Although Jesus never claimed to be God, as Jehovah’s appointed ruler he is identified in Isaiah’s prophecy by the terms “Mighty God” and “Prince of Peace.” Isaiah’s prophecy adds: “To the abundance of the princely rule and to peace there will be no end.” (
Isaiah 9:6, 7) So, as the “Prince”—the son of the Great King, Jehovah—Jesus will serve as Ruler of the heavenly government of “God Almighty.”—
Exodus 6:3.
Yet, a person may ask, ‘In what sense is Jesus a “Mighty God,” and didn’t the apostle John say that Jesus is himself God?’ In the
King James version of the Bible,
John 1:1 reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Some argue that this means that “the Word,” who was born on earth as the baby Jesus, is Almighty God himself. Is this true?
If this verse were interpreted to mean Jesus was himself God Almighty, it would contradict the preceding statement, “the Word was
with God.” Someone who is “with” another person cannot be the same as that other person. Many Bible translations thus draw a distinction, making clear that the Word was not God Almighty. For example, a sampling of Bible translations say the following: “The Word was a God,” “a god was the Word,” and “the Word was divine.”
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Bible verses that in the Greek language have a construction similar to that of
John 1:1 use the expression “a god.” For example, when referring to Herod Agrippa I, the crowds shouted: ‘It is
a god speaking.’ And when Paul survived a bite by a poisonous snake, the people said: “He is
a god.” (
Acts 12:22; 28:3-6) It is in harmony with both Greek grammar and Bible teaching to speak of the Word as, not God, but “a god.”—
John 1:1.
Consider how John identified “the Word” in the first chapter of his Gospel. “The Word became flesh and resided among us,” he wrote, “and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs [not to God but]
to an only-begotten son from a father.” So “the Word,” who became flesh, lived on the earth as the man Jesus and was seen by people. Therefore, he could not have been Almighty God, regarding whom John says: “No man has seen God at any time.”—
John 1:14, 18.
‘Why, then,’ one may ask, ‘did Thomas exclaim when seeing the resurrected Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”?’ As already noted, Jesus is a god in the sense of being divine, but he is not the Father. Jesus had just told Mary Magdalene: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to
my God and your God.” Remember, too, why John wrote his Gospel. Three verses after the account about Thomas, John explained that he wrote so that people “may believe that
Jesus is the Christ the Son of God”—not that he is God.—
John 20:17, 28, 31.