When a Jehovah’s Witness opens a Bible and speaks about Jesus, I need to listen carefully to what he means. We may use the same words while disagreeing about who Jesus is, what He accomplished, and what it means to receive salvation. Those disagreements deserve a clear answer from Scripture, and the person in front of me deserves to be treated with patience and respect.
The Real Test Is the Christ Being Preached
Many Witnesses take their beliefs seriously and devote considerable time to sharing them. I should acknowledge that commitment without treating it as proof that the teaching is true. A sincere person can be mistaken, just as someone who knows the right doctrine can behave badly. We need to examine what is being taught rather than substitute either admiration or contempt for an answer.
The modern movement developed from the Bible Students associated with Charles Taze Russell in the late nineteenth century. Russell edited the publication that became The Watchtower and served as president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. After his death, Joseph Rutherford succeeded him as president. Under Rutherford, the movement adopted the name Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931.
That history identifies the organization we are discussing. Neither its age nor its claim to have restored the original Christian faith can establish that its doctrine is true. We have to compare the teaching itself with the Scriptures the apostles gave us.
The central question is whether the Jesus being proclaimed is the Son revealed in Scripture. John does not permit us to dismiss that question as an unimportant disagreement among religious people:
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
1 John 2:23
Official Witness teaching identifies Jesus with Michael the archangel and denies that He is the eternal God. It rejects the Trinity and describes the Holy Spirit as God’s active force. It also distinguishes between a limited group called to heavenly life and a larger group hoping for life on earth. I cannot receive this system as biblical Christianity, because these teachings change the identity of the Savior and restrict promises the New Testament gives to everyone who belongs to Him. We need to examine the reasons for that conclusion without misrepresenting what Witnesses actually believe.
Jesus Is the Eternal Creator, Not Michael
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not teach that Jesus began to exist at His birth in Bethlehem. They believe He existed before becoming human, but identify Him as a created spirit being. Their publication “Is Jesus the Archangel Michael?” explicitly identifies Him with Michael before His human life and after His return to heaven. John begins his Gospel with a different description:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
The Word already existed in the beginning. He was with God, which distinguishes Him personally from the Father, and He was God. John then explains that everything made came into existence through Him, and that nothing made came into existence without Him (John 1:3). If the Word were a creature, He would belong to the very category of things John says came into existence through Him. John’s explanation places Him on the Creator’s side of that distinction.
The New World Translation renders the end of John 1:1 “the Word was a god.” That wording presents the Word as a lesser divine being. John’s opening, however, identifies Him as eternal and as the Creator through whom every created thing came into existence.
The Greek clause is kai theos en ho logos. The absence of the article before theos, God, does not automatically require the English wording “a god.” As the NET translation notes explain, the clause describes the Word’s divine nature while distinguishing Him from the Father. John wrote as a Jewish monotheist, someone who believed in one God. He was not introducing a second, lesser god. His opening proceeds from the Word’s existence in the beginning to His becoming flesh, without describing the creation of an angel.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
The Word became flesh; He did not begin to be the Word when He became man. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. His real humanity does not reduce His deity, and His deity does not make His human life an appearance or a disguise.
Witnesses appeal to the title “firstborn over all creation” in Colossians 1:15 as evidence that Christ was created. But a firstborn son’s position involves rank and inheritance, and we must read Paul’s explanation of the title in the next verse:
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Colossians 1:16
Paul includes the invisible powers as well as the visible world among the things created through Christ and for Him. Angels therefore belong to His creation. The following verse places Him before all things and says that all things hold together in Him. In that setting, firstborn describes His supremacy over creation, rather than making Him its earliest member.
Colossians 2:9 states, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Paul also distinguishes the Son from the angels throughout Hebrews 1. The angels are called to worship Him, and the Father addresses the Son as God. Michael is an archangel, a chief angel; he belongs to the order that worships the Son. The study on the deity of Jesus examines that testimony in more detail.
Witnesses connect Michael with Jesus partly because 1 Thessalonians 4:16 describes the Lord’s descent with an archangel’s voice. The verse describes what accompanies the Lord’s coming, but it does not name Michael or call Jesus an angel. The description of the Son in John, Colossians, and Hebrews should guide our reading of the voice that accompanies His return.
