The believer and the law

What does the Bible say?

What did Jesus come for? Did Jesus come to build a new, special devotion? True worship, as Jehovah's Witnesses call it? – No, Jesus condemned all special piety and repeatedly made it clear that no man can stand before God with a special piety.

Did Jesus come to bring another technique of religion to the world? Did Jesus want to add a particularly effective variant to the existing forms of religion? – No, Jesus once and for all replaced religion and set up the only salvation with himself. He alone is the way to God. No pope, no faithful and understanding slave, no esoteric technique, no magic can bring us even one centimetre closer to God.

What do people say?

The essence of man longs to be accepted by God. Man is his own accuser and judge, but also his own fast pardoner. Every human being knows that this cannot be the truth.

He's fleeing into

• one oversized piety, to protect himself from being permanently sued by his own conscience
• complicated religions, to fool oneself, one only has to study long enough to be saved
• the direct rejection of God, to get out of this mess with the help of modern reason
• the belief in Jesus based on the promises of Jesus

Jehovah's Witnesses choose the path of piety and complicated religion. In the final instance, both serve only one thing: the law. The Jehovah's Witnesses place themselves under the protection of the law and try desperately to ignore that the Bible clearly and firmly reports that no one can be saved with the law or by the law. Only the comforting state of honest exhaustion after sermon service, congress and meeting can give these people a certain amount of imagination that perhaps the law and the attempt to fulfill it could give life.

But they know very well that this attempt is doomed to failure and must inevitably lead to death. In order to endure this fear of their own death, they have to work harder to hide it. In addition – quasi in order to close the gaps of obedience to the law – they throw a special interpretation of Jesus into the scales: the redeeming sacrifice. With this redeeming sacrifice, which they interpret from the Bible in the old manner of the law in accordance with the old religious patterns of the people, they believe they have exactly the trump card in their hand that closes the old path of the law gap-wise before God.

In this way, the Jehovah's Witnesses have kept all doors open for the sake of their beloved goodness. This good old method of persuading oneself that one will somehow gain God's benevolence is the true nature of natural man. He is born with it, gets used to it, is educated to it, cares for it and does not understand that exactly this good old falling in love with the good self is deadly.

For before God all men are sinners. Even if they try so hard to be good.

So Jehovah's Witnesses are on their way to judgment all their lives and live from appeasing their consciences with good deeds. They make up for their inner uncertainty with a complicated doctrine of a redeeming sacrifice that is to serve as a stopgap for their sins. As only a fool can say: "I take the bus, but for safety's sake I will also buy a plane ticket" so the Jehovah's Witnesses maneuver themselves into a special construct that is in itself the purest lie.

What does Jesus Christ say?

It is to these very deceivers of their own conscience that Jesus gives important advice:

For if you go to court with your opponent, make an effort to get away from him, so that he does not drag you before the judge, and the judge gives you to the bailiff, and the bailiff throws you in prison. I tell you, you will not come out of there until you have paid the last cent. (Luke 12, 58 and 59)

Thus Jesus gives a decisive indication that the way to judgment must be broken off! The anxious expectation of a possibly functioning salvation must be broken off, because according to Jesus this possibly functioning salvation must fail. Anyone who does not make an effort to get away from his opponent of judgment even before his arrival at judgment must inevitably be condemned and punished according to his works. No air ticket (redeeming sacrifice) in the luggage will help, because at the end of the bus journey the court waits for the sinner.

What do we have to do to break off the way to court?

The abort of the way to the court is possible. Whoever does not claim Jesus only as an air ticket (redeeming sacrifice), but actually orders him to be Lord over his life, can end the way to judgment and get away from his opponent. This is the salvation that Jesus Christ promises to all those who accept him as their Lord and shepherd and who believe that he is the truth. Whoever accepts Jesus has not become better, but he becomes free. He no longer has to wait anxiously for judgment because he knows that Jesus paid the debt in full.

The believer and the law

This is where the false doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses comes in and tries to whisper to people that Jesus' sacrifice is not fully valid from this moment on. While the liberated Christian experiences from the moment of conversion how he is changed by Jesus, the false doctrine of the Watchtower Society not only demands confession and testimony to a substitute name (Jehovah), but denies the finally effective liberation through Jesus Christ. Instead of entrusting themselves to the good shepherd and relying on Jesus making us pleasing in the eyes of God, they fall back into the old double strategy with the bus ride and the plane ticket.

But the bus journey (the legal belief) must destroy the air ticket, because who does not get on the plane, he will not be able to do much with the air ticket in the bus. To illustrate the pointlessness of the way of the law, a quotation from Paul, who understands how to explain the facts to even the most incompetent of good people:

Don't you know, dear brothers – because I'm talking to those who know the law – that the law only rules man as long as he lives? For a woman is bound to her husband by the law as long as the man lives; but when the man dies, she is free from the law that binds her to the man. Now if she is with another man while her husband is alive, she is called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress when she takes another man. So you too, my brethren, are killed by the Law through the body of Christ, so that you belong to another, namely the one who is raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit to God. (Romans 7:1-4)

Those who are dead to the law cannot try to fulfill it on their own. But the one who clings to Jesus fills it with the power of Jesus. Through him and not through one's own goodness. So that no flesh may boast!

Jehovah's Witnesses already lost

Those who only have Jesus in their pockets as a redeeming sacrifice and think that they must make sure themselves that they are a good person who can bring about grace before God are on their way (in the bus) to judgment. Whoever accepts Jesus as his Lord has gotten away from the opponent of the judgment and has already been judged, because the judgment has been carried out on Jesus Christ. He who acknowledges Jesus as his Lord can no longer acknowledge the fictitious name Jehovah as the goal of worship. Jesus Christ is God. (Revelation 5, 13 and 14)