²⁷ “… for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father.

Belief that Jesus came from God” is absolutely essential for a right relationship with God. True Christianity does not teach that Jesus the man became God, something which is impossible and the teaching of which would rightly be called blasphemy. Rather, the Son, who is God, became a man, Jesus. There is a huge difference between these two statements. While it is impossible for man to be God, it is entirely within the realm of God’s ability to become human, and to exist with both the full qualities of Godhood and humanity at the same time in the same existence.

One cannot be a follower of Christ and fully experience the love of God without believing that Jesus came from God, and is, in fact, God in the flesh. John expands on Jesus’ comment when he wrote about 50 years later, “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23). Further, he wrote, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world” (1 John 4:2–3). In his second letter, John adds, “Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love” (2 John 3).

True faith involves believing that Jesus came from God, He is God in the flesh, and that His relationship with the Father is as a son who has been commissioned by His Father to come into the world. He is certainly a prophet, but not only a mere prophet. His origin is not from among humans, but from God. He is the cosmic and eternal entry point of the Creator into His creation, the Uncreated One taking on the form of His creation. Jesus Christ is the Reality merging with the reflection of reality. The One in whose image we were created, taking on that image in human form.

Paul affirms this when writing the Colossians: “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him [i.e. Christ]” (1:19) and “For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (2:9). And because Jesus comes from God as a human, therefore, following Christ and believing in him means “…you have been made complete …” (Col 2:10a). We are completely accepted for we have fully believed in who Jesus is and what He came to do.

Lord, I believe that Jesus is fully God and fully human. And in this faith, I know I am completely accepted and loved by You.