Cross Commission Ministries

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IGNATIUS and his writings to the Ephesians 

Ignatius a disciple of the Apostle John that was martyred in Rome around A.D. 107–110

Ignatius wrote to the Ephesians concerning Jesus and encouraged them in their devotion to Christ. He spoke of the blood of Christ as the blood of God.

Ignatius declared both the Deity of Jesus and the sufficiency of His blood:

Welcoming in God your much-loved name, which you possess by your righteous nature according to faith and love in Christ Jesus our Savior, you are imitators of God, having rekindled by the blood of God your related task, you completed it perfectly.

Brannan, Rick, trans. 2012. The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

I’m also reminded of Hebrews 9:14

how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?  (Hebrews 9:14, MEV)

Charles Ryrie gives us a good overview concerning the Eternality of Jesus:

The Evidence for Eternality

His relationship with God as of the same essence demonstrates eternality, since God is eternal. Notice the word charakter in Hebrews 1:3, which indicates that Christ is the exact representation of God’s nature or essence.

Possession of divine attributes includes the attribute of eternality.

The Old Testament prophets claimed eternality for Messiah. Micah said that His goings forth are from the days of eternity (5:2; see Hab. 1:12). Though the words can mean “from the days of old,” that is, from earliest times, they can also mean from eternity. Isaiah 9:6, “Eternal Father,” likely refers to Christ as a Father to His people always (thus it only looks forward, not backward to eternity past).

Christ claimed eternality when He declared, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58 kjv). This is more than limited existence before Abraham was born because He said “I am.” “I was” might indicate that He existed for several centuries before Abraham, but I am (eimi) states eternality.

John’s plain statement was that Christ is God (John 1:1). “The Word was God.” Not the Word was divine (as in Moffatt and Goodspeed) since that would require theios (as in Acts 17:29 and 2 Pet. 1:3). Nor does John say that the Word was a god (as Jehovah’s Witnesses translate it). Definite nouns that precede the verb, as here, regularly lack the definite article.

Ryrie, Charles Caldwell. 1999. Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth. Chicago, IL: Moody Press.

Example

A famous example is Gospel of John 1:1: καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος

Literally: “and God was the Word.”

Here:

  • θεὸς (“God”) comes before the verb ἦν (“was”).
  • θεὸς has no article.
  • Many Greek scholars explain that the absence of the article does not automatically make “God” indefinite (“a god”). Because the noun comes before the verb, Greek grammar often omits the article while the noun remains definite or emphasizes its quality.

The bottom line: Jesus is God, and we know that early Christians believed that when we observe the Inspired Scripture and the writings of early church fathers.