Evidence · Case 12 · Jehovah’s Witnesses
The Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 18 to 23
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
John reports that they sought to kill Jesus because he was “making himself equal with God.” In the next verses Jesus says he does whatever the Father does and should receive the same honor as the Father.
Sources
Objections & responses
- In the very next verse (John 5:19) Jesus says the Son can do nothing of his own accord, only what he sees the Father doing. Isn’t that a disclaimer of equality rather than a strengthening of the claim?
Witnesses cite 5:19, and it deserves an answer. Verses 19 to 23 describe a Son who does everything the Father does, gives life as the Father gives life, and is to be honored as the Father is honored; can do nothing of his own accord expresses the unity of action between them, not inferiority of nature, which is why the passage ends with equal honor. The dependence language is real and the Trinity affirms it: the Son is eternally from the Father. The Trinity case’s claim on submission and equality sitting side by side treats this at length.
- “Making himself equal with God” is the narrator’s report of the opponents’ inference. John doesn’t say Jesus claimed equality; he says the Jews took it that way.
The narrator’s voice in John 5:18 is not merely reporting. John explains why they sought to kill him with a because clause that presents the equality as the substance of Jesus’s claim, not a misunderstanding, and John’s Gospel opens by asserting the Word was God. Where John records a misunderstanding he usually marks it (2:21, 7:39); here he does not. The verses that follow, with Jesus claiming equal honor, confirm that John means what the opponents heard.