My Testimony: The Fruit of a Fully Human Jesus

Note: Traditional Christianity also insists that Jesus was fully human. Throughout this article, however, when I speak of Jesus as “fully human,” I mean that humanity is His complete nature: He is genuinely human rather than a divine person possessing both a divine and human nature.

I have spent this section making a biblical case that Jesus is not God.

I believe Jesus is the Messiah.

The Son of God.

Our Savior.

Our Lord.

Our great high priest.

The one through whom God has reconciled the world to Himself.

The one whom God raised from the dead and exalted above every other human being.

But I now understand Jesus as fully human.

That conclusion has profoundly changed my Christian life.

As with the other theological conclusions on this website, I do not believe good fruit can establish a doctrine.

If Jesus really is God, then the fact that understanding Him as fully human has helped me cannot make His deity false.

Scripture must answer the question.

But Jesus also tells us:

“You will know them by their fruits.” — Matthew 7:16

And Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit as:

“love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.” — Galatians 5:22–23

So after making the biblical argument, I think it is legitimate to ask:

What fruit grows from these competing understandings of Jesus?

For me, the answer has been profound.

The Fruit in My Own Life

Understanding Jesus as fully human has not made Jesus smaller to me.

It has made what God accomplished in Jesus—and what God may accomplish in humanity—seem much greater.

I believe that:

I now understand God better.

I understand Jesus better.

I understand their relationship better.

I understand prayer better.

I understand worship better.

And perhaps most importantly, for the first time in my life, I truly believe, by God’s grace:

I can become like Jesus.

I Now Believe I Can Actually Become Like Christ

Christians told me my entire life that I was supposed to become like Jesus.

Follow Jesus.

Imitate Jesus.

Walk as Jesus walked.

Become conformed to His image.

But there was always an enormous qualification in my mind:

Jesus is God.

I am not.

Jesus may be fully human according to traditional Christian theology, but he is also eternally God.

He therefore belongs to an ontological category I can never enter.

Traditional Christianity has an answer to this objection.

Traditional Christology insists that Jesus possesses a complete human nature, not some diminished or artificial humanity (Council of Chalcedon). And Christians who believed strongly in Christ's deity have taken the imitation of his humanity extraordinarily seriously. Giles Constable's study of medieval Christianity documents the profound emphasis Christians placed upon following and imitating the human life, suffering, obedience, and character of Christ (Constable 169–93).

I do not want to erase that history.

Traditional belief in Jesus' deity has not prevented Christians from becoming extraordinarily Christlike.

Christians who have strongly believed in Jesus' deity have included saints.

Martyrs.

Missionaries.

Caregivers.

People who forgave enemies.

People who gave away wealth.

People who served the poor.

People who endured suffering faithfully.

People whose lives looked remarkably like Jesus.

That is genuinely good fruit.

But psychologically and theologically, the distance remained for me.

Jesus was the example I was commanded to imitate.

But Jesus was also God.

Of course he could do it.

Of course he could overcome temptation.

Of course he could become perfectly righteous.

Of course he could love his enemies.

Of course he could obey God completely.

He was God.

I was not.

Now Jesus' Victory Shows Me What a Human Being Can Become

Understanding Jesus as fully human changed that.

Jesus was tempted.

Jesus suffered.

Jesus learned obedience.

Jesus depended upon God.

Jesus prayed.

Jesus was anointed by the Spirit.

Jesus received authority from God.

Jesus grew.

Jesus faced genuine moral choices.

And he became perfect.

Hebrews says:

“Though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered. Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation.” — Hebrews 5:8–9

Now I read those words differently.

Jesus' humanity is no longer one nature operating alongside an eternal divine nature.

It is who he is.

And that means his victory over sin shows me something extraordinary:

a human being can actually do this.

Not independently.

Not without God.

Not without grace.

Not without the Spirit.

Jesus himself did not overcome apart from God.

But that makes the comparison even more meaningful.

Jesus depended upon God.

So must I.

Jesus was empowered by the Spirit.

So am I.

Jesus learned obedience.

So must I.

Jesus suffered.

So will I.

Jesus was perfected.

And Scripture says God intends to conform Christians to his image.

“For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” — Romans 8:29

Suddenly that promise feels much more literal to me.

Jesus became no less extraordinary. In many ways, my new understanding of Jesus has resulted in greater awe and respect for Jesus, not less. I am amazed that, as a human being without deity, he accomplished what he did.

And I am more confident than I have ever been that his followers can truly be like him.

