[
Replying to Wootah in post #1]
When Jesus specifically taught us how to pray, he did not say "My" Father. Instead
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
“Father,… This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17.3).
Earlier, he told his Jewish opponents that the Father is “the one and only God” (John 5.44). And again, at the Last Supper, Jesus distinguished himself from this one and only God by commanding his disciples, “believe in God, believe also in Me” (14.1).
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph 4.4-6). Here, Paul implicitly identifies Jesus Christ as “one Lord” and distinguishes him from the “one God,” whom he unequivocally identifies as “the Father.”
Paul is unique in NT literature in that he consistently calls Jesus “Lord” and the Father “God.” Therefore, he never calls Jesus “God.”
“‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone’” (Mark 10.17-18/Luke 18.18-19 and Matthew 19.16-17).
Peter preached about “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst” (Acts 2.22).
The FACT that Jesus is not God is also supported by Jewish tradition that there is only one God; that God would send a special prophet, a ‘Messiah,’ not that he would incarnate himself.
This truth and the sad fact that the Church fell into the same very human trap of many religions, worshipping the messenger instead of the message , is expanded upon expertly by Thomas Sheehan, in ‘The First Coming.’
."
