But He gets his power from the Father, so my question is, how is Jesus God here? Again not denying the trinity, but severely confused.
In the Nicene Creed we confess our faith in "in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, truly God of truly God, begotten, not made, of the same Being with the Father; through Him all things were made."
This language was carefully chosen to express Christian truth about Jesus Christ:
"eternally begotten of the Father", or more traditionally written "begotten of the Father before all ages". This line in the Creed emphasizes that Jesus, as the only-begotten Son of the Father, does not have His origin in time as a creature, as though there was a time when Jesus came to be; but instead that Jesus as the Son of the Father has always been. The Son is eternal just as the Father is eternal, that He is begotten does not mean come about at a time, but that His origin is eternal and timeless, without beginning and without end.
"God of God, Light of Light, truly God of truly God" is a triple redundancy to really hammer the point that Jesus, as the Son, is truly, really, and 100% God. He is not something other than what the Father is. If the Father is God, then the Son is also God. Jesus is just as much God as the Father is God.
"begotten, not made" again emphasizing that Jesus is begotten, but He is not a creature. He has no beginning, He is eternal, He is God.
"of the same Being with the Father", this was the most important phrase at the Council of Nicea, the word translated as "of the same Being" is
homoousios; this Greek word is the combination of the Greek prefix homo meaning "same" and the Greek word ousia, which means "being" or "essence" or even "substance". It is literally a noun form of the Greek verb "to be" or "is". So to say that Jesus is homoousios with the Father means, in the most clear and unambiguous terms, that Jesus
is what the Father
is, Jesus
is God. Jesus is not a second God, a separate God, a different divine being from the Father--Jesus is the same Being, the same God as the Father.
We don't have any analogous language to explain this kind of relationship. There is nothing in all of creation which is comparable. Every example of anything has individual instances of beings. For example, while you are a human being, and I am a human being, we are two different human
beings. But when we are talking about the relationship of Jesus to the Father, we say the Father is God (the Divine Being), the Son is God (the Divine Being), and are the same God, the same Divine Being. Not two divine beings, but one and the same Divine Being. And this holds true also when we speak of the Holy Spirit.
Hence why we say there is one God and three Persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct Persons, that is each is distinct unto Himself (these are not three expressions, three faces, three modes, three different ways God behaves or acts, these are not roles, etc). When Jesus prays to the Father there are two distinct Someones: Jesus and the Father. When Jesus says He will go to the Father and will send the Holy Spirit, there are three distinct and real Someones involved here: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But while distinct in their Persons, there remains only one, undivided God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God: one God.
-CryptoLutheran