Christlikeness Has Become Empowering Rather Than Abstract

I no longer hear:

“Be like Jesus.”

and internally translate it into:

“Try to resemble the God-man as much as a normal human being possibly can.”

I hear:

“Look at what God did in a human being.”

And then:

“God intends to do this in you too.”

That is deeply empowering to me.

Jesus becomes the prototype of restored humanity.

The firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

The perfected human image of the invisible God.

The one who went before us.

The one who shows us where God is taking humanity.

Hebrews says:

“For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” — Hebrews 2:11

I believe that more radically now.

Jesus is my brother.

That does not diminish him.

My brother is the Messiah.

My brother is Lord.

My brother died for the world.

My brother was raised from the dead.

My brother sits at God's right hand.

My brother is the great high priest.

My brother is the one through whom God is restoring humanity.

But he is still my brother.

And if Jesus is truly my brother, then what God accomplished in him tells me something about what God can accomplish in His other children.

That fills me with hope.

I Understand God and Jesus More Clearly

Another major fruit has been clarity.

Traditional Trinitarian theology often confused me.

I knew Christians said there was one God.

I knew the Father was God.

Jesus was God.

The Holy Spirit was God.

But the Father was not Jesus.

Jesus was not the Spirit.

The Spirit was not the Father.

And yet there was still only one God.

Then Jesus prayed to God.

Jesus obeyed God.

Jesus was sent by God.

Jesus received authority from God.

Jesus called the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3).

Jesus said:

“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” — John 20:17

Paul wrote:

“There is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we live through him.” — 1 Corinthians 8:6

And:

“There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” — 1 Timothy 2:5

I can now read those distinctions straightforwardly.

God is God.

Jesus is God's Son.

God sends Jesus.

Jesus obeys God.

God empowers Jesus.

God raises Jesus.

God exalts Jesus.

Jesus reveals God.

Jesus reconciles humanity to God.

Jesus mediates between God and humanity.

Jesus brings us to God.

Understanding God as God and Jesus as his fully human Son, not God, has made Scripture and the roles of God and Jesus far more understandable to me.

Knowing God and Jesus Is Eternal Life

This matters because Jesus says:

“This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” — John 17:3

Notice that eternal life involves knowing both.

The only true God.

And Jesus Christ, whom God sent.

If my biblical case is correct, understanding their distinction is not some peripheral theological technicality.

It means understanding who God is.

And understanding who Jesus is.

That has brought me enormous joy.

I believe I have come to know God more deeply.

And I believe I have come to know Jesus more deeply.

I Have Not Lost Jesus

One of the fears Christians may have when considering a fully human, not deity, Christology is:

If Jesus is not God, what is left?

For me, an enormous amount.

I have not lost my Savior.

I have not lost my Lord.

I have not lost the Messiah.

I have not lost the Son of God.

I have not lost my high priest.

I have not lost the one God raised from the dead.

I have not lost the one seated at God's right hand.

I have not lost the one appointed to rule.

I have not lost the one through whom God reconciles humanity.

I have not lost the one I follow.

I have not lost the one I love.

What I have lost is one identification:

Jesus is God.

And removing that identification has allowed many of the other biblical identities of Jesus to become more meaningful to me.

Jesus is not simply “God in human form.”

He is the Messiah of God.

The Son of God.

The image of God.

The servant of God.

The high priest of God.

The mediator between God and humanity.

The human Lord whom God exalted.

I believe I understand these titles and roles better in a fully human Christology.

My Worship Has Changed

This may be the most serious implication of my changed Christology.

If Jesus is God, then worshiping Jesus as God is right.

Christians who worship Jesus as God are doing exactly what they should do if the doctrine is true.

I want to make that clear.

But the reverse is equally important.

If Jesus is not God, worshiping Jesus as God is not a minor theological mistake.

It raises one of the most serious concerns in all of Scripture:

idolatry.

Jesus Himself says:

“You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.” — Matthew 4:10

Paul distinguishes:

“one God, the Father”

from

“one Lord, Jesus Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 8:6

And Jesus identifies His Father as:

“the only true God.” — John 17:3

So the stakes go both ways.

If Jesus is God, refusing him divine worship would be an enormous error.

But if Jesus is not God, giving him divine worship would also be an enormous error.

That is why the biblical question matters so much.

I Am Free to Honor Jesus Without Making Him God

Personally, I no longer worship Jesus as God.

I honor Jesus.

I love Jesus.

I follow Jesus.

