by Giuseppe Monno
Titus 2:13
“waiting in hope for the blessing which will come with the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Christ Jesus.”
To deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, the New World Translation used by Jehovah’s Witnesses introduces a distinction between “the great God” and “the Saviour.” However, this distinction does not reflect the original Greek text.
The Greek text reads:
Prosdechomenoi tēn makarian elpida kai epiphaneian tēs doxēs tou megalou Theou kai Sōtēros hēmōn Iēsou Christou.
In this construction, the article tou (“of the”) appears only once and refers to “megalou Theou” (“great God”), while “Sōtēros” (“Saviour”) is linked to it without a second article. According to a recognized rule of Greek grammar (known as the Granville Sharp rule), when two singular personal nouns are joined by kai (“and”) and share a single article, they refer to the same person.
Thus, the most faithful translation is:
“of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.”
The Apostle Paul clearly attributes to Jesus Christ the full title of “great God and Saviour,” without distinguishing between two subjects.
The context confirms this interpretation: in the New Testament, the “appearing” (epiphaneia) consistently refers to Christ (cf. 1 Timothy 6:14; 2 Timothy 4:1; Titus 2:13). It is not a matter of two separate manifestations, but of a single event referring to the Son.
A similar construction is also found in 2 Peter 1:1:
“through the uprightness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ,”
further confirming this usage.
When Scripture distinguishes Jesus from God, it does so at the personal level, distinguishing the Son from the Father—not in terms of divine nature. The same Scriptures, in fact, attribute to Christ titles and prerogatives proper to God: he is “My Lord and my God!” (cf. John 20:28), “Lord” (cf. Philippians 2:11), and in him “in bodily form lives divinity in all its fullness” (Colossians 2:9).
By calling Jesus “Lord,” the New Testament identifies him with the Kyrios of the Old Testament, that is, the one God of Israel (cf. Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29). This is not a second God, but the Son who, though distinct from the Father, fully shares the same divine nature.
For this reason Jesus can say: “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30), and “Everything the Father has is mine” (John 16:15). Christian faith thus recognises in him the only-begotten Son, God from God, eternally begotten of the Father.