son of Man portrays him as a divine figure with eschatological authority; his sayings were astonishing to those who heard them and decried as blasphemy. He claimed the authority to forgive sins, a prerogative that belonged to God alone. His authority as a teacher exceeded that of a scribe, Pharisee, or prophet. He intensified the Law on his own authority, speaking not on the basis of tradition nor even on behalf of God in a prophetic sense. He understood himself as the arbiter of people’s eternal destinies. Thus, the situation is exactly as C.S. Lewis describes it in his famous trilemma:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[21]
To his credit, James Talarico says that Jesus is not just a great teacher in his tradition.[22] His claim, however, that Jesus did not ask us to worship him and his denial of the uniqueness of the incarnation effectively put Jesus in that category. These allegations fall flat. While he offers a kernel of truth in that the words “worship me” may not be explicit in the four Gospels, this implication is clearly present.[23] In word and deed, Jesus placed himself squarely in the divine category, assuming an exalted status that commands worship—and invites disaster for those who deny him.
References:
[1] Talarico’s post can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1000859498461019
[2] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOGPvMftb8&t=4798s, 40:16–41:30.
[3] There are, of course, many other avenues of evidence that could be explored in addition to these (e.g., the implications of many of Jesus’ rhetorical statements such as “there is no one good but God alone” in Mark 10:18), but space prevents an exhaustive study. The proofs explored here should be sufficient to demonstrate Jesus’ divine self-consciousness.
[4] This is not to suggest that “Christ” is not a key title in understanding Jesus—of course, it is hugely significant. However, when working specifically to establish Jesus’ deity, it is less helpful than the other titles.
[5] Darrell L. Bock, Jesus According to Scripture, 2nd ed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 424.
[6] C.F.D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977), 19.
[7] This suggestion has some merit since in Hebrew and Aramaic it can be an idiomatic way of referring to a human being, whether generically or with someone specific in mind; cf. Darrell L. Bock, “Son of Man,” pages 894–900 in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. by Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013), 894–895. That said, see above for the arguments concerning Jesus’s unique usage of the phrase.
[8] See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 1996), 223–24. Cf. Moule, Origin of Christology, 13. Note that Greek does not have an indefinite article, so just saying “the article” is equivalent to the definite article in English.
[9] Darrell L. Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation in Judaism: The Charges Against Jesus in Mark 14:53–65 (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1998), 150.
[10] Cf. The description of the Son of Man found in the Similitudes section of 1 Enoch; see 1 En. 37–71, in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 (New York; London: Yale University Press, 1983), 29–50.
[11] Bock, Jesus According to Scripture, 480, n117. Cf. Exod 14:20; Exod 34:5; Num 10:34; Ps 104:3; Isa 19:1.
[12] For background on the pronunciation of the divine name when quoting Scripture, and whether Jesus actually did so here, see Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, 197–99.
[13] Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2006), 178.
[14] Bock, Blasphemy and Exaltation, 201.
[15] Cf. Gruenler, Jesus is “consciously speaking as the voice of God on matters that belong only to God… the evidence clearly leads us to affirm that Jesus implicitly claims to do what only God can do, to forgive sins…” Royce Gordon Gruenler, New Approaches to Jesus and the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982), 46, 59.
[16] William Lane Craig¸ Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 320.
[17] Ben Witherington III, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 65.
[18] Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 14.
[19] Context is clear that Jesus is referring to himself by the Son of Man sayings. However, there are some who contest this and suggest that Jesus understands the eschatological Son of Man as someone other than himself. Cf. Ehrman, The New Testament, 270; Ehrman says that there is “no indication” in Mark 8:38 that Jesus is referring to himself, but that assertion is completely untenable in light of the many other cases in Mark’s gospel where Jesus could not be referring to anyone besides himself—e.g., his confrontation with Caiaphas in Mark 14.
[20] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 326.
[21] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, in The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperOne, 2002), 50-51. Note the allusion to Thomas’s declaration, “my Lord and my God,” in John 20:28. Contrary to those like Talarico who deny that Jesus asked for worship, observe that Jesus accepts this worship from Thomas without reservation (cf. Matt 28:17; Luke 24:52).
[22] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jOGPvMftb8&t=4798s, 40:16–41:30.
[23] In fact, the Gospels fully imply that worship of Jesus is appropriate even using the language of “worship.” Ten times in Matthew, two in Mark, once in Luke, and once in John, the verb προσκυνέω (proskuneō, “to bow down, worship”) is used in reference to Jesus. Some of these occasions are feigned (Matt 2:8; Mark 15:19), and in several cases those bowing down probably acted better than they knew (Matt 2:2, 2:11, 9:18, 15:25, 20:20; John 9:38). However, as every student of the Bible should learn, Scripture must be read both forwards and backwards with a careful eye towards the literary artistry of its authors. All of these cases need to be refracted through the evangelists’ own framing. Their lens is often evident from the outset of their writing (e.g., John 1:1) and should inform how one reads the whole narrative.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke each record Satan’s temptations of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry (Matt 4:1–11 // Luke 4:1–13; cf. Mark 1:9–13), during which Satan challenges Jesus to bow down and worship him in exchange for dominion over the earth (Matt 4:8–9 // Luke 4:5–7). Whether Satan is overplaying his hand is a different matter, but what is significant for our purpose is that Jesus responds by quoting Deut 6:13: “You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him” (Matt 4:10 // Luke 4:8). The verb used by both Satan and Jesus is προσκυνέω.
Attuned to this fact, the reader must hold in their mind that only God should be the object of προσκυνέω every other time it is used, whether the “worshipper” realizes it or not. Thus, there is a running irony throughout the narrative(s). But when the disciples worship Jesus on the other side of the resurrection, their formerly blind eyes now see him for who he truly is (Matt 28:17; Luke 24:52)—or at least they are quickly moving that direction. Jesus is worthy of worship because Jesus is God. The parallelism is especially poignant in Luke; in Luke’s temptation account, Satan asks Jesus to worship him, and then upon his refusal takes him to Jerusalem and to the highest point of the temple for his final challenge (4:7–9). Upon Jesus’s ascension, the disciples worship him (24:52), and then they return to Jerusalem and went to the temple, blessing God (24:53). The sequential similarity is probably not a coincidence. Luke offers final closure to Satan’s challenge by literarily accentuating that proper worship belonged to Jesus—to God—and not Satan. For an excellent discussion of this narrative artistry and a comprehensive review of all the passages ascribing worship to Jesus in the NT, see Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2024), 105–22.
Recommended Resources:
Jesus, You and the Essentials of Christianity by Frank Turek (INSTRUCTOR Study Guide), (STUDENT Study Guide), and (DVD)
Correct not Politically Correct: About Same-Sex Marriage and Transgenderism by Frank Turek (Book, MP4, )
Legislating Morality: Is it Wise? Is it Legal? Is it Possible? by Frank Turek (Book, DVD, Mp3, Mp4, PowerPoint download, PowerPoint CD)
Was Jesus Intolerant? (DVD) and (Mp4 Download) by Dr. Frank Turek
Ryan M. Crews is a Bible teacher and ordained minister. He holds a Masters of Theology (ThM) from Dallas Theological Seminary where he received the Harold W. Hoehner Award in New Testament. His graduate studies concentrated in New Testament Studies and New Testament Textual Criticism, and he has previously been affiliated with the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM). His current research interests include the Gospels, Historical Jesus Studies, New Testament Use of the Old Testament, and Textual Criticism.
