For the last couple of weeks, we have been discussing this  claim that the Watchtower makes on its website:

“The most important reason why God’s Son came to earth was not to save mankind. Rather, it was to settle the slanderous issues raised by Satan with regard to Jehovah’s sovereignty.”

As a reminder, in Genesis 3:4-5, the serpent (Satan) led Eve to rebel against God, telling her that God had lied to Adam: “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The Watchtower analyzes these events this way: “When Satan led Adam and Eve into disobeying Jehovah, an important question was raised… Satan questioned Jehovah’s right to rule. By calling God a liar who withholds good from his subjects, Satan charged that Jehovah is a bad ruler… Satan implied that mankind would be better off without God’s rulership. This was an attack on Jehovah’s sovereignty, his right to rule.” (What Does the Bible Really Teach?, p. 109)

According to Watchtower teaching, the reason God didn’t destroy the rebels then and there was that he decided it best to give them plenty of rope to try to prove their claims against him. The failure of their efforts would put the lie to their claims, thereby vindicating Jehovah’s sovereignty.

It used the analogy of a teacher who is faced with a rebellion in one of his classes. Instead of directly confronting the rebellion, he chooses to give the rebellious students the floor so that when they fail to prove their point everyone will see that the teacher is right.

In last week’s post, I challenged the underlying premise that God’s right to rule needs vindication as well as the teacher illustration employed to bolster it.

This week I will assume for the sake of discussion that God decided to prove to men and angels that his way of ruling—his sovereignty—is superior to that of the rebels.

That means that God gave Satan and sinful humans plenty of rope with which to hang themselves by proving to everyone that their claim that they could run things better without God was completely false.

By this reasoning, Jehovah’s his sovereignty—his right to rule—would be vindicated when the rebels’ attempts to run the world better than Jehovah could resulted in abject failure.

Fine.

But what does Jesus have to do with this object lesson?

That is, in what way did Jesus’ coming and his conduct on earth vindicate Jehovah’s sovereignty?

The online Watchtower article quoted last week— “Appreciating Why the Messiah Was to Come” —explains: “Jesus’ course of faithfulness was marked by sincere prayers, a burning zeal for pure worship, and a deep love for Jehovah. (citations omitted). Jesus succeeded in keeping flawless integrity in the face of all the subtle temptation, ridicule, and vicious persecution heaped upon him by Satan and his agents. (citations omitted)….”

All right. Jesus sided with his Father and against Satan.

And we certainly don’t want to minimize Jesus’ loyal obedience to his Father even to the point of unspeakable suffering and death.  

But how does that affect the “teacher’s solution” God supposedly implemented?

In other words, what was the result of the rope Jehovah gave Satan and his fellow the rebels to try to make their case against Jehovah’s right to rule?

What’s the verdict?

The Watchtower announces triumphantly: “In the thousands of years of human history, mankind has been able to try every form of self-rule, or human government. Mankind has made some advances in science and other fields, but injustice, poverty, crime, and war have grown ever worse. Human rule has now been shown to be a failure. (What Does the Bible Really Teach?, p. 112)

That’s certainly true.

But wait.

That means the rebels’ failure would have been evident even if Jesus had never come or done anything, right?

So by the Watchtower’s own illustration, Jehovah’s sovereignty would have been vindicated without him.

Conclusion

Contrary to the Watchtower’s claim, Jehovah did not send Jesus to us in order to vindicate his right to rule the universe or planet earth.

God has nothing to prove to his creation.

Rather, he sent Jesus to sacrifice his life to atone for the sins of rebellious humans and to offer them reconciliation and an inner transformation to make them as righteous as Jesus himself.

2 Corinthians 5:20-21 (Watchtower translation): “Therefore, we are ambassadors substituting for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us. As substitutes for Christ, we beg: ‘Become reconciled to God.’ The one who did not know sin, he made to be sin for us, so that by means of him we might become God’s righteousness.”