In this video clip Paul Washer talks about the death of Jesus Christ and who Jesus Christ is. Why must Jesus be God in order to pay for our sins?
Other helpful resources:
The Trinity: You Must Believe In It
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(This video was put up today due to a JW convention in San Antonio, TX in which our church went out to evangelize to.)
Let’s talk about the death of Christ for a moment. We know that the one who dies on that tree must be a man. We know that, don’t we? Because the blood of bulls and goats will not take away our sin. A man must die on that tree! But, then again, more than a man must die on that tree. The one who dies on that tree must also be God. Why must the one who dies on that tree be deity? Be God in the flesh? Be God the Son, the Son of God? Why? Well, first of all, a small statement in the book of Jonah. “Salvation is of the Lord. ” Isaiah is quite clear. God shares the title of Savior with no one. That is why the doctrine of the Jehovah Witnesses is such an abomination because they say that God created an innocent creature to go down and save men. To put away sin. And if that’s that case, then it is a creature that has saved us.
But what you need to understand is Christ was no creature but the Creator. The eternal Son of God who stepped down out of Heaven, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But came down from Heaven. He did not lay aside His deity. He laid aside the glory and privilege of His deity. He did not become something less than God, but He became something God had never been. He took to His divine nature, human nature. He took to Himself flesh and He became a man. And He went to that tree as the God-man and He died on that tree as the God-man and He rose again from the dead as the God-man. And the one that we call Savior is not just man, but He is God! And so, the words of Jonah remain intact, “salvation is of the Lord.”
If you have a Jehovah’s Witness come to your door ask them about that. Say, “Do you worship Christ? Do you love Christ? Do you adore Christ?” We’ve talked about that before. That’s something that they can’t relate with. One of the things in which it is very important to help the Jehovah’s Witness to understand, anyone who would deny the deity of Christ, is when they ask me, “Why do you believe that?” And I say well, because I believe the Bible. And I believe the Bible to such an extent that I have to accept everything it says even if I cannot explain it.
And then I go on the attack. Your problem is this, you believe that you can believe only what you can explain. And if you can’t explain it then the Scriptures must not be saying it and so you throw out, or twist, or change some of the texts of Scripture to make them fit your reasoning. You can’t do that. I am and must be submitted as a slave to Scripture. I must submit my intellect to Scripture. If Scripture says that there is one God but Scripture attributes deity to three persons equally, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I must accept that truth even if I can’t explain it. You can’t explain it so you change the text. I can’t do that.
Also, another thing that is very, very good, when you are dealing with a Jehovah Witness… I’ll never forget this. I had been in the jungle several days with a missionary by the name of Homer Crane. And we came out of there and we were not doing good. We were supposed to be met by a group of other missionaries. We were not. We had to sleep out in the jungle without mosquito nets laying on the ground. And it was no fun. I’ll never forget. I came back in and I was carrying the diesel back up, these big drums of diesel. I was a lot younger back then. And I pulled them out of the back of the boat and I was carrying them up the dock and I got diesel all over me. So, not only was I muddy, I hadn’t taken my boots off in about five days, I hadn’t bathed, and now I had diesel all over me.
Well, I finally got everything taken care of and I’m walking back. And I’m walking through the plaza just trying to make it to a hotel. That is all that I wanted to do. And here the Jehovah Witnesses just converge on me. And I’m like, “Oh! Just not now, Lord!” And I’m sitting there as they are talking, just wondering, “Lord, do I enter into an argument with them, what do You want me to do?” And just all of a sudden it came to my mind what I ought to do. So, I just looked at him and I said, “you know, I love talking about God, I really do. And I really appreciate people like you who talk about God.
I said, “But you know what I like to talk about the most?” And I said, “You’ll understand this. Because you’re a people who love God. I love to talk about those times, you know those times in prayer when you’re praying and all of a sudden the presence of God just seems to fill the room and fill your heart and you break out in worship and it just goes on for hours and you literally almost have to cry out to God and ask Him to take His hand off of you because it will just kill you because He is so real and His presence is so powerful and there’s so much joy in your heart that you literally end up crying out, ‘O God! Take your hand off of me lest I die!’ Share with me some of the times you’ve had like that in prayer.” And they just go…
Because they can’t. Because there is no presence, there is no power, there is no joy. And when you see the bewildered look on their face, just say, “You can’t even talk about it, can you? Because you don’t even know what I’m talking about. Because you have a religion, you don’t have God, you don’t have God because you don’t have Christ.” So, now God is just. Why? He has punished our sin but He has punished our sin in His only Begotten Son. He alone is uniquely qualified to carry it away because the blood of bulls and goats will not take away sin. So, a body was prepared, and the Son of God was born. The man Christ Jesus. Adam had sinned. The Son of Adam must die. He became a Son of Adam and died in the place of His people. He had to be man but He also had to be God.
That is why the doctrine of the Jehovah WItnesses is so vile. Because the claim that Christ was nothing more than a mere creature that God sent down to do a work of salvation. No! God came down to do a work of salvation! He had to be God. Why did He have to be God? If He is not God, He is not Savior, and if He is the Savior He must be God because Jonah says, “Salvation belongs to the Lord.” It comes from the Lord and no one else! Why did He have to be God? Who but God can withstand the wrath of God and rise again? Why did He have to be God? He had to give His life away. I hear all of these people saying, “God couldn’t find a perfect angel.” “God couldn’t find a perfect man.” It wouldn’t have mattered if He had found a perfect angel or a perfect man! It still wouldn’t have worked! God came down! God became a man. God… for you… And gave His life away. Let me ask you a small question, the life that you have, can you give it away? It’s not even yours to start off with. It’s not inherent in you. It’s something derived. Your life comes from God. Me giving my life away is like me giving your car away. It is not mine to start off with. But Christ said I have authority to lay down my life and I have authority to take it back up again. It’s His own!