I obey Jesus as Lord.

I recognize the authority God gave him.

I recognize him as Messiah and Savior.

I recognize him as the one through whom God has acted decisively for humanity.

But I no longer identify Jesus with the God he worshiped.

In that sense, I no longer give Jesus the divine identity and worship that, if my theology on this blog is true, belong to God alone.

That statement would be completely wrong if Jesus is God.

But after the biblical study developed throughout this section, I no longer believe he is.

And that has given me peace and clarity.

I no longer feel that I must interpret Jesus through the lens of the hypostatic union: he is tempted, but cannot be tempted in his divine nature, he does not know everything, but he does in his divine nature, he fully depends on God, but he is omnipotent in his divine nature. I no longer need Jesus to be simultaneously the God receiving worship and the human offering worship to God (John 4:22). These categories never really made sense to me or seemed coherent.

I can worship God.

And honor God's Son.

Those relationships have become distinct.

I believe I now have more biblical clarity regarding the distinction between God the Father and Jesus in particular.

My Relationship With the Father Has Changed

Jesus repeatedly directs people toward the Father.

He prays to the Father.

He obeys the Father.

He teaches His disciples to pray:

“Our Father in heaven.” — Matthew 6:9

He says:

“The Father is greater than I.” — John 14:28

He tells Mary:

“I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” — John 20:17

Understanding Jesus as God often blurred those relationships for me.

Who exactly was I praying to?

Was I primarily relating to Jesus?

To the Father?

To the Trinity?

Was Jesus the destination of prayer or the mediator through whom I approached God?

Now the distinction feels much clearer.

Jesus brings me to God.

I pray in Jesus’ name to the Father.

God is my Father.

Jesus is my Lord and brother.

The Spirit is God's presence within me—and, as I have argued elsewhere, our divine Mother.

I do not feel farther from God.

I believe I finally know better Whom Jesus was directing me toward. God is God. Jesus is His Son.

My Relationship With Jesus Has Changed Too

This reconstruction does not only affect my relationship with God.

It affects my relationship with Jesus.

If Jesus is human, then relating to him primarily as God can obscure the relationship Scripture actually gives Christians with him.

Brother.

Teacher.

Messiah.

Lord.

High priest.

Mediator.

Example.

Firstborn.

Human image of God.

I cannot know exactly how Jesus experiences Christians thinking he is God.

I do not want to speculate about his internal response.

But I can say this:

If Jesus is not God, relating to him as God means relating to him as something he is not.

And that necessarily changes the relationship.

For me, recognizing Jesus as human has made him more—not less—relatable.

I believe:

I understand him better.

I understand his dependence upon God better.

I understand his prayers better.

I understand his suffering better.

I understand his obedience better.

I understand his victory better.

And I understand why Scripture calls him my brother—and why, after examining the New Testament, I no longer believe Scripture identifies him as my God.

Prayer Has Become Clearer

My understanding of prayer has changed too.

The dominant biblical pattern is prayer to God.

Jesus prays to God.

He teaches His disciples to pray to the Father.

The Church prays to God.

Jesus functions as mediator and high priest.

Traditional Christianity can also address prayer directly to Jesus because Jesus is understood as divine and therefore capable of hearing prayers offered everywhere.

Within my present framework, I no longer assume that a human Jesus independently possesses God's omnipresence or omniscience.

That does not mean Jesus can never be addressed.

Scripture includes extraordinary situations in which Jesus appears or is directly addressed, and God can certainly make communication with His exalted Son possible.

But I no longer believe ordinary Christian prayer requires me to assume that Jesus inherently hears millions of prayers everywhere at once.

I pray to God.

I approach the Father.

I rely upon the Spirit.

And I recognize Jesus as the mediator through whom humanity has been reconciled to God.

For me, that has restored a simplicity to prayer that I had lost.

A Fully Human Jesus Changes Christian-Muslim Conversations

This has had a very practical effect in my life because I regularly interact with Muslims.

Jesus is not insignificant within Islam.

Quite the opposite.

Islam reveres Jesus as an extraordinary figure and prophet, while rejecting His deity. Contemporary scholarship on the Islamic Jesus likewise emphasizes that Islamic tradition honors Jesus while maintaining his humanity and subordination to God.

Mona Siddiqui describes Jesus as both a bridge and a barrier between Christians and Muslims—a figure both traditions honor, but whose identity also marks one of their sharpest disagreements (Siddiqui).

I have experienced that personally.

