RanRan you are fire tonight bro! I am enjoying it and as always love the passion! 
Is it simple enough for unbelievers to understand or can only believers understand the Bible?
This is getting interesting. Most people who say that Christ is not God and not a man - call THAT whatever it is remaining - a myth…Or Christ The Concept for non-literary types.
Sheesh, Aaron. It’s time for some compelling logic. Do you realize the corner you’ve painted yourself into? Or why Luther called logic a whore? Your goddess has let you down this time.
Simply put, you have this jealous God demanding that every knee bow and every tongue confess, TO WORSHIP something that is NOT God - but the ‘functional equivalent’ of God. Why not Hitler or Stalin? They demanded worship as well. And what pantheist hasn’t found the ‘functional equivalent’ of God in a tree, or a bull, or my good ole hub-cap as worthy of worship? Yeah, you’re talking idolatry and don’t even know it.
Is this where ‘compelling logic’ has taken you - because this is where you are. And it ain’t pretty, no matter how you paint it. So paint away, but the title on the canvas, all flowered up and pretty, is still going to be NOTGOD.
I have not painted myself into a corner, Ran. I made sure to define “functional equivalence” to mean exactly what Scripture says in regards to what was given(!) to Christ by the Father since his death/resurrection. I am not saying that the Father is demanding that everyone worship Christ as one who is ontologically equivalent to himself. I’m saying he has given to Jesus (God’s perfect representative - the “image of the invisible God”) an exalted status that makes him worthy of worship and honor as such. I don’t worship Jesus as God (i.e., the Father); I worship him for who he is: the Messiah - the King of kings and Lord of lords. If you think all worship (honor, reverence and adoration) of which the Bible speaks is to be reserved for God alone, then you’re mistaken.
I encourage you to re-read the story of Joseph in Genesis to better understand my position on this. Just like Pharaoh (who was considered a “god” to the Egyptians) exalted Joseph to a status that was second only to Pharaoh himself - even giving Joseph his *signet ring *(Gen 41:42), which signified the Pharaoh’s own authority - so the one true God (the Father) has exalted his Son. While this elevated status did not make Joseph Pharaoh, it did enable him to do everything that the Pharaoh could do (and it was only the Pharaoh who could delegate this authority!). Joseph was set over all the land of Egypt; all the people were under his command. According to Pharaoh, without Joseph’s consent no one could even “life up hand or foot in all the land of Egypt” (vv. 40-41, 44, 55). Not only that, but Joseph was even given a new name (v. 45)! This, RanRan, is a beautiful type of what God did for Jesus when he raised him from the dead, set him at his right hand as Lord over all, and gave him a name that is above every name.
Aaron: I’m not sure this kind of objection applies to those who (like myself) don’t believe Christ “pre-existed” his own birth. I’m not an Arian (although being labeled as “Aaron the Arian” would be kinda funny). Moreover, I’m not arguing that God bestowed upon Christ every divine attribute (again, I think that would be impossible if Jesus is in fact a man); what I am saying is that, whereas during his earthly ministry Christ could do nothing of himself (John 5:19, 30), after his death/resurrection God bestowed upon Christ “functional equivalence” to himself in the sense that he gave his Son “all authority in heaven and on earth” and made him “Lord over all,” both “the dead and the living.” There is no indication whatsoever that the Father was simply giving back to Jesus what he’d already possessed for “all eternity.”
Tom: Hi Aaron. I’m not a scholar on Arius or anything, but I think I know enough to question how this makes you essentially different than Arius. What do you see as the essential differences between your view had his? True, Arius believed the Son pre-existed creation while you don’t. But Arius believed the Son was created slightly before the world, so you both agree the Son is a created, non-divine being, and that would be Orthodoxy’s objection. And Arius would agree that lordship and authority to rule are conferred upon Christ as a function and not as something he deserves because of any inherent/essential divine attribute. So again, I’m not seeing a huge difference between the two of you. What do you think differentiates the two of you so importantly?
And I mean this only on an academic level. This says nothing about your (or Arius’s) faith or trust in Christ with respect to salvation. These issues and the councils that debated them were about defining what the community’s orthodox belief would be. And they decided that Arianism didn’t express/represent the orthodox faith of the Church. The same church leaders believed excommunicated persons were also LOST. But that, I think, was uncalled for.
