A similar expression appears in II Peter 1:1:

"by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

These translations are disputed--Jehovah's Witnesses are not alone with such renderings as "the great God and of [the] Savior of us, Christ Jesus" (NWT) and "of our God and [the] Savior Jesus Christ" (NWT). The latter translations assert "God" and the "Savior" separately refer to the Father and Son, instead of combining the two expressions together to refer to the Son alone. Does ambiguity reign? In fact, a major problem arises against the New World Translation's rendering. In the Greek, this grammatical construction connects the two nouns with the word "and" (kai) in between, while placing a definite article "the" before the first noun but not the second. Bowman maintains that every time this construction appears when using singular nouns and common ones denoting persons (brother, Savior, Lord, Son, Father, etc.), both nouns refer to just one person. Josh McDowell and Bart Larson (Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1983), p. 26) call this a "Granville Sharpe construction" because one article refers to both nouns inseparably. Furthermore, at least for Titus 2:13, note that the context points to Christ's second coming--Paul can't be referring to the Father's appearance!

While describing God's dealings with Israel, Paul identifies Jesus as Jehovah in I Cor. 10:4, 9 (NKJV):

"For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. . . . nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents."

Jehovah's Witnesses attempt to evade the first text by translating the word for "was" as "meant" (NWT). But the straightforward normal meaning of the Greek is "was," not "meant." Only while laboring under the theological view that Jesus couldn't possibly be Yahweh could someone insist on translating/interpreting the Greek so unconventionally. Similarly, Paul in Rom. 14:9-12 (NKJV) calls Christ

"Lord of both the dead and the living,"

and states,

"We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,"

applies an Old Testament text about "the Lord" (the Eternal) to Him, and finishes,

"So then each of us shall give account of himself to God."

While discussing humans giving an account of themselves to God as their judge, Paul plainly equates Jesus, God, and Yahweh as one and the same!

Messianic Texts and Jesus' Deity

Does Matthew 1:23 show Jesus is God?

"'Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,' which translated means, 'God with us.'"

The name Jesus received strongly implies His Deity, because God and the Jewish culture in Scripture often name people for what they are. Hence, Moses was drawn out of the water as a baby, Abraham became the father of many nations, Jacob did supplant his brother for the birthright, Esau was hairy, Israel did strive with both God and men, Eve was the mother of all living, and Adam was the (first) man. Although today in our culture parents rarely name their children to describe who and/or what their offspring are, the Bible reveals God and patriarchal culture operated differently. Since Jesus was the God-Man who lived among humanity as a man while being God as well, "Immanuel" as a name fits perfectly.

Since the Old Testament portrays the Messiah as being God, this means Jesus must be God (Isa. 9:6-7):

"For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father [or "Father of Eternity"], Prince of Peace."

If the Unitarian replies the title "Mighty God" shouldn't be taken literally, then neither can the other three titles, which is unacceptable. Does Jesus being "Mighty God" make Him into an inferior semi-divine being compared to the "Almighty God" who is the Father? Isaiah's next chapter (verses 21-22) refutes this claim, for Yahweh is called "the mighty God." The Old Testament also describes the Messiah as preexisting before the Virgin Mary became pregnant, even as eternally existing by one meaning of "olam" ("forever") (Micah 5:2; cf. Heb. 7:3):

"From you [Bethlehem] One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity."

Furthermore,

"They will look on Me [Yahweh] whom they have pierced" (Zech. 12:10).

Other Texts that potentially affirm Jesus' Deity

Although perhaps more disputable, other texts given a standard translation or interpretation say Jesus is God. For example, I John 5:20 reads:

"And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life."

The most natural reference for "This is the true God" is "His Son Jesus Christ." Remember that John began his letter referring to Jesus as someone who could be touched

"and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us" (I John 1:2).

If Jesus was "the eternal life" at the beginning of John's letter, presumably He still is the "eternal life" at its end!

Consider now Romans 9:5 (NKJV):

"of whom are the fathers and from who, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen."

Of course, this verse can easily be translated to avoid the reference to Jesus being God. But the mere fact that's a perfectly possible meaning indicates how Paul, at least here, didn't strive to avoid grammatical constructions that could point to multiplicity within the Godhead--a thought once unthinkable to any true Jew. Acts 20:28 presents another example:

"The Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood."