When Christians tell Muslims:

Jesus is God,

the conversation immediately encounters one of Islam's deepest theological objections.

For a Muslim committed to the absolute oneness of God, the claim that a human being is God can feel not merely incorrect but fundamentally incompatible with monotheism.

My conversations are different now.

I can say:

I believe in one God.

Jesus is not that God.

Jesus is God's Messiah.

Jesus is God's Son.

Jesus was sent by God.

Jesus obeyed God.

Jesus performed works through God's power.

God raised Jesus from the dead.

God exalted Jesus.

I still disagree significantly with Islam.

The crucifixion matters.

The resurrection matters.

Jesus' unique Sonship matters.

His messianic authority matters.

His role in salvation matters.

There are still enormous theological differences.

But one of the largest barriers is gone.

I am no longer asking a Muslim to begin by accepting that a man is the one God.

I want to be careful here.

It would be impossible for me to claim:

If Christians stopped teaching Jesus' deity, Muslims would become Christian.

Islam and Christianity still disagree about enormous questions.

But the theological barrier itself is real.

Scholarship on Christian-Muslim dialogue repeatedly identifies the Trinity, divine Sonship, and Christ's deity among the fundamental differences between the traditions (Siddiqui).

So I think it is fair to say:

If Jesus' deity is not actually biblical, Christians have been asking Muslims to overcome an enormous theological barrier that God Himself never required them to overcome.

I also think it is reasonable to believe that some Muslims may be more open to considering Christianity if the majority Church did not insist that accepting the Trinity and Jesus' deity is necessary for becoming a Christian. Those doctrines represent some of the deepest theological objections Muslims have historically raised to Christianity. Removing that barrier would not resolve every disagreement between Christianity and Islam, but it could make the Christian message considerably easier for some Muslims to consider.

In my own conversations with Muslims, I have found that this removes an enormous initial barrier. We still disagree about important questions concerning Jesus, but the conversation becomes much easier when I can affirm with them that there is one God while still explaining why I believe Jesus is God's Messiah and Son.

The Jewish Barrier Matters Too

Christianity began within Judaism.

Jesus was Jewish.

His apostles were Jewish.

The God Jesus worshiped was the God of Israel.

Yet historically, the Trinity and Incarnation became major points of Jewish objection to Christianity.

Daniel Lasker's extensive study of medieval Jewish philosophical polemics shows that the Trinity and Incarnation were among the central Christian doctrines Jewish thinkers sought to refute. They objected especially to the apparent conflict between Incarnation and convictions about God's incorporeality, immutability, and unity (Lasker).

That does not mean removing Jesus' deity eliminates the Jewish-Christian divide.

It does not.

Whether Jesus is Messiah remains an enormous question.

The resurrection remains a question.

The New Testament itself remains a question.

But once again:

one enormous theological barrier disappears.

If Jesus is not God, Christians no longer need to persuade Jewish monotheists that Israel's God is simultaneously one God and three divine persons, one of whom became human.

Instead, Christians can proclaim:

The God of Abraham is one.

Jesus is His Messiah.

That does not resolve everything.

But it changes the conversation considerably.

It May Create Greater Unity Within Christianity Too

The implications are not limited to Judaism and Islam.

There are already Christians outside classical Nicene Trinitarianism.

The Unitarian Christian Alliance, for example, explicitly affirms the Father alone as the one true God and Jesus as his human Messiah, raised and exalted by God as Lord and Savior (Unitarian Christian Alliance, “The UCA Affirmation”).

Jehovah's Witnesses likewise explicitly reject the claim that Jesus is Almighty God while affirming him as Savior and Son of God, although their broader theology differs substantially from mine (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society).

Latter-day Saint theology is different again. Latter-day Saints still understand Jesus as divine, so their Christology is not the same as the one I am arguing here. But they reject classical Nicene consubstantiality and emphasize Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct beings united in purpose rather than one substance (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Godhead”).

These traditions disagree with one another—and with me—on important issues.

I am not proposing that abandoning Nicene Christology instantly creates Christian unity.

But it does change which disagreements are treated as absolute boundaries.

Christians who believe Jesus is the human Messiah can discover that they have more theological relatives than traditional categories sometimes suggest.

And perhaps some people historically dismissed as automatically outside Christianity deserve to be heard more carefully.

If the majority Church were to conclude that Jesus is not God, there would be significantly more theological common ground between it and minority Christian traditions that already reject Jesus' deity.

A Comparison of the Two Frameworks

Traditional Christianity has produced enormous good.

