Cheryl Schatz

Dave,
You beat me to it! Mark seems to think that if he puts the word Father in brackets that this magically means that God must mean only the Father.

I have had frustrations like this with the JWs. I say that Jesus is God. They ask me how Jesus can talk to himself. I say that he isn’t talking to himself.

So I figured out how to deal with this. I ask the JWs if when I say that Jesus is God are they hearing me say that I believe Jesus to be the Father. Everyone I have asked says “yes”. This is the problem. God is not just the Father and when we limit this term to only the Father, we can seriously distort what the Scripture is saying.

The problem is that while the Father is God, He is not the only one who is God. There are times that Paul uses the term Father to mean specifically the Father. When he uses the term God, we need to think of the entire nature of God. IF we don’t understand that then we may become confused like the JW’s.