Godhead Continued…
June 5, 2009 by Jason DeMars
Filed under Biblical Teaching
It’s desperately important for us as believers to properly understand the Godhead. The reason it is important is because Jesus said that eternal life was based upon knowing the Father, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent.
First, why is the Trinitarian doctrine incorrect. It clearly violates the greatest commandment of the entire bible.
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
(Mark 12:28-29)
Most confessions of faith in denominational and catholic churches read, “we believe in one God eternally existing as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Is this the biblical confession of faith? Did something change from the time of Jesus to our time? The Hebrew bible teaches that there is only one God and that he is only one person. This is the very foundation of biblical faith. This is what made Israelites different from all other nations. They believed in one God that could not be seen with the eyes and that there was not be an image made of him. In fact many Gentiles called the Israelites atheists because they did not worship an image and they only worshipped one God.
Jesus the Jewish Messiah confirms this belief and it should in fact be our belief and it is the greatest commandment that we must protect with our lives, honor and every thing within our souls. “Hear O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” He is only one person. There is one God not three in one or two in one. He is simply one, period, that’s it.
Second, the trinity is an erroneous doctrine because of the arguments that are used to teach it.
Take for instance the baptism of Jesus.
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
(Matthew 3:16-17)
Now, trinitarian theologians will point out here we have three persons involved. First, we have the Son standing in the water, second we have the Spirit of God descending like a dove and three we have the voice of the Father coming from heaven.
This argument is complete nonsense. First of all it does not acknowledge that God is omnipresent. He can be everywhere at once. God is more than able to speak from heaven and at the same time send his Spirit down to earth. To take another example of this; he can speak to me and at the very same time speak to you and thousands of other believers around the world. This does not make God thousands of persons. It simply means God is not limited by space and time like a human being is.
So here is a breakdown of the biblical account of Jesus’ baptism. We have a man, the Son of God, standing in the water and we have the Spirit of God descending and a voice coming from heaven saying “this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Where else would the voice of God come from other than heaven?
The Spirit of God is no more a separate person from God than your own spirit is a separate person from you. God’s Spirit is referred to as “the power of the Highest” in Luke 1:35. The power of the Highest is not a separate person from him. In John 15:26 Jesus is to send the Spirit to believers and the Spirit is said to proceed from the Father. The Spirit goes forth from the Father not as a separate person, but as the Spirit sent forth from the heavens to work in and dwell in our hearts by faith.
Another point is that Jesus was declared to the Son of God and the Scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. If God the Father and the Holy Spirit were separate persons then Jesus would have two separate fathers. The reality is that the Holy Spirit is precisely what God is. John 4:24 tells us that “God is a Spirit.”
So when I write about the oneness of God this is what I am talking about. I speak of the one true God, who is Spirit, and is one person. There can be all kinds of disputes over more obscure scriptures, but one thing we can agree with is that you are to interpret the more difficult to understand scriptures based upon the ones that are easy to understand.
Start from the hundreds of scriptures that declare that God is one person not the ones you think might imply something different. In fact there are thousands of times God is referred to with a singular personal pronoun. Start from there then interpret the mysterious verses!!
Knowing that God is one person brings us back to biblical faith and properly understanding this and who Jesus is gives us a greater opportunity to bring the faith of Christ to the Islamic world.
My prayer is that this writing helps you in your walk with the Lord and gives you a greater passion to search the scriptures daily to know whether these things be so. Acts 17:11
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