Christians who believe Jesus is God have loved him – and do love him – deeply.

They have imitated his humility.

They have served the poor.

They have forgiven enemies.

They have endured martyrdom.

They have developed profound traditions of prayer and holiness.

They have taken Jesus' humanity seriously.

Any comparison that ignored that goodness would be unfair.

But I think an important distinction is necessary:

Good fruit produced by Christians who hold a doctrine is not necessarily good fruit produced by the doctrine itself.

Christians who believe Jesus is God have also believed many other profoundly biblical things that believing Jesus is fully human, not deity, share as well:

that Jesus should be followed,

that his teachings matter,

that Christians should love their enemies,

that believers should care for the poor,

that holiness matters,

that self-sacrifice matters,

and that God calls His people to become like Christ.

Those truths can produce extraordinary fruit regardless of whether Jesus himself is God.

So the question I want to ask is more specific:

What fruit follows from identifying Jesus himself as God—and what changes if Jesus is instead understood as God's fully human Messiah?

Fruit / Biblical Criterion	Traditional Divine-Human Christology	Fully Human Christology
Jesus as Messiah and Son of God	Strongly affirmed	Fully preserved
Jesus as Savior and Lord	Strongly affirmed	Fully preserved
Jesus' humanity	Fully affirmed alongside his divine nature	Jesus' humanity is his complete ontological identity
Imitation of Christ	Strongly affirmed and historically practiced	Strongly affirmed, with Jesus' moral development and victory understood entirely within genuine humanity
Possibility of becoming like Christ	Christians become profoundly Christlike but never share his unique divine identity	Christ's perfected humanity becomes a direct picture of what restored humanity can become
Ontological distance	Jesus is fully human but also belongs eternally to the divine identity	Jesus belongs fully to the same human race as those he sanctifies
Jesus as brother	Affirmed through his human nature	Becomes one of the central descriptions of his relationship to believers
Dependence upon God	Attributed to Christ's humanity within the two-nature framework	Read straightforwardly as the genuine dependence of the human Messiah upon God
Prayer of Jesus	God the Son prays to the Father according to His humanity	A human Son prays to his God and Father
God and Jesus distinction	Father and Son are distinct persons within the one divine being	God and Jesus are personally and ontologically distinct: God and His human Messiah
John 17:3	“Only true God” is harmonized with Jesus' divine identity within Trinitarian theology	Father is straightforwardly the only true God; Jesus is the one He sent
1 Timothy 2:5	The divine-human Christ mediates between God and humanity	The human Messiah mediates between the one God and humanity
Worship of God	Divine worship properly includes Jesus because Jesus is God	Divine worship belongs to God; Jesus receives the honor appropriate to God's exalted Messiah and Lord
Risk of idolatry	If Jesus is God, worshiping him as God is right	If Jesus is not God, this framework avoids assigning divine identity and worship to a human being
Relationship with the Father	Christians approach the Father through the divine Son	Christians approach Jesus' God and Father through His human Messiah and mediator
Relationship with Jesus	Jesus is simultaneously God, Lord, Savior, brother, and mediator	Jesus is Lord, Savior, brother, Messiah, high priest, mediator, and perfected human Son
Ordinary prayer	May be directed to Father, Son, or Trinity; Jesus can hear universal prayer as God	Ordinarily directed to God, with Jesus serving as mediator and being addressed when God makes such communication possible
Human potential	Human beings can be sanctified and glorified but never become what Jesus is in his divine nature	Jesus' perfected humanity visibly demonstrates the destiny God intends for his human children
Jewish monotheistic barrier	Trinity and Incarnation remain major theological differences	One God remains the God of Israel; the central question becomes whether Jesus is his Messiah
Muslim monotheistic barrier	Jesus' deity and Trinity remain major disagreements	Jesus' deity barrier disappears, while substantial disagreements about Jesus still remain
Dialogue with non-Nicene Christians	Nicene deity often functions as an essential doctrinal boundary	Greater immediate common ground exists with Christians who identify the Father alone as God and Jesus as Messiah
Clarity of identity	One divine being exists as Father, Son, and Spirit; Jesus is fully God and fully human	God is God; Jesus is God's human Son, Messiah, Lord, and mediator
Final meaning of Christlikeness	Become like Jesus while he remains ontologically unique as God incarnate	Become like the perfected human Jesus whom God has made the pattern for restored humanity

The table does not prove my Christology.