One God Revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
The Trinity means that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are distinct Persons, not three gods or one Person appearing under three different names. The Son’s distinction from the Father does not make Him a lesser deity. Jesus names the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together when He commands baptism:
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 28:19
He says “the name,” bringing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together in the one baptism He commands. Likewise, 2 Corinthians 13:14 joins the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit in the apostolic blessing. We understand the Trinity by reading these passages alongside the direct statements that the Son and the Spirit are God.
In their explanation of the Holy Spirit, Jehovah’s Witnesses describe Him as God’s power in action rather than a Person. They recognize the passages in which He speaks and teaches, but interpret those descriptions as personification, language that gives personal qualities to something impersonal. I do not think that explanation adequately accounts for the way Scripture presents Him.
The Spirit teaches and testifies concerning Christ (John 14:26; 15:26). He distributes gifts as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), intercedes for believers (Romans 8:26–27), and can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30). In Acts, Peter confronts Ananias for lying to the Holy Spirit:
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit… You have not lied to men but to God.”
Acts 5:3-4
Peter identifies the lie to the Holy Spirit as a lie to God. This is the same Spirit who wills, teaches, and intercedes. Scripture presents Him as a divine Person who knows and acts, and against whom people can sin. The wider study on the Holy Spirit follows those passages and His work in believers.
I am not adding three divine Persons together to produce three gods. Scripture teaches that God is one, while revealing the Father, Son, and Spirit as personally distinct and truly divine. The doctrine of the Trinity expresses those truths together. Rejecting the Son’s deity or denying that the Spirit is a Person changes the God being described, even when familiar biblical names remain.
The NKJV also includes the heavenly witnesses in 1 John 5:7: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. We should acknowledge that this longer reading has a disputed manuscript history and is absent from the early Greek manuscript evidence. The biblical case for the Trinity does not depend on settling that textual question. The passages considered above establish the deity of the Son and Spirit without relying on that longer reading.
The Gospel Is Grace Received Through Faith
We must be equally careful when discussing salvation. Jehovah’s Witnesses explicitly deny that their door-to-door ministry earns salvation. Their publications appeal to God’s generosity and to Christ’s ransom sacrifice. I should not tell a visitor that he believes forgiveness can be purchased by counting hours when his own teaching denies that claim.
The disagreement concerns the identity of the Savior and the relationship between His saving work, faith, obedience, and assurance. Witness teaching requires baptism and continued obedience to obtain everlasting life. Its explanation of salvation also says that someone who has been saved can lose that salvation. Calling salvation a gift does not by itself resolve those questions. Paul explains how a sinner receives it:
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9
The person who trusts Christ receives salvation as God’s gift. Baptism, religious membership, and service add nothing to Christ’s completed sacrifice. In Ephesians 2:10, Paul then describes believers as created in Christ Jesus for good works. Their obedience follows from the new life God gives them. Good works do not cause the new birth, and we do not remain forgiven by accumulating enough service.
When I speak of new birth, I mean someone genuinely made alive in Christ, not someone who merely adopts a Christian label. A believer should repent of sin, be baptized, serve others, and share the gospel. Conduct supplies evidence of new life, without making good conduct the price of salvation. The Holy Spirit indwells and seals the believer (Ephesians 1:13–14), and Jesus keeps those who belong to Him (John 10:27–29). That security gives us no permission to persist in lawlessness.
The gospel announces what the eternal Son accomplished for sinners. He became fully man without ceasing to be fully God and lived without sin. As the perfect sacrifice, He voluntarily gave Himself to be slain for our sins. Wicked people inflicted His bodily suffering and death; the Father did not punish Jesus. He shed His innocent blood and died, completing His saving sacrifice before His burial and bodily resurrection.
Christ died for the sins of the whole world. God’s offer of salvation is genuine for every person, though a person can resist His grace and refuse Him. Everyone who turns to Christ in repentance and faith is forgiven and born again. Neither an organization nor its requirements can replace the Savior or improve on His completed work.
Paul warned the Galatians against accepting a changed gospel, even from someone who appeared to possess extraordinary authority:
But 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
I cannot accept a created substitute for the eternal Son simply because the message also contains familiar statements about faith and obedience. The apostles proclaimed the Son who truly became man and rose bodily. Witness teaching denies that Jesus was raised with His human body and says that He appeared in human bodies He temporarily took on. In Luke 24:39, however, the risen Jesus identifies Himself and invites His disciples to examine His hands and feet. His resurrection is bodily, not the replacement of His humanity by an angelic existence.
