• uniquely-ironic said on Jul 11, 2008....

  creation says we were made "in the image of god" so you might say we are all like god that way.

• skald said on Jul 11, 2008....

  Uni.  That is beautiful. Thank you. 

• fearing said on Jul 11, 2008....

  I find it interesting they are looking for the bones.  

• polarheart said on Jul 11, 2008....

  I also find the bone thing very interesting.  And I agree with you, Skald.  Jesus came to reconcile man to God the Father.  The following passage shows where Jesus, however stipulates the importance of believing in Himself, although He is speaking in the 3rd person.
   
  John 3
  10 Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
  18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”

• skald said on Jul 12, 2008....

  Fearing.  This was just a story and the Catholic church would have had a problem if it had been Christ because he went to heaven. He was not in the grave anymore. Well it turned all out right as it is in stories. Only the priest did not want to be with the church anymore after his experience. He found his superiors very selfish. Still he found god.
  
  Polar.  Yes, there he said clearly that he was here to teach us. He also said that the people of that time could not understand it all, neither can we. He said that you  should not perish but have everlasting life. That is something.
  He said clearly there that he is the son of god.
  There is still so much hatred in this world. Let's hope someday it will be less.
  
  He was also asked by the Jewish priests if he was messiah, the son of god. He said then, You said it.
  
  I did love my biblical stories  as a  child and I felt I was there  with the people in them.
  Later I read the whole bible twice. But I can not quote like you do. Thanks so much Polar this was a lovely quote.
  

• nytquill17 said on Jul 12, 2008....

  I do not know now if there is a biblical verse where Jesus himself says this (it's been too long now since I was involved at church) but I know that I was taught that Jesus was God in a way.  That is, there are three parts of God - God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  All different, but all one God.  The Holy Trinity.  Jesus was fully God and fully human, but he was not all of God.  Not everything there was of God, just one aspect of him.
  
  There is a legend that St. Patrick explained this to the Christians in Ireland with the example of a shamrock or 3-leaf clover.  Each leaf is separate and different yet all part of the same plant.
  
  I have also heard it explained this way.  Because the whole concept is confusing and difficult to understand.  How can someone be man and yet God?  Or how can God have three separate parts and still be a whole?  And the answer is that it is something beyond our complete comprehension and we just have to accept what we are told (I didn't like that part!)
  
  It was explained as, imagine if you are a stick figure living on a piece of paper.  Two dimensions.  And imagine that a ball, a sphere, somehow passes through the piece of paper where you live.  What would you see?  You would see a point when the ball first touched the paper, and then a small circle that gets bigger and bigger until the ball passes the middle and then the circle gets smaller and smaller, down to a point as the ball leaves the paper on the other side. 
  
  Now if someone told you that a third dimension exists and you had just seen a 3-dimensional object, you wouldn't be able to understand.  You could not picture a ball in your mind or comprehend a third dimension; it's beyond you.  You would just know you had seen a circle and someone told you it was really a ball.  That's what it was like for humans when Jesus came.  Our knowledge was so limited that we were not able to understand everything about him.  We only saw a very shallow part.
  
  Anyway those are some of the things I was taught, and I don't go to church now or follow Christianity, but when I did, I was taught well by some very smart people and it's fun sometimes to share these thoughts and ideas that I grew up with. :)
  

• skald said on Jul 12, 2008....

  Nytquill  Hope I spell your screen name correctly. thank you very much for your very well grounded answer. I know those teachings my self and I say that the church has made them years and hundred of years after Christianity was grounded. But they are good teachings.
  
  But the church has also interpreted things to it's favor. Still does. I do think that those things that we learned as children stick. Weather we follow them or not.
  
  As I said I think your answer was very good.
  

• curmudgeon said on Jul 12, 2008....

  From John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it...
  14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15(John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
   
  In this passage, Jesus (The Word) and God are inseparably tied together. Again, Jesus is referred to as "only Son".
   
  We need to remember that as closely held as it is, the doctrine of the Trinity is how major denominations within the Body of Christ describe God. Recall Jesus' question "Who do YOU say that I am?". The Trinity is one aspect of who we say that He is.
   
  I've heard it described this way - in life, to other people, we are father, mother, employer, employee, husband, wife, friend, taxpayer. We are one person or another based on how we relate with others. But it doesn't change the fact that we are essentially one person. 
   
  We can look at God as Creator of the world, God as love, provider of all things. We can look on Christ as God in the flesh, God's material manifestation in the world, God's human, physical expression of love, God's call to live in love with God and one another. We can look at the Holy Spirit as God's continuing work within us, the divine wind eternally hovering over the waters.
   
  They are not separated by function, but describe how we relate with God, how we experience in the world, in our lives.

• skald said on Jul 12, 2008....

  Curmudgeon.  Thank you very much for this. This contributes to this conversation and is very good. 

Comment on "When did Jesus say he was god."

Currently tagged	life religion Jesus trinity (Click to add tags below)
Tag this post	(Separate tags using commas, for example: New York, dating, vegetarian)
Your comment