The short answer is yes and no, and the difference matters. Jehovah is the personal name of the one true God of Israel. The Bible teaches that this one God exists eternally as three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Son, the second person, who became man. So Jesus is not “the Father”, and it would be a mistake to say that the Father became flesh or died on the cross. But Jesus is fully God, not a lesser or created god, and he shares the one divine being and the one divine name. That is why the New Testament takes Old Testament passages about Jehovah and applies them directly to Jesus. The Christian church has confessed this since the apostles, and summed it up in the Nicene Creed of 381. This site is independent and is not affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose different view is described briefly below.
One God, and only one
Christian faith begins where Israel’s faith began: there is one God, and no other. Moses taught it, and Jesus himself called it the most important commandment.
Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah:
— Deuteronomy 6:4 (ASV)
The doctrine of the Trinity does not soften this. Christians do not worship three gods, and they do not believe that Jesus is a second deity standing beside Jehovah. The Trinity is a way of confessing everything the Bible says at once: that God is one in being, and that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are each truly God and yet truly distinct from one another. The Athanasian Creed puts it with care: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, “and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.”
It helps to separate two questions. “What is God?” is answered with one: one divine being, one nature, one name. “Who is God?” is answered with three: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Confusion comes when the answers are swapped.
Why the Son is fully God
John’s Gospel opens by placing the Word, who is the Son, both alongside God and within the identity of God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
— John 1:1 (BSB)
“With God” shows distinction; the Word is not simply the Father under another label. “Was God” shows identity of being; whatever God is, the Word is. A few verses later John adds that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). The eternal Son did not stop being God when he was born; he took a full human nature to himself. This is why the church confesses Jesus as fully God and fully man, one person in two natures.
At the end of the same Gospel, the apostle Thomas meets the risen Jesus and addresses him in words no faithful Jew would say to any creature:
Thomas replied, “My Lord and my God!”
— John 20:28 (BSB)
Jesus does not correct him. He accepts the confession and blesses those who will believe it without seeing.
How the New Testament applies Jehovah texts to Jesus
The most striking evidence is the way the apostles quote the Old Testament. Through Isaiah, Jehovah swears that he alone will receive universal worship:
By myself have I sworn, the word is gone forth from my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.
— Isaiah 45:23 (ASV)
Paul takes those very words and applies them to Jesus:
Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name above all names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
— Philippians 2:9-11 (BSB)
The “name above all names” is the divine name, rendered in Greek as Kyrios, “Lord”. Paul does the same in Romans 10:13, where Joel’s promise about calling on the name of Jehovah becomes a promise about calling on Jesus. Notice what Paul does not do: he does not erase the Father. The worship of Jesus is “to the glory of God the Father”. The Son shares the name without replacing the one who sent him. The entry on the name in the New Testament traces this pattern further, and Jesus and the divine name looks at the “I am” sayings.
Father, Son and Spirit under one name
When Jesus sent his disciples out, he gave them a single name to baptise in, and three persons within it.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
— Matthew 28:19 (BSB)
The word is “name”, singular, not “names”. The Holy Spirit is listed as a person alongside the Father and the Son, not as a force or influence. This verse is one of the clearest windows into the Trinity: one name, three persons.
Practical ways to say it clearly
If someone asks you whether Jehovah is Jesus, a careful answer runs like this. Jehovah is the name of the one God. The Father is Jehovah, the Son is Jehovah, and the Holy Spirit is Jehovah, yet the Father is not the Son and neither is the Spirit. Jesus is the Son of God who became man for our salvation.
A few mistakes are worth avoiding. Do not say that God merely wears three masks, appearing sometimes as Father and sometimes as Son; the Father and the Son speak to one another and love one another, which masks cannot do. Do not say that Jesus is a lesser god; Scripture allows only one. And do not treat the Trinity as a puzzle to be solved before you can trust Christ. Salvation is by grace through faith in him, and understanding grows over a lifetime.
Where Christians differ
On this question the historic churches, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant, stand together; the Trinity and the full deity of Christ are shared confession, not a secondary matter. Differences lie mainly outside that consensus. Jehovah’s Witnesses regard Jehovah as the name of the Father alone and teach that Jesus is God’s first creation, exalted but not God in the same sense, and that the Holy Spirit is God’s active force rather than a person. Mainstream Christians differ from them on all three points, for the reasons set out above. Those differences can be discussed with courtesy, and the entry Is this site connected to Jehovah’s Witnesses? explains them more fully.
For reflection
Read John 1 and Philippians 2 slowly, and notice how naturally the apostles speak of Jesus in the language once reserved for Jehovah. Pray to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, as the church has always done. If the Trinity still feels difficult, bring your questions to a pastor and a local church that confesses the Nicene faith, and keep reading the Gospels, where the Son makes the Father known.
References
- The Nicene Creed (Nicaea 325, Constantinople 381).
- The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque vult).
- The Definition of Chalcedon (451).
- Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate (early fifth century).
- The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 2.
Lexicon answers from the Bible and public-domain reference works. It is a study aid and is not affiliated with any organisation.