On This Day: How the Deity of Jesus Simply Adds Up

  When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once." (John 13:31-32)

   Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

   The deity of Jesus Christ is denied by Muslims, Mormons, and JWs, but clearly taught as fact in God’s word, the Bible.

   For me, this is a mix of revelation (what God tells us in his word about his Son), and relationship (how I have come to know Jesus in the way revealed). Both make it feel utterly crucial that we do not let go of this glorious reality that Jesus is glorified as the Son of God who makes his Father known.

   Part of the deep feelings I have about this comes from the rhyming thoughts of Scripture on the topic. God presents truth in parallel thoughts so that, just as multiple threads are woven together to make a strong cord, the revelation of Jesus as God the Son is so strong that anyone who hangs his/her life from it will never be ashamed.

   The point is to see how all the rhyming thoughts are synonymous in revealing the relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father has his place in the Triunity of God, and the Son has his. And, just like my son and daughter are as much human as I am even though I am the dad and they are my children, Jesus is just as much God as his Father even though the Father is the father and the Son is the son.

   Part of the glory of all these references to Jesus in his relationship with the Father is the pattern they follow. In the center is “of”. On the first side is something about Jesus; on the other side is something of the Father. Every such phrase tells us a different color of the spectrum of the divine light of their relationship.

 

Something about God the Son

Of

Something about God the Father

 

   Here are a variety of these expressions listed together so you can see their unity and harmony in revealing this relationship.

 

Something about God the Son	Of	Something about God the Father	Scripture
The image	of	the invisible God	Col 1:15
The radiance	of	the glory of God	Heb 1:3
The exact imprint	of	his nature	Heb 1:3
The form	of	God	Phil 2:6
The Son	of	God	Too many!

 

   We can add to this that Jesus is “the Word” of God, even though the exact phrase is not found in Scripture. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). Jesus was with God, he was God, and as “the Word” he is the ultimate revelation of God.

   One of the beautiful pictures of what it will be like in the new heavens and the new earth is “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). What a beautiful summary of everything the rest of Scripture teaches, that Jesus is the lamp who makes the Father’s light known to the world. He had that “form of God” in the beginning, “the Word became flesh” in time, and we will see the glory of the Father in the Son for eternity.

   This is why it is such “good news of great joy” that “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6). Let yourself picture that. It is ours already. By faith, we see in the face of Jesus Christ the glory of God. Jesus came to make this known to us!

    So, when Jesus is just hours away from his crucifixion, and he tells us, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him” (John 13:31), it is to prepare us for what we would see of the world’s hatred of our Savior. Death and the grave would have no victory over Jesus even though he would humble himself to experience both.

   But because of his resurrection, we believe that Jesus will appear in glory soon enough no matter how long it seems to take for his return. For “we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (I John 3:2).

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: When the ‘If Onlys’ Meet the Good Shepherd

   Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:17-21)

   Four years ago, we lost our four granddaughters to what my wife and I came to call “relational suicide”. She had been helping a hospice client through the loss of a loved one by suicide, and we suddenly realized that we were going through the same thing!

   There’s never a day goes by that I do not have some kind of “if only” thought about how things could have been handled differently. To know they were convinced to make such a decision haunts us. To know they are still alive to come home but won’t mocks us. It’s our story. It’s of the “nothing new under the sun” category. I get it.

   But that’s my stage. I am not in Bethany with the grieving sisters. I am not at Lazarus’s tomb with Jesus showing up. I’m not feeling what Martha felt to have come to know Jesus Christ in person as “Lord” and have to accept that he wasn’t there when I needed him most. I can easily relate to it all, but it’s not my stage!

   My stage is mine. Your stage is yours. We can join hands with Martha and face our losses together. We can “weep with those who weep” as taught by God’s word. We can go around the circle telling our own stories and listening to theirs. We can feel the bubble of pain that won’t come to the surface. We can feel the tsunami of grief that won’t stop pouring out our pain. It doesn’t matter how we would describe it, we have a stage with Jesus as much as Martha did.

   That’s why I am going no further than this today. My experience with church folk is that we have a hard time stopping and feeling. We miss out on so many facets of getting to know God because we won’t admit how we are doing. We won’t pray like Martha did. We won’t talk to Jesus like our IF-Onlys matter to him. We read these accounts like a grief brochure that tells us, “It ends with a resurrection!”, but do not stop and make the journey to the promised destination.

