Is God the only Savior?
I imagine by now you may be arguing with me and saying something like this: Well, if Jesus is not God in human flesh what you say to the Scriptures that say only God can save? After all, God says, "I, even I, am the LORD; and there is no Savior besides me" (Isaiah 40 3:11). If Jesus is not God and there are two saviors! And this is something the Bible here clearly excludes.
We have already seen a strong argument against the idea that God became man in order to redeem us is that there is not one single Old Testament prophecy that supports it. Not one verse foretells that God himself was going to become a man in order to save us. The opposite is the case. The prophets predicted a human being who would under God's anointing Spirit rescue us.
Wherein lies the solution? Ah, let's now read this through our Hebrew eyes and see what a difference it makes. Remember that dictum the Jews had about the law of agency where "the agent is as the principal himself"? It applies right here.
Let's go back to Exodus 23. You remember that we used this chapter earlier to illustrate the Hebrew law of agency. We saw that the angel of the Lord acted in God's stead. What the angel did in said was really what God himself did and said, for "My name is in him" (v. 21). In verse 23 Jehovah explained, "For My angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivities and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them." The angel was the instrument through whom God destroyed the enemies.
Now let's proceed on in the chapter. God says to the Israelites, "I will send my terror ahead of you… I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets ahead of you, that they may drive out the Hivities, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you" (v. 27-28).
To our understanding this sounds as if the LORD himself is going to do the work. But when we come to verse 31: "I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you." So God expects the Israelites to drive their enemies out. Is there a contradiction here? Will God Himself drive out their enemies or will the Israelites do it? We note the principle again and again. Got says He will act when in fact He is going to empower his angels and his people to do the work.
This kind of talk has a thorough Hebrew feel about it. Actions that are directly ascribed to God are in fact carried out by his commissioned agents. Take another instance: "in the LORD… he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam" (2 Kings 14:27).
Once again we observe the clear distinction between God who is the ultimate Author of deliverance and his appointed agent who in this case was King Jeroboam. Or take this verse: "therefore you did deliver them into the hands of the oppressors who oppressed them. But when they cry to You in the time of their distress, You did hear from heaven, and according to Your great compassion You did give them deliverers who delivered them from the hand of their it oppressors" (Nehemiah 9:27).
Graeser, the author of One God and One Lord, p.363. Writes:
God, Christ and others are referred to as "saviors," but that clearly does not make them identical. The term "Savior" is used of many people in the Bible. This is hard to see in the English versions because, when it is used of men, the translators almost always translated as "deliverer." This in and of itself shows that modern translators have a Trinitarian bias that was not in the original languages. The only reason to translate the same word as "Savior" when it applies to God or Christ, but as "deliverer" when it applies to men, is to make the terms seem unique to God and Jesus when in fact it is not. This is a good example of how the actual meaning of Scriptures can be obscured if the translators are not careful or if they are theologically biased.
Is often been argued that the very name Jesus, which means "Yahweh saves," prove Jesus is Jehovah because "he will save his people from their sins" (Matt 1:21). But the logic is not consistently applied because the O.T. name Joshua means "Yahweh saves." I have never yet heard someone who believes in the deity of Christ argue that Joshua was God in the flesh. We know that the O.T. Joshua was God appointed man to deliver Israel. As Joshua and Israel went forth in obedience to his word God save them. Just so, in the matter of our salvation, God sent forth his son into battle. Through Jesus God has saved us. This is why both God and Jesus are called Savior.
This same line of reasoning applies to the healing of the paralytic in Mark 2. This is one of the most commonly appealed to Scriptures that allegedly proves that Jesus must be God, because "only God can forgive sins" (v.7). When Jesus pronounced the man forgiven/healed, the Pharisees say that Jesus is "blaspheming" because he is claiming to be God. But a little careful attention to detail will show that Jesus is not claiming deity. He is rather claiming "authority." He says, "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…" (v.10). The parallel account in Matthew's report is that once the people saw Jesus healed a paralytic, "they were filled with awe, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men" ( Matt 9:8). We note that Jesus is claiming to be "the Son of Man," that is, the human Messiah, with a God given right to pronounce forgiveness. Not too much later Jesus invested other men-his apostles-with the same authority to forgive sins: "If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; he to retain the sins of any, they have been retained" (John 20:23). If only God can forgive sins, then God and Jesus and the apostles are all God! Besides, there is no teaching anywhere in the Bible that says only God can forgive. Even Christians are commanded to forgive each other sin (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13). The fact that the Pharisees say that only God can forgive sins does not make this an established Biblical doctrine. The Pharisees often had wrong doctrine and were often corrected by our Lord Jesus. This was one such occasion.
Those who believe that Jesus can only be our Savior if he is God sometimes appeal to the prophecy from Jeremiah 23: (In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is his name by which he will be called, ‘The LORD our righteousness’" (Jer. 23:6).
Does this not say that the coming Savior will be "The LORD our righteousness," that is, God himself? This is easily answered when we note that a few chapters later we have this prophecy in Jeremiah 33: "in those days Judah shall be saved in Jerusalem shall dwell in safety; and this is the name by which she shall be called: the LORD is our righteousness’ (v.16).
Here the city of Jerusalem is given the very same title as the coming redeemer earlier. I have never yet heard anyone argue that the city of Jerusalem must also be God himself because it bears the same title as Jehovah. Hebrew understanding is needed to avoid the confusion.
This is why it is fallacious to reason that because Jesus is called the "King of Kings and the Lord of Lords" (Rev. 19:16) he must necessarily be Almighty God Himself. The fact that Artaxerxes is called "king of kings" and that God himself calls Nebuchadnezzar "king of kings" does not put these men in the same league as Messiah Jesus, nor mean they have the same nature as him. The designation "king of kings" is obviously a very Hebrew way of speaking that has nothing to do with the equivalency of nature. The Hebrews could also speak of a "servant of servants," which simply means to the lowest of the low (Gen 9:25). In the book of Daniel God addresses Nebuchadnezzar: "You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory" (Dan. 2:37).
In the same Hebrew fashion, when Scriptures designate Jesus Christ as "the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords" the message conveyed is that God has also given him the Kingdom, the power, the strength, and the glory of the Age to Come. Equality of being with the God who gives the Kingdom does not come into the equation, for either Nebuchadnezzar or Jesus. If, as already noted, to share the same nomenclature as God does not prove literal identity with God himself, the same holds true for the sharing of the same titles. Whilst Jesus may share the title "king of kings and Lord of Lords" with God his Father, there is one title reserved uniquely for the Father God. No other individual, including the Lord Jesus, is ever called by the title "God of gods" (Deut. 10:17). This title, as well as "the Lord God" (Rev. 1:8), is always reserved for the one true God, who is the Father.
