By The deity of Jesus Christ is has become such a defining point of true faith, that it is one of the doctrines distinguishing true Christianity from the many Christian-like cults. The doctrine that Jesus is God is not just a construct of theological arguments that we believe by faith. Instead, the reality that Jesus is truly God is revealed to us in stunning clarity—both in simple terms that can be translated in any language, and in technical terms that the Greek language is unmistakably clear on.
The simple statements of the reality that the human person Jesus is indeed truly God are given to us in short affirmations and in more detail phrases as is evident in the following verses.
Thomas answered him [Jesus], “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
For in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.
For in him [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
I [Jesus] and the Father are one.
In addition to theses, there are countless descriptions of Jesus that also affirm Jesus’ God-ness. Colossians 1:15-19 list a few of those.
But then there is a wonderful technicality that also confirms the deity of Jesus.
In Titus 2:13 the Second Coming is mentioned in these terms:
waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ
What is not immediately evident in English, but unmistakeable in Greek (I told you this would be a technicality!) is that the wording is very intentional. There is a grammatical rule nicknamed the Granville Sharp (because that was the name of the person who recognised it in Greek writings, learn more about this man here). It asserts that if two nouns are joined with an “and”, and the article “the” only comes before the first one, then those two nouns refer to the same person, on the conditions that both nouns are personal (i.e. relatable to a personal entity, not objects or animals), singular (not plural), and not proper nouns (someone’s name).
For example, “the bird and tree” are two nouns joined by “and” with “the” only before the first one, but because they are not personal, they break the first condition, and are therefore not both true of the same person).
Similarly, “the shepherds and teachers” (Eph 4:11) are also two nouns joined by “and” with “the” only before the first one. They are both personal (can describe a person), and they are not proper nouns (for example not John and James), but because they are plural, the “shepherds” and “teachers” do not necessarily refer to the same person. We call this a Granville-Sharp-‘like’ construction, because it fails on only one condition.
But Titus 2:13 matches all the conditions of Greek grammar to fit the construction discovered by Granville Sharp. Word-for-word in Greek (I’ll type in English for our sake), Titus 2:13 says:
of the great God and saviour of us
Titus 2:13 (maintaining Greek word order and structure)
There are two nouns (“God”, “saviour”) that are both personal (can be attributed to a person), singular, and not proper names. The two nouns are joined with “and” and “the” only appears before the first one. According to the Granville Sharp rule, the noun “God” and the noun “saviour” both are referring to the same one person. That is all fairly straightforward.
The question is, who is this one person? Although it is clear from the context that it is most likely Jesus, God had two more words added to this verse to make it unmistakably clear.
waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ
The point is this. Jesus is not just a wonderful person, He is our object of worship since He is our God. When we think of the Lord Jesus, we exclaim with the bold assertion of Thomas “My Lord and my God”.