   But there is no immediate promise in this. A future one, yes. Absolutely. But this is a historical event. It happened then and there. It does not promise us that Jesus will always show up to raise a loved one from the dead, or to even change people’s minds about dying to us. That is not the promise.

   The absolute and unshakable promise in this is that there is a future resurrection for all who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord. Jesus came into the world to save sinners into the gracious gift of eternal life. ALL who believe in him will not perish but live with our Savior forever.

    However, there is another promise of our Savior that is illustrated in this death-and-life scene. As David said, there will still be our seasons of “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”. But the “You are with me” part is in effect for us even more profoundly than what David had experienced. That, “your rod and your staff, they comfort me” is still true and real, but more so in the person of the Holy Spirit who is Jesus’ “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

   That’s why we talk to him in prayer the way Martha did in person. We pray about our If-Onlys like the one who could have healed those relationships cares about our grief, even while we lament that he chose not to do so.

    And when we will pour out our hearts to the Good Shepherd like Martha did, and admit whatever is going on in there the way David did, there is a promise. Not for a physical resurrection of a deceased loved one now. Not for a relational resurrection of loved ones who disowned us. But the opportunity to get to know our Savior today, in our grief, better than we have ever known him before. Yes, THAT is a promise!

    Paul expressed it like this,

   “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (II Corinthians 1:3-4).

   Yes, I have many times been comforted by God in my grief. I have accepted that, if he taught his children to “weep with those who weep”, it is what he is like as well (we will soon see that “Jesus wept” at Lazarus’s tomb even just minutes before raising him from the dead!).

   And so, I trust that sharing my stage in personal application of the stage John is describing to us will be an added wave of comfort to others on whatever stages we are living on. Martha invites us to remain steadfast in the faith we had in Jesus before any loss shattered our souls. And if we will keep relating to him about everything we go through, we will continue getting to know him in the real and personal ways that are shouting out to us from the pages of Scripture.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: Why the World Hates Jesus Christ

   After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee. (John 7:1-9)

   There is a well-known Christian evangelist named Ray Comfort who begins his sharing of the good news by walking people through the 10 commandments. He sees that “since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20), people need to see themselves first measured by the law so they realize they are condemned sinners, and then to hear the good news of great joy that God has given us a Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord, who came into the world to save sinners.

   Today I noticed that, when Jesus was explaining to his brothers why he wasn’t ready to go to the “feast of booths” in Jerusalem, he distinguished between them and him by the fact that they were of no threat to the world’s worldliness because they were part of the religious world system of Israel, while he was a threat to the world system of Israel because he was testifying “about it that its works are evil.”

   One thing that really stood out was Jesus’ use of “the world” in relation to Israel. Israel’s spiritual standing before God was so lost that Jesus identified it as “the world”. The same world the Romans and Greeks lived in. It was the world system operating without God. That world would hate him because he was not of the world. He had a kingdom that was not of the world. Israel was not of his kingdom because it was of the world. And, at that time, so were Jesus’ earthly brothers.

   What Jesus was saying was that Israel’s worldly hatred toward him was based on him testifying that their works were evil. What they were doing as a nation was evil. There were some faithful ones in the mix (Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, Simeon, Anna, John the Baptist, etc), but the nation itself was of the world. And it hated being told that it was living in sin, particularly because they were such good religious people.

   As I pondered this in prayer, it then stood out how the reference to “the world” is used in John’s gospel. That famous verse, John 3:16, states it clearly, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” For a long time, I have noticed the contrast between God loving Israel (as seen throughout the Old Testament), and God loving the other nations. John 3:16 is Jesus words to Nicodemus, a leader in Israel, identifying that the message of love God had communicated to them was for “the world”, meaning, all nations. But it also means that Israel was part of that world as well and needed the same salvation as the despised Romans, Greeks, and Samaritans of the day.