Death Leads to Resurrection and Judgment
Jehovah’s Witnesses also teach that the dead are unconscious until resurrection. They do believe in resurrection and final destruction, so it would be inaccurate to say they simply deny any future judgment. My disagreement concerns the person’s condition after death and the way the resurrection and judgment are explained.
I do not believe Scripture teaches endless conscious torment for human beings. I understand the final punishment of the lost as irreversible destruction of body and soul, following bodily resurrection and judgment. That does not require unconsciousness between death and resurrection. Jesus describes conscious existence after death in Luke 16:19–31, and Paul speaks of departing to be with Christ in Philippians 1:23. Those passages must be considered along with Revelation’s description of the final judgment:
And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened… And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books.
Revelation 20:12
The dead stand before God and are judged according to their works. John then says that anyone whose name is not found in the Book of Life is cast into the Lake of Fire, which he identifies as the second death. I understand that punishment as final destruction, not a temporary correction followed by another opportunity to repent. Jesus also says that all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth, some to life and others to condemnation (John 5:28–29). Resurrection and judgment cannot be omitted from the explanation of what finally happens to the lost.
The hope offered to believers raises a further disagreement. Witnesses teach that 144,000 anointed Christians will live in heaven and rule with Christ, while most faithful people will live in an earthly paradise. Their teaching associates the new birth and membership in the new covenant with that limited group. They do not claim that only 144,000 can be saved. The question is whether Scripture confines these promises to a small class of Christians.
And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed.
Revelation 7:4
Revelation 7 identifies the sealed servants by the tribes of Israel. I understand this as a particular group from Israel, rather than a fixed ceiling on how many Christians can receive new birth or belong to the new covenant. John next describes a multitude from the nations:
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
Revelation 7:9
The multitude stands before God and the Lamb. Revelation 14 describes the 144,000 as redeemed from the earth and following the Lamb, but neither chapter says that all remaining believers are excluded from new birth. Jesus makes new birth necessary for entering God’s kingdom in John 3, and John 1:12–13 describes those who receive Him and believe in His name as born of God.
The New Testament does not tell most believers to remain outside the new covenant while receiving benefits through a smaller group. Every believer comes to the Father through Christ and shares the hope of resurrection. God can assign different rewards and responsibilities without creating one class that is born again and another that belongs to Christ without being born again. My objection is to that division, not to the biblical promise that God’s people will enjoy His restored creation.
Read the Whole Witness and Keep Returning to Christ
In John 20:28, Thomas addressed the risen Jesus with the words “My Lord and my God.” Colossians places the fullness of deity bodily in Christ, Hebrews distinguishes Him from the angels, and Revelation presents worship given to the One on the throne and to the Lamb. We should read those passages together, including the passages in which the incarnate Son submits willingly to the Father. His submission does not erase His divine identity.
In conversation, I would ask the person to read John 1, Colossians 1–2, or Hebrews 1 with me and explain the surrounding argument. If he quotes a verse about Jesus’ humanity, I should acknowledge it rather than act as though it contradicts my faith. Jesus truly became man. Then we can ask how the same passage or book also describes His divine identity. Reading patiently gives both people an opportunity to address what the text actually says.
I would also ask how a sinner receives forgiveness and what Christ’s blood accomplished. A discussion can drift into holidays, terminology, or the organization’s reputation until neither person is considering the Savior anymore. We need to distinguish obedience that grows out of salvation from religious actions treated as a way to obtain or keep it. Ephesians 2:8–10 provides a clear place to examine that difference.
Speaking firmly does not require speaking cruelly. A person may have trusted these teachings for years and may be hearing a serious challenge to them for the first time. Interrupting, ridiculing, or trying to embarrass him will not make my explanation more faithful to Scripture. Paul describes how the Lord’s servant should teach:
And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient.
2 Timothy 2:24
I do not need to memorize every Watchtower publication, but I do need to understand the passages I use and represent the other person’s beliefs honestly. If I am unsure what he means, I should ask. The aim is to help him recognize the Son Scripture reveals and receive the salvation He provides.
