God is God, you are not.
Is this True? It seems like every time I publicly declare on social media the authority we believers have over sickness, poverty or failure, religious folks, even some leaders, who are considered studied in the Bible, come at me with this statement: “God is God and you are not!” Most onlookers easily believe their statement; after all, we’re aware that we are not perfect like God, right? We know we aren’t God so what are they trying to say and is it true?
I was told this by three different people in a post recently. Two of them would be considered church leadership or pastors. What they are really doing is “reminding me” that I can’t do what God can. I’m not God. They think Jesus did what He did because He was God, but we are not God so we can’t do what He did.
But is this true that we can’t do the works of Jesus?
I know they have not really thought it out completely or they would not say such a thing to someone. They know the promises a Christian has, but they don’t see the application or impact of those promises on the believers’ life.
So, what does Scripture say about who we really are and what we can really do? Let me set the stage before explaining.
Mainline Christianity believes in the teaching called the Trinity. The Trinity declares that there are three persons, but they are all God. You have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three in One.
Now, Jesus is not the Father. Only the Father is the Father. Jesus is not the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not the Father, nor is He Jesus. Yet both Jesus and the Holy Spirit surrender to the will of the Father, even though they too are God just as the Father is. They are their own person, but yet, they are God. Equal, but not equal (Jesus and the Holy Spirit surrendering to the Father’s will). What makes them equal is not their individual persons, but that each individual identity is God.
When God created mankind originally, mankind was created in God’s image, with His likeness (Genesis 1:26-27). “Image and likeness” together form this visual; it was as if Adam was looking in a mirror and saw God reflected back to him. He was an exact duplicate. The intent of God was for all mankind to be in His image with His likeness. The man God created was named Adam.
But Adam was not God. He Looked like Him, acted like Him, thought like Him, but He was not Him. But God’s presence was all around Adam and over him. So you have Adam, an individual, and the presence of God in his life. God walked with Adam and talked with him and Adam was in the midst of the King’s presence. Adam was an exact representation of God. He was an individual who was not God, but was obedient to the Father. God’s presence working through the individual, Adam. This was God’s purpose and intent for you, me, and every person.
Let’s move forward 4,000 years. God came to earth in a human earth suit. Remember, God is Spirit (John 4:24). Jesus, who was Spirit, came to enter forever a human earth suit. He was God [seed of the Holy Spirt] in the flesh [seed of woman]. He laid all of His Godly attributes down (Hebrews 1).
According to Isaiah, the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord was on Him, because the Lord had anointed Him to proclaim good news to the poor. God had sent Jesus to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1). Acts 10:38 says that God had anointed Jesus with power through the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
He was also called the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). He looked like Adam. If you looked at Jesus, you could have seen what the first Adam looked like before he sinned. However, unlike the first Adam, the second Adam never gave the devil any place in Him. He lived His life without sin. He showed what mankind was suppose to live like. He fulfilled God’s mandate for man given in Genesis 1:26-27 without fault.
His purpose for coming was to reveal the Kingdom of God (Luke 4:43) and to return mankind to his original position with God that the first Adam lost. This is very crucial to the understanding of mankind being restored to the image and the likeness of God.
Restoration means to be returned to its original state. Christ accomplished this on the cross (2 Corinthians 6:18; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; Acts 3:20-21). We are to be restored to look like Jesus and the pre-fall first Adam.
Now I am a Spirit that was placed in a human body. I lived on earth for 14 years in this human suit before I learned of Christ’s restoring work on the cross and trusted Him as my savior. When I did that, Scripture said that The Holy Spirit came to dwell in my earth suit with me. The very one that anointed Jesus to live His life with power, is the One Who now dwells in me (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Timothy 1:14) and Who is now anointing me!
Not only that, but Scriptures declare that when I trusted Jesus the Christ as my Savior, my spirit was born again (John 3:3-8; 2 Corinthians 5:17; John 1:13).
So when a person looks at me they see my earth suit. That’s the “Herb” they see, and Herb is not God. The Holy Spirit that’s inside my body is God. Scripture says that Christ is in us [the anointing that the Holy Spirit brings], and it’s our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). My new Spirit is of God. And with my spirit surrendered to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit in me can do everything that Christ did. Scripture says that the very power that raised Christ from the dead is in me (Romans 8:11).
So, my body is not God, and my spirit has been born again, made completely new by God, but these two things are not God. This is the only thing true about the statement “You are not God”, or “God is God, and you are not.” The fullness of God lives in my body, building my spirit up in the anointing, but my body is perishing. And when I’m surrendered to the Holy Spirit within, God can do miraculous things, yet people would think it was me doing them because they are materialistic and see Herb as the body part of me.
This is the way it is for every believer who has received Jesus Christ as their Savior and has received The Holy Spirit as Scripture says.
When we walk in the room, God walks in the room, because God is in our body with us. We must be diligent and to be ever mindful of the Christ in us, The indwelling Holy Spirit.
The only thing that statements like “God is God, you are not,” or “You’re not God” does is that it’s purposed to make you think you can’t do what God does. It suppresses God from working through the person in whom He shares the body with.
God within you wants to protect you from all harm, keep you safe, kill disease in your body, empower you to get wealth, cause you to heal others, restore others heath, release prisoners from bondage, and much more. God wants you to be Christ (Isaiah 61:1-2) to people. Believing that you can’t do these things because you are not God suppresses God Who is in you and wants to use you to do those things!
Matthew 18:19 declares that it takes two people to be in agreement for the Father to act upon it. If I don’t agree with the Holy Spirit within me, I’ll never see God use me for the miraculous. This is the way it is with so many believers. They aren’t in agreement that the Holy Spirit in them can do the miraculous, so they deny the reality of the power within them.
Scripture declares that one strand [When I do things on my own without recognizing the Spirit within me] can easily be broken or destroyed.
When we are in agreement with the indwelling Holy Spirit and what He wants to do, that makes two strands of a cord and two strands can stand back to back and conquer.
Since Scripture is God’s Word, that makes God in agreement with me and the Holy Spirit, so, a cord of three strands is not easily broken.(Ecclesiastes 4:12) .
Lastly, would Jesus say to a believer, “I am God, You are not!?” I don’t think so. Not when His goal in life was to restore mankind to their original relationship with the Father, the relationship that mankind had in the beginning. He prayed for us to be every bit One with Him as He was with the Father (John 18:20-24). Does Jesus want us to think we are God? No! But He does want us confident of the power of the One who is in us and what He wants to do through us! Sure He does!
No, we are not God. Be we have His fullness dwelling in us to work in us and through us to bring us to equality (in works) with Jesus Christ and the Father. We are to be Holy as He is Holy (1 Peter 1:16). And we are brothers of Christ (Hebrews 2:11; Romans 8:29; Mark 3:34), co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17; Colossians 1:12; 3:24) and we reign with Christ (Romans 5:17; Revelation 3:21; 5:10).
We know we are not God. But I truly believe in my heart that those who declare such things as “You’re not God” struggle with knowing the love of God and receiving restoration from God.
It takes faith to actually believe that God loves me enough to believe that He is in us, anointing us, and empowering us so that we can be in His image, act like Him, do what He did as the second Adam, and to believe that we are truly restored.