What comfort! Jesus is fully God and fully human

Even in the matter of his own earthly life and death Jesus demonstrated his divine power. He declared that he would lay down his life of his own free will and then take it up again of his own volition (John 10: 14-18). 

No idle boast

It might be easy enough for someone to make such a claim. Jesus however proved that this was no idle boast. When the officers came to arrest him, it was not their power that prevailed but his (John 18: 3-9). When he died on the cross, the moment of his death was of his own choosing (John 19: 30). His rising from the dead proved that he had the power over life and death, that he was telling the truth when he said that he had power to lay down his life and then to take it up again. 

Most important, only God could claim that this work was sufficient to pay for the whole world’s sin and guilt. He is the world’s Savior and he its final judge. And by it all he does what only God could do; as the Author of life he gives us eternal life (John 3: 16; 5: 19-30). In short, he is God— true, eternal, everlasting God— as his divine names declare and as his divine works demonstrate.

Entitled to worship

Because he has divine names, divine attributes, and divine works, he is entitled to the worship that is reserved for God alone. Those who do not worship him do not worship God. 

In his earthly ministry he claimed such worship for himself (John 5: 23; 8: 58) and demonstrated that he was entitled to it (Luke 9: 18-36); both before and after his resurrection he accepted such worship (Matthew 14: 33; 16: 16; John 20: 28). 

The Church proclaims his status

The mission of the church has been from the beginning a mission of proclaiming Christ as God and Savior who is worthy of worship because of who he is and most blessedly because of what he has done for us and for our salvation. The very first sermon preached after the birth of the church on Pentecost was filled with references to Christ as God and Savior (Acts 2: 14-36). And the last book of the Bible proclaims that truth from beginning to end (Revelation 1: 5-19; 22: 7-21). 

Because he is God and Savior, all owe him worship. All of the epistles call us to the confession of the same truth, a truth so beautifully summed up by St. Paul in Philippians 2: 10,11, when he tells us that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (cf. also especially Ephesians 1: 20-23; 1 Peter 3: 22; Hebrews 1: 8; 2: 8).  

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Source: Daniel Deutschlander in Grace Abounds: The Splendor of Christian Doctrine (Kindle Locations 4971-4973). Northwestern Publishing House.