1 John 5:13-20 Jesus is the true God?

by NikL 17 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  NikL

  One of the main things I am trying to wrap my head around after waking up to the nonsense of JW.org is the deity of Christ.

  JWs go out of their way to ignore him, it seems to me. They make him out to be an angel or something.

  Yet, if one simply reads the scriptures, you get an entirely different picture.

  Doing some bible reading this morning I accidentally (long story) read the latter part of 1 John 5 and it's good stuff.

  After reading it in the NIV I read it in NWT and it is still pretty amazing even in that abomination of a translation.

  It says...

  13 I write you these things so that you may know that you have life everlasting, you who put your faith in the name of the Son of God. 14 And this is the confidence* that we have toward him, that no matter what we ask according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us concerning whatever we are asking, we know that we are to have the things we ask for, since we have asked them of him.
  16 If anyone catches sight of his brother committing a sin that does not incur death, he will ask, and God will give life to him, yes, to those not committing sin that incurs death. There is a sin that does incur death.+ It is concerning that sin that I do not tell him to make request. 17 All unrighteousness is sin, and yet there is a sin that does not incur death.
  18 We know that everyone who has been born from God does not practice sin, but the one born from God* watches him, and the wicked one cannot take hold of him. 19 We know that we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one. 20 But we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us insight so that we may gain the knowledge of the one who is true. And we are in union with the one who is true, by means of his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and life everlasting.
  

  It seems to me that it is saying Jesus is the, "true God and life everlasting".

  When taken in conjunction with the rest of scripture, I can't see it any other way.
  
• 

  moggy lover

  This is a tricky thing, and is dependent on a grammatical construction that has limitations. The rule here can be called the rule of the nearest antecedent. There are two antecedents in this phrase both governed by the preposition εν in Greek, a preposition that roughly corresponds to our "in" [The NWT is particularly deceptive here in that in degrades the word "in" by two distinctive usages, neither of which is contextual:

  "W know.....in the One who is True [the Father] ......in His Son Jesus Christ". He is the True God and life everlasting"

  The two antecedents are

  1.The Father

  2The Son.

  Then John uses the singular pronoun "He" [ ὁυτος the masculine form of "this", hence "he"]. Who is this HE? The Father or the Son, Jesus Christ?

  When such a degree of ambiguity occurs the simplest thing to do is to go to the nearest antecedent and conclude that John was applying the "He" to the Son. This is the case in point in most occurrences of this construction. BUT NOT ALWAYS, and that is the catch. There are many occasions when NT writers apply the first antecedent to the pronoun, rather than the nearest.

  The point is: can the Watchtower deny the deity of Christ here? No. Are you right in concluding that John is calling the Son God here? Yes. Let no one take that away from you.

  And whereas I agree with you about the deity of Christ here, I cannot deny that others have the right to conclude otherwise. To me, I am told to go to the Son Jesus Christ for life everlasting [Jo 3:16, 36] so I associate "everlasting life" with the Son primarily, so I have no problem with concluding that the "He" applies to Him.

  Also, remember, that what is said of the Father is said of the Son. We are IN the Father, and we are IN the Son, so accepting the deity of Christ here is not denying the deity of the Father, and accepting the deity of the Father here is not denying the deity of the Son either.

  There are many evangelical theologians, such as Murray Harris who believe that the "HE" here refers to the Father, but this does not define his relationship with the Son as anything less than the Son being God.
  
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  smiddy

  2000 years later and people are still debating what God actually said or meant when he said it.

  And its all left up to imperfect human interpretation to what he was supposed to have meant.

  And God hasnt bothered to clear up the confusion one way or another in all this time.

  In this day and age of technology /communication it doesnt fare well for an Almighty God who created the Universe does it ?

  Apparently sholars can study Ancient greek ,Aramaic ,and Hebrew ,and they are still none the wiser as to whether Gods word says what he meant ,or meant what he said.

  He sounds like a God of confusion to me observing all this 2000 years later.
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  jhine

  There are other reasons to accept Jesus as God . Phrases used about Yahweh in the OT such as the Alpha and the Omega are used about the Son ,Thomas' " My Lord my God " to which the WT gives a very poor counter argument . The Early Church Fathers mostly accept the Deity of Jesus and some of them wrote not so long after the Apostles . So it is possible that the teaching was passed down from the Apostles .

  The fact that the WT lies about the origin of the Trinity , saying that it was thought up at the Nicene Council speaks volumes .

  Jan
• 

  Vanderhoven7

  Yes re John 3:16

  For God so loved the world that he sent His top angel .... just doesn't cut it.
• 

  NikL

  @ moggy lover

  Your comment was amazing. It's the type of comment I wish I could make.

  There is a huge discrepancy between my head and mouth (in this case keyboard).

  Thank you.

  @Vanderhoven7

  Amen brother!

  The fact that the WT lies about the origin of the Trinity , saying that it was thought up at the Nicene Council speaks volumes .

  Yes Jan. That's part of the reason that the idea that the trinity could be true blows my mind!
  
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  Old Navy

  He told us who he was while on Earth.

  He is the Son of his Father.

  That the Son of God would be like the Almighty One seems reasonable.

  Weren't we in the Physical Realm created because the Son wanted us?
  
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  SummerAngel

  Hi Nikl, yep you've got it Jesus is Lord, not some secondary being to God and definitely not an Angel. Pop along to any Baptist or evangelical church and they will explain it to you. Also look up Nicky Gumbel's book ' who is Jesus" where he puts 3 hypothesis, that Jesus is either a madman, a good man or who he says he is.

  Once you move away from theridiculous knotts the WT ties you in you will be struck by the simplicity of the true gospel if you want to go down that path.
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  NikL

  Once you move away from theridiculous knotts the WT ties you in you will be struck by the simplicity of the true gospel

  So true SummerAngel.
  
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  Cold Steel

  Can one still get a cheap copy of the NWT from the Pioneers that canvas the neighborhood? What's the price? Do they all have copies? I know it's online; but if like to pick one up. And why did they do away with the green ones they were using back in the 70s?