You may be certainly unorthodox, in which case orthodox/trinitarian churches wouldn’t have you teaching Sunday School, being a deacon or elder, or serving on the Church Board. But (contra A37) I don’t think it follows that Orthodoxy can render a judgment about the status of your faith and soul. I’ve known non-trinitarians that I had every possible confidence were my brothers and sisters in Christ. But when it came to our churches’ catechism/curriculum, administration and leadership these individuals weren’t permitted a defining role. Some churches wouldn’t let them attend either (following antiquity’s rule there). Some would let them attend only and worship. But you understand all this.
Blessings,
Tom
OK, I whittled down my response somewhat. And I decided to post my treatise on the matter of the deity of Christ, then branch off to another thread which I title “Jesus and the Creation”. I believe both have relevance to the question at hand but feel that a separate thread dealing with the creation issue to prevent the discussion from might veering away from the topic here.
Before I come to the how or mechanics of the question, I first want to establish that indeed there is evidence in my view that Jesus is God. My proof texts will come from the book of Revelation (and I understand that some here might not take Revelation as canon. I could just as well use other passages to support the claim, but this one just happens to be my favorite) :
“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty…Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last:” – Revelation 1:8, 11a
Whoever is speaking here is making an unequivocal claim that He has always existed and is all-powerful. This recalls back a similar claim in Isaiah 48 attributed to the LORD:
“Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.
Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together.” – Isaiah 48:12-13
There is no doubt that this is the Creator speaking. And BTW, there is a curious Trinitarian-supported verse in Isaiah 48:16, which implies three persons involved (the Lord GOD, His Spirit, and Me, the latter being the aforementioned speaker), but I’ll leave it to you to unravel)
And so turning back to Rev. 1, we can see the continuance of the words spoken by the LORD:
“Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”
So the Speaker is instructing the Apostle John to write to these churches, but when John turns to see who spoke the voice, he is greeted with a description if the Being in Rev 1:12-16, which is quite similar with the Person described later in Rev. 19:11-16, which clearly describes the return of Christ, as the Word of God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords. Note similarities in eyes as the flames of fire and the double-edged sword out of His mouth.
Furthermore, we can identify the Rev 1 figure as the risen Christ in the next few verses:
“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” – Rev 1:17-18
But the clincher for me is found in a related passage in Rev. 20: 6-7:
“And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
The identity of the Alpha and Omega is confirmed when we realize that Jesus possess the everlasting water of life as He stated in John 4:14, and in the same breath proclaims that for those who drinks of the water of life freely He (Jesus) will be his God.
Now I’d like to attempt to describe my view of the Trinity, but to do that I need to go back to the beginning. So please direct you attention to this thread:
Then return for the conclusion in a following thread here.
Here is my conclusion, following on from this thread: Jesus and creation.
I’ve always wondered why the Blood? I mean, physical Blood. How can physical Blood in anyway affect the spiritual? Why is it so essential to redemption? We are told in Hebrews 9:14,
“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
Because the Spirit is hidden behind the veil, and indeed is the conduit between the Eternal and the temporal universe, yet there is no access to the spirit, soul, and body of corrupted man, since he became an independent agent. Man needs to be made perfect before there can be interaction with God. We learn from I John 5:7,8 that there are three that bear record in heaven (The Eternal): the Father, the Word (which speaks creation into existence), and the Holy Spirit (the conduit between the Eternal and the temporal), and these three are One. And that there are three that bear witness on earth (the physical temporal universe): the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree in one.
Notice what is common is the Spirit.
Well, it is through the operation of the Holy Spirit that overshadowed (there’s that word again) Mary and that holy thing (thing? NOTE: mostly rendered ‘holy’ 229 times in the NT) born in her that shall be called the Son of God. In Hebrews 10:6 we read, *“Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:”, *and then in Philippians 2:7-8, *“But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man…”, *testifying that the physical body of Jesus is created (though He himself is uncreated, being God), and so the witness of the Spirit on earth is that the Spirit conceived in Mary Jesus’ body. Whether it was wholly created by the Spirit or a merger of godly DNA with Mary’s DNA is of speculation beyond the scope of discussion, but suffice to say it was holy. But it is the Spirit of Christ from Eternity that that enters the temporal world first through conception in the womb of Mary, uncorrupted in human flesh as the Spirit of Christ abides.
