Did Peter and Paul Call Jesus God in 2 Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13?

“Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours” (2 Peter 1:1 NIV, bold emphases added throughout).

“…while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13 NIV).

Many English Bible translators have translated the two passages cited above with the grammar that make them say Jesus Christ is the one referred to as God or the great God in them. But is this interpretation what Apostles Peter and Paul had in mind? Let us consider the following points:

1. The Scriptures which the first century believers read was the Hebrew Bible which Christians now call the Old Testament. It should therefore be expected that the writings of the apostles would be influenced by the language of the Scriptures they had read. In the Hebrew Bible, the title “great God” is used for YHWH (Yahweh)in six places – Deut. 10:17; Ezra 5:8; Neh. 8:6; Psa. 95:3; Prov. 26:10; Dan. 2:45. The use of that title by Apostle Paul for God the Father is therefore not strange. He used in Titus 2:13 a title which has been used by many Old Testament prophets for YHWH (Yahweh).
2. Our Lord Jesus Christ has made it known that He will return to the earth with great power and glory. He said, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matt. 16:27 NIV). He also said, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne” (Matt. 25:31 NIV). Luke has this account recorded, “Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:26 NIV). These verses make us know that our Lord Jesus Christ is going to come in the combined glory of His Father, His angels who will accompany Him, and that of Himself. It is therefore evident that Paul had two persons – our great God, and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – in mind when he wrote Titus 2:13. Paul wrote of the glory of the great God and the glory of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
3. In all of Apostle Paul’s letters he consistently distinguished between God and the Lord Jesus Christ. In none of his letters did he equate Jesus Christ with God, even though he affirms the preexistence of the Son of God. Most of his letters begin with a salutation in which he mentions “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3; 2 Cor. 1:2; Gal. 1:3; etc). 

Paul also used the same greeting in his letter to Titus. He greeted Titus saying, “To Titus, my true son in our common faith: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus1:4 NIV). Paul could not have distinguished between God and Jesus Christ in his opening greeting and later in the body of his letter say Jesus Christ is that great God. Moreover, he said there is one God, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6). He also said that God the Father is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:17). He also told the Ephesian believers that there is “. . .one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph. 4:5-6 NIV). He told Timothy, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5 NIV).

It is crystal clear that whenever Paul used the title “God,” without an article, he was referring to God the Father of all beings, including our Lord Jesus Christ. At no time did Paul equate Jesus Christ with God. Therefore, to say that Paul referred to Jesus Christ as “the great God” in Titus 2:13 is to say that Paul contradicted himself in his writings. But the truth is that Paul affirmed nothing but strict monotheism. The Trinitarian teaching of one God made up of three coequal and coeternal Gods is nowhere found in Paul’s teachings.

The Granville Sharp Rule

Granville Sharp (1735-1813) was an English scholar and philanthropist, noted as one of the first advocates for the abolition of slavery. He was a diligent student of Greek and Hebrew. He published many treatises on biblical criticism.

In 1798 he published a monograph titled “Remarks on the uses of the definitive article in the Greek text of the New Testament: containing many new proofs of the divinity of Christ from the passages which are wrongly translated in the common English version.” The treatise has in it a part which became named “The Granville Sharp Rule.”

The Rule states, “When the copulative Kai [and] connects two nouns of the same case, if the article ho [the, this, that one, he, she, it, etc] or any of its cases, precedes the first of the said nouns or participle, and is not repeated before the second noun or participle, the latter always relates to the same person that is expressed or described by the first noun or participle.”

James Robert White clarifies the rule this way:

“Basically, Granville Sharp’s rule states that when you have two nouns which are not proper nouns (such as Cephas, or Paul, or Timothy), which are describing a person, and the two nouns are connected by the word “and” and the first noun has the article (“the”) while the second does not, both nouns are referring to the same person.”

Going by the rule will mean that the phrase “the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13) is a reference to one person instead of two persons. And that will mean that Jesus Christ is the one Paul referred to as the great God.

Does The Rule Apply in 2 Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13?

The Granville Sharp Rule cannot be accepted as applicable in the two passages because that will make them run counter to the truth revealed in the Bible.

First, Jesus Christ Himself had said that the Father is the only true God (John 17:3) and that He is the Son of God (John 10:36). What does the term “son of God” mean? The basic meaning is that our Lord Jesus Christ derived His life or existence from the Father. The Father is the only self-existed being. There is no other one. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not self-exist. He is called the Son of God just like the angels and man because all of them got their existence from God (Eph. 4:6; Job 1:6; 38:7; Luke 3:38). But His Sonship is different from that of angels and mankind. He is the only one who came out of God by means of a begettal. That is why He is called the “monogenes,” the only one begotten of God. But contrary to what the Trinitarian theory has sold to Christendom, Christ is not a self-existed being. That is why He consistently referred to the Father as His God (Matt. 27:46; John 20:17; Rev. 3:12). The Lord Jesus Christ never at any time claimed equality with God who is both His God as well as His Father. When He said “My [the] Father is greater than I,” He did not use any figurative language. He made a plain statement and it should be so understood. There is no theory, principle, or rule that can qualify, vary, or annul it. 

