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Father. This is in complete accordance with other statements made by the Lord
Jesus Christ,1 and also with those made about Him by His disciples.2
He is the Way 3 for this reason, as He Himself explains. But He is
also the Truth
(الحق), which our Muslim friends hold to be one of God's special
titles. He claims to be the life too, as He does when raising Lazarus from the
dead, for then He said: 'I am 4 the resurrection, and the life: he
that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth on me shall never die.' It is because He is the Truth that elsewhere
He says: 'Heaven 5 and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not
pass away.' With this accords the statement of the Prophet Isaiah: 'The 6
grass withereth, the flower fadeth but the word of our God 7 shall
stand for ever.'
(3) One of the things most clearly taught in both the Old Testament and the
New is that God alone should be worshipped. God alone can answer prayer, and
that is one of the special attributes of the Most Merciful One. Because
therefore of His own essential Deity, the Lord Jesus Christ promised to do this
very thing: for He said to His disciples
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PROOF OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST
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'Whatsoever 1 ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the
Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask me anything in my name, that
will I do.'
(4) Life is the gift of God: He is the Living One
(الحي), and He alone
causes life in others. With a full knowledge of this fact, the Lord Jesus Christ
says of Himself: 'I 2 am the first and the last, and the Living one.'
Here He claims three divine titles, as is clear from other passages of the holy
Scriptures,3 but we wish here to confine ourselves to the
consideration of the third. The claim to be the Living One implies that He is
the source of all spiritual life to all creatures. Hence He teaches us that
belief in Him is necessary to spiritual life, saying: 'This 4 is life
eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst
send, even Jesus Christ.' The same lesson is taught by His teaching us that He
is the Bread of Life; for He says: 'I 5 am the bread of life: he that
cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.'
Lest, however, these words and others in the same chapter should be
misunderstood, He proceeds to explain that He uses them in a spiritual sense,
saying: ' It 6 is the spirit that quickeneth; the
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