WHO IS THE SON
Two weeks previously Thomas had heard Jesus pray to his heavenly Father and say: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent, " at John 17:3. On the fourth day after that prayer, or on his day of resurrection, Jesus sent a special message to Thomas and the other disciples by means of Mary Magdalene. “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her, " at John 20:17,18. So from Jesus’ prayer and from this message through Mary Magdalene, Thomas knew who his own God was. His God was not Jesus Christ, but his God was the God of Jesus Christ. Also his Father was the Father of Jesus Christ. Thus Thomas knew that Jesus had a God whom he worshiped, namely, his heavenly Father.
How, then, could Thomas in an ecstasy of joy at seeing the resurrected Jesus for the first time burst out with an exclamation and speak to Jesus himself as being the one and only living, true God, the God whose name is Jehovah? How could Thomas, by what he spoke, mean that Jesus was himself “the only true God” or that Jesus was God in the Second Person of a Trinity? In view of what Thomas had heard from Jesus and had been told by Jesus, how can we read such a meaning into Thomas’ words: “My Lord and my God”?
Jesus would have reproved Thomas if Jesus had understood that Thomas meant that he, Jesus, was “the only true God” whom Jesus had called “my God” and “my Father.” Certainly Jesus would not take a title away from God his Father or take away the unique position from God his Father. Since Jesus did not reprove Thomas as if addressing him in a wrong way, Jesus knew how to understand Thomas’ words, Scripturally. And so did the apostle John.
John was there and heard Thomas exclaim: “My Lord and my God.” Did John say that the only thing for us to conclude from Thomas’ words was that Jesus was God, “the only true God” whose name is Jehovah? PS.35:23,24 Here would have been an excellent place for John to explain John 1:1 and say that Jesus Christ, who was the Word made flesh, was God himself, that he was “God the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.” But is that the conclusion that John reached? Is that the conclusion to which John brings his readers? L
“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe.” That we might believe what? “That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.”John 20:29-31
In his life account of Jesus John wrote the things to persuade us to believe, not that Jesus is God, that Christ is God, or that Jesus is “God the Son,” but that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” The trinitarians designedly twist things by saying “God the Son.” But we take John’s explanation the way that he words it, namely, “Christ, the Son of God.” We follow John to the same conclusion that he reached, that Jesus is the Son of the One whom Jesus calls “my Father” and “my God,” in this same Twentieth Chapter of John. Hence Thomas was not worshiping “God the Father” and “God the Son” at one and the same time as equals in a “triune God.”
Thomas worshiped the same God whom Jesus Christ worshiped, namely, Jehovah God, the Father. So if Thomas addressed Jesus as “my God,” Thomas had to recognize Jesus’ Father as the God of a God, hence as a God higher than Jesus Christ, a God whom Jesus himself worshiped. Revelation 4:1-11 gives a symbolic description of this God, the “Lord God Almighty,” who sits upon the heavenly throne and who lives forever and ever; but the next chapter, Revelation 5:1-8 describes Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God who comes to the Lord God Almighty on his throne and takes a scroll out of God’s hand. This illustrates the meaning of Jesus’ words to Thomas and the other apostles: “I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.” John 14:28 Jesus thus recognized his Father as the Lord God Almighty, without an equal, greater than his Son.