Is Jesus God according to the Bible?

Yes — while Jesus rarely used the exact words "I am God," He repeatedly made claims that only make sense if He believed Himself to be God, and His earliest followers worshiped Him as such.

In John 8:58, Jesus says, "before Abraham was, I am," directly invoking the divine name God gave Moses in Exodus 3:14. His Jewish audience understood the claim clearly — they picked up stones to stone Him for blasphemy (John 8:59).

Jesus also accepted worship (Matthew 14:33, John 20:28), forgave sins directly (Mark 2:5-7, something the religious leaders rightly noted only God can do), and claimed authority to judge the world (Matthew 25:31-46). Paul, writing within decades of the resurrection, calls Jesus "God over all" (Romans 9:5) and says "in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).

The historical evidence is that the earliest Christians — Jewish monotheists who would never casually deify a man — worshiped Jesus as God from the very beginning. That's best explained by the fact that Jesus really did claim, and demonstrate, deity.