I have been blessed by your website and amazed by the depth of knowledge you display on issues. Can you please share your thoughts on Mathew 19:16. A lot of Muslims like to quote this scripture to support an argument that Jesus was denying the fact that He was God. I know that is not the case, but I will be glad if you can shed a bit of light on it for me.
You can’t build doctrine on the basis of one verse, especially when it is taken out of context. Matt. 19:16 is the beginning of the account of the rich young man. I think Jesus was responding to His greeting of “Good Teacher” which indicated he didn’t think of Jesus as anything more than that. If the young man didn’t think Jesus was God, he shouldn’t have called Him “good” because no one is good except God.
More importantly, if Jesus had been claiming He was not God He would have been contradicting statements He made elsewhere, such as John 10:27-30 and John 14:9. In addition, John said Jesus was God (John 1:1), Paul said He was God (Colossians 1:15-16) the writer of Hebrews said He was God (Hebrews 1:3) and Hebrews 1:8 shows God Himself addressing Jesus as God.