   All of this together got me realizing that if the world loves the message, the messenger is likely NOT addressing that “its works are evil.” On the other hand, those who know the good news of great joy the best know that “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20) leads to,

   For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22-25)

   You see, even there it’s “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” as a necessary-to-believe truth that prepares hearts for “and are justified by his grace as a gift…” Jesus came into the world to save sinners, so he told them the truth about their sin (which is why the worldlings hated him), and told them the truth about the so great salvation he would secure through his death (which is why the poor-in-spirit sinners loved him).

   We all know that Jesus did not only go around testifying to the sinfulness of the world. He didn’t say that was the whole message, only that it was the part of the message that caused the world to hate him. But it was a necessary thing for people to know that only because God put Jesus “forward as a propitiation by his blood” to deal with the evil in us can we have a redemption that is “received by faith”.

   The reason “repent” and “believe” must always be kept together (even when one is used as a summary for the whole) is because repentance focuses on changing our minds about our evil deeds so that what we once loved we now hate, and faith focuses on changing our minds about the triune God so that the God we once hated we now attach to in childlike trust and love.

   I am ever so thankful that God has been quick and relentless to call me out on my evil deeds. By seeing that I was,

   dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:1-3),

I could also see how,

   God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)

   Earlier in John’s gospel we read, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). Today we see how Jesus became hated by the world because he was calling them out on their evil works in order to open their hearts to the good news. Many continued loving the darkness, their very religious darkness, while others heard the good news that there was a kind of redemption from sin they had never experienced, and they came into Jesus’ kingdom to have it.

   So, what is your reaction to Jesus putting the spotlight on your evil works?

   And does your answer show you where you stand with him?

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

On This Day: A New Year of Comings and Goings

   When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:60-66)

   I’m one of those folks Paul spoke about who sees every day as the same. Today that means that New Year’s day of 2026 is just another day for me far more than it feels like the start of something new.

   However, because our culture does consider it a special day to bring closure to the past year and try to start fresh, I was curious what Scripture would disciple me today. And the one that did certainly has me on high alert!

   I often encourage people to focus more on the daily journey with God than charting where we imagine we are in our travels with him. If our attention is on how we are getting to know God in the moment, we will have the joy of knowing him no matter whether or not we get any sense we have “made progress” in any other way.

   With that in mind, I had lots of “little child” wonderings about what it was like for Jesus to have a multitude of people walk away from him. In his deity, he had a level of attachment with the Father and the Spirit that we can’t even imagine. How much did that affect him in his humanity when people walked away from him? Was that unfailing attachment a comfort to him when his humanity experienced broken relationships of the most personal kind?

   I was reminded of a line from a wonderful old hymn that I have really come to… well, not like! In the song, “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” (Charles Hutchinson Gabriel, 1905), the writer expressed, “He had no tears for His own griefs, but sweat-drops of blood for mine.” Let’s just say that I really don’t think that is accurate!

   In my own heartaches and griefs, I am often drawn to the description of Jesus that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). How easily my heart is drawn to such a man as this, the God-man, deity in bodily form, the Word who became flesh to live among us. He was despised like we are. He was rejected by men like we are. He had so many sorrows that it characterized him as “a man of” such things. He was acquainted with grief just like ourselves. I don’t see anything of him not having feelings about his own griefs in experiencing all such injustices, and that’s why he is so approachable when I experience such painful things myself.   

   We just passed the fourth Christmas season since I was “renounced” by the people who were closest to me in life. Today I see Jesus “renounced” by people he had fed with a miraculous multiplying of bread and fish. They had seriously considered that he might be their promised Messiah.

   But then the steppingstones to faith turned into the stumblingstones of unbelief. They simply couldn’t attach to a Messiah who was different than their religious expectations. He had to be their way, because there was no way they would think differently about him.

   So, what did they do? They went back to their self-dependent religion. Claiming God’s word as theirs, but not following what God said, or believing in the One of whom he wrote.

   If it means anything at all that we are entering a new year, then I would want this year to be a year of comings not goings. I want to be known by my daily coming to Jesus and growing in him. I want to see “the many” who go away to the wide road to destruction matched by “the few” who come to Jesus and live every day to know him better than ever before.

   And, if the comings and goings of this year add to the heartache and grief of being disowned by people I love, I will rest in the Man of Sorrows to hold me close to his heart, and teach me his love that would bear such things in such greater intensity than I could ever know, and then go and lay down his life for his friends.

 

© 2026 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)