Honoring Jesus as God

The following excerpt is taken from the monumental work titled The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense, authored by Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, published by Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024, Part 1: Crown Him with Many Crowns: Jesus’ Divine Honors, Chapter 3: Honoring the Son, 88-90.

In my estimation this is THE best and most comprehensive exposition and defense of the biblical basis for the Deity of Christ. Every serious Trinitarian Christian student of the Holy Bible, apologist, and/or theologian must have this book in the library.

“HONOR THE SON” (JOHN 5:23)

We have already used the word honor repeatedly in reference to how the Bible teaches us to respond to Jesus Christ. Honor was an important cultural value in the ancient Mediterranean world, including the Jewish culture. To give persons honor was to acknowledge their place in the scheme of things— to speak about them and to behave toward them in a manner appropriate to their status and position. In the monotheistic Jewish culture, to honor God meant to give him the highest praise and to live in the light of his exclusive status as the maker, sustainer, and sovereign king of all creation, the source of all good things (Exod. 15:2; Deut. 10:20–21; Neh. 9:5–6; Pss. 29:1–2; 103:1–5, 19–22). The Lord God’s unique nature and exclusive status is the basis for the prohibitions in the Ten Commandments against worshiping other gods and against making or worshiping idols (Exod. 20:3–5; Deut. 5:6–10; cf. Exod. 34:14). To honor any creature, no matter how wonderful, as a deity was to detract from the honor due to God. As Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish philosopher, put it, “God’s honour is set at naught by those who deify the mortal” (Ebr. 110).²¹ New Testament scholar Jerome Neyrey, citing this statement by Philo, explains: “When someone achieved honor, it was thought to be at the expense of others. Philo, for example, condemns polytheism, because in honoring others as deities, the honor due to the true God is diminished.”²² Jesus and the New Testament authors shared this conventional Jewish monotheistic perspective (e.g., Matt. 5:16; Rom. 1:21; 15:6–9; 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 4:9–11).

It is in this cultural setting that Jesus asserted that it was God the Father’s purpose “that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (John 5:23a). By “the Son,” of course, Jesus meant himself. Jesus went on to say that anyone failing to accord him such honor actually dishonors the Father: “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him” (John 5:23b). Linking the honor due God with the honor due anyone else in this way was unprecedented in the Jewish Scriptures. A detailed look at the interpretation of this text will provide a useful entry point into the way various Christologies handle the same material in the New Testament.

Unitarian writer Kegan Chandler denies that “religious worship is the subject of Christ’s discourse here” in John 5:23. Instead, he claims, “The honor which Jesus refers to in this passage is not religious veneration, but acceptance of a heavenly message.”²³ However, in context Jesus was not speaking about his role in delivering a heavenly message but about his role in performing God’s works of giving life and judging all people:

For just as [hōsper] the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so [houtōs] the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son just as [kathōs] they honor the Father. (John 5:21–23a NASB)

Even if Jesus had been referring to his speaking as God’s messenger, this would not diminish the force of his statement about the honor due to the Son. As D. A. Carson observes, “This goes far beyond making Jesus a mere ambassador who acts in the name of the monarch who sent him, an envoy plenipotentiary whose derived authority is the equivalent of his master’s. That analogue breaks down precisely here, for the honour given to an envoy is never that given to the head of state.”²⁴ Indeed, Jesus does not represent himself here as merely the king’s messenger servant (as Muslims, for example, view Jesus), but as his Father’s royal Son. Since the honor that is due to God is or includes worship, it follows that “worship is obviously what is intended” in John 5:23.²⁵

Jehovah’s Witnesses also have attempted to blunt the force of Jesus’ statement in John 5:23. The Watchtower Society has asserted, “He did not say we were to honor the Son as much as the Father.”²⁶ To the contrary, if we look more closely at the immediate context, we will find that Jesus is here claiming no less than the same honor due to God. Jesus has just claimed that he does whatever the Father does (v. 19) and that he “gives life to whom He wishes” (v. 21). The Father has even entrusted the responsibility of rendering eternal judgment over all people to the Son (v. 22). Colin Kruse points out, “The ‘just as . . . even so’ (hōsper . . . houtōs) formula highlights the exact correspondence between what the Father and Son do.”²⁷ According to Jesus, the Father did so precisely so that everyone would honor him, the Son, as they honor the Father (v. 23). In short, we are to honor Jesus as the One who holds our eternal future in his hands—as the one who has the power of life and death. We can assign no higher honor or status to someone than that of our ultimate, final Judge. In this context, the comparison of honoring the Son “just as” (kathōs) we honor the Father should be given its natural, full weight.

Imagine someone saying that all people should honor the angel Gabriel just as they honor Jehovah, or that everyone should honor Peter just as they honor God. We instinctively recognize that such statements would be inappropriate (and, of course, the Bible never says such things). We would not excuse such statements by claiming that they meant merely that Gabriel or Peter acted on God’s behalf. Yet Jesus said that all of us should honor him, the Son, just as we honor the Father. That astonishing claim is simply not consistent with the belief that the Son was a created being, whether human (Muslims, progressive Christians, Unitarians) or angelic (Jehovah’s Witnesses).

