|
John
5:30-32, "By Myself I can do nothing."
"I can do
nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is
just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who
sent Me. 31"If I alone bear witness of Myself, My
testimony is not true. 32"There is another who bears
witness of Me, and I know that the testimony which He bears of Me is
true," (John 5:30-32,
NASB).
Jehovah's Witnesses
use these verses in their attempt to say that Jesus is not God. They
reason that if Jesus were really God in flesh, then He could do
anything He wanted to do. But here we see that Jesus says that He can
do nothing on His own initiative. If this is true, then how can Jesus
be God in flesh?
The answer is that Jesus is both God and man in one
person. This doctrine is called the hypostatic union. As a man, Jesus
was under the law and was obligated to keep the law (Gal. 4:4). In
His humbled state of being lower than the angels (Heb. 2:9), Jesus
was cooperating with the limitations of being a man (Phil. 2:5-8).
Therefore, He was in complete subjection to the Father so that He might
fulfill the law and be the high priest sacrifice for our sins (Heb. 5:10).
Furthermore, Jesus did not begin His miracles until His
baptism. It was at that point that the Holy Spirit came upon Him.
Therefore, Jesus was performing His miracles not by His own power, but
by the power of the Holy Spirit. This explains why in
Matt. 12:22-32
when the Pharisees said that Jesus was casting out demons by the power
of the devil, Jesus said that blasphemy on the Holy Spirit of not be
forgiven. In other words, Jesus was doing His miracles by the power of
the Holy Spirit and not under His own divine power which He had laid
aside the rightful use of while he walked this earth doing the
Father's will.
Therefore, these verses do not mean that Jesus is not
divine. But it does mean that Jesus, as a man, was completely and
totally in submission to the will of the Father and that Jesus would
only do the will of the Father as the text clearly says.
Return to the
Jehovah's Witness Page
|