Restoring Apostolic Faith

Why Scripture Asks a Different Question About Jesus Than We Usually Do

There is a question many of us instinctively bring to the Gospels when we talk about Jesus:

“So… is Jesus God—yes or no?”

It feels decisive. Necessary. Even faithful.

But there is a quiet problem with beginning there:

that is not how Scripture itself proceeds.

The New Testament shows remarkably little interest in defining Jesus in abstract or philosophical categories prior to narrating His mission, obedience, and exaltation. Instead, it is relentless about something else entirely:

• Who sent Him

• What authority He carries

• Whose Name He bears

• How He obeys

• And where allegiance now belongs after His exaltation

That does not mean ontology is unimportant.

It means it is not where Scripture begins.

Scripture opens with authority, representation, and loyalty.

That shift in starting point matters more than we often admit.

Shifting the Question (Without Setting Off Alarms)

A helpful way forward is not to argue conclusions immediately, but to retrain attention.

The New Testament does not spend most of its energy explaining what Jesus is.

It spends a great deal of time explaining what authority He has been given—and by whom.

Jesus speaks this language openly:

• “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”

• “The Father sent the Son into the world.”

• “I can do nothing on My own initiative… I seek not My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

• “The Father is greater than I” — spoken within the context of His earthly mission and obedience

Before anyone reaches for metaphysics, the text insists on a different category first: commission.

You are not yet asked to define Jesus.

You are asked to recognize whose authority is at work in Him.

Authority in Scripture Always Flows

This is not a pattern introduced with Jesus.

It is the operating grammar of Scripture from the beginning.

Throughout Israel’s story, God consistently acts through authorized representatives:

• Prophets speak as the LORD

• Priests bear God’s Name and pronounce blessing in His place

• Angels receive obedience when commissioned

• Kings rule by the word of the LORD

None of these figures compete with God.

None divide Him.

None confuse Israel about who the source is.

Authority flows from sender to agent.

The biblical concern is not what these figures are in themselves, but who stands behind them.

Once that pattern is clear, the question begins to change on its own.

Jesus Within the Pattern—Not Outside It

What is striking about Jesus in the Gospels is not that He disrupts this framework, but that He inhabits it perfectly.

He is consistently portrayed as:

• Sent by the Father

• Acting in perfect obedience

• Speaking only what He hears

• Refusing self-derived authority

• Bearing the Father’s Name

And then—after faithfulness unto death—something changes.

He is exalted.

He is given the Name above every name.

Every knee now bows.

The movement is unmistakable:

faithful agent → exalted Lord

This narrative movement is not about Jesus becoming something He was not,

but about the public bestowal of authority He did not seize.

Any serious account of Jesus must hold both halves of that story together, not only the second.

To say that Scripture begins with authority and agency is not to imply that agency exhausts Jesus’ identity—

but that this is how Scripture first teaches us to recognize who He is.

Worship Follows Authority, Not Metaphysics

Modern readers often assume that worship automatically settles ontological questions.

Biblically, the order is reversed.

In Scripture, worship and allegiance follow authority and commissioning—not prior philosophical definition:

• David receives obeisance as the LORD’s anointed

• Angels refuse worship when they lack authorization

• Jesus receives worship after His exaltation because all authority has been given to Him

This does not mean worship is unconcerned with who Jesus is—

only that Scripture trains recognition through allegiance before explanation through philosophy.

The logic is simple and scriptural:

Where God has placed His full authority, allegiance follows.

Worship is not confusion.

It is recognition.

To confess “Jesus is Lord” was not an abstract metaphysical claim.

It was a declaration of loyalty.

A Necessary Guardrail

This approach does not deny anything Scripture says about Jesus, including what later theology rightly sought to safeguard.

It simply refuses to answer philosophical questions out of sequence, before honoring the biblical categories the New Testament itself emphasizes:

• Sending

• Authority

• Obedience

• Priesthood

• Allegiance

That order matters.

When we reverse it, we risk answering questions the text itself has not yet asked—

while missing the ones it presses relentlessly.

Why This Matters (Without Settling Everything)

The earliest believers were not solving metaphysical puzzles when they confessed Jesus as Lord.

They were transferring allegiance.

They were naming who now carried God’s authority, bore His Name, and stood as the appointed ruler through whom forgiveness, judgment, and life would flow.

That framework is ancient.

It is Jewish.

And it is deeply biblical.

Later theological reflection may attempt to describe how all of this coheres philosophically—

but Scripture itself begins somewhere else.

An Invitation Forward

This post is not an argument against later doctrinal formulations, nor an attempt to collapse centuries of reflection into a single article.

It is an invitation to ask a more foundational question:

What if Scripture’s primary categories are authority, priesthood, and allegiance—and many of our debates have begun one step too late?

In upcoming work, we will explore how these biblical patterns shaped the earliest confessions about Jesus long before formal creeds attempted to express them in philosophical language.

For now, this much is enough:

Before we ask what Jesus is,

we should listen carefully to how Scripture tells us who He was sent to be—

and why every knee now bows.