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JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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191<br />

Jehovah's Witnesses make the futile attempt to do away with this identification by using<br />

the name "Jehovah" instead of "Lord" in Romans 10:13 and in all other Old Testament<br />

quotations in the New Testament. Everywhere else, however, the New World Translation uses<br />

the word "Lord." This is purely arbitrary and based upon wishful thinking rather than careful<br />

biblical exegesis.<br />

In simplest terms Paul points out that God requires a belief in two things as outlined in<br />

Romans 10:9-10,13:<br />

● Confession that "Jesus is Lord"<br />

● Belief that God raised Jesus from the dead<br />

Biblical scholar C. E. B. Cranfield put it:<br />

"The confession that Jesus is Lord meant the acknowledgment that Jesus shares the<br />

name and the nature, the holiness, the authority, power, majesty and eternity of<br />

the one and only true God . . . there is expressed in addition the sense of His<br />

ownership of those who acknowledge Him and of their consciousness of being<br />

His property."7<br />

The belief in the resurrection is key because we must not only believe that Jesus lived,<br />

but that He lives. It is not enough to know about Him, but we must know Him. It is not enough<br />

to know Jesus as merely a great historical figure; we must know Him as a living presence. The<br />

belief in the resurrection assures us that Jesus was not merely a martyr, but a victor as well.<br />

Because He rose from the grave on that Easter morning we have come to know Him as the risen<br />

Lord who was victorious over death, sin, the world, and Satan.<br />

● ". . . our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13).<br />

The issue is whether Jesus Christ is our Savior only, or our God and Savior. According to<br />

Greek grammar (called “the Granville Sharp law”):<br />

"When a copulative [connective] kai [Greek for 'and'] connects two nouns of the<br />

same case, if the article which precedes the first noun [articular] does not precede<br />

the second noun [anarthrous], the latter always refers to the same person expressed<br />

or described by the first noun and is a further description of it."8<br />

When we apply this rule to the passage before us we see who is "great." It is "God and<br />

Savior" because the two names are in the genitive case with the absence of the article preceding<br />

"Savior." Who, then, is our "great God and Savior"? Jesus Christ!<br />

Jehovah's Witnesses New World Translation has inserted the bracketed article "the" in<br />

order to "complete the sense in the English text. The verse therefore reads:

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