Jesus is good = Jesus is God

An interesting thing about anti-Trinitarians is that, while they will often point out the fact that the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, they will often cling to statements that absolutely do not say "God is not a Trinity", or "Jesus is not God" or something like that.

One example comes from a story about a rich man asking Jesus how to be saved. The rich man calls Jesus "good teacher", to which Jesus replies "why do you call me good? No one is good but God." To an anti-Trinitarian, "no one is good but God" and "I am not God" are identical statements.

But is that really the case? If we look at His response again, He doesn't say "I am not good". Rather, He asks why the rich man thinks He is good? In reality, the fact that Jesus absolutely is good is essential to the Gospel itself. If Jesus was not good, He could not bear our sins. However, He did. He who knew no sin became sin for us. Thus, we can construct the following syllogism:

Premise 1: Only God is good.

Premise 2: Jesus is good.

Conclusion: Jesus is God.

So what did Jesus really mean when He said "why do you call me good?" To answer that, let's look at modern apologists, such as Ray Comfort. We live in a culture of moral relativism. If you ask someone whether they think they are a good person, they will usually say yes. The next step is to take them through the commandments and show them how they actually break God's laws, and thus He must actually say we're not good, and punish us accordingly. From there, you lead them to Jesus.

Now read the account in question again. What do we see Jesus doing? We see Him doing the same thing. He lists off some commandments and says that to keep them is a requirement to get to Heaven. In his hubris, however, the rich man claims to have obeyed them. So Jesus points out the rich man's biggest failure: Greed. To be saved, he must get rid of his possessions and follow Christ.

Effectively, Jesus came up with the "good person" test 2,000 years before Ray Comfort first used it. He was showing that good is not a relative term. The way to know what's good and what's not is the command of God. Which, of course, only Jesus has ever fulfilled.