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John 20:28–29
“Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’”
Yesterday we saw the central teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Today we set the biblical witness to the deity of Christ alongside their system to see how thoroughly Scripture refutes it.
Thomas’ confession in today’s passage is one of the clearest declarations of Christ’s deity in all of Scripture. Standing before the risen Jesus, the doubting disciple who had refused to believe without tangible evidence now bows in worship and addresses Jesus as “my Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). This is no mere exclamation of surprise. Thomas is making a deliberate confession, applying to Jesus the very titles that the Old Testament reserved for Yahweh alone. Jesus, far from correcting him, accepts the confession and pronounces blessing on all who will likewise believe without having seen.
The witness of the New Testament to Christ’s deity is consistent and unmistakable. John’s gospel opens with the declaration that the Word was God and that all things were made through Him (John 1:1, 3). Paul writes that in Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Hebrews calls the Son “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb. 1:3). The Witnesses’ teaching that Jesus is a created being simply cannot be reconciled with these texts. To make all things, the Son cannot Himself be a thing made.
The doctrine of the Trinity, far from being a late ecclesiastical invention, arises directly from the data of Scripture. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and yet there is one God. The early church did not invent this teaching but worked carefully to articulate it in the face of various denials, including denials very similar to those that the Witnesses now make. The Nicene Creed stands as a careful summary of what Scripture teaches about the relations among the three persons of the one God.
Much is at stake here. If Christ is a created Being, then His death cannot bear the infinite weight of sin against the infinite God; only an infinite person could make such a sacrifice. If there is no eternal punishment, then the urgency of the gospel is dramatically diminished and the cross becomes a curiosity rather than the only refuge from a coming wrath. The Witnesses’ system presents a different gospel because it presents a different Christ. In witnessing to those caught in this teaching, we must point them to the risen Lord whom Thomas confessed: our Lord and our God.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The deity of Christ is not a peripheral doctrine but the very ground of our salvation. Only the eternal Son could bear the eternal wrath that our sin deserved. Let us join Thomas in confessing the risen Jesus as Lord and God, and pray for those who have been taught a lesser Christ.
For further study
- John 1:1–3
- Philippians 2:5–11
- Revelation 1:17–18
The bible in a year
- Song 7–Isa. 1
- Galatians 3