Moving on to the witness of water, we learn in John 3:5-6, *“I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” *
So the water represents Christ’s physical birth process with water nine months after the conception of the Holy Spirit through Mary, that which is flesh is flesh. Water is used to symbolize a new beginning, a baptism into the newness of life, a process of being born. The Israelites after coming out of Egypt were baptized as a nation through the Red Sea, after escaping the bondage (womb) of Egypt (I Cor.10:1-2).
Finally, the witness of the blood, as Jesus sheds His blood on the Cross for our sins in His death. How interesting that these three things that bear witness to Christ encompasses His whole life and death. As far as the blood is concerned,
“For the life (soul) of the flesh is in the blood…” – Leviticus 17:11
With this Levitical prohibition concerning eating of blood, it should not be overlooked the significance of that statement. We find that the blood of Abel cried out of the ground to God after Cain killed him. It is my belief that the blood is where the soul resides. Blood takes oxygen and other nutrients to all the cells of the body. When God breathed life into Adam after forming him from the ground, Adam became a living soul as that oxygen coursed through his blood. Death really occurs when there is a lack of oxygen to the cells and cell death becomes immanent and permanent.
In Jesus, there is the life-giving blood of the eternal and endless Spirit of God. When Jesus died, his soul died also, but the Spirit of God through the Eternal brought Him back to life. Why? Because that blood was pure, untainted. Jesus was pure, untainted. And when that life-giving blood is imparted to us, we become purified through the eternal Spirit (see Hebrews 9:14).
Therefore, it is not merely a symbolized sacrifice of atonement meant to appease God as satisfaction for payment for our sins, but a metaphysical act that will physically and spiritually change our lives. It is the merger of Spirit of God and the Body of Christ which begat the Son of God.
Well, I know what you are thinking. This makes Jesus’ existence have a starting point in Mary. But that’s not what I’m saying at all. Rather I’m demonstrating that the concept of tzimtzum explains the Trinity (as explained in the other thread) in a coherent fashion that takes nothing away from the deity or eternity of Christ. It is the revealing of God in stages, a progressive manifestation of God in different forms at different times. It is telescopic in explanation:
God the Father dwells in Eternity.
God the Holy Spirit dwells simultaneously between Eternity and the temporal universe, via contraction (tzimtzum). It is the Holy Spirit that manifests Himself in the pillars of fire and clouds interacting with the temporal world from Eternity. The Holy Spirit is like a conduit between each.
God the Son dwells humanly. It is the Body and Blood of Christ fashioned as a man, but it is the Spirit of God dwelling in the man, Jesus. Jesus died as a human in the flesh, but raised by the Spirit of God and metaphysically changed in the resurrection and risen up into eternity. You can think of Christ as the mustard seed, where as one man who opened up the way for all of us to return to the Creator in eventual harmony as He reconciles the world.
All Three reside simultaneously because from the Eternity, all temporal events are simultaneous: past, present, and future. Wherever Eternity is, outside the time-space-matter construct, therein dwells the Godhead.
All things in the temporal universe are a shadow of the Eternal.
All things that exist in the temporal are from the Essence of God, but are a contraction of God that both Light and Darkness can dwell, in order for man to have the means to be autonomous. However, God’s Spirit will draw all men toward Himself and eventually all things will be reconciled back, through Christ.
The final reconciling of the world will involve a new heavens and new earth, which will be a reversal of the contraction of God, possibly an unraveling of the 10-dimensional space.
Tom.
How many true born again children of God do you know that go around blaspheming Jesus and denying that He is God in the flesh? I know none… 1 John 4: 1-4 is very clear…A False teacher or prophet is tested by the spirit that is leading them. The Holy Spirit testifies the true nature of Jesus and The Antichrist spirit denies the true nature of Christ.
Psst…Hey Aaron37:
*"And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.
But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.
For he that is not against us is on our part.
For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward." - Mark 9:38-41*
Hmmm…I didn’t catch the part where they interrogated this guy as to his doctrinal beliefs about the deity of Christ, did you?
