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Is Jesus Denying That He Is God When He Says "Only God Is Good" and "My God"?

A Plain-English Summary

No. When Jesus asks "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18), he is not saying "I'm not God." He is pressing the man to think about what he just said — and what it means if it is true.

When he tells Mary "I ascend to my God and your God" (John 20:17), he is speaking as someone who became human and relates to the Father through that humanity — not as someone confessing he is less than God. The rest of the New Testament makes this unmistakable.

The Goodness Question Is a Challenge, Not a Denial

A rich young man runs up to Jesus and calls him "Good Teacher." Jesus responds: "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone."

Read in isolation, it sounds like Jesus is distancing himself from God. But look at what happens next.

He lists the Ten Commandments — but only the ones about how we treat other people. He leaves out every commandment about our obligations to God. Then he says, "Come, follow me." He puts himself in the slot the commandments reserve for God.

That is not what someone does right after saying "I'm not God."

There is an earlier scene that ties this together. In Mark 2:7, the religious leaders say, "Who can forgive sins except God alone?" — using the exact same phrase as Mark 10:18. Jesus then proves he can forgive sins.

Same phrase, same pattern: someone states that only God can do something, and Jesus demonstrates that he does it. By the time the reader reaches chapter 10, the pattern is established. "Only God is good" followed by Jesus acting with God's authority is not a denial. It is an invitation to connect the dots.

"My God" Does Not Mean "I Am Not God"

When Jesus tells Mary Magdalene "I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17), notice what he does not say. He does not say "our Father" or "our God." He keeps his relationship separate — "my Father and your Father."

The Jewish leaders understood exactly what that kind of language meant. In John 5:18, when Jesus called God "my Father," they tried to kill him because they recognized he was "making himself equal with God."

Eleven verses after telling Mary "my God," Jesus stands in front of Thomas, who declares, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28). Jesus does not correct him. He says, "Because you have seen me, you have believed."

Then John tells us his entire Gospel was written so that people would reach the same conclusion Thomas reached.

If "my God" in verse 17 means Jesus is not God, then Thomas's confession in verse 28 is wrong — and John wrote his Gospel to promote a mistake. That does not hold together.

The Glorified Christ Still Says "My God" — and Still Claims to Be God

One of the strongest pieces of evidence comes from Revelation. The risen, glorified Jesus — fully exalted — says "my God" four times in a single verse (Revelation 3:12).

If "my God" language belonged only to the period when Jesus was humbling himself on earth, it should have stopped after the resurrection. It did not.

But in that same book, this same Jesus calls himself "the Alpha and the Omega" (Rev 1:8), "the First and the Last" (Rev 1:17) — a title God uses in Isaiah 44:6, where he adds, "beside me there is no God." He accepts worship that angels refuse. He holds titles that belong exclusively to the God of Israel.

The glorified Christ says "my God" and claims YHWH's own titles in the same book. That means "my God" cannot be a denial of deity. It reflects the permanent reality of the incarnation — God the Son took on a human nature and never gave it up. Even in glory, he relates to the Father through that humanity.

The Old Testament Already Held These Together

This is not a New Testament invention. Psalm 45:6-7 addresses a king as "God" — "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" — and then says "God, your God, has anointed you." One figure is called God while having a God.

Hebrews 1:8-9 applies this directly to Jesus: the Son is addressed as God, and the Son has God. Being called God and saying "my God" are not contradictions. The Hebrew scriptures already combined them.

Psalm 22 opens with "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — words Jesus quotes on the cross. But that same psalm ends with all nations worshiping God. The psalm holds "my God" and universal divine worship together without tension.

Why Jesus Cannot Be in the "None Good" Category

When Jesus says "no one is good except God alone," he is drawing on a specific tradition. Psalm 14 says, "There is none who does good, no, not one." Paul quotes it in Romans 3. This is a statement about universal human sinfulness.

But the New Testament is emphatic that Jesus does not belong in that category:

  • "He knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21)
  • He "did no sin" (1 Peter 2:22)
  • He was "without sin" (Hebrews 4:15)
  • "In him is no sin" (1 John 3:5)

Four independent witnesses place Jesus outside the "none good" human category. If only God is truly good, and Jesus is truly good, the implication is clear.

The Worship Test

There is a simple behavioral test in the New Testament. When Peter is worshiped, he refuses: "Stand up; I too am just a man" (Acts 10:26). When an angel is worshiped in Revelation, he refuses: "Worship God!" (Rev 19:10, 22:9).

Every righteous creature who receives worship rejects it and redirects it to God.

Jesus never does this. He accepts worship from Thomas, from the disciples in the boat, from the women after the resurrection. Hebrews 1:6 says the Father himself commands the angels to worship the Son.

If "only God is good" means Jesus is not God, then every time he accepts worship he is violating his own stated principle. The only way everything holds together is if Jesus is on God's side of the line — not the creature's side.

The Bottom Line

Jesus is not denying his deity in either passage. In Mark 10:18, he is forcing a man to reckon with the implications of his own words. In John 20:17, he is speaking as God-become-human to the Father he has always known.

The "my God" language is real — it reflects the genuine relationship between the incarnate Son and the Father. But it coexists with deity claims, worship acceptance, YHWH titles, and sinlessness throughout the same texts.

The question is not whether Jesus says "my God." He does. The question is what it means — and the biblical evidence is consistent: it means God the Son permanently joined himself to humanity, and that relationship is expressed in "my God" language forever.

Simplified from the trin-05 study, 2026-05-28