If Jehovah's Witnesses deny Jesus' divinity why do they call him son of God isn't Jesus in fact a separate person from God the creator didn't he call himself the son of God?

Answer 1

The official line of the Jehovah's Witness organisation is that they do not regard Jesus as divine. They call him the son of God as a subservient 'son' of Jehovah - in other words Jesus is a different person from God, and that at the Cross God sacrificed Jesus as an atonement for our sins.

The mainstream Christian Church has real issues with this belief. Throughout scripture God is regarded as perfect, infinite unconditional love. By sacrificing someone else on the Cross, this is contradictory to a God of love, but instead displays a God of vengeance - just like the Aztec gods who demanded human sacrifice to be appeased.

The mainstream Church interprets scripture very differently. Bible scholars, bible historians and theologians have looked back at the early Church as described in Acts and the Church of the centuries following, and have examined carefully both scripture, and the writings of many who actually knew Jesus or were just a generation or two removed from those who knew him. They all regarded Jesus as divine - fully human and yet fully God. The gospel that describes this most eloquently is John's gospel where he writes of episodes in Jesus' life followed by miracles (he calls them 'signs' of jesus' divinity) and then Jesus follows these signs with the seven great 'I am' statements. In addition, the gospel writers, and especially John, describe Jesus as performing deeds (like forgiving sins, declaring his divinity, declaring his lordship over the Sabbath, performing miracles in his own name and not God's etc) that were only possible if Jesus was either who he said he was - God - or a madman or a fool. John finishes off the gospel with the climax -- not of the resurrection, but of Thomas, who initally doubted, falling on his knees and declaring that Jesus was 'My Lord and my God' when he saw him in his resurrected state.

Theologans have argued that only if Jesus is both God and man can the Cross make sense. Rather than a vengeful God sacrificing someone else on the Cross, God performs the ultimate sacrifice, by giving himself in love fully for humanity. Thus, in the mainstream Church God sacrifices himself on the Cross - in the form of Jesus - as this is the ultimate act of love - and one to which Jesus attests on several occasions.

Jesus' usually called himself the Son of Man to emphasise his humanity, and also 'God the Son' in the sense that the son carried all the authority and character of the father. In Jewish society this authority would have been well understood, as sons carried the full authority of their fathers, and were not seen as subservient.

Thus, Jesus as God's Son, is seen by the Church as not only fully human, but also fully divine. As jesus himself said, as a rebuke to the diisciples who simply did not understand..."don't you understand? ... he who has seen me has seen the Father'.

Answer 2

This is what Jehovah's Witnesses believe about Jesus:

1. He was the "firstborn son" of Jehovah, the Beginning of God's creation and has the heavenly name of "Michael the Archangel".

2. Jesus was the "only-begotten son of God" in the sense that it was the only thing God created directly. All other things were created through Jesus, including the other sons of God, or angels.

3. After Adam and Eve rebelled and Satan's claims that humans would never be what God wanted them to be, humanity needed a savoir. God sent his only-begotten son to Earth as a human in order to prove Satan a liar and to prove that a human could indeed be loyal and perfectly sacrifice himself for others with unselfish love.

4. God resurrected Jesus back to heaven after his death and in time, appointed him King of his Kingdom. At the end of this world system, Jesus will come and judge the people of the Earth and only the ones that have shown their willingness to obey God's command and exercise faith in that ransom will be saved in what would be considered the ultimate way to vindicate God's name.

5. The Earth would then be ruled by Jesus for a thousand years and it will be restored to the paradise Jehovah originally intended it to be and then presented to God in a cleaned condition.

Some scriptures they often mention in their publications regarding this question are: Colossians 1:13-20; Revelation 3:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:16; John 3:16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 25:31-33; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28