I also want to acknowledge again that Christians today, and Christians throughout history who have believed Jesus is God, have often displayed extraordinary and deeply Christlike fruit. This fruit is the mark of a genuine follower of Jesus.

If Jesus is not God, then worshiping him as God would, in my view, be objectively mistaken. But that does not mean I believe sincere Trinitarian Christians have idolatrous hearts. They intend to worship the true God, even if I believe they are mistaken about Jesus’ identity.

This was my own experience, as I worshiped and treated Jesus as God for over twenty years as a sincere Christian. When my understanding changed and I came to believe that Jesus is not God, I immediately changed aspects of my prayer life, worship, and the way I spoke and thought about Jesus. But my heart remained largely the same: I still wanted to love God, follow Jesus, and love other people.

That is why, if my Christology is correct, I understand this kind of mistaken worship as something much closer to unintentional sin than deliberate rebellion against God. Scripture itself distinguishes between sins committed unintentionally and willful, high-handed rebellion. I discuss this more fully in my implication article on God valuing love over knowledge. Many of the incredibly loving, sincere, and genuine Christians I personally know, and many of the Christians throughout history who most inspire me, do believe and have believed that Jesus is God.

I therefore think it is important to distinguish between right understanding and right-hearted devotion. Both matter. Truth matters. The way we worship matters. But I believe love, faithfulness, humility, mercy, and the genuine desire to know and serve God matter more than intellectually being able to understand and see in Scripture that Jesus is not God. I would rather be a Christian who loves God and people well than one who can understand theology best. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 13:2. If he understands all mysteries and all knowledge but has not

love, he says he is nothing.

I believe God sees that distinction far more clearly than we sometimes do: we can be in danger of condemning harshly something God judges with more gentleness. I have found this true in my own experience. Since I changed my view on Jesus’ divinity, suddenly certain pastors and Christians I know have judged me very harshly as not a Christian and firmly “outside the faith” – simply because my mind changed on Jesus’ divinity after studying Scripture for several years. That logic does not make sense to me. Absent from these judgments is any bad fruit from me – though I do have many areas to grow in. Absent from these judgments is an acknowledgement of my testimony of walking with and experiencing God over decades. Would God really make salvation depend on reaching the correct conclusion about this contested and confusing theological question? I think not. We should make right judgments: paying attention to a person’s character, fruit, and faithfulness rather than making salvation depend on a complicated theological conclusion. Truth matters deeply, but Scripture is clear that love matters even more. The necessity of believing that Jesus is God in order to be a Christian is not, at least explicitly, established in Scripture. Scripture says: believe Jesus is the Son of God. Believe Jesus is Lord, that he died for you, rose again from the dead, and repent and follow him. I do. And so do Trinitarian Christians. Let’s keep the main thing the main thing while still striving to best understand what Scripture reveals about who God and Jesus are.

I do see something striking when I consider the chart above:

A fully human Christology is a high Christology that retains almost everything Christians rightly treasure about Jesus: he is Son of God, Messiah, Lord, Savior, High Priest, mediator, King, brother, the image of God, and the perfected human pattern for God’s children. The central thing is that it rejects the additional identification of Jesus himself as God. That one change, however, has significant consequences. It makes the distinction between God and Jesus much more straightforward, makes Jesus’ genuinely human life a more direct picture of what God can accomplish in humanity, and opens the possibility of much greater theological common ground with Jews, Muslims, and non-Nicene Christians. Finally, I think – and I have found – a fully human Christology more empowering and hopeful than one in which Jesus is ontologically God.

In some ways, the most significant moral consequence I now see in the doctrine of Jesus’ deity may be the division it creates when belief in that doctrine is treated as necessary for belonging to Christianity. If Jesus is not God, then Jews and Muslims have been asked to cross a theological barrier God never required, and minority Christian traditions have often been excluded over a claim that should never have functioned as the boundary of Christian identity.

If Jesus is the human Messiah rather than God, the result is not instant agreement across religions or Christian traditions. But one of the largest barriers disappears, and a great deal of theological common ground becomes visible.

Does Jesus' Deity Add Necessary Good Fruit?

This is the harder question.

Traditional Christianity would answer yes.

Jesus' deity guarantees, within that theological system, the unique significance of his revelation, saving work, authority, and worship.

It gives Christians confidence that in seeing Jesus they have seen God revealed with unsurpassable clarity.

It has inspired extraordinary devotion.

Those are significant theological goods.

But after studying Scripture, I have come to ask:

Which of the biblical goods actually requires Jesus himself to be God?

