Following on from yesterday’s post about Jehovah’s Witnesses and their denial that Christ is God:
If you were to force me to make the case for the true divinity of Jesus from a single verse of the Bible, I would go to John 1:3.
(John 1:1 would be easier, and Titus 2:13 would do the job too, but both of these are mistranslated in the JW version of the Bible, and though the proper translation can be defended, it’s a long and arduous process that involves a lot of Greek grammar, which is boring.)
Why John 1:3? Because it contains a perfect, brief description of what theologians call the Creator/creature divide, and forces us to place the pre-incarnate Word on the Creator side. The JWs claim that Jehovah created the Word, and then Jehovah created all other things through the Word. They claim that the Word was God’s first creation, and this is what they say the Bible means when it speaks of Christ as ‘the firstborn’.
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:3 ESV
All things were made through him — that is, through the Word. Now, there are times in the Bible where ‘all’ means ‘all without distinction’, but here it’s clear from the rest of the verse that it means ‘all without exception’: ‘without him was not any thing made that was made.’
So we are speaking in absolutes. This is good — it allows us to create clear categories:
1. Things that exist that were never created
2. Things that exist that were created without the Word
3. Things that exist that were created through the Word
What belongs in category 1? Both JWs and orthodox Christians agree: the LORD, God, Jehovah if you insist on calling him that. To be self-existent, uncreated, and eternal, belongs only to the divine nature. Category 1 has a single occupant: God himself.
What belongs in category 3? It seems pretty clear: everything else. If it’s not self-existent and uncreated, that means it was created, and as John 1:3 says, ‘All things (without exception) were made through the Word, and without the Word there was not any thing made that was made.’
Was it made? Then it was made through the Word.
Was there anything made that was not made through the Word? John 1:3 says that there wasn’t.
But wait. Where then do we place the Word himself?
We can’t place the Word in category 3. How can the Word be created through the Word? A thing cannot be created by means of itself.
What about category 2 then? Is the Word a thing that exists that was not made through the Word? That would seem to make sense — it’s what the JWs teach about the matter: that Jehovah first made the Word, and then made all other things through the Word.
But, though it seems sensible, it falls apart when you look again at John 1:3. ‘Without him was not any thing made that was made.’
Or to put it another way: there is no thing in existence that was created, but not created through the Word.
That means that category 2 has nothing in it. For John 1:3 to be true, category 2 is a non-existent category. It’s an empty set. If you gather up all things in existence that a) were created, but b) were not created through the Word, and put them in a box, then you will have an empty box.
Where does that leave us?
The Word must — must — go into category 1. The only occupant of category 1, JWs and orthodox Christians agree, is the LORD, Jehovah, the one true God, the only self-existent, uncreated being. And we can’t suggest that there is more than one eternal, uncreated divine nature and more than one eternal, uncreated divine being — that’s repugnant both to JWs and to the orthodox. There is only one God.
Which means what then? The Word, the one through whom all things were made, is himself uncreated, self-existent, and one and the same with the LORD. And it is that same Word, who, in John 1:14,
became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 ESV
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