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In this essay I will attempt to answer and explain the reason that Jesus needed to
pray to God the Father while in His earthly ministry in order to answer the question
typically posed by Jehovah’s Witnesses. I shall look at the different theories
surrounding the incarnation of Jesus and what it is the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe
about Him and His deity.
Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that Jesus is God, or Jehovah as they prefer to refer to
God as, incarnated in the flesh. The Jehovah’s Witnesses keep fast the view that He,
Jesus, is in fact the first creation of God the Father - Jehovah. To the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Jesus is a created being, he chief of angels and the highest of God's
creation.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses get this idea about Jesus from their interpretation of
Colossians 1: 15 which says 'He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation,'1 but this idea runs contrary to Scripture.
'It is erroneous to conclude that Christ is the "first created" simply because He is the
firstborn. These two terms are not synonymous'2
"First created" and "firstborn" are also two completely different words in the Greek
and Paul, in writing Colossians, specifically uses PRŌTOTOKOS - "firstborn". Jews,
at the time of Christ and before, would have understood the term "firstborn" to mean
a position or rank, rather than the actual first born of a family; and also this would
mean the heir of the father to inherit all that the father owned. This is especially
relevant when referring to Christ Jesus, as He is the Son He is 'appointed heir of all
things' (Heb 1: 2). The Jehovah’s Witnesses also mistranslate Col. 15 - 17, adding
the word "other" before the word "things" to make it read as though Christ was
created first before anything else and then all other things were made after and by
1
All Bible citations are taken from the NRSV, unless otherwise stated.
2
Jesus Christ Saviour and Lord, pp.14
Christ's deity is made quite plain throughout Scripture time and time again. The
Gospel’s and even Jesus Himself, equates Himself to God when He declares that He
and the Father are one3 and also in John 5: 18, the Jews were planning to kill Jesus
for ‘calling God His own Father, making Himself equal to God’. Looking at the book of
Revelation too, verses 17 – 18 say: ‘I am the First and the Last, I am the Living One;
I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever.’ (Italic emphasis added). In their
own Bible, the New World Translation, these passages still hold true and say the
same as any other reliable translation out there, showing that even in their own
Scriptures Jesus is considered equal to, and is, God the Alpha and Omega –
Beginning and End, a title Jehovah’s Witnesses will quite happily apply to Jehovah
God thus showing, by their own translation, that Jesus is God.
‘Other scholars have pointed out that the NWT is not consistent in the application of
the rule by which they claim to translate “a god”. It would mean they would need to
translate Matthew 5: 9 as follows: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be
called sons of a god,” not “sons of God” (as … the NWT … [has] it).’4
This confirming the fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses Bible has discrepancies and
contradictions in their translating and understanding of Jesus as God, not “a god”,
because they overlook an established rule of Greek grammar.
The two main trains of thought on the Incarnation of Christ and what took place, are
the Kenosis theory and the Krypsis theory. Kenosis says that Jesus emptied Himself
completely and had no access to His divine rights or power; whereas Krypsis says
that He did have access to His divinity but just chose not to draw on it. The Bible
does not make it clear on either which is right, so our own conclusions will have to be
drawn from how we view the life of Jesus and His miracles, and from the rest of the
New Testament writings. In Phil. 2: 5-8, Paul talks of Jesus as being in the form of
God but although He was, and is God, He did not hold on to His equality with God
and humbled Himself instead as a servant, to the will of the Father. He chose to live
as a man, self-imposing the limitations of a man upon Himself, in order to be able to
3
John 10:30
4
Scripture Twisting, pp. 163
So why did Jesus have to pray then, if He was also fully God? As God incarnate on
earth, Jesus also had to take on human attributes and limitations, so in becoming
man He chose to live a normal life as a normal human being, in that He either gave
up His Godly powers or chose not to use them al all, or until the right moment. By
becoming a man, God put Himself within human restrictions so that He could be
tempted, experience human life, but still remain perfect and pure. But also by doing
this, Jesus needed to pray to the Father in order to keep the relationship between
them positive and active. It was Jesus the man that prayed to God the Father who
still dwelt in heaven, not Jesus talking to Himself, to his divine side, in a seemingly
schizophrenic or split personality kind of way. ‘In prayer we place our entire existence
5
Jesus Man For God, pp. 68
6
Mk. 14: 61-64; Lk. 22: 66-71; Jn. 4: 25, 26
7
Masters of Deception, pp. 18
So the reason that Jesus did spend so much time in prayer is because of Him being
on earth incarnated as flesh in human form as well as having a divine nature. God
was very much still in heaven as it appears obvious by the way Jesus spoke of God
and to God – if He were not and was confined to a finite human form totally in Jesus,
then who would have been holding the universe and all creation in place? While
Jesus was indeed God fully, God the Father was also fully in heaven keeping
everything in place while Jesus, being God in the flesh and not in heaven, worked out
His divine mission on earth by keeping in constant contact and communication with
God in order to fulfil everything He was sent to do. The Incarnation is a very
confusing issue, and ‘one way of dealing with the problem was to refer to God as
‘Father’, and Jesus as ‘Son’, or ‘Son of God’’10 meaning that they had a divine bind
between them but it is also be told apart from one another in simple terms that
everyone can grasp.
The Father and Son are one and the same, bonded by divinity, but also separate in
the sense that God the Father stayed in heaven, while His Only Son came to earth in
the form of man and had to pray like man in order to keep that bond to God, but also
to allow us to see the ultimate example of humility and a servant heart in the
examples Jesus left us to follow in order that we may have that bond with God like
He did.
8
Unbounded Love, pp. 143
9
Mk. 14: 32 - 36
10
Understanding Doctrine, pp.168
Deek. P., Questions on the Christian Faith from the Bible, (GB, Hodden and Shishton
Ltd; 1967)
New Revised Standard Version, New Testament (The Division of Education and
Ministry, National Council of the Churches of Christ, 1990)
Sanders, J. O. and Wright, J. S., Some Modern Religions, (London, IVP 1989)
Toy, J., Jesus Man For God, (Worcester, A. R. Mowbray and Co. Ltd; 1988)
New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, (New York, Watch Tower Bible and
Tract Society of New York Inc.; 1984)