The Bible proclaims plainly and
clearly
that there is
one and only one God. When the Bible says that God
is one,
the word
one does not refer to a "God Family," but to one God.
Let’s look at a few passages in the Old Testament.
- "You were shown these things so
that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no
other" (Deuteronomy 4:35).
- "There is no one holy like the
Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God" (1
Samuel 2:2).
- "How great you are, O Sovereign
Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we
have
heard with our own ears" (2 Samuel 7:22).
- "So that all the peoples of the
earth may know that the Lord is God and that there is no other" (1
Kings 8:60).
- "I am the Lord, and there is no
other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though
you have
not acknowledged me" (Isaiah 45:5).
- "For this is what the Lord says
— he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made
the
earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed
it to be
inhabited — he says: `I am the Lord, and there is no other’ "
(Isaiah 45:18).
- "Declare what is to be, present
it
— let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who
declared
it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no
God apart
from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me. Turn to
me and
be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no
other" (Isaiah 45:21-22).
- "Remember the former things,
those
of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is
none
like me" (Isaiah 46:9).
As you can see, there is no
question about
the biblical fact that there is one and only one God, not two or more
"Gods." God says: "I am God, and there is no other." He
speaks in the singular, as "I," saying that he is the only God, and
there is no other being that is even like him. That’s why God commands
us,
"You shall have no other gods before me" (
Exodus 20:3).
The idea of more than one being in
a
family or hierarchy of gods is condemned throughout the Scriptures. That
was
precisely the concept that the polytheistic nations surrounding Israel
taught.
Polytheistic
is a word that refers to a belief in more than one god (
poly =
many;
theos
= god). The Bible teaches that there is only one God, a belief called
monotheism,
from
mono (one) and
theos (God).
A family is made up of more than
one
being. The pagan hierarchies of gods were mostly made up of more than
one
"god being," and at the top of the hierarchy were usually a father
god, a mother god and one or more son and daughter gods. The Bible
condemns the
concept of a family of gods.
New Testament
The Bible does not allow for the
existence
of two God Beings. It categorically denies it. Let’s take a look at some
New
Testament passages.
- Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:4
when he
affirmed that there is one God. Answering the question about what is
the
greatest commandment, he said: "The most important one...is this:
`Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one’" (Mark 12:29).
There is no other being that is worthy of worship (Matthew 4:10).
- Likewise, Paul taught that
there is one
God. He wrote: "Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God,
who
will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through
that
same faith" (Romans 3:29-30).
- In 1 Corinthians 8:4 he wrote:
"So
then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is
nothing
at all in the world and that there is no God but one." In 1 Timothy
2:5
he wrote: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and
men,
the man Christ Jesus."
- James wrote: "You believe that
there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that — and shudder"
(James 2:19).
As we saw above, Paul points out
that the
man
Jesus Christ is the mediator between humans and the
one God. Even
while
describing the role of Jesus Christ, who was
God in the flesh,
Paul
still
affirmed that there is only
one God. When the Son became flesh,
he did
not cease to be God — he was God in the flesh (
John 1:14). But there was
not,
never has been, never will be, two Gods.
Contradictory truths?
So the Bible gives us two facts
that are
apparently contradictory. But I say
apparently, because they only
appear
to be contradictory because our minds are finite and limited, while God,
our
Creator, is infinite and unlimited. The Bible tells us there is one God.
The
Father is God. The Son is also God (
John 20:28-29). He was eternally
with God
and also was God (
John 1:1-2). The Father is God and the Son is God, but
there
is only one God.
The Father and the Son are
persons
in the God being. This is part of the Christian doctrine usually called
the
doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine does not teach three Gods, but
only one.
They are distinct, but not separate. There is no "family" that people
can be born into. We will never be God in the same way that God is God.
Rather,
we are partakers of the divine nature (
2 Peter 1:4) — children of God,
but
never Gods. There can be only one God.
This is not a matter of confusion,
as some
say. It is a matter of believing the Bible and realizing that God is
greater
than our finite imaginations can perceive. It is a matter of faith,
because we
believe the Bible.
It’s true that the "average"
Protestant or Catholic cannot explain God’s nature. Some may even think
that
there are three God Beings in one Godhead, or a three-headed Being of
some sort.
But their misunderstandings do not affect the truth of the teaching. The
Bible
teaching is that there is one God who is the Father, the Son, and the
Holy
Spirit. It is not my idea, nor is it the idea of some fourth-century
theologians. It is the teaching of the Bible.
What the fourth-century
theologians did
was to formulate a doctrine that denies certain unbiblical teachings
about God
that were in vogue at the time. One such teaching was the idea that the
Son was
a created being. Another heresy is the idea that the Father, the Son,
and the
Holy Spirit are not distinct but are really all the same — in other
words, the
idea that the one God is sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, and
sometimes
the Holy Spirit, but not all three all the time. This was declared to be
false.
God is not like a human
God transcends our world of time
and
space. He
created time and space. He appears in it when he
desires, but
he is in no way limited to time and space. He does not
need time
and
space to exist. We can only think in created terms, in terms of time and
space.
Therefore, God is everything we can conceive of
and more! He uses
all
sorts of concepts in the Bible to reveal himself to us, and he does it
in
terms
we can understand — like King, Redeemer, Shepherd, Defender, Fire,
Rock, Shelter. But he is all those and more, and not just like any of
them,
because they are all part of the created world.
God does not have or need a
"mighty
arm," for example. God uses the human term, "mighty arm," because
it is one we can understand, one that helps us understand something
important
about the power of God. But it is not a literal description of God. It
is a
metaphor. God also speaks of his "right hand." Is that because his
"right hand" is stronger or more skilled than his "left
hand"? Of course not. He is conveying the fact that he is powerful, that
he
intends to do a particular thing, and that he is going to do it in a
powerful
way. Bible-believers should not take such descriptions literally and
think of
God as subject to time and space like ourselves.
This brings to mind Paul’s
statement in
Romans 1:22-23: "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and
exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like
mortal man
and birds and animals and reptiles." There are stone images and there
are
mental images. Now, none of us would want to make God like a created
thing, but
if we think that God has a body (a male body, some will attest), or is
subject
to time and space (who can only be in only one place at one time), and
needs to
have something in order to create (that he needs a preexisting
"substance"), just like we need physical matter to fashion things,
then we
have inadvertently reduced God to an "image made to look
like mortal man."
God is not created. He does not
have a
body. Bodies are put together or composed, and God is neither put
together nor
composed of anything. He is the Creator, not the created. Until God
created,
there was nothing.
Only God is eternal. Only God is uncreated.
There is
no eternal matter or "spiritual substance" that co-existed with God.
That would mean that God
did not create everything, and such a
God is
not
the God of the Bible. Such a God is a
limited God, a
less-than-supreme
God, a God who needs something beside himself to act as God.
One other important point. God is
personal
— and he relates to us in a personal way. We should never think of God
as so
transcendent that we cannot relate to him in a personal way. That,
again, is
precisely why he reveals himself to us in the Bible in human terms, in
terms we
can understand. That is why the Son of God became human to reconcile us
to God.
God wants a close and
personal relationship with us. He wants
fellowship
with us. That is the reason he made us, and he has made it possible
(despite our
sin) through our mediator, the God-made-human Jesus Christ.