In the
official Watchtower publication, Should You Believe in the Trinity,
Jehovah’s Witnesses proclaim that:
·
Jesus
had an existence in heaven before coming to the earth…the Bible plainly states
that in his pre-human existence, Jesus was a created spirit being, just
as the angels were spirit beings created by God.
Nevertheless,
they believe that Jesus died for our sins and that we have to place our trust
in Him. In light of this, is His deity worth fighting over? Doesn’t doctrine
divide and create acrimony? Isn’t it enough to believe that Jesus was, at
least, a form of deity?
Hopefully,
without any acrimony, I’d like to try to explain why this is such a critical
doctrine, one that profoundly impacts our lives.
For one thing, God requires that we
know, love and worship Him as He truly is. Jesus claimed that this knowledge
was essential:
·
“I
told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the
one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins." (John 8:24)
According to Jesus, faith and
salvation were a matter of believing what He taught about Himself. In contrast,
many today believe that a relationship with God isn’t about believing a set of
teachings or doctrines about God, but rather about experiencing Him. Oprah
asserted this very thing:
·
“God
is about a feeling experience, not a believing experience…A mistake we humans
make is believing that there is only one way…There are many paths to what you
call God…There couldn’t possibly be just one way…Do you think that if you never
heard the name of Jesus but lived with a loving heart…you wouldn’t get to
heaven?...Does God care about the heart or if you call His Son ‘Jesus?’” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwGLNbiw1gk
According to Oprah, a relationship
with God is a matter of both experience and the quality of our heart. However,
we all fail the heart test:
·
As
it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one
seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no
one does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12)
This is why salvation must be by grace
and not by our merit or the quality of our heart. Otherwise, we’d our “spiritual
superiority” would go to our heads and make us utterly contemptible (Ephesians
2:8-9; 1 Cor. 1:26-29)
Understanding God correctly is not
optional. God had been angry at Job’s three friends because they failed to
understand and speak rightly of Him:
·
After
the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I
am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what
is right, as my servant Job has. (Job 42:7)
Jesus
reaffirmed the fact that we have to approach God bearing a correct
understanding. He contrasted a true understanding with the understanding of the
Samaritans:
·
“You
Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation
is from the [revelation to the] Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come
when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they
are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers
must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:22-24)
Perhaps we
can best understand this connection between truth and worship/relationship if
we examine our own relationships. We tend to value those friends who appreciate
us for who we really are, rather than people who might appreciate us but for
the wrong reasons.
Correct
theology really matters. This is why Paul was so intolerant of false gospels:
·
But
even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to
the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now
I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you
received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8-9)
The importance
of what we belief is inscribed throughout Scripture:
·
Thus
says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty
man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him
who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD
who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in
these things I delight, declares the LORD.” (Jeremiah 9:23-24)
If we are to
boast about anyone, we should boast about what is of supreme importance – that we
know and understand God. Why is God so insistent about truth and correct
knowledge? It sounds so arbitrary that God would save us according to faith
(including correct beliefs) rather than according to the quality of our lives.
It sounds
this way because we fail to see the connection between the new heart and spirit
which God grants us and the knowledge (faith) that arises once our heart is
regenerated.
Knowing of Christ’s Deity also endears
us to our Triune God.
Scripture reveals that the cross was a monumental demonstration of God’s love
for us:
·
God
shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since,
therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved
by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we
be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8-10)
I desperately needed to be convinced of God’s love for me. I had experienced decades of the severest depression and then panic attacks, even into my Christian life. It often felt that God was a cosmic sadist, eating popcorn as He delighted in the freak-show He was observing below.
Even though I
wanted to believe otherwise, my feelings allowed no other interpretation. One
night as I walked with head to the ground, crying my eyes out, I suddenly
realized that this wasn’t a freak-show, and that Christ suffered on the cross
for me and even suffered for me now (Heb. 4:15).
However, how
could the cross demonstrate God’s love for me? God could have created 50,000
Christs in one second, at absolutely no cost to Himself. However, if Jesus is
God and not a created being, this was totally another matter. God actually
loved me so much that He Himself died
for me! He didn’t send a mere created being to take my place, which would have
cost Him nothing. Instead, it was God Himself who had suffered and died for me.
This truth alone was able to penetrate my depression with His embrace.
Jehovah’s Witnesses isn’t the only
group that obscures the truth of Christ’s Triunity and His love for us. The
modalists do the same thing but in a different way. For instance, the United Pentecostal
Church claims that Jesus
was no more than an appearance of
deity, a manifestation – smoke and mirrors. Consequently, God didn’t die for us
but rather an appearance of God “died”
– hardly a token of God’s love.
I continue to
find other evidences of this “big bang” of self-sacrifice that has changed this
world. Jesus talked often of His coming moment of glory. How could anyone
imagine that this moment would entail His time of pain and humiliation?
·
Jesus
replied, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you
the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains
only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:23-24; 7:39; 13:31)
What love! He so desperately longed to
show us His glory, and we thought that this had been fulfilled on the Mount of
Transfiguration. However, He was pointing to something even more glorious - His
torture and His death, the spit and the naked humiliation – the greatest tokens
of His love.
It also served as an example for us of
what our own self-sacrifice should look like. (Lord, help us!) Paul argues that
if Jesus, God Himself, had humbled Himself to die on the cross, so should we do
likewise for others (Phil. 2:3-8).
However, if Jesus isn’t God but rather
a created, non-priceless being who was created for the very purpose of dying,
this fails to both demonstrate God’s love and glory. It also fails to impress
us into self-sacrificial living.
Furthermore, the death of a mere
created being fails to humble us by showing us the depths of our sins. In fact,
they were so weighty that the blood of animals couldn’t begin to atone for
them:
·
Because
it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore,
when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did
not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin
offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, 'Here I am--it is written about me
in the scroll--I have come to do your will, O God.' " (Hebrews 10:4-7 quoting Psalm 40)
If our sins could have been atoned for
in a less costly way, our Savior would have done it that way. However, nothing
short of the death of the Savior would suffice! This humbles us more profoundly
than would the crucifixion of a created being.
It also gives us great confidence. It
demonstrates to us that if God loved us so much while we were still His
enemies, how much more will He keep and protect us now that He has already paid
the price and has converted us into a band of friends and worshippers (Romans
5:8-10).
Even beyond this, the cross of Christ
our God communicates that we are rich beyond reckoning. Paul argued that if we
have Christ, we have everything. Why? Because in Christ is everything – all Deity (Col. 2:9-10). Before making this
life-altering assertion, Paul set forth the Deity of Christ – “the image of the
invisible God…by Him all things were created…and hold together…all [God’s]
fullness dwells in Him” (Col. 1:13-21). Therefore, we really do have
everything, along with the assurance that we are co-heirs with Christ (Rom.
8:17).
Because of these surpassing riches, we
should never be tempted to think that we lack anything. We need to know that we
are safe and beloved as we venture forth every morning into the discouragements
of this life. The fact that God Himself died for us while we were still sinners
can give us this assurance, especially as we drink deeply from the truth of our
own unworthiness (Luke 17:10).
Theology – the truths of God – deeply matter.
They also transform.
No comments:
Post a Comment