Arguably the most succinct and powerful answer to that question is the declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself recorded in the tenth chapter of John’s Gospel: “I and the Father are one” (v. 30). The Jews who heard Him immediately understood what He was saying, namely, that He was God, because we read that they “picked up stones again to stone Him” (v. 31). John says again because he had earlier revealed that the Jews had sought to kill Him: “For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God” (5:18). But if John 10:30 is the most succinct expression of who Jesus is, perhaps John 16:15—“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.”— is the most succinct expression of what that means. The implications of that statement are infinite. Consider the following thoughts.

            1. The “all things” the Father has He possesses by inherent right. No being or entity granted or ceded possession to Him. God the Father did not steal what He has from another; He did not buy it; He did not win it in a contest or competition; He did not wrest it by force of arms. He always and alone was the original and only possessor of “all things”—everything that exists. Asaph provides a poetic expression of this truth in Psalm 50. “The Mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken . . . . ‘For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird of the mountains, and everything that moves in the field is Mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is Mine, and all it contains” (vv. 1a, 10-12). Everything in the universe came into being according to His will and by His omnipotence and therefore belongs to Him exclusively.

            2. The “all things” that the Father has surpass the physical realm. As impressive as is the fact that the entire universe owes its existence to the Father and belongs to Him exclusively, it has existed for only 6,000 years or so. Yet God is eternal, and far more substantial than the universe are the things that God has possessed eternally. Paul explains that “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Rom. 1:20a). Ultimately, what the Father “has” are His “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature.” They include, but are not limited to, holiness, righteousness, purity, and truth. Also eternality, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. These attributes are unique, exclusive: they define God; they belong to Him alone. If He lacked even one or if some other being possessed even one of any of those attributes, God would cease to be God. They set Him apart from all other beings; they express His exclusive transcendence.

            3. The “all things” that the Father possesses belong equally to the Son. So much so, so absolutely so, that the Lord Jesus is able to say of those “all things” that the Father “takes of Mine” those things. In order to say that, one of three things must be true. He must be either a liar and His statement false, or a usurper, in which case God was not God in the first place, and the statement is false. Or He must be God. It is a breathtaking revelation. Without batting an eye, this nobody son of a nobody carpenter, this frail man without any more than the clothes on His back to call His own declares that all that belongs to God, all that He has and is, all that defines His divinity belong to Jesus in such a manner that He may speak of God the Father as taking from Him (Jesus) what He possesses.

            How can we express this reality existing between the Father and Jesus Christ? Equality? Mutuality? Who is Jesus? He is God, “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). He is “our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Tit. 2:13b).