Dondi.
How many true born again children of God do you know that go around blaspheming Jesus and denying that He is God in the flesh? I know absolutley none. If you think that is Ok or normal…your dead wrong.
Hark, I hear an echo.
For those who have you cramped up, I can only offer this:
“Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: ***or else ***believe me for the very works’ sake.” - John 14:11 [emphasis mine]
Seems Jesus was less concerned about what people thought of Him. That ‘or else’ gives the option to believe Him for the works that He did rather than trying unravel His nature.
Dondi.
That is what I thought…you know none yourself. There is a reason for that.
I’m a missionary at heart and tend to extract theology (partly) from that (as, I think, did Paul). Now, I don’t think the deity of Christ is an unimportant issue, but missiologically my goal is to MOVE people from where they are into a steadily progressing faith and intimacy with Christ. I think it’s possible for people to position themselves in right relation to God in/through Christ without having to cross EVERY Christological T and dot EVERY Christological I. For example, in my part of the world it’s not uncommon for Muslims to trust in Christ–i.e., to believe that Christ died for them and that in Christ’s death for them God did in fact fix what’s wrong with the human race–without really understanding theologically that Christ is God-incarnate. We’ll teach them and work with them. Eventually they grow conceptually into an appreciation of what it is they’ve experienced. But many just don’t “get it” at first, though they DO look to Christ as when and where God dealt with the fallenness of human beings. I have no doubt they’re saved on the basis of that trust. And I think Christ is happy to embrace them lovingly and mediate to them his healing presence and fill them with his Spirit.
I won’t CONFIRM them in their failure to affirm Christ’s deity. I’ll WORK on that. But turn the light on FIRST, then dust and straighten the furniture. If others can’t countenance such a thing, there are other mission boards and churches they can work with. Good ridence. (What the rudeness Tom! Yes.) But I’ve seen more enduring fruit from this approach than from demanding that Muslims pass a systematic theology class before we’ll embrace them in community on the basis of their faith in the Crucified Christ. I’ve known Muslims who committed to Christ, trusted what God did in Christ on the Cross as the ONLY means of their redemption and right relation to God, even pray to Christ and believe he lives within them via the Spirit, but who for several years just couldn’t bring themselves to SAY “Jesus is God” (or divine, or whatever).
Tom
A37, I don’t see any of your posts, but I trust you can see this. You can send PMs to me until hell freezes over. I don’t read them. Really. Trust me. I just delete them without opening them. I say this just in case “redeeming the time” is important to you, for any PM you send is a complete waste of your time.
T
Yeah, I obviously keep stating “authority” as the REAL enemy… where??? (Hint: nowhere do I ever state once that “authority” is the REAL enemy. Except in your imagination.)
Ditto.
Nope. And despite what you fail to quote me as saying (including the one place you did quote me), I never did even try to say that someone can run a church without authority.
How you’re getting from my affirmation that the woman in charge of the house church had the authority and responsibility to gauge whether people claiming prophetic authority were valid or not before she let them influence her flock with prophetic authority, to some idea that I must be against not only prophetic authority, and not only the authority of a leader of a church group to protect her (or his) flock from imposters, but even against ‘authority’ at all, is a mystery known only at this point to God. (And maybe to you, though I somewhat doubt that.)
Which obviously you don’t need to remind me, or I wouldn’t have written what I just quoted above.
I have no problem with Lutherans disallowing that whatsoever. (Except in your imagination.)
Ditto. Do they have the authority to bar people who deny the canonicity of RevJohn from teaching in your church? Yep, that, too. Does a Synod which doctrinally rejects universalism have the authority to bar people who affirm universalism from teaching in their churches? Yep, I agree they do.
Does any of my affirmations there fit what you persist in imagining to be true about me? Not in the least. 
Not in the least. Neither do I think that 1 John 4 is talking about mere teachers, though. People claiming prophetic authority are not merely claiming to be teachers. They’re claiming to be passing along teaching from a spirit, which is why the Evangelist puts his rejection in terms of identifying spirits.
