Post by The Ambassador on Jun 14, 2019 17:19:25 GMT
Knowing God
From
Humans have developed many complex and
ethereal ideas about what God is like. But how
does our loving Creator reveal Himself in the
pages of the Bible? It’s both more accessible
and more incredible than people have imagined.
Really getting to know God will transform your
life for the better forever!
ethereal ideas about what God is like. But how
does our loving Creator reveal Himself in the
pages of the Bible? It’s both more accessible
and more incredible than people have imagined.
Really getting to know God will transform your
life for the better forever!
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” ~ John 17: 3
Introduction:
Can we get to know God? Is He so far off, so mysterious, that we could never understand Him? Or does God want to have a close, personal relationship with us? Does He reveal Himself clearly in the Bible? Our world is filled with myriad gods and ideas about God, most of which seem inconsistent or unintelligible.
One of the most common beliefs in Christianity today is the mystery of the Trinity—that there is one God who appears as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many have accepted this explanation of God as the defining doctrine of orthodoxy without studying its origin.
Chapter 1 Part Three; “The Oneness of God”
This Sabbath, we continue with our study of how the trinity doctrine began. Our discussion this week centers on the Oneness of God.
As we consider this, we should recognize that in the New Testament Paul also wrote that there is one God. Writing to the church at Corinth, Paul said,“There is no other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4), and to Timothy, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
What Paul was relaying was precisely what Jesus had likewise said. John records Jesus saying, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30). So both the Old Testament and the New Testament concur that God is one.
But what does the Bible mean when it says that God is one? Not understanding how the word one is used in the Bible has led to much confusion. Since we have already seen that the Bible speaks of the plurality of God, we need to find a biblical explanation of the oneness of God that harmonizes with the plurality of God.
The Hebrew word for “one” in Deuteronomy 6:4 (and in over 800 other places in the Old Testament) is echad אָחַד, which has a variety of meanings.
Definitions in addition to the number one include “one and the same,” “as one man, together,” “each, every,” “one after another” and “first [in sequence or importance]” (Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1951, p. 25). It is translated “alone” in the New Revised Standard Version’s translation of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” Similarly, the Moffatt translation puts it: “Listen, Israel: the Eternal, the Eternal alone, is our God.”
New Testament Use of “One” to Mean a Unified Group
The New Testament uses the same sense of one, meaning unity, as the Old Testament does. These references in the New Testament often refer to the Church and to God.
Writing to Church members in Galatia, Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Even though composed of many individuals, the Church is one in Christ Jesus. Members gather as one body—the Body of Christ—to observe the Passover, the weekly Sabbath and the other festivals of God.
Writing to members in the city of Corinth, Paul said, “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. . . . For in fact the body is not one member but many” (1 Corinthians 12:12, 14). Paul goes on to explain that while members of the Church are individuals with differing gifts, they are one in similar fashion to a human body having many members that are all part of the same human body (verses 12-27).
The Godhead is similar in that there is only one God, with two spirit members currently in this unit. Though two beings, They are unified in thought and approach. This is what Christ meant when He said, “I and My Father are one” (John 10:30).
The unity that Jesus and the Father have is the same type of unity Jesus desires for those who become members of His Church. Just hours before His crucifixion, Jesus prayed to the Father for those who would be called through His disciples. Specifically, Jesus prayed “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that you sent Me” (John 17:21).
This profound verse teaches us that just as the Church is a single unit made up of individuals, so is God. The Bible shows that God is a single unit currently comprised of two spirit beings.
When there are multiple meanings for a word, we must consider context and harmony with other scriptures to determine how the word should be understood. The setting of Deuteronomy 6:4 is in a section of Scripture in which Moses explained the importance of faithfully following God and avoiding the worship of the gods of surrounding nations. Note also the verse that follows Deuteronomy 6:4: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (verse 5).
Based upon the context, it seems most likely that Moses was telling the Israelites that God was their God, that He was to be their highest priority, and that He alone was God (i.e., there are no other gods).
If we want to consider echad from the perspective of how many beings are in the Godhead, something that does not seem to be the context of Deuteronomy 6:4, we need to broaden our perspective to see how the Bible explains oneness in addition to the number one.
In Genesis 2:24 we find God speaking of marriage saying, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one [echad] flesh.” Here, two humans are united as one family unit. And in procreation a male and a female—two beings—are joined together as one to produce a new life.
Similar usage of echad to mean the unity of more than one person is found in several additional Old Testament scriptures. At the Tower of Babel God observed that “the people are one [echad],” meaning they were united in their plan (Genesis 11:6).
In Exodus 24:3 we find the Israelites responding to Moses “with one [echad] voice.” During the time of the judges, the people of Israel gathered together “as one [echad] man” in their actions against the tribe of Benjamin (Judges 20:1, 8, 11), and later during a time of reform under Nehemiah, “all the people gathered together as one [echad] man in the open square” (Nehemiah 8:1).
Since multiple scriptures in the Old Testament show the plurality of God, the way to remain biblically consistent with these passages is to understand echad in relation to the Godhead as meaning that God is first in importance, the only true God, and a unified family.
The word family is a collective noun. There may be multiple members of a human family—father, mother and children—but the family is one family. Family members may say, “We are going to do something,” but when we refer to this family, we say, “This family is [not are] going to do something. As we will see, the Bible talks about God’s family. It makes sense for members within this group to use plural pronouns when communicating with each other. It also makes sense to speak of this group in a singular sense, as a single Group.
Before concluding this section, we should also realize that if Moses had wanted to convey a numerical count regarding God in Deuteronomy 6:4, hecould have used the Hebrew word yachid, which means “only, only one, solitary, one” (Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon). This word is translated “your only son” in Genesis 22:2, 12, 16.
Thus far, we have seen that the Old Testament speaks of the plurality and oneness of God. Let’s now turn to the New Testament for further clarification regarding the members within the Godhead.
For additional explanation of this subject, see our LifeHopeandTruth.com article “God Is One.”
Next Sabbath: Chapter Two
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