Jesus Christ — Created Or Eternal? No. 1
To most believing readers of the Bible it is incredible that there should be any reason to ask the question of the title, much less to suppose that any serious controversy should exist about it. Yet there are some who, for some reason, want to be known as Christians who deny the deity of Jesus, and therefore deny also that he is eternal in being. Among such people no group has been more aggressive in propagating this infidelity than Jehovah's Witnesses. In what amounts to the Watch Tower's creed book, Make Sure of All Things, and under the article of faith entitled "Jesus Christ," it is officially stated that "Jesus, the Christ, (is) a created individual..." (Pg. 207). In the Harp of God, (Pg. 101), Joseph Rutherford (a late president of the Watch Tower) wrote, "Some insist that Jesus when on earth was both God and man in completeness. This theory is wrong, however."
To support its statement that Jesus is a created being (and therefore not eternal) Make Sure of All Things relies principally upon four texts, all of which are taken out of context, twisted, or prejudically and arbitrarily altered.
A marginal reading of Proverbs 8:22, 27-30, "Jehovah formed me in the beginning. . ." is applied to Jesus, but even a casual reading of the context shows that Solomon spoke not of Jesus, but of wisdom in personification. Verse 1 says, "both not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice?"
In the Watch Tower's New World Translation, John 1:1 is rendered, "Originally the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god." To determine whether or not this reference to Jesus, the Word, as "a god" is correct or not the reader is only asked to refer to the scholarship of such men as those who gave us the King James, American Standard, and New American Standard Bible translations. Without exception these fine works render John 1:1, ". . . the Word was with God, and the Word was God," leaving no doubt as to the deity and eternal being of the Word, Jesus the Christ.
Colossians 1:15-17 is cited to prove that of all of God's creation Jesus was the first thing formed, and the conclusion drawn is that having origin he therefore is not eternal in being. The context, however, shows that the expression "firstborn" does not refer to any supposed origin of Jesus, but speaks instead of his relationship to the universe as existing before it and being the creator of it. He is the image of the invisible God and the creator of all things, because he existed before all things, and by him all things consist. This is the meaning of the expression, ". . . the firstborn of every creature." So says William E. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, and so argues the context.
And finally, a description of Jesus as "... the beginning of the creation of God" from Revelation 3:14 is construed like Colossians 1:15 to mean that Jesus was created by Jehovah. The word "beginning" does not, however, refer to any beginning for Jesus, but instead refers to him as the beginner, or cause, of the creation. Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament says that the word translated beginning means "that by which anything begins to be, the origin, active cause ..."
It does not require a great deal of perception to see that these texts do not argue that Jesus had origin, is not eternal, and is therefore not deity. One of them does not even refer to Jesus, and the other three teach just the opposite of the (mis) use made of them by the Watch Tower. They show that Jesus is the creator, that he is coexistent with Jehovah God, and that he is therefore deity, God the Word who was made flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
A second, and concluding, installment to this article will deal with other texts which declare the eternal being of Jesus.
— P. O. Box 928, Bend, Oregon 97701