(All non-trinitarians here on the board who are claiming to be, yourselves, prophetic authorities receiving revelation from a spirit that trinitarianism is false, and expecting us to receive you as such authorities over us, take a moment to raise your hands please! )
Does that mean I reject a church’s authority to regulate teachers who aren’t insisting they be received by the church as prophetic authorities bringing a revelatory message from a spirit? Not in the least.
Try to stop having a brain aneurism long enough to think, Ran: if I was against church authority to define what will be taught to its congregations, why would I (someone who affirms the canonical status of RevJohn) not only affirm church authority to acknowledge that as canon but also defend church authority to reject it as canon?!–in fact, why would I go out of my way to defend your own personal rejection of its canonicity as a matter of good conscience on your part?!
For that matter, if I was against church authority to define what will be taught to its congregations, why would I voluntarily rescind myself from teaching positions in congregations which are anti-universalist?! Or, why would I rescind myself from joining the RCCs (whose church around here I rather like) on the ground of respecting their requirement that I be in communion with them on various points which in fact I disagree with them about? (Notice: one of those points is that I reject the inherent inerrancy of their own claimed authority; but I nevertheless refuse to hypocritically ‘join’ their church, taking advantage of their leniency on this matter, while opposing their hierarchy’s beliefs and insistent teaching about their own spiritually inspired inerrancy–which seems to be what they mean by ‘infallibility’. Why? Because I respect their right to define and police themselves that way.)
I could hunt up and link to places where I’ve mentioned those last two things before, but maybe they’re peripheral enough you wouldn’t remember them in any case. You ought to have remembered that I defend your right in good conscience (and the Syrian Orthodox church’s, too) to reject the canonicity of RevJohn, though.
Nope; but at the risk of tiresome monotony, I can point to the verse (yet again) that shows what John was more specifically talking about in 1 John 4. John isn’t saying that everyone who denies X beliefs has the spirit of antichrist. He’s saying that someone claiming prophetic authority over other people who (with that putative prophetic authority) denies X beliefs, has the spirit of antichrist.
And as I explicitly said before: does that mean I think teachers aren’t liable to God? Nope; I said before that I think teachers are more liable to God than people who aren’t teachers; but not as liable as people claiming prophetic authority. By “liability” do I mean they’re sinning by being teachers and/or prophetic authorities? As I have repeatedly said before, NO! I only mean they’re held proportionately more responsible by God. And (as I have said) by “they” I mean “me”, too, whenever I’m in teaching mode.
(Which, by the way, as I have explained to you before A37, since you asked again, is why I write essays: I’m giving people as much opportunity as possible to see why I’m teaching this-or-that, or denying this-or-that, and so also as much opportunity as possible to properly reject me where applicable. Also, when your position requires ignoring verse 1 leading into verse 2 and 3, as well as the context of the rest of the epistle, not to say the context of 2 John, then no, your hermeneutic and your exegesis fails.)
Does the special responsibility (and so liability) of teachers make them immune from church authority to decide what teaching they will permit? As I have said before (and as ought to be obvious), no it absolutely does not give teachers such immunity.
This is all entirely consonant with the paragraph I wrote right before asking “Really, what’s the problem here?”–a paragraph you either didn’t bother to read or were incapable of understanding for some reason:
What’s the difference? We’ll all see Him as He is soon enough anyway (we see in a glass darkly anyhow). Can’t you just be happy that folks have some kind of relationship with Christ without being hung up over it?
I seriously doubt that, Aaron. The Holy Spirit has always directed me to worship God alone - not three Gods. The same Spirit who spoke through the prophets - literally spoke through them - and the message has always been that worship is only due God. Likewise, the Spirit has always directed me to worship Christ as only due God. And finally, the Spirit itself testifies that in Him (the Holy Spirit) we have our being - life itself and He is worthy of worship only due God.
When a man has less of life and is ‘functionally dead’ but walking he also has less of the Father and less of the Son as well. But if a man is enlivened by the Life which points him to the Father and to the Son - then the experience is the Trinity - God is a package deal and the essential unified reality in all this. And what is the experience of God like? A love fest between Father and Son and that love radiating in and through the Holy Spirit to EVERYTHING - even the stones would cry out if they could that God is a Trinity of Persons.
So, Aaron, if Christ is NOTGOD is that also true of the Holy Spirit? 'Let US make man in our image…"
Simple logic should compel you to agree that if something is ‘functionally identical’ to God then that something IS God.
