Is Yeshua God? The short answer, yes, He is.
I wish that were enough. But I know that many, like myself, have struggled with this question. This is a question that hits hard at the Jewish soul as it hard for a Jewish person to reconcile with tradition. Indeed, the idea of a human being who was also the Creator boggles the mind of anyone. It’s tough.
Yet it is also a truth that magnifies the Messiah.
The divinity of Messiah and the tri-unity of God can be the cause of great doubt and stumbling for some, especially Jewish followers of Yeshua. Yet, it is also the what makes messianic faith unique amongst all other faiths.
Indeed, when you look deeply at this issue, many see that these beliefs are actually in harmony with Judaism:
Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took on bodily form….No Jew sensitive to Judaism’s own classical sources, however, can fault the theological model Christianity employs when it avows belief in a God who has an earthly body as well as a Holy Spirit and a heavenly manifestation, for that model, as we have seen, is a perfectly Jewish one. A religion whose scripture contains the fluidity traditions [meaning God appearing in bodily form at different times and places], whose teachings emphasise the multiplicity of the shekhinah, and whose thinkers speak of the sephirot does not differ in its theological essentials from a religion that adore the triune God.
Benjamin D. Sommer (2009), The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge University Press), 135
We believe that the God who created all things and fills the universe with His presence also walked among us in the person of Messiah Yeshua.
The very point that some argue is the weakness of Messianic faith is in fact its greatest strength.
So why do we believe this? What is the evidence?
Most books of the Brit Hadashah (New Testament) clearly demonstrate the belief that Yeshua was God and yet also separate in some way.
For example:
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were made through Him, and apart from Him nothing was made that has come into being. 14 And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We looked upon His glory, the glory of the one and only from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:1-3, 14
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
This passage powerfully speaks of Jesus’ association with Yahweh. This is because it so powerfully overlaps with verses from Isaiah 45 where Yahweh, the God of Israel says:
22 Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’
In the book of Revelation, we are told that in the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven to Earth:
“The throne of God and of the Lamb [meaning Jesus] will be in the city, and his will serve him [not their servants will serve them]. They will see his face [not their faces], and his name [not their names] will be on their foreheads.”
(Revelations 2:3-4; emphasis by M. Brown, The Real Kosher Jesus, 2012, p. 137)
This passage forms a beautiful summary. One God. One Throne. One face. One name.
These are just a small sampling of verses from the New Covenant Scriptures that teach that the Messiah is divine. There is so much more. I encourage you to also read The Angle of the Lord.