While Jesus’ statement in John 5:23 emphasizes the full divine honor that the Father intends for the Son to receive, it also clearly distinguishes the Father and the Son as two distinct persons, as is the case throughout the New Testament. (By “person” we mean here simply someone, rather than an abstract or lifeless something.) Christ says that the Father defers the final judgment to the Son so that people will honor the Son just as they honor him. Here someone (the Father) defers a role deserving honor to someone else (the Son) for the purpose of bringing the same honor he receives to that someone else. There is simply no cogent way to interpret this text to fit the claim that Jesus is the Father, as Oneness theology claims.²⁸

The main objection to the orthodox understanding of John 5:23 is that in context Jesus also speaks of his dependence on the Father: “the Son can do nothing of his own accord” (v. 19); “the Father . . . has given all judgment to the Son” (v. 22); and so on (see also vv. 26–27). Those adhering to different Christologies infer dramatically different conclusions from this evidence, however. Unitarians understand these texts to mean that Jesus was simply “the perfectly submitted, sinless human being.”²⁹ Latter-day Saints infer from the same texts that Jesus was “Jehovah,” the God of Israel in the Old Testament, but that he was “subordinate to God the Father,” whom they view as another God superior to Jehovah or Yahweh.³⁰ Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that these texts prove that Jesus is not Jehovah but an inferior, created angel whose  life force became the life of the perfect man Jesus.³¹ Muslim apologist Shabir Ally cites these same texts to prove that John did not view Jesus as God.³² He agrees with the interpretation that John viewed Jesus as a preexistent creature who became a man, though Ally does not accept this view himself.

The motif of the Son’s dependence on the Father is indeed part of the complex presentation of Jesus in the Gospel of John. However, we have already explained in the previous chapter two aspects of biblical Christology that are relevant to this issue. The first is that the Father’s relation to the Son is such that the Father sent the Son and in turn the Son came in response to the Father’s sending him. That is, the Son did not act independently, “of his own accord,” in coming into the world as a human being, but rather came because the Father sent him. From this perspective, everything that the Son did he did not on his own, as though he were an independent deity, but in response to the Father’s will. Far from expressing inferiority, Jesus’ claim that as the Son he did nothing of his own accord emphasizes the unity of the Son with the Father in all that he did (John 5:19). At the same time, what Jesus said expresses a clear distinction of relationship or role between himself and the Father. The point is that the fact that the Son is the Son and not the Father does not make the Son any less worthy of honor.

Secondly, Christ’s statements about his dependence on the Father were made in the context of his mission of redemption in the incarnation. It was the Father’s will that the Son, through his death, resurrection, and ascension, would be the person who pronounced judgment, determining who would receive eternal life and who would not. This is the context of Jesus’ statement that the Father “has given all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22). Having humbled himself to become one of us, the Son willingly chose in response to the Father’s will to become dependent on the Father for everything. The Son’s humility led to the Father glorifying him with the glory he had before creation (John 17:5). As a result, it is not simply as the divine Son that he will judge all people, but as the divine Son incarnate, as Jesus Christ, who is both God and man. And it is this incarnate Son whom the Father intends to receive the same divine honor that he himself receives (John 5:23).

In short, the dependence of the Son on the Father is not a valid objection to giving the Son the same honor that we give the Father. The Son is the proper object of divine honor because the Father defers an essential and eternally significant divine function to the Son, for the express purpose of bringing people to give him full divine honor. We dare not do any less.

Before leaving our consideration of John 5:23, we should note how the evidence from this text for the deity of Christ does not consist exclusively or narrowly of the honor that Jesus receives. Rather, we find in this text in context that his divine honor, his divine name (the Son), and his divine deed (judgment) are all part of the picture. Here we see a helpful example of the way some or all of the features of New Testament Christology that we are examining in this book—Christ’s honors, attributes, names, deeds, and seat— often combine in the same context to reveal the deity of Christ. As theologian Peter Sanlon observes, “None of the evidences of his divinity were meant to be considered in isolation from the others.”³³

21. All references to Philo are to Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, LCL (London: William Heinemann, 1937–1971).

22. Jerome H. Neyrey, “‘Despising the Shame of the Cross’: Honor and Shame in the Johannine Passion Narrative,” Semeia 69 (1996): 117.

23. Chandler, The God of Jesus, 466. 24. D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 254–55.

25. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 373.

26. “Source of His Life,” Watchtower, Oct. 1, 1962, 592.

27. Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed., TNTC 4 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 174. The comparison using these words expresses “exact correspondence” because the Son is said to do the same thing the Father does.

28. David Bernard does not comment on John 5:21–23, though he does reference the surrounding verses, Bernard, Oneness of God, 184–88.

29. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 115.

30. Millet, The Atoning One, 135–37.

31. See the comments on John 5:18–20, 30, in “John Study Notes—Chapter 5,” in New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition) (Wallkill, NY: Watchtower, 2021), hereafter NWT (Study Edition). Danny André Dixon, a non-Jehovah’s Witness holding a somewhat similar view (Christ was a preexistent but created being), appeals to these same texts in response to our discussion of John 5:23 in our earlier book, Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007), 31. See Dixon, “An Arian View: Jesus, the Life-Given Son of God,” in Charles Lee Irons, Danny André Dixon, and Dustin R. Smith, The Son of God: Three Views of the Identity of Jesus (Eugene, OR; Wipf & Stock, 2015), 78–79.

32. Ally, Is Jesus God? The Bible Says No, 27.

33. Peter Sanlon, Simply God: Recovering the Classic Trinity (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 152.

Further Reading

John 5:23: A Blessing for the Trinitarian Pt. 1 (https://answeringislam.blog/john5_23__p1/), Pt. 2 (https://answeringislam.blog/john5_23__p2/)