My Final Thoughts
I cannot receive official Jehovah’s Witness doctrine as biblical Christianity because it denies the eternal deity of the Son and alters the apostolic gospel. I also cannot excuse careless accusations or contempt toward the people who believe it. Every Witness needs the same Savior I need: Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, who willingly shed His blood and died for our sins before rising bodily. We should know His Word, explain it plainly, and speak with the patience we would want someone to show us.
When someone asks how we can know God exists, I want to know what led him to ask. He may have an objection no one has answered, or he may be trying to understand a painful loss. He may also be resisting what acknowledging God would require of him. Scripture gives us reasons to believe, but I will not answer someone well by assuming I already know everything going on in his mind.
What Kind of Proof Does Scripture Give?
The Bible begins with a direct statement: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). It presents God as the eternal Creator on whom everything else depends. He made us, including the minds with which we ask questions about Him. That means we are accountable to Him even while examining the reasons for belief.
His authority does not excuse a careless answer from me. Apologetics means defending the faith, which involves giving reasons and dealing honestly with objections. Scripture directs us to the created world and our moral awareness, then tells us what God has done in history. Its witness leads to Jesus Christ and His bodily resurrection. I want the person asking to know the living God through His Son, rather than leave impressed with my ability to argue.
We should also clarify what someone means by proof. A historical event is not established in the same way we solve a mathematical equation. We examine testimony and the evidence surrounding the event. A moral judgment cannot be weighed on a scale, but that does not make the difference between kindness and cruelty imaginary. Requiring every kind of knowledge to pass one particular test can prevent us from considering the evidence suited to the question.
What God makes known through creation and conscience is often called general revelation. It gives us reason to acknowledge Him, but it does not explain the whole gospel. The stars cannot tell us Jesus’ name or how His blood provides forgiveness. Psalm 19 itself moves from the heavens to the law of the LORD. We need His written Word to understand His promises, and we need Christ to rescue us from sin.
Creation Points Beyond Itself
David uses poetry to describe the heavens bearing witness to God. The sky does not speak with a human voice, yet day after day it displays a world we did not make and cannot sustain.
The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge.
Psalm 19:1-2
Learning how that world works does not remove its Creator. Explaining rainfall, gravity, or photosynthesis tells us something about the order He made. Scientific investigation depends on patterns stable enough to examine and minds capable of understanding them. We can discover how a process operates and still have to ask why such an ordered world exists at all. I do not need to reserve God for the things scientists have not yet explained.
We reason from effects to causes in ordinary life. A house gives us reason to recognize a builder, and a book’s contents point to someone capable of communicating meaning. Hebrews uses the familiar example of a house.
For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.
Hebrews 3:4
Hebrews 3 compares Moses, a faithful servant in God’s house, with Christ, the Son over it. The verse belongs to that argument, but it also appeals to something the reader can recognize: a house does not build itself. A house and the universe differ in many respects, so the comparison is not a complete philosophical proof. Even with those limits, it helps us ask whether a proposed cause can account for what it produces. An explanation of the world needs to account for its matter and order as well as its living inhabitants.
Scripture identifies a personal, eternal Creator whose power and wisdom account for that world. Treating impersonal matter as the final explanation leaves further questions about rational thought, moral duty, beauty, and the people who recognize them. Describing the materials from which something is made does not by itself settle every question about its existence.
Living things add to this witness. The National Human Genome Research Institute describes DNA as carrying genetic information used in an organism’s development and functioning. The sequence of its chemical bases encodes instructions used to make proteins or RNA. Cells use this information as they grow, reproduce, and repair damage.
When I read the instructions in a recipe, I know someone arranged them to produce a particular result. I see a similar reason to recognize intelligence in the way living cells use biological information. A cell is not the same thing as a human artifact, and this comparison is not a substitute for studying the biology carefully. But learning how life works gives me further reason to share David’s gratitude to the God who formed him.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
Psalm 139:14
His praise is not a laboratory account of embryology. Scientific study can describe how a human body develops without settling the ultimate question of why life exists in an ordered world. Scripture attributes that world to God’s creative work and continuing care, which gives us reason to join David in thanking Him.