True, "Son" in brackets can be inserted to complete the thought after the word "blood." But again, since the first translation is the simplest, it indicates Paul (who was speaking here) didn't strive to avoid language at all costs that potentially referred to Jesus as God, as possibly compromising monotheism (belief in one God).

One controversial text is I Timothy 3:16 (NKJV):

"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: 'God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.'"

The alternative reading places "He who" for "God." The dispute here concerns not translation as such, but the long-running debate between the Received/Byzantine text that underlies the KJV and NKJV, and the Critical/Alexandrine text that underlies most modern Bible translations. "Theos," "God" appears in the Received text, while "os," "(He) who," surfaces in the Critical text (i.e., Westcott-Hort, Nestle-Aland). Excepting for the spurious Trinitarian interpolation inserted into I John 5:7-8, some groups have traditionally maintained the Received text was normally the better of the two. The space isn't available to explain the reasons why it's better to follow the vast majority (but later) manuscripts representing the Received text instead of the older (but many fewer) manuscripts upholding the Critical. Skeptics questioning the reading of "God" for I Timothy 3:16 would find it worthwhile tracking down the English textual critic John Burgon's 76-page defense of it in The Revision Revised. (A good general defense of the Received text can be found in David Otis Fuller, ed., Which Bible? (Grand Rapids, MI: Grand Rapids International Publications, 1975)).

Does the Oneness of God Rule out Jesus being God?

Having presented above briefly the positive case for Jesus' Deity, it's necessary now to examine some of the objections raised against it. The leading objection goes like this: Since Scripture repeatedly says God is one or that only one God exists (Deut. 6:4; Gal. 3:20; James 2:19; I Cor. 8:4; Rom. 3:30; Isa. 44:6,8; Jude 25; II Sam. 7:22, I Kings 8:60; Deut. 4:35, 39; Mark 12:32), calling both Jesus and the Father "God" contradicts the rest of the Bible. If Jesus is one God, and the Father another, that makes for two Gods--which is absurd, and a total denial of traditional Jewish monotheism. In reply, it's necessary to recall Gary Fakhoury's brilliant insight that we should define the word "one" as the Bible does, not as our a priori (before experience) human reasoning and speculations indicate (cf. "The Nature of God: A Biblical Review," pp. 10-17). We need to let the Bible interpret itself.

Now the word translated "one" in the Shema of Deut. 6:4 is "echod." This word can mean composite unity, not an indivisible, solitary unity. Genesis 2:24 uses the word "echod" thus:

"For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."

Here two separate individuals become "one." Similarly, the giant cluster of grapes carried on a branch between two of the spies scouting out the Holy Land for Israel was "echod" (Num. 13:23). Despite apparently having hundreds of grapes, the cluster still was called "one" or "single." The Greek word for one, "heis," merely repeats the same story, since it can refer to composite unity as well. For example, the analogy between the human body and the church makes "one" out of many (I Cor. 12:12):

"For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ."

Similarly, many can be "one" in Phil. 2:2 (NKJV):

"fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind."

The non-spurious part of I John 5:7 (ASV) makes three into one:

"For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one."

In light of this Scriptural evidence, it's wrong to insist the texts that affirm God's oneness must mean God is one single Person (center of consciousness).

Genesis 1:26 and the Plural of Majesty

Does the Old Testament ever attribute to God a plurality of Persons? Although Hebrew term for God, "elohim," is in the plural, it almost always takes singular verbs or pronouns. But a few exceptions do arise (Isa. 6:8; Gen. 11:7), most notoriously Gen. 1:26:

"Then God said, 'Let US make man in OUR image, according to OUR likeness.'"

Those asserting monotheism requires God to be a single Person commonly employ two interpretive strategies to evade this text's implications. One asserts that God spoke to the angels here. But since Scripture never says the angels are creators, even assistant creators, this claim is totally unpersuasive. Another approach maintains God here used the "plural of majesty," as Queen Victoria did in this statement attributed to her, "We are not amused." Of course, the question then becomes why God almost never uses the plural of majesty, even when in Isaiah He is affirming His greatness compared to His creation and mankind, except in a very few, isolated cases. (A serious scholarly investigation should be launched to see how and whether Israelite and other kings of a Semitic culture commonly used the plural of majesty, or whether it appeared in myths about false gods of the ancient Middle East). But must ambiguity reign? Notice Gen. 3:22:

"Then the Lord God said, 'Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.'"