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
I’ve been confessing that creed all my life - you say it creates a paradigm - but I say it describes it.
Either way, the Trinity expresses itself - about itself - better than any arguments or creeds which are feeble attempts to capture that expression. Pray for wisdom - it will be interesting to see where you’re at on this matter five years from now.
To be fair, I think A37 thinks Christ is hung up on everyone (not only people in authority who have all the advantages and who could be expected to get things right but who are intentionally going the other way) getting a bunch of things technically right before He will save them.
Which makes it kind of ironic when he complains about me being so technically picky all the time in favor of orthodox trinitarian theism and its doctrines. 
(Whereas I, the hyper-doctrinaire, don’t think Christ saves us on the basis of the correctness of our knowledge and profession about Christ. Which I also think is ironical; but I like my irony better. 
)
If by “Arian” one simply meant “Christian unitarian” I wouldn’t object to the label. I agree that there is not an essential difference between my view and that of the Arians when viewed in light of Trinitarian orthodoxy. However, I was just responding to the following from Ran:
My only point in bringing up Arianism was that I don’t believe Christ divested himself of anything he possessed in a pre-existent state in order to “walk amongst us as a man” (which is what I understood Ran to be implying I believed).
Ran,
I worship the Father as God, and I worship his Son as “the one mediator between God and men - the man Jesus Christ,” whom God has set at his right hand to save me from sin and death. I do not worship the Father as one who is less than the Son, and I do not worship the Son as someone who is greater than the Father. Here are two examples of Jesus being worshipped during his earthly ministry - not as “God the Son,” but as “the Son of God” (there is a difference!):
Matthew 14:33 "Then those who were in the boat worshiped him Jesus, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
John 9:38 “Then the man said, ‘Lord Jesus, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.”
Now, there are many examples in Scripture of people bowing down to other human beings in order to honor them and express reverence and respect, which is what the Hebrew and Greek words translated in English Bibles as “worship” denote (see, for example, Gen 19:1; 23:7; 33:3; 42:6; Ex 18:7; 1 Sam 24:8; 2 Sam 14:22; 1 Kings 1:23; 1 Chron 29:20; Matt 18:26; Acts 10:25 ). The Hebrew word shachah and the Greek word proskuneo account for more than 80% of the appearances of the word “worship” in most English versions of the Bible. A study of these words reveals that they simply mean “to bow down.” The Hebrew word shachah is used of bowing or prostrating oneself, often before a superior or before God. In the King James Version, it is translated by a number of different English words, including: “worship” (99 times), “bow” (31 times), “bow down” (18 times), “obeisance” (9 times), and “reverence” (5 times). In the East, to fall upon the knees and touch the ground with the forehead was an expression of profound reverence. Hence, in the New Testament the word means kneeling or prostration to do homage or make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication.
1 Chron 29:20 is especially relevant to the topic of worship, for there we are told that the people of Israel “bowed their heads and paid homage (shachah) to the LORD and to the king.” That is, the people worshipped God and his anointed king. If the kings of Israel could be worshipped as God’s representatives (without themselves being ontologically equal to God, or even sinless!), how much more he who is the “King of kings” - God’s only-begotten, sinless son, who has been made Lord over all? Scripture does not, in fact, teach that any and all “worship” must be reserved for God alone. Nor is there is any indication in the above verses that Jesus is being worshipped as God. The questions we should ask ourselves in reading these verses are, “Is Jesus being honored and reverenced as Yahweh, the one God of Israel (i.e., the true and living God)? Or, is he rather being honored and reverenced as the Son of God (i.e., as God’s anointed King - the Messiah)?” It is obviously the latter that is the case. No first-century believer worshipped Jesus as God, simply because no first-century believer understood him to be God (it would take a few more centuries for this idea to fully develop and acquire orthodox status). The honor, reverence and adoration that first-century believers expressed toward Jesus was according to their understanding that he was God’s Anointed One – the promised Savior and King of Israel of whom their inspired scriptures had prophesied. As such, their bowing down to him out of humble reverence and respect, and their rendering to him service as God’s anointed king (Rev 22:3) was completely appropriate, and in no way implies that they thought Jesus was Yahweh.