Jehovah's Witnesses say they believe on Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and salvation - but they don't believe that Jesus is God. Are they saved?
When we take into consideration exactly what they mean, we should not conclude that they are saved. They have a different Christ and a different gospel
In their minds, there is a total obliteration of the distinction between spirit and body. Anyone who is a human being must have been created, for God is Spirit [only]. Jesus is "a" god, a created being.
This is supported (in their minds) by Jesus being called the "Son" of God, and the "firstborn" of all creation.
When they think of a son, and especially in relation to a father, they mistakenly think in terms of the Greeks. This was also the error of Arian before them. BUT, this is also the error of many who are attached to orthodox Christianity in one way or another. If a son is "offspring" from a father, then it logically denotes that the father must have existed before the son.
Firstborn is thought to be "first offspring"
The Church has not done itself any favors in this area.
First, in its efforts to squelch Gnosticism in the first few centuries AD, there was a total disregard of the biblical distinction between spirit and body, though several NT writes made the distinction very clear (Jesus pitched His tent in our midst - John 1:14 e.g., and Paul and Peter both spoke of the body as a tent).
This brings a gasp even today, where most who hear of this distinction automatically cry GNOSTIC ALERT !! But this cry is almost always made by those who have never undertaken to investigate exactly what the Gnostics taught, nor what exactly attracted them to Christianity in the first place. Ignorance has aided no one in a defense of the truth
Ignoring this one critical doctrine gave rise to all sorts of philosophical speculation regarding the nature of Christ, the nature of men, and the nature of Christ as He relates to men.
The teaching of Paul that all men are condemned to die physically because of Adam (Romans 5:12-21), yet die spiritually on account of each man's own rebellion (Romans 1:18-25, 7:9-11) was thrown away. The church began to confuse the spirit and the body, and the distinctive aspects of each in regards to the disease of sin.
Traducianism was introduced by at least the time of Tertullian, teaching that the spirit of a man is procreated by his parents, thus transferring spiritual death to all of his descendants. Then, recognizing the train wreck that this doctrine caused in relation to Christ (Adams physical descendant), the Immaculate Conception was contrived in order to relieve the difficulty of a spiritually dead Christ. Then the Theotokos was contrived later as a result of this, adding error upon error.
The whole while, the church affirmed that Jesus is God. But the nuts and bolts of how and why were fading. The church, in an effort to clearly define Jesus as God, contrived the notion of the Hypostatic Union, where two ambiguous "natures" were brought together in the One Christ. By this time, "nature" had lost its biblical application of either spirit or body, and had become, similar to Greek mythology, with human and divine - whatever that means.
"Fully God and fully man" became the mantra without any clear scriptural statement in the affirmative.
Seeing the smoke and mirrors of pressing philosophy into the church, the Arians tried to glean from the scriptures for themselves the nature of Christ. Having a Greek paradigm of a father and son, and readily acknowledging that the Son and the Father are portrayed as distinct in the NT, they rejected the notion of a divine Son, preferring that He be thought of as a created being.
However, if they had cared to investigate the HEBREW concept of a son, and couple that with the apostle John's teaching on the essence of the Christ, they might not have made such a grave error.
In Hebrew thought, a son is an heir. Inheritances passed through the sons, not the daughters (unless there was no son). The "firstborn" son received a double portion of the inheritance. A son did not even have to be offspring (See Deuteronomy 25:5-10, where a man was responsible for raising up a son to a deceased brother). Abraham was concerned that his heir would be "one from his own house" instead of his own offspring. God promised to give him a SON from his own loins to be his heir.
Have you ever wondered why Isaac was called Abraham's "only son" ? After all, Ishmael was also Abraham's offspring. Isaac was Abraham's only HEIR. Read Genesis 16:9-12, 22:16, Hebrews 11:17)
If we take only what scripture tells us, and do not allow ourselves to be influenced by traditions of church councils and Greek philosophers, we can easily answer the heretical claims of the Jehovah's Witness.
In essence, Jesus is the WORD of God who was with God, and who was God. All things were created by Him, for Him and though Him. He did not think of equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself and was made in human likeness. Better than all the angels, but was made a little lower then the angels, he became like us in all things - see John 1:1-14, Philippians 2:6-11, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:2-14, 2:14-17
Son of God is not Jesus' ESSENCE, it denotes his position as the HEIR of God. He became the recipient of His inheritance byway of suffering on the cross. See Hebrews 2:9-10, 12:1-2. By this, He was given a more excellent name (Hebrews 1:4).
It was said "I
will be a Father to You, and You
will be a Son to Me (Hebrews 1:5, quoting 1Chronicles 17:13 & 22:10)
Why do we make such assertions as "God the Son" or "Son from eternity" when scripture never uses these phrases? Simple. We are thinking of a son in terms of Greek thinking rather than Hebrew thinking. If we think like the Hebrews, that a son is the heir, and the firstborn is the recipient of a double portion of the inheritance, then we are better equipped to answer the heretic. We can readily acknowledge that the Word of God is God, always was God, and always will be God, while Son of God denotes His position as Heir.
Then when the JWs say that the Father is always portrayed as greater than the Son, we say "SO WHAT?" Is the beneficiary ever greater than the benefactor? Of course the Heir receives from the Father.
Then, as for Jesus dying for our sins - in the mind of a Jehovah's Witness, there are two aspects of culpability for sin - Adam's part and our part. Remember that in their minds there isn't any distinction between spirit and body.
To that heretical faction, Jesus died only to remove our guilt associated with Adam. This is what they mean when they say "Jesus died for my sins". They use the right terminology, but they distort the meaning. The Jehovah's Witness believes that one must have faith in Jesus for His death to be efficacious to cover our guilt in Adam. But, that we must attain our own righteousness through works in order to be eternally saved.
That is contrary to the teachings of scripture, which state clearly that whoever believes in Him has passed from death to life, and shall never come into condemnation
The bottom line is that JWs do indeed have a different Christ, and a different gospel. Both are condemned in scripture, so both bring condemnation upon the disciple of that false sect.
And I would ask of anyone, that before hurling an accusation that I have somehow attacked the deity of Christ, or the humanity of Christ, be like a Berean (Acts 17:11). Check to see if the things I say are accurate.
If we believe that scripture is the sole authority for matters of faith and practice, then we ought to be able to find answer in scripture - not only in the words of councils and creeds
