Question:

I am very confused about the identity of Jesus. If he is God, why did he offer worship and pray to his father? and if he is God, why does he not refer to himself as God?

Answer;

I will have to admit that the biblical doctrine of Jesus and his divinity is hard to completely understand from a human perspective.  It inevitably leads one into statements which do not seem to make logical sense.  Jesus is God.  Jesus is deity.  His is God, but in a sense he is part of God.  He is an aspect of God.  The way John put it in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word.  The Word was with God and the Word was God.   Later in John 1:14, we learn that "The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us."  Jesus, the Word (Greek: logos) of God, the "one and only Son" (John 1:18) took on humanity.  Jesus is God and the Father is God, as well as the Holy Spirit being God.  How can Jesus be with God and be God?   I know that this is hard to understand, but it is what the Bible teaches.  This is the teaching sometimes called the Trinity.

Jesus did claim to be God.  He was careful how he did this because for him to publicly claim to be God would have gotten him killed at the wrong time.  Jesus knew that he had to die in Jerusalem on the even of the Passover, as prophesied in the Old Testament.  Jesus claimed to be God in John 10:27-33.  The people knew exactly what Jesus was claiming and when they accused him of claiming to be God, he did not deny the charge.  He claimed to be God in John 11:25 when he said he was the resurrection and the life,  in John 6:35-45 and in John 8:57-59 when he took for himself the name "I AM," which was the name God used for himself when Moses asked his name.  While Jesus is God, when in human form, he prayed to his Father.

So Jesus claim deity.  He is God, yet he prayed to God the Father.

John Oakes