The Eternal God and the People He Made
If creation requires an explanation, someone will reasonably ask why God does not need a creator too. If I claimed that absolutely everything had to be made by someone else, I would only have pushed the problem back another step. Scripture instead distinguishes the eternal God from the things that came into existence.
Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever You had formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
Psalm 90:2
The question “Who made God?” treats Him as one more thing that began to exist. A being made by someone else would itself be a creature. The God revealed in Scripture is self-existent, meaning He depends on nothing outside Himself for His existence. He was not assembled from earlier materials and is not the first object somewhere inside the universe. The world had a beginning; He did not.
We also need to be precise about nothing. Absolute nothingness is not a hidden substance with laws or potential waiting to produce a universe. It has no power to act. The biblical claim is that the living God created, rather than that something caused itself to exist out of absolute nothing. Calling matter the ultimate reality still leaves us asking why it exists and has the order we observe.
We reason and communicate, form relationships, and grieve when someone we love dies. We remember our past and make plans for a future we can imagine but have not seen. We can regret a decision because we recognize that we ought to have acted differently. Genesis describes our personhood in relation to the personal God who made us.
Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
God is spirit, so bearing His image is not a description of physical resemblance. We reflect Him as creatures capable of reasoning, language, relationships, and moral responsibility. The authority we exercise within creation is delegated by Him, and we answer to Him for its use. Sin has profoundly damaged our conduct without erasing His image. Human dignity therefore belongs to people from the womb through the end of earthly life, as the study on the sanctity of life explains further.
Conscious thought raises another question. The brain is physical, but measuring its activity does not by itself establish the meaning or truth of a thought. We can measure the sound waves carrying a sentence and still have to judge whether the sentence is true. I understand our ability to recognize and reason about truth in light of the God whose image we bear. Our Maker knows and speaks truth, and He made us as embodied persons who can know it too.
Our moral judgments concern more than personal preference. If I condemn betrayal or cruelty, I mean someone ought not to act that way, even if he enjoys it or his neighbors approve. People disagree about morality and sometimes rationalize terrible conduct, yet they still appeal to what they think is right. Paul describes this witness of conscience in Romans 2.
for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them
Romans 2:14-15
Paul is explaining why Gentiles as well as Jews are accountable to God. Gentiles did not possess the Mosaic Law as Israel did, but conscience could still accuse or excuse them. Jews who had received the Law were responsible to obey it, rather than merely hear it. Neither group could claim innocence. Paul’s argument proceeds to Romans 3, where everyone has sinned and needs justification through Christ.
An unbeliever can recognize kindness and condemn abuse; denying God does not erase the moral awareness God gave him. But conscience is not infallible, and it cannot save anyone. It may be misinformed, hardened, or wounded and needs correction from Scripture. If justice means only what a group prefers, we have no firm basis for saying the group itself is wrong. Scripture grounds moral law in God’s character and our worth in His image, so popular approval cannot make cruelty right.
Why People Resist the Evidence
These reasons for belief do not mean unbelief can be resolved simply by supplying more information. Romans 1 describes a moral response to what God has made known.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
Romans 1:18-19
The word translated suppress conveys holding something down. Paul describes people resisting God even though they owe Him worship. He is not saying every unbeliever has studied every argument and deliberately lied about his conclusion. Someone may have been poorly taught, encountered religious hypocrisy, or suffered a devastating loss. I need to listen to those circumstances while taking Paul’s warning seriously: we are not innocent observers with no obligation to the God we are discussing.
Paul then explains how creation bears witness to Him.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
Humanity is without excuse because God has made His power and divine nature known through what He made. Creation directs us to worship its Maker, rather than the things He made. That witness condemns idolatry and leaves us accountable, but it cannot provide salvation apart from the gospel. We need to tell people about the Christ whom Scripture reveals.
I should answer someone’s actual question honestly, but I cannot assume one more argument will meet his entire need. He also needs God’s grace and conviction. A request for more information may be sincere, or continued postponement may become a way to avoid responding to truth already understood. We need to call people to repentance without pretending we can always identify their motives.
