“Why does this man speak like that? He (Jesus) is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Mark 2:7📕
Mark is thought by numerous scholars to be the earliest of the four gospel accounts recorded with “internal and external data pointing to Rome as the place of composition around the mid-to-late 50’s.”(1)
With Jesus’s crucifixion occurring around A.D. 30 or 33, the documentation provided by Mark is approximately 20 years later, which is astounding when referring to ancient documents! For example, the first written copy of Caesar’s Gaelic Wars had a time gap of ~950 years.(2)
Based upon this information, we would expect the earliest eyewitness report (Peter’s given to Mark) to solidly address Jesus’s identity as the long-awaited Messiah: God the Son, incarnate. And as you’ll witness in the 7m clip by Wes Huff (Christian Apologist from Canada), Jesus’s divinity is boldly on display in Mark!
The acronym which Wes mentions is provided by Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski from their book, Putting Jesus in his Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ.
H – Jesus shares the honors due to God.
A – Jesus shares the attributes of God.
N – Jesus shares the names of God.
D – Jesus shares and the deeds that God does.
S – Jesus shares the seat of God’s throne.
Friends, #Jesus demonstrated in real time and space who He was (and still is). God’s love came down and put upon Himself a human nature to fulfill His promise: rescuing humanity (Ge 3:15; Jn 2:12; 3:26). This is news we should rejoice in daily!
“Relating to Jesus as God is also crucial to the message we take to the rest of the world. We must know whom we represent if we are to represent him faithfully. Our Christian walk, witness, and worship all must reflect a sound understanding of the identity of our Lord Jesus Christ.”(3)
Hold Fast Apologetics 