When Jesus prayed to the Father was Jesus praying to Himself?
Even I have troubles with this one sometimes.
Jesus is God, He was praying to God but not the same God that the God is that He was praying to but they are both fully God, not two gods.
Once again, read up on Relational Subordination Theology, where the Son is Subordinate to the Farther in their relationship but not in their Being.
My understanding is that God in all communication with creation must condescend in order to be understood. When forming the New Covenant with Mankind through Jesus Christ The Father- Son relationship is a working model for us to emulate.
Gal:4:4-6
4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law:
5 That he might redeem those who were under the law: that we might receive the adoption of sons.
6 And because you are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: Abba, Father.
So just as Jesus cried out to the Father, prayed to the Father, served the Father, did the will of the Father, obeyed the Father, loved and was loved by the Father with a Fathers love, so may we as adopted Sons of the Father.
As Paul tells us all through out the New Testament, those who were under the law obeyed the law to sanctify themselves before God and the relationship that they had with God was a Servant-Master or Subject-Sovereign Relationship under the New Testament we have a Father-Son Relationship a personal relation ship of Love.
God in his boundless love for us sent his only begotten into the world to face humiliation, shame and a horrifying death so that we also may become sons and be loved by a Fathers Love. Jesus said “I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except by me”. It is this Personal filial relationship between a Father and a Son that Jesus was talking about.
The Jehovah Witnesses do not have or share in this relationship with God, Just as John tells us. 1Jn2:23" Every one that denieth the Son, hath not the Father either. He that confesseth the Son, hath the Father also". This can be seen in their publications where you will never see them referring to God as the Father, and one will constantly read phrases such as Almighty Sovereign or Supreme Ruler of the Universe when they refer to God.
To take Gods free gift to us, which is the gift of a Fathers Love for a Son, which was only made possible through the obedient, sacrificial death of Gods only begotten Son. As Paul Tells us.
Phil 2: 5 For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery, to be himself equal to God:
7 But debased himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in shape found as a man.
8 *He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
9 Wherefore God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above every name:
10 *That in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.
12 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence) work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
13 For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, according to the good-will.
14 *And do ye all things without murmurings and hesitations:
15 That you may be blameless, and sincere children of God, without reproof, in the midst of a depraved and perverse generation: among whom you shine as lights in the world.
And then deny this gift to millions of people and enslave them in the service of a false, avarice, covetous, organisation by manipulating the very verses in God’s Word which down through the centuries have assured mankind that yes “The True Light that Enlightens all men did in fact come into the world” to freely give this priceless gift of a Fathers Love to us sinners.
Who would do such a thing as this??? I ask you, ask yourselves!!! Who would go into a persons home with the sole purpose of telling them that their Father does not Love them and they are not their Fathers Son.
Deity, perhaps?