The Creator Has Revealed Himself in Christ
John takes us beyond belief in an unnamed Creator. The Word was with God in the beginning and was Himself God, and everything created came into existence through Him.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
John 1:1-3
This eternal Word became flesh as Jesus Christ. The Maker entered His own creation, becoming fully man without ceasing to be fully God. Colossians describes the reach of His creative work and His authority over it.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
Colossians 1:16
All things were made through Christ and for Him, and the surrounding passage says they continue to hold together in Him. The Creator has identified Himself in the Son, so I cannot leave the discussion at an impersonal force. Our minds and the world we investigate belong to Him. History is moving toward His judgment and kingdom.
Paul makes that connection between creation and Christ in Acts 17:16–34. Athens was filled with idols, and philosophers brought him to the Areopagus to explain his teaching. He told them that the God who made the world gives every nation life and breath. This God does not depend on temples or human service to sustain Him. Paul even used words familiar from their poets to challenge the idea that the divine nature could be represented by an idol made through human art.
He then called his hearers to repent because God had appointed a day of judgment. Christ’s resurrection gave assurance that the judgment would take place.
because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.
Acts 17:31
Some mocked when they heard about the resurrection, others wanted to hear Paul again, and some believed. Paul reasoned from things his audience could recognize, but his appeal went on to the risen Christ. They needed to respond to Him.
The Judge is also the Savior sinners need. Jesus, born of a virgin and entirely without sin, willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked men tortured and crucified Him, and He shed His innocent blood and died for us. His sacrificial offering through that blood and death was complete before He was buried and rose bodily. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus; Father and Son were united in providing our redemption. Our defense of belief in God should lead us to proclaim the One through whom guilty people can be forgiven.
Answering Objections with Truth and Humility
A difficult question does not threaten the truth, and I should not treat the person asking as though he has done something wrong by raising it. We may need to distinguish a created process from its ultimate explanation or discuss why an eternal Creator differs from a creature. A particular biblical question may need its own careful answer; the study on who Cain’s wife was is one example.
A person asking about evil may be grieving a terrible loss. If I begin with a lecture about moral standards before listening to him, I may fail to answer the question he is actually asking. Scripture gives room for lament in Job and the Psalms, and Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. We should listen patiently and never assume that a particular illness or disaster proves the sufferer committed a particular sin.
When we call something objectively wrong, we mean more than that it offends our preferences. I believe the holy God provides the foundation for that judgment: evil violates His good order. Scripture traces evil to creaturely rebellion, including humanity’s fall and the activity of the devil. God remains in authority without becoming the author of sin.
Removing God does not resolve the suffering or give us a firmer basis for condemning it. His knowledge and authority ensure that no wrong escapes final justice, even when human courts fail to discover it. The cross also shows that He did not remain distant from human suffering. The sinless Son was betrayed and crucified by wicked men, yet God provided mercy through what He willingly endured without declaring their evil good.
I cannot tell someone why God permitted a particular loss when He did. I can point him to what God has done in history against sin and death, His promise of resurrection, and His coming judgment. He will defeat the devil and judge rightly. Those promises give us hope without requiring us to pretend that the suffering is less terrible than it is.
1 Peter 3:15 instructs believers to give a defense with meekness and fear, or gentleness and reverence. If I humiliate someone to show how foolish I think his question is, I should not congratulate myself on defending the faith. Plain speaking does not require cruelty, and patience does not require evasion. I also need enough honesty to say when I have not examined a question thoroughly, rather than bluff my way through it.
Someone can accept that a Creator exists and still remain unreconciled to God. Christ died for the whole world, and God offers salvation to everyone, although people can resist and reject Him. Whoever repents and believes is forgiven and born again. The Spirit indwells and seals that believer, whose eternal life is secure in Christ. For a fuller explanation of these truths, see the study of salvation.
When I speak with someone about Christ, I should also be praying for him. We ask God to open blind eyes, grant repentance, and work through His Word in the hearer. I can speak with conviction while recognizing that someone’s new birth does not rest on my skill as a debater.
My Final Thoughts
I believe Scripture gives substantial reasons to know that God exists. Creation bears witness to His power and wisdom, while our personhood and conscience are explained by the God whose image we bear. We can consider these things confidently without pretending a well-phrased argument can give someone new life.
The answer should lead to Jesus Christ, who made us, entered our world, and shed His blood for sinners. He rose bodily and will judge the world in righteousness. I want to speak plainly enough to call people to Him and patiently enough to hear what they are struggling to understand, trusting God to work through His truth.
