The Oneness of God The Nature of God There is only one God, and we are to worship Him alone. Hear O Israel: The Lord our God the LORD is one! You shall Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength (Deut 6:4,5). The Old Testament emphasizes Gods numerical oneness in the strongest possible terms. No one else shares Gods glory, He created the universe alone and by Himself, no one is before or after Him, no one us beside Him, there us no one else, no one equal to Him, and no one is like Him. (Isaiah 42:8; 43:10,11; 44:6-8,24 45:21-23; 46:5-9). The new Testament also proclaims that God is one. (Mark 12:28-30; Gal 3:20; James 2:19). There are no distinctions in Gods eternal being; He does not have plural centers of consciousness. God is a Spirit (John 4:24). He is not made of physical matter. He us invisible to humans unless He reveals Himself in some way (John 1:18). He is omnipresent (everywhere present), omniscient (all knowing and wise), omnipotent (all powerful). In short, He is transcendent-above and beyond human existence. At the same time, He loves humans, participates in human affairs, and works to deliver them from sin. In other words, He is also immanent- involved with His creation, manifesting Himself to humans, and actively working in their lives. The Bible destined God as a single personal being who thinks, feels, and acts. He is not an abstract, impersonal substance in which multiple actors can dwell or in which multiple personalities can participate. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost God had revealed Himself as Father-as the Creator, as the source if all existence and life, and in parental relationship to humanity. (Isaiah 63:16; Mal 2:10; Hebrew 12:9). He has revealed Himself in the Son-God coming in human identity. (Luke 1:35; Gal 4:4). He has also revealed Himself as the Holy Ghost-in spiritual presence and action. (Gen 1:2; Acts 1:8). Another divine title is the Word, which describes God in self-revelation. The word us God Himself, particularly His character or mind as ultimately revealed in flesh (John 1:1,14). Before His incarnation, we can describe the one God as Father, Word, or Spirit. When Jesus walked on earth as God incarnate, the Spirit of God continued to be omnipresent. The roles of Father, Son, Holy Ghost are necessary to Gods plan of redemption for fallen humans. In order to save us, God provided a sinless Man who could die in our place, the Son if God. In foreordaining the plan of salvation and begetting the Son, God is the Father. In working in our lives to transform and empower us, applying salvation to us individually, God is the Holy Ghost. In sum, the titles of Father, Son and Holy Ghost describe Gods redemptive roles or works, but they do not indicate eternally preexistent flesh. The terms Father and Son in the New Testament serve to emphasize the true humanity if Jesus, bot to make distinctions within Gods transcendence, while the title of Son focuses on the Incarnation. Defining the Sons-an eternal, divine Son who could not die and temporal, human Son who did die. The Bible never speaks of God as a trinity or as three persons. The new revelation of the new covenant is not another divine entity but the manifestation of the one God in flesh to be our Savior. (Matt 1:21-23; 1Tim 2:5) The Identity of Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is the one God incarnate. For him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Cold 2:9). God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor 5:19). Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, God manifest in flesh, our God and Savior, and the express image of Gods own person (substance). (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; 1 Tim 3:16; Tit 2:13; Hebrew 1:3; 2 Pet 1:1). When the New Testament writers called Jesus God, they confessed Jesus to be to be God in the Old Testament sense, Jesus accepted Thomass confession of him as my Lord and my God (John 20:28,29). Jesus is not the incarnation of a portion if God but if all the identity, character, and personality of the one God. As to His eternal deity, there can be no subordination of Jesus to anyone else, whether in essence or position. Jesus us the revelation of the one God-I AM, Jehovah (Yahweh), the Father (John 8:58; 10:30-38). In Heaven if we asked to see the Father apart from Jesus, the words of Jesus to Phillip would still apply: He who had seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, Show us the Father?... The Father who dwells in Me does the works (John 149,10). In eternity, we will see one God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. (Rev 22:3,4). Jesus is also the Son of God. The term Son refers to Christs human identity ( as in the Son died, and it acknowledges the union of the deity and humanity in Christ (as in the Son had power to forgive sin), but it is not used apart from Gods incarnation. The terms God the Son and eternal Son are not biblical. The role of the Son began when Jesus was conceived miraculously in the womb of a virgin by Gods Spirit, so that God was His Father. ( Matt 1:18-20; Luke 1:35; Hebrew 1:5) As the glorified Messiah, Jesus is now on the right hand of God-in the position of divine glory, exercising the power and the authority of the invisible Spirit (Acts 7:55-60). Jesus Christ is completely and genuinely human-in body, soul, spirit, and will. (Luke 22:42; 23:46; Acts 2:31; Rom 1:3). Christs humanity means that everything we can say of ourselves, we can say of Jesus in His earthly life, except He had no sin. (Hebrew 2:14-18; 4:15; 5:7,8). Moreover, in every way that we relate to God, Jesus related to God, except that He did nor need to repent or be born again. Thus, when Jesus prayed, submitted His will rock the Father, and spoke about and to God, He simply acted in accordance with His authentic humanity. Although we recognize both deity and humanity in Christ, these two aspects of His identity were inseparably joined. While there was a distinction between the divine will and His human will, He always submitted the latter to the former. Jesus was, and remains, the one God manifested in flesh. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit that was in Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 3:17; Phil 1:19). The Holy Ghost does not come as another person but comes in another form (in spirit instead of flesh) and another relationship (in you instead of with you ); the Holy Ghost us actually Jesus coming in human lives (John 14:16-18). By the presence of the Holy Ghost, Jesus fulfills His promise to dwell in our midst when we gather in His name (Matt 18:20). All who experience a genuine work if God encounter one Spirit, not two or three. They do not experience three personalities when they worship nor do they receive three spirits, but they are in relationship with one personal spirit being. As Yahweh manifested in the flesh, Jesus is the only Savior (Isaiah 45:21-23; Matt 1:21-23). His name actually means Yahweh-Savior, and Jesus Christ if Nazareth is the only one who literally embodies the meaning of that name. Thus, Jesus is the only name given for our salvation (Acts 4:12). The Father was revealed to the world in the name of Jesus, the Son was given the name of Jesus at birth, and the Holy Ghost comes to believers in the name of Jesus. (Matt 1:21; John 5:43; 14:26; 17:6). Thus, the one name that reveals the work of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost is Jesus. While on earth Jesus was fully God, not merely an anointed human. At then same time, He was fully human, not just about appearance of a human. He possessed the unlimited power, authority, and character of God. He was God by nature, by right, by identity; He was not merely defied by an anointing or in dwelling. Unlike a Spirit-filled believer, the humanity if Jesus was inextricably joined with all the fullness if Gods Spirit. Jesus is the fullness of God dwelling in perfect humanity and manifesting Himself as a perfect human being. He is not urge transmutation of God into flesh, the manifestation of a portion of God, the animation of a human body by God, or God temporarily dwelling in a separate human person. Jesus Christ is the incarnation-enbodiment, human personification-of the one God.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 23:25:54 +0000
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