John Gospel Denies Jesus is God 

The youngest gospel of the four we have is the gospel of John. It is purported to make the clearest statements that Jesus Christ was the incarnation of God, God made man. In fact this isn’t true. But if the gospel did declare that Jesus Christ was God then it would have to be eliminated from the New Testament for the doctrine that Jesus was godlike but not God or a god is all over the New Testament. When older gospels and sources than John deny Jesus is God we must listen to them.

The worshipers of the divine Christ think they find in their proof of his divinity in the form of the last gospel in the New Testament to be written. In their imagination, it is the clearest proclamation of the divine Lord. It is alleged to emphasise Jesus’ equality and identity with God. But this balloon of theirs is easily popped.
 
JOHN 1.  This says the Word was in the Beginning and the Word was with God and the Word was God and became flesh.  If you put it alongside where we are told that Jesus was accused of making himself equal to God in John 5:18 it seems obvious that Jesus was God.  Jesus does not affirm however that the perception is right.  And when you remember that Word means message you get, "In the beginning was the message and the message was with God and the message was God and became flesh you see that this is not meant to be taken literally.  It does not affirm Jesus as God but as a manifestation of God's message.  Notice that the word is not a person but a force.  Jesus is divine power, the message, but that does not make him God.

JOHN 8:58. Jesus said that before Abraham was born that he is and saw Abraham. He called himself, “I AM”, which is the name of God in Exodus 3:14. Therefore Jesus was God.
 
Jesus only said I AM before Abraham was. He didn’t say my name is I AM.

Jesus said, “I AM”, but he did not say, “I AM in the sense God meant it in Exodus.”

JOHN 10:30. “I and the Father are One”. When Jesus said this after promising to bestow eternal life the Jews tried to kill him by stoning for making himself God.

When one studies the context it is made plain that their response may not have been caused by this utterance but by the promise that he would give eternal life which seemed to make him God. The cited utterance itself is no proof that he claimed to be divine. A man and his wife are one (Genesis 2:24). It is silly to argue that they would have lifted the rocks to stone him before he got a chance to say he was one with the Father if it was the everlasting life promise that bothered them. Maybe they just wanted to hear what else he had to say and let him finish before they grabbed the stones?

JOHN 12:40, 41. Jesus says that Isaiah’s vision of God (Isaiah 6) was a vision of himself. Does this mean that Jesus must be God?

The Bible says that nobody can see God and live (Exodus 33:20) – if God is good then the reason is that upon experiencing the happiness of beholding God one cannot live for the crave for death in order to be with him forever is too strong and is powerful enough to cause death – so Isaiah did not see the essence of God but a symbolic vision of God. The Bible says that God has no body and is everywhere and is almighty so when Isaiah spoke of God’s train and sitting down he didn’t mean it literally and held the vision to consist of symbols of God. If he saw Jesus through whom God revealed himself and who said that anybody who saw him saw the Father (for he showed what God was like) (John 14:9) then he saw God by seeing the divine works. God is his actions for he is a partless being so he saw God in an indirect way.

Isaiah had to see an image of some sort. If he saw Jesus he would not say that Jesus was God just as if he saw a light he wouldn’t say that God is a literal light. God would have given him a glimpse of the future Jesus who was the mirror of God so we can’t say we have an indication of pre-existence here.

JOHN 12:45 where Christ claims that whoever sees him sees the Father.
 
This is like John 14:9 where Jesus asks Philip does he not know him to be the Father when Philip asks Jesus to show him and the disciples the Father. Jesus says that whoever sees him sees the Father. Jesus did not claim to be the Father for he spoke of the Father as separate from himself. He was the mirror and temple of the Father. He was so close to the Father that the Father can be described as having took flesh in Jesus but not in the sense that the Father has literally become man. We see the meaning of the words of the gospel that God the Word was made flesh.

The Church says that since the Father and Jesus were one God or one being to see the Father was to see Jesus. But if Jesus was the perfect mirror of God and not God at times this interpretation is not the only one.

JOHN 17:5 where Jesus asks God to give him the glory he had with him before the world was proves his divinity for God says he will not give his glory to another (Isaiah 42:8; 48:11).

Jesus never asked for God’s glory, that is, the glory that belongs to God alone. The Bible promises that God will glorify the saved.

JOHN 17:21 has Jesus saying that just as he and the Father are one so he wants his followers to be one.
 
Christians say that Jesus and the Father are two persons but one being so he did not mean that he wanted us to be one that way for we are all separate beings from each other and from God. So they say that Jesus meant that he wants people to be as close to one another as he is to the Father in the loose that is less literal sense. But the verse is open to the interpretation that Jesus wants us to be one in the exact same sense that he is one with the Father which would mean that he is not God but only in a relationship with God for we can’t become God and still be ourselves. Support for this is in the fact that when in doubt the literal interpretation is the probable one. That is the interpretation that we are to be literally one but in the friendship sense with God like Jesus and God are one that way. And there is more. The oneness between persons in the godhead is not free while ours, according to the Bible, can be. God did not choose to be three persons who loved each other and he cannot help loving. In a sense the unity is artificial because it is forced. So there is no comparison. Jesus then could not mean that he wants us to be one like the Father and Son are because the two categories of relationships are as far apart as Mount Everest and the moon. So he wants us to love one another as he freely loves the Father and he loves him as a free man and not as a God-man who has to love.
 
