Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 47
part of God during his life on earth. . . . It is as a man that Christ is more relevant. True he was the son of God and addressed God as Father but he was also the son of Man, and made it clear that we are all sons of God. (p. 95). . . Muslims who believe Jesus to have been a great prophet of God, will no longer need to be offended by dogmatic Christian insistence on his divinity. (p. 118) Jesus was the last prophet in Israel. He was called the son of God, an expression that was in common use in scripture but was always employed metaphorically and in no single instance did it connote God. Nowhere in the Gospels or the Epistles is it said that Jesus referred to himself as God or implied that he was God. The expression, Lord, was applied to him but there is no evidence that those who made use of this expression with reference to him believed, or meant to convey, that he was God. It was used as a synonym for master. It was, long after his time that the expression son of God was transmuted into God, the Son, meaning thereby that Jesus was the second person in the Trinity. The entire concept of the Trinity was foreign to the thinking of Jesus. He always referred to himself as having been sent by God, meaning that he was a divine messenger. For instance: This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. (John 17:3) I can of mine own self do nothing, as I hear I judge and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. John 5:30) 39