This construction can't be explained as a "plural of majesty" because "one" is set against "Us." Despite being not the most straightforward interpretation, the claim God used the "plural of majesty" in Gen. 1:26 may not be able to be decisively refuted at the present state of knowledge. But in light of Gen. 3:22, the view that "Elohim" can't refer to a plurality of Persons in the Godhead wears exceedingly thin.

How the word "God" has more than one meaning

Arians and Unitarians like to trot out texts such as I Cor. 8:6 to prove Jesus is Lord but not God:

"Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him."

So if there's only "one God, the Father," does this exclude Jesus? But inverting this question is easy: If Jesus is the only "Lord," does that mean the Father is never the "Lord"? Yet Jesus Himself calls the Father "Lord" in Matt. 11:25:

"'I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and Earth."

Similarly, Jesus' citation of Ps. 110:1 plainly applies the name "Yahweh" to the Father, although He used the standard Jewish terminology of "the Lord" for the Tetragammaton (YHWH):

"For David himself says in the book of Psalms, 'The Lord said to my Lord . . . David therefore calls Him 'Lord,' and how is He his son?'" (Luke 20:42, 44).

Plainly, as Vance Stinson observes in the Church of God, International booklet Who, What Is God?, pp. 36-37, the word "God" has more than one meaning. Often the word "God" refers to the Father in particular, as distinct from Jesus. But other times, "God" refers to the divine Family or Godhead, to all Persons who are of the same eternal substance and essence, so it includes Jesus and the Father together. In this light, the use of both meanings of "God" in the one verse of John 1:1 is especially noteworthy, since the Word (Jesus) was with God and the Word was God.

Does Revelation 3:14 prove Jesus was Created?

Another verse Arians seize upon to "prove" Christ was created appears in one of the letters to the churches, where Jesus is speaking (Rev. 3:14):

"And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God."

On its face, this verse is unclear: Was Jesus "the Beginning of the creation of God," i.e., the first being made by the Father, or was Jesus "the Beginning of the creation of God" by starting the making of the universe? The word translated "Beginning," arche, has more than one meaning. First of all, it can mean "ruler." The NIV translates the key part of this verse as "the ruler of God's creation." Second, arche can simply mean "origin," which merely confirms again Jesus as the Creator, as Moffatt brings out: "the origin of God's creation." The TEV (GNB) has "the faithful and true witness, who is the origin of all that God has created." Third, it's true--this verse can mean Jesus was created first. But this verse's very ambiguity leads us to state a basic principle of interpreting Scripture: It's illegitimate to take one or a few verses to contradict the great weight of evidence going in the opposite direction. It's much easier to take the relatively few verses that purportedly deny Jesus' Deity, and reconcile them with the many that affirm it directly or indirectly, clearly or somewhat arguably, than to exalt the few verses that supposedly deny it, then engage in all the great sweat and effort of constantly having to explain this, that, and more away. Fundamentally, Jehovah's Witnesses and all Unitarians opted for the latter choice, which simply becomes unpersuasive since they're inevitably, almost constantly, on the defensive when facing knowledgeable opposition. Their defenses take on the feel of scientists propping up an old paradigm under attack by constantly devising ad hoc "explanations" for numerous anomalous facts that contradict it.

How was the Father greater than Jesus?

In order to deny Jesus is God, Arians and Unitarians commonly turn to John 14:28 as proof:

"Because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I."

But since Jesus was in the flesh when saying this, it's fundamentally unconvincing. So long as Jesus was a human, He voluntarily limited His Divine prerogatives. In a text that proves Jesus' preexistence, He asked the Father to restore

"the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:5).

Notice He had it "with" the Father--this can't be a reference to Jesus' existence being a mere thought in the Father's mind that He willed to do. If the Unitarian interpretation was correct, that unactualized thought would have to have the same glory Jesus possessed when really existing--which is absurd. Instead, He is asking to have back what He used to have, when He had in unlimited measure all the attributes of the Almighty Yahweh. The pouring or emptying out (kenosis) of Jesus meant He choose to limit His divine prerogatives (Phil. 2:6-8). For example, Jesus was not omniscient while He walked the earth, since He didn't know the day of His return (Matt. 24:36). (Although here we run into the theoretical theological problem of asserting Jesus was God when He lacked some of the defining attributes of God such as omnipotence while in the flesh, we should still call Jesus "God" then as well as "man" because Scripture does). As for John 14:28 itself, consider what your reaction would be to someone you know telling you, "Well, God is greater than me." You'd consider him or her unbearably pompous for stating the stunningly obvious. Such a statement by Jesus implies the highness of His earlier claims about His relationship with the Father.