JOHN 20:28. Thomas probed the Risen Jesus’ wounds and cried, “My Lord and my God”. Jesus did not correct him for calling him God so Jesus accepted this confession of faith in his divinity as the truth. Thomas was not swearing but he was speaking to God. He was speaking to Jesus.
 
If Joe raised Jake from the dead and you saw Jake it would be natural to exclaim “Joe”, in acknowledgment of his power.
 
Christian apologists maintain that no Jew would cry, “My Lord and my God,” as an exclamation for Jews have an excessive reverence for the name of God. But Jesus sneered at many Jewish traditions and laws and sought to restore sensible obedience to divine law, the Torah (Mark 7). His apostles would have picked up the same trait. If John’s gospel says elsewhere that Jesus was not God which we believe it does then it does not need to have Jesus correct Thomas if Thomas meant to call Jesus Lord and God.
 
Besides the gospel doesn’t say Thomas was right even if he called Jesus God. The gospel only reports the episode without commenting on the right or wrong of it. It speaks of Thomas having refused to believe in Jesus or believe in the evidence for the resurrection until Jesus appeared to him indicating that Thomas is hardly a reliable source of doctrine.

Why does Thomas use an expression seemingly about Jesus that fits pagan imperial culture best?  Don't forget that this gospel is for Roman pagan culture.

The Roman emperors commanded that they be titled Dominus et Deus which means Lord and God. They claimed to be God in the sense that despite them being men without magical powers and who would die they were still somehow God incarnate. Even if Jesus was called God it could be explained in this sense. There is a difference between an active God-man and one who seems to be just ordinary. There is a difference between a supernaturally active one and one who is positively uninteresting. Jesus claiming to be God would not necessarily mean much. John draws on philosophical and pagan influences and so Thomas despite being a Jew could have meant it all that way. Emperors Augustus and his successor Domitian discarded the Lord and God title. Statius claims that Domitian did away with it (Silvae 1.6.83–84). But when we turn to Suetonius’s Life of Domitian chapter 13 we are told that Domitian got a letter started with “Our Lord and Master enacts."

JOHANNINE DENIAL OF DEITY

The Gospel of John which is the bedrock of belief in the divine saviour is the one that is the clearest in rejecting it. The gospel has been twisted and abused by fake Christians.

In John 5:45 Jesus tells his Jewish enemies that he will not accuse them before the Father for Moses will do that. But if Jesus is God then he has to for all his thoughts are communicated to the Father and if he thinks of them as guilty it is a message to the Father that they are. Jesus is not God. If John said that Jesus was God then this is evidence that he was not always God or was just God on a few special occasions.

In John 7:16, Jesus said, “My teaching is not My own, but His Who sent Me”. Christians claim that he means that his teaching is not the product of his human nature but of his divine nature. If he meant that he would have said, “This doctrine is not of human origin but divine”. He said that it was not his own. His human nature alone is not a my. The Church says that Jesus is fully God and fully man. This is like two separate persons pretending to be one. If Jesus is still one person the my refers to this person who is human and divine. Jesus was saying that God was one person and he was another, a creature, somebody made by God and not God.

In John 8:28, Jesus said that when he will be raised up by the Jews on the cross they will learn that he was the messenger from God they were waiting for and that he did his Father’s will and not his own and said only what he was told to say. The crucifixion reinforced the Jews’ conviction that Jesus was not God though it might have made them believe that he was a holy man inspired from on high. The verse proves then that Jesus was not literally God.

In John 10:18 Jesus said he was authorised to lay down his life and to take it up again. To be God is to have supreme authority and so God cannot be authorised to do anything. Jesus was not God. The Church says that Jesus was God but that he was also man and as man he had to receive authority and power from his divinity or divine nature. When the gospel Jesus nowhere actually states that he was at once fully God and fully man that explanation is untenable. The Jews would have taken him to mean an ordinary man claiming to have been authorised by God so that is what he meant.

In John 14:28, Jesus asks the apostles to rejoice that he will return to his Father for his Father is greater than him. Believers in Jesus’ deity contend that Jesus meant that it is best for his humanity to go to Heaven to enjoy God forever instead of remaining on earth not that God is greater than he is. Greater in the context Jesus gave must mean “more able to make me happy than I can make myself”. If Jesus had had that in mind it was best to be with the Father for the Father was more glorious than he was in his humanity and not that there was any inequality, it would make no sense for he said that the glory of God was love and God could have no greater glory than to become man to sacrifice himself forever. Jesus said that he was neither God not equal to God as in being another God. It didn’t occur to Jesus that a God who does not suffer is not love for love is sacrifice that was just an error. It does not stand as evidence that Jesus claimed to be God. If, however, Jesus did not make this mistake it does not mean that he had to claim to be God for God could suffer without becoming man. He could become an emotional angel.

Jesus informed Magdalene in John 20:17 that he is going up to his Father and her Father and his God and her God. Jehovah’s Witnesses regard this as an indication that he was her Father and God in the way he was his. But an adopted child might say something like that to a natural child concerning their father.

CONCLUSION

If you keep unnecessary interpretations out of your reading of the John Gospel and stick to the necessary ones you see plainly that John didn’t declare Jesus to be God.