Secondly, the Apostle Paul at no time taught anything contradictory to what Jesus Christ had taught. All his teachings have been found to be consistent with the ipsissima verba of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Titus 1:4, Paul wrote, “To Titus, my genuine son in a common faith. Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior!” (Titus 1:4 NET). We see here that Paul distinguished between God the Father and Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Paul would have reversed himself if he wrote in Titus 2:13 that Jesus Christ is the great God. But the truth is that the Trinitarian deception has caused many Bible teachers to misinterpret Paul’s writings as well as those of other writers (2 Peter 3:15-16).

All the teachings about the equality of our Lord Jesus Christ with God are products of the manmade Trinitarian theory of the fourth century CE which is grossly and blatantly repugnant to biblical revelation. All the translators and teachers who accept the Granville Sharp Rule as applicable to Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 do so because of their theological biases. It is not because they found it hard to grasp the fact that two persons, God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, are in view in the two places.

It should be noted that Titus 1:4 and 2 Thes. 1:12 are similar to Titus 2:13. But I have observed that in the first two passages, many translators (e.g. NIV, ESV, NASB, NET, BLB, CSB, etc.) made a distinction between God the Father and Jesus Christ, our Saviour. But in Titus 2:13 that distinction was not made by them. Many of them placed the comma sign after the word “Saviour.” The distinction between the two persons would have been obvious if the comma sign was placed after “God.” But we all know that there were no punctuation marks in the original Greek manuscripts. Therefore by placing the comma sign after Saviour instead of God, these translators have exposed their biases in favour of the Trinitarian dogma which teaches that God the Father, the Son of God, and God’s Spirit are coequal and coeternal Gods.

Similarly, 2 Peter 1:2 makes mention of God and Jesus our Lord and Saviour just as it does in verse 1. These two verses have rubbished the Granville Sharp Rule. Apostle Peter couldn’t have said in verse 1 that Jesus Christ is God and our Saviour and in the very next verse say He is not God. The truth is that Peter talked about two persons in the two verses – (1) God, and (2) our Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. Compare Acts 2:36 where Peter, full of the holy spirit, said it was God who made Jesus both Lord and Christ (Messiah). The two verses have exposed the flaw in the Granville Sharp Rule and the Trinitarian bias of the translators who want us to believe that Peter and Paul called Jesus Christ God in 2 Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13. It is crystal clear that the two apostles did not say so in the two verses.

Some True Witnesses

God has never left Himself without a witness. On this subject, some versions of the Bible have distanced themselves from the erroneous rendition of the second part of Titus 2:13. Some of them are cited below.

“. . .looking for the blessed hope and appearing of that glory of that mighty God, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ” – Geneva Bible (1599).

“. . .while continuing to expect the blessed fulfilment of our certain hope, which is the appearing of the Sh’khinah of our great God and the appearing of our Deliverer, Yeshua the Messiah” – Complete Jewish Bible (David Stern, 1998).

“. . .as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ” – New American Bible (1986, 1991, revised 2010).

Equally gratifying is the fact that there are some versions that avoided the Trinitarian translation of 2 Peter 1:1. The second part of the verse is here cited from some of them:

“To those who through the righteousness of our God and of our Deliverer Yeshua the Messiah, have been given the same kind of trust as ours:” – Complete Jewish Bible.

“. . .to those who equally share with us in the advantages of faith, thro’ the veracity of our God, and of Jesus Christ” – Mace New Testament.

“. . .this letter to those who have been given a faith as valuable as yours in the righteousness of our God, and Saviour Jesus Christ” – J. B. Phillips New Testament.

These versions have made it clear that two persons, God, and Jesus Christ, were in the mind of Peter when he wrote 2 Peter 1:1. The proof of this is in verse 2 where the two persons were clearly distinguished from each other.

Conclusion

The Granville Sharp Rule is unreliable. The very fact that Granville Sharp himself said the rule does not apply where proper nouns are used is the same reason it cannot apply where common nouns are used. Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 are clear instances of the failure of the rule.

The divinity of Christ has been clearly revealed in the Bible. But it cannot be established on the basis of flawed principles like the Granville Sharp Rule.  Neither should we twist Scriptures to make them say what they did not say on the divinity of Christ. The Bible has made it known that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. This means He had the same God nature as the Father who begot Him (Phil. 2:6; Heb. 1:3). He is therefore a God-being like His Father who begot Him. But to translate Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 in a way that makes the two verses call our Lord Jesus Christ God is an indefensible distortion. None of the two apostles call Jesus Christ God or the great God in the two verses under reference. They talked of two persons – God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ – in the two places.