Does Jesus need to be God to reveal God perfectly?

Scripture calls human beings God's images.

Does Jesus need to be God for God to raise him from the dead?

No.

Does he need to be God for God to exalt him above every other human being?

No.

Does he need to be God to be Messiah?

No.

To be Son of God?

No.

To be Lord because God appointed him?

No.

To be high priest?

No.

To mediate between God and humanity?

In fact, 1 Timothy 2:5 explicitly calls the mediator:

“the man Christ Jesus.”

To become the pattern for restored humanity?

His humanity arguably makes that pattern more direct.

And so I find myself asking whether Jesus' deity adds something Scripture actually requires—or whether it introduces an ontological category that then requires Christians to reinterpret many of Scripture's simplest distinctions.

I think it is fair to say that all the good fruit that comes from following Jesus and rightfully honoring him as Lord and Savior is maintained in a fully human Christology, and that understanding that he is also God on top of what Scripture explicitly states about him does not add anything.  If anything, Jesus being God works against that good fruit in some ways as it is more difficult to follow a God-man, at least intellectually, than to follow someone understood as fully human without deity.

The Idolatry Question Cannot Be Avoided

This is ultimately one of the most serious fruits I see.

Romans 1 treats distorted worship as deeply consequential.

Scripture repeatedly insists that worship belongs to God.

If Jesus is God, worshiping him as God is right.

If Jesus is not God, worshiping him as God is misdirected divine worship.

I spent much of my life doing the latter because I believed the former.

I do not condemn the sincerity of Christians who continue to do so.

I understand it.

I did it too.

But if the biblical argument in this section is correct, then recovering Jesus' true humanity is not merely about getting a Christological diagram right.

It is about restoring worship to God.

And simultaneously:

restoring Jesus to the relationship with humanity that Scripture actually gives him.

The Fruit Does Not Establish the Doctrine

My increased confidence that Jesus’ followers, myself included, can truly become like Jesus does not prove he is fully human.

My clearer prayer life does not prove it.

My improved conversations with Muslims do not prove it.

Jewish objections to Incarnation do not prove it.

Greater common ground with non-Nicene Christians does not prove it.

My understanding that Scripture has become more understandable in many ways does not prove it.

Scripture must establish the doctrine.

That is why the biblical case came first.

But after making that case, I do not believe fruit becomes irrelevant.

Jesus told us to examine fruit.

And when I compare these two frameworks, I do not see the fully human Jesus as diminishing Christ.

I see the opposite.

Jesus is no longer extraordinary because he belongs to a category of being that I can never share.

He is extraordinary because of what God accomplished in a human being.

A human being trusted God.

A human being learned obedience.

A human being overcame temptation.

A human being became perfect.

A human being loved his enemies.

A human being gave his life for the world.

A human being was raised from the dead.

A human being was exalted to God's right hand.

A human being became the great high priest.

A human being became Lord.

And Scripture says God intends to conform us to his image.

That fills me with hope.

Jesus Became No Less Extraordinary

I want to end with this because it summarizes what has changed most for me.

When I stopped believing Jesus was God, I did not think that Jesus became less important.

I did not think that Christianity became smaller.

I did not think that God's work became less miraculous.

Instead:

the human calling became more extraordinary.

Jesus shows me what humanity can become when completely surrendered to God.

Jesus shows me the power of the Spirit working within a human life.

Jesus shows me obedience.

Jesus shows me righteousness.

Jesus shows me self-sacrificial love.

Jesus shows me dependence upon God.

Jesus shows me humanity restored.

And now when Scripture tells me that I am supposed to become like Christ, I can believe it.

Not metaphorically.

Not with an invisible qualification that says:

“Of course, you can never really become like him because he is God.”

But truly.

I can become like Jesus.

I can overcome sin.

I can grow.

I can learn obedience.

I can become holy.

I can become mature.

I can depend upon the same God Jesus depended upon.

I can be led by the same Spirit who led Jesus.

And God can transform me.

That has been extraordinarily empowering.

A Word on Error, Grace, and Responsibility

Grace does not make theological error irrelevant. If I am wrong about Jesus, I want to be corrected. And if traditional Christianity is wrong about Jesus’ identity, that error matters too. Truth matters. It informs right worship. What we believe about God and Jesus shapes how we relate to them and to one another.