Other texts about Jesus' relationship with the Father plainly show He was subordinate to Him:

"But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ" (I Cor. 11:3).

"And when all things are subject to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all" (I Cor. 15:28).

In light of the other texts affirming Jesus' Deity, these Scriptures merely show Jesus had less authority than the Father--that the Father was Jesus' "boss." But just as men and women are both intrinsically equal in their ultimate spiritual destinies, despite within marriage husbands have authority over their wives (I Cor. 11:3), these texts don't prove Jesus' essence or substance differed from the Father's.

Jesus was "the first-born of all creation"

Another text Arians and Unitarians appeal to is Col. 1:15, which calls Jesus

"the first-born of all creation."

Does this mean Jesus was the first being created? First, it's important to examine this term in its Old Testament, Jewish cultural context, not in light of our modern presuppositions. Receiving a double portion as an inheritance, the firstborn son of a Jewish family was considered preeminent over his siblings (cf. Reuben in Gen. 49:3). He, not his younger brothers, became the head of the family after his father's death. Hence, the term "firstborn" took on a connotation of authority and position of favor. Job uses it metaphorically to refer to death (Job 18:13), and Isaiah to the poorest of the poor (Isa. 14:30). Although Manasseh was the firstborn of Joseph's sons (Gen. 48:14-20), Ephraim gained the greater blessing from God through Jacob, so he is referred as the firstborn in Jer. 31:9:

"For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My first-born."

Similarly, God calls the nation of Israel His "firstborn" (Ex. 4:22).

Second, we in the Church of God should remember that Jesus was the first to be "born again" by eventually becoming a spirit being after His resurrection (I Cor. 15:44-45). Jesus was the

"first-born from the dead" which gave Him "first place in everything" (Col. 1:18).

But we Christians at the resurrection are to be "born again" just as He was (Rom. 8:29):

"For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren."

Although Jesus became the Son of God once the Virgin Mary became pregnant (not before, nor from all eternity--Heb. 1:5), He

"was declared the Son of God with power by ['as a result of,' NASB margin] the resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4).

John 3:6, 8 should be given a plain interpretation, not a metaphorical one:

"'That which is born of the flesh IS flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit IS spirit. . . . The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so IS everyone who is born of the Spirit.'"

On this subject, the Council of Nicea was right!

Much more Scriptural evidence in favor of Jesus being Jehovah, the Almighty God, could be presented. Although a number of the texts discussed above can be evaded to one degree to another, and alternatively retranslated, reinterpreted, and/or dismissed as textual errors, still so often the main weight of the semi-ambiguous texts point to the Deity of Christ, over and above the clear ones. Although the Trinitarians are wrong overall, their affirmation that Jesus is God is thoroughly correct. Given the two basic choices the Council of Nicea faced in 325 A.D., the bishops who voted for Athanasius and against Arius were right. (The original Nicene declaration merely asserted they believed "in the Holy Spirit," saying nothing about its nature. )

For this article, I lifted arguments in favor of the Divinity of Christ from such deeply flawed works as Walter Martin and Norman Klann's Jehovah of the Watchtower, Robert M. Bowman Jr.'s Why You Should Believe in the Trinity: An Answer to Jehovah's Witnesses, and Josh McDowell and Don Stewart's Handbook of Today's Religions: Understanding the Cults. Although full of doctrinal error, these books by defenders of traditional Christian doctrines are undeniably right on this one doctrine. It seems 80% or more of the emotional energy of Trinitarians is eaten up defending Jesus is God--denials that the Holy Spirit is a Person and/or God simply arouse their visceral reactions far less. We should avoid the knee-jerk reaction that "because they teach it, it must be wrong," but instead concern ourselves with what the Bible teaches. Ultimately, it's much more persuasive to fit the Bible's jigsaw pieces together to declare "Jesus is God," rather than to twist and pound them into place to proclaim "Jesus isn't God."

Written by: Eric Snow