Who's That At My Door? Responding to Jehovah's Witnesses: The Issue of Greatness (Part 5)

John 14:28 is a classic verse that Jehovah’s Witnesses use in showing that Christ was not equal to the Father.  By ignoring passages before like John 14:11 which states, "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves," and the immediate context they are able to make a pretty convincing argument.  The problem with their argument is that they fail to use proper exegesis which looks to whole text…. even verses surrounding the text in question.  D.A. Carson responds to the allegations brought forward about this verse saying

When you use a category like “greater,” it doesn’t have to mean ontologically greater.  If I say, for example, that the president of the United States is greater than I, I’m not saying he’s an ontologically superior being.  He’s greater in military capability, political prowess, and public acclaim, but he’s not more of a man than I am.  He’s a human being and I’m a human being. 

So, when Jesus says, “The Father is greater than I,” one must look at the context and ask if Jesus is saying, “The Father is greater than I because he’s God and I’m not.”  Frankly, that would be a pretty ridiculous thing to say.  Suppose I got up on some podium to preach and said, “I solemnly declare to you that God is greater than I am.”  That would be a rather useless observation. 

The comparison is only meaningful if they’re already on the same plane and there’s some delimitation going on.  Jesus is in the limitations of the Incarnation—he’s going to the cross; he’s going to die—but he’s about to return to the Father and to the glory he had with the Father before the world began.[1]

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[1] Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), 163.