Turning an Argument Against Jesus’ Divinity on Its Head

If you’ve ever had the chance to speak with Jehovah’s Witnesses missionaries, you know they have some clever arguments for their most distinctive belief: their denial of the divinity of Jesus. They claim to be Christians, yet they believe that Jesus is just a created being. To most of us, that probably seems ludicrous, but like I said, they have some pretty resourceful ways of defending this odd belief. For example, there is a verse in Revelation to which they often like to point, and I have to admit, at first glance it does seem pretty convincing:

“The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.” (Revelation 3:14)

This verse is about Jesus, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses contend that by calling him “the beginning of God’s creation,” the text is clearly saying he is just a created being (albeit the first one), not God. At first glance, like I said before, it looks like they’re right, so how can we respond to this argument?

Beginning or Ruler?

Well, there are a few ways. For one, we can point out that the Greek translated here as “beginning,” arche, can mean a few things. For our purposes here, the most important alternative meaning is “ruler” (as in Luke 12:11, Ephesians 3:10, Titus 3:1), so we can also translate this phrase as “the ruler of God’s creation.” Either meaning is possible, so  their citing this verse is inconclusive.

That is the easiest way to diffuse this argument, but there is another one that I think is even more effective. Not only does this second response refute the argument against Jesus’ divinity, but it also gives us an argument for his divinity. If we go this route, we will still translate the word arche as “beginning” (thus avoiding potentially dead-end translation disputes), but it doesn’t mean what the Jehovah’s Witnesses think it means.

Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End

To begin, we have to find out what the word arche means in the context of Revelation as a whole. There are a few times in the book when God the Father and Jesus describe themselves in very similar ways, and these verses contain the only other uses of arche in all of Revelation (I’ve emphasized the similarities to make them easier to spot):

Father: “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 1:8)

Father: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning [arche] and the end” (Revelation 21:6)

Jesus: “I am the first and the last” (Revelation 1:17)

Jesus: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning [arche] and the end” (Revelation 22:13)

What we see here are three interchangeable titles. “The first and the last” is obviously equivalent to “the beginning and the end,” but let’s take a closer look at the other phrase, “the Alpha and the Omega.”

Alpha and omega are Greek letters, and they bookend the Greek alphabet. Alpha is the first letter, and omega is the last one. Once we understand that, it becomes clear that this phrase means the same thing as the other two. They’re all just different ways of expressing the fact that the Father and Jesus are in some way both the start and the end of something.

And what exactly is that “something”? It’s creation. These phrases mean that they created the world (the “beginning” or “first”) and that they are also the goal of all creation (the “end” or “last”). Scripture is very clear that both the Father and Jesus made everything that exists (1 Corinthians 8:6), and as the end of the book of Revelation shows, the goal of creation is perfect, loving communion with them as well (Revelation 21:1-4, 22-23; 22:3-4).

Jesus is God

Now, by using these phrases to describe both Jesus and the Father, Revelation is very strongly implying that Jesus is in fact equal to the Father as God, and this becomes even clearer if we look at the Old Testament background to these phrases. The Old Testament uses only one of them, but since they all mean the same thing, it’s really the background for all three of them:

“I am the first and I am the last;
besides me there is no god.” (Isaiah 44:6)

What is interesting about this passage is that Isaiah uses the phrase “the first and the last” to describe God as the only God there is. He is using it to teach the unique divinity of the God of Israel, so when we find it again in Revelation, it has to have that same meaning there as well. It has to be a title of divinity, which shows that Jesus and the Father are both the one true God.

The Beginning of Creation

We’ve gone pretty far from the question with which we started out, so let’s circle back to Revelation 3:14 and the curious phrase “the beginning of God’s creation.” In the phrase “the beginning and the end,” the word “beginning” means that Jesus is the origin of creation, so we should understand him to be “the beginning of God’s creation” in that same sense. In other words, when we read this verse in the larger context of the book as a whole, it doesn’t mean that Jesus is the oldest created being; rather, it means that he is the creator.

So if we understand the verse correctly, it actually turns the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ argument right on its head. Not only does Revelation 3:14 not prove their point, but it actually leads to the exact opposite conclusion. If we understand it in the context of the entire book of Revelation, we will end up proving that Jesus is God, equal to the Father in his divinity.