But Scripture also does not treat every error as morally identical. The Torah distinguishes sins committed unintentionally from deliberate, “high-handed” rebellion (Leviticus 4; Numbers 15:27–31), and Jesus distinguishes between the servant who knew his master’s will and the one who did not know it (Luke 12:47–48). God therefore judges more than the fact that someone has reached a wrong conclusion. He knows what a person understood, what they intended, what light they had received, how honestly they sought Him, and what they did with the truth they believed they had.

That distinction matters enormously here. If Jesus is not God, then worshiping him as God would be a real theological error. But I do not think it follows that sincere Trinitarian Christians should therefore be treated as though they are consciously rejecting God or deliberately choosing idolatry. They believe they are honoring the true God. Their error, if it is an error, can coexist with genuine love for God, faithfulness to Christ, and beautiful fruit of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, grace does not remove our responsibility to keep learning. All of us, myself included, remain responsible to seek God honestly, test what we believe, receive correction when we are wrong, and respond faithfully to whatever truth God enables us to see.

The proper response to theological error, therefore, is neither indifference nor condemnation. It is grace joined to responsibility: taking truth seriously while remembering that God sees hearts more clearly than we do, judges justly, and is patient with human beings as He leads us into greater understanding.

Some Christians may read this and think I am not taking this situation seriously enough, if indeed Christianity has been wrong about Jesus’ deity. One pastor I talked to regarding this told me he thought if Jesus was not God, the Church would then be an evil organization. That characterization really troubled me, and I thought carefully afterward about his words. I now strongly disagree with his conclusion. The Church has been responsible for great evil. I address that in my “Christian History” section. But the Church has also been responsible for great good, and I do not believe sincerely misidentifying Jesus while trying to honor God belongs in the same moral category as deliberate rebellion against God. It is a largely unintentional sin—still sin—but sin by many who genuinely love God and Jesus faithfully but do not have complete understanding. Scripture itself teaches that type of sin extremely differently than intentional rebellion against God. See the Scripture quotes above. That is very different than sins like murder, harboring hate, adultery, etc. Scripture explicitly distinguishes between these kinds of wrongdoing and differing levels of responsibility.

Further, if what I write is true—yes, God has allowed confusion and serious error regarding Jesus’ deity, but God is still at work, and has always been at work in the Church. We can trust Him. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The Trinitarian Christians I know love God. I have learned so much from the majority Church, and I am inspired by the Christians around me who show me in a deeper way who God is, who Jesus is, and what love is—and most of them believe Jesus is God. If that is error, that matters, but if Jesus is not God, God is still love, and He is still sovereign. He has worked in His Church throughout history. He continues to do so. As Jesus said, the gates of hell will not overcome the Church. I trust God will bring good even out of this error (Romans 8:28), if I am correct.

I already see ways it can be used for good: for example, if the Church repents regarding worshipping Jesus as God and treating him as such, that repentance and change, done humbly and with love, would be a testimony to people from other faiths. The Church would be universally acknowledging we have made serious theological errors and have the ability to repent. That could be a powerful witness to people of other faiths, because Christians would be modeling the same willingness to reconsider inherited beliefs that we ask of others when we share the gospel. This could also naturally increase our humility towards people of other faiths—it certainly has increased mine. As I’ve been very wrong myself, I can better extend grace and understanding to others. I can be more willing to listen to those from other faith backgrounds instead of just assume I must be right as a Christian. This could set a good foundation for humble, loving, and careful interfaith dialogue that might even lead more to Christ.

If I am right, God can redeem even this error and bring good out of it: greater humility, unity, and love.

Conclusion

Jesus says eternal life is knowing:

“you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” — John 17:3

I now believe I understand that sentence better.

I believe I know more clearly who God is.

And I believe I know more clearly who Jesus is.

God is my God.

Jesus' God is my God.

Jesus' Father is my Father.

Jesus is God's Son.

And through God's Son I am being brought into the family too.

Jesus is not my God.

He is my Savior.

My Lord.

My Messiah.

My high priest.

My teacher.

My example.

And my brother.

That relationship has become deeply meaningful to me.

I am free to honor Jesus for who I now believe he actually is.

And I am free to worship the God Jesus himself worshiped.

For me, this theology has produced:

greater clarity.

Greater hope.

Greater motivation toward holiness.

A deeper belief in the possibility of Christlikeness.

A clearer relationship with God.

A clearer relationship with Jesus.

Greater confidence in prayer.

Greater common ground in conversations with Muslims and Jews.

Greater openness toward Christians outside Nicene traditions.

And a greater sense of what God intends humanity to become.

That is very good fruit.