📖 Galatians Intensive — Unit 9: Another Gospel — Jehovah’s Witnesses

Anchor: Galatians 1:6-9 — with Galatians 1:8; 2:16, 21; 5:4 (NKJV)

A Word Before We Begin

Before we examine the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, we must be clear about our spirit. Jehovah's Witnesses are, in the main, sincere, moral, and remarkably devoted people. They love God as they have been taught to understand Him, they honor the Bible, and they give themselves to spreading their message at great personal cost. We owe them courtesy, kindness, and honest respect as our neighbors and as people for whom Christ died. Our purpose in this unit is not to mock them or to win an argument, but to test their teaching by the Word of God, and, where it departs from the gospel, to say so plainly and lovingly. We are to speak "the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). The kindest thing we can do for any person is to tell them the truth about Christ.

Who Are Jehovah's Witnesses?

Jehovah's Witnesses are members of an organization known as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, which arose in the United States in the late nineteenth century and is directed today by a Governing Body. They use their own Bible, the New World Translation, insist on the use of God's name "Jehovah," and are widely known for their door-to-door ministry. They number several million worldwide and are diligent students of their literature. Much in their conduct is admirable. Our concern is not with their diligence but with what they actually teach about God, about Christ, and about salvation.

What They Teach, in Their Own Terms

Concerning God, Jehovah's Witnesses reject the doctrine of the Trinity. They hold that only the Father, Jehovah, is Almighty God, and that the Holy Spirit is not a person but God's active force.

Concerning Jesus, they teach that He is God's first and greatest creation. Before His earthly life He existed as Michael the archangel, and He returned to that identity afterward. He is, in their words, "a god" — mighty, but not Almighty God, and not eternal. He laid down His perfect human life as a ransom, and was raised, they say, not in His fleshly body but as a spirit.

Concerning salvation, they teach that it is a gift of God's undeserved kindness, received through faith in Christ's ransom. But that faith, they say, must be shown by repentance, by baptism as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, by righteous conduct, by zealous preaching from door to door, and by loyal association with God's organization, which they call "the faithful and discreet slave." A Witness is taught that he cannot be certain of his salvation in this life.

Concerning the future, they teach two hopes: a "little flock" of 144,000 anointed ones will reign with Christ in heaven, while the "great crowd" of all other faithful will live forever on a restored paradise earth. They teach that the wicked are not tormented forever but simply cease to exist, that the dead are unconscious, and that Christ began to rule invisibly in the year 1914, so that the battle of Armageddon is near.

We have stated these things as fairly as we can, in the terms the Witnesses themselves use. Now we must test them by Scripture.

Testing the Root (1): A Different Christ

In the previous unit we learned that the gospel is a tree, and that at its root is Christ alone. Everything depends, then, on who that Christ is. If the root is not the true and eternal Son of God, it is a different root, and a different root makes a different tree. Here the teaching of the Witnesses fails at the very point where it matters most. Scripture does not present Jesus as a created angel but as God Himself. John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1) — not "a god," as the New World Translation renders it, for the rest of John's Gospel will not allow it. Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I AM" (John 8:58), taking to Himself the very name of God. Paul declares that "by Him all things were created" and that "He is before all things" (Colossians 1:16-17): the One who created all things cannot Himself be a creature. "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9). Far from being the archangel Michael, the Son is worshiped by the angels: "Let all the angels of God worship Him" (Hebrews 1:6); and of the Son the Father says, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" (Hebrews 1:8). When Thomas saw the risen Lord — risen, the Lord insisted, in a body of "flesh and bones," not as a mere spirit (Luke 24:39) — he fell down and said, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28), and Jesus received the worship. The Christ of the Witnesses is not the Christ of the Scriptures.

Testing the Root (2): A Different Gospel of Salvation

The second failure lies at the very heart of Galatians. The Witnesses add to Christ a long list of works as the condition of salvation — baptism into their organization, a record of righteous conduct, hours of preaching, and unbroken loyalty to the Watch Tower — and they deny that anyone can be sure of being saved. But this is exactly the error Paul fought in Galatia. "A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16). "I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain" (Galatians 2:21). To those who would be justified by their own performance Paul says these sobering words: "You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace" (Galatians 5:4). Salvation is "by grace... through faith... not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9); it is "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy" (Titus 3:5). And it is sure: the one who believes "has passed from death into life" (John 5:24), and these things are written "that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13). Nor is salvation channeled through any organization, "for there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). To make salvation rest on works and on an organization, and to strip away all assurance, is to change the root.

Why This Is "Another Gospel"

Put these two failures together and the verdict is unavoidable. A message that gives us a created Christ and a salvation earned by works is not a slightly different version of the same gospel; it is, in Paul's words, "a different gospel, which is not another" (Galatians 1:6-7). Paul's warning could not be more solemn, and it lands here with peculiar force: "even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8). The Witnesses make Christ Himself an angel; but Paul says that no angel, not even the highest, and no human teacher, however sincere, may set aside the gospel of the true and eternal Son. The issue is not zeal, sincerity, or morality, in all of which the Witnesses may excel many Christians. The issue is whether Jesus is God and whether sinners are saved by grace. On both counts, this is another gospel, and to pervert the gospel at the root is no small thing.

The Question of Fellowship

This brings us to a hard but necessary conclusion. Because Jehovah's Witnesses confess a different Christ and a different gospel, we cannot recognize their teaching as the Christian faith, nor join with it in the fellowship and work of the gospel. This is not personal hostility, and it is not permission to be unkind. We honor them as neighbors, we are courteous and gracious, and we gladly do them good. But love does not pretend. Scripture will not let us treat the denial of Christ's deity and of salvation by grace as merely another Christian tradition: "Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God... If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him" (2 John 9-10) — that is, do not welcome him as a fellow worker or lend approval to his message. We are not to be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers," for there is no true spiritual partnership between light and darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14). So we do not share in their worship or their mission, because it rests upon another foundation. We may sit at their door and reason with them from the Scriptures; we may not stand beside them as fellow heralds of the same gospel.

A Redemptive Aim

Yet all of this is for a redemptive end. We do not draw these lines to shut people out, but because we long for Jehovah's Witnesses to come in — to the true Christ. Our message to them is good news: the real Jesus is far greater than they have been taught. He is not an angel but the eternal Son, God in the flesh, who does not merely offer a ransom on condition of our works, but gives full, free, and certain salvation to everyone who trusts in Him. Many Witnesses already love the Scriptures and reverence the name of God; we pray that God will open their eyes to see, in those same Scriptures, the Christ who is "Lord and God," and to rest at last in His finished work. We treat each one as a person Christ died to save — with patience, with prayer, and with an open Bible.

Submit Exam & Check Pass Reset Unit