The expression "gods" occurs in six places in the New Testament: (1) Jesus, in reply to the Pharisees, who questioned His right to call Himself the son of God, quoted Ps 82:6: "I said, Ye are gods." He argues from this that if God Himself called them gods to whom the word of God came, i.e. the judges who acted as representatives of God in a judicial capacity, could not He who had been sanctified and sent into the world justly call Himself the Son of God? It was an argumentum ad hominem (Joh 10:34-37). (2) When Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel in Lystra they healed a certain man who had been a cripple from birth. The Lycaonians, seeing the miracle, cried out in their own dialect, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercury" (Ac 14:11 f). Their ascription of deity to the apostles in such times shows their familiarity with the Greek pantheon. (3) As Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection at Athens the people said he seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods. The conception of only one God seemed to be wholly foreign to them (Ac 17:18). (4) In 1 Cor 8:5 Paul speaks of "gods many, and lords many," but the context shows that he did not believe in the existence of any god but one; "We know that no idol is anything in the world." (5) While at Ephesus, Paul was said to have "persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they are no gods, that are made with hands" (Ac 19:26). (6) The Galatians had been "in bondage to them that by nature are no gods" (Ga 4:8). Indirect references are also found in Ac 17:16, where Paul observed the city full of idols. Likewise in Ro 1:22 f,25 ff. Paul refers to the numerous gods of the heathen world. These were idols, birds, four-footed beasts and creeping things. The results of this degrading worship are shown in the verse following.
See also IDOLATRY; GOD, NAMES OF.
J. J. Reeve