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Did Jesus say in Matthew 23:23 that Christians should pay tithe?

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One of the verses the advocates of tithing in Christianity use is Matthew 23:23. It reads, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.” (Matthew 23:23 NKJV).

Taken out of context, many pastors have erroneously taught their followers that Jesus Christ was teaching tithing to New Testament believers in the verse. But a proper examination of the immediate context, Matthew 23, has shown that our Lord Jesus Christ did not teach the payment of Tithe in this verse.

In Matthew 23, which the KJV captioned as the Great Denunciation, Jesus denounced the teachers of the Mosaic law (scribes) and the Pharisees in very strong terms. In the chapter, he pronounced “woe” on them seven times because of their hypocrisy and lawlessness. He told his disciples and the crowd who were around and listening to him not to be like them because they don’t practice what they teach (verse 3). In verses 13 to 35, he pronounced seven “woes,” one of which is in verse 23, on them. Six of the woes were pronounced on them for their hypocrisy and lawlessness.  The seventh was pronounced on them for how they truly were in God’s sight:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.  [28] Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matt. 23:27-28 NKJV).

In verse 23, Jesus was telling the scribes and the Pharisees the wrong thing they were doing. He told them them of how they were cherry-picking the law of God. They obeyed the Mosaic laws that were convenient or desirable to them, like tithing, but refused to obey the more important aspects of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness. He was not teaching Christians on tithing.

Were the scribes and the Pharisees Christians? No. Their religion was Judaism. They were Israelites, the people to whom God gave the law on tithing. But these religious hypocrites did not practice their religion with the truthfulness, obedience, and sincerity desired by God. See Matthew 15:3-9 (Mark 7:6-13).

The following points should be noted by the reader:

1 The word “tithe” is an old English word which means a tenth. In the Bible, the word is translated from the Hebrew word maaser or maasar or maasrah, and it is used 32 times in the Hebrew Bible, known as Old Testament by Christians. In the New Testament, the word is translated from the Greek dekatoo or dekate, which is used 8 times. Both the Hebrew and the Greek words also mean a tenth. Once a pastor begins to ask you to pay more than one-tenth (10%) as tithe, know that he has departed from the law of tithing.  Know that he is being driven by the love of money, which is the root of all evils. That makes him a modern-day Pharisee. Luke tells us that the Pharisees were lovers of money (Luke 16:14). Biblically, any giving that is more or less than 10% is not tithe.

2. Tithes were specifically meant to take care of the Levites. The reason God made the law was because He commanded that they should do no other work than to serve in the temple. And since they must eat, God commanded the other eleven tribes of Israel to give one-tenth of their produce to them as their wages for their service in the temple. The priests got 1%, while the Levites, who are more in number, got 9%. See Num. 18:20-21; Deut. 18:1-2; Neh. 10:37-38; 12:44.

3. In the New Testament church, giving was practised. But no one was mandated to give 10% (a.k.a tithe). People exercised their free will in deciding what to give. Paul defined the type of giving in these words:

“Each one of you should give just as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, because God loves a cheerful giver.” (2 Cor. 9:7 NET).

What is given could be anything above zero per cent to any percentage, say 100%. Barnabas and some other people, for example, sold their lands and brought the proceeds to the church.  The funds were used to buy things that were shared among the brotherhood (Acts 2:45; 4:34-37). Nowhere is the giving of tithe practised in the New Testament church.

4. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross put an end to the Levitical (Aaronic) priesthood (Heb. 10:1-14). There is no longer the office of a Levitical priest or Levites in the New Testament church. What the New Testament church has are pastors whose work are to shepherd (or feed) the flock of God with the word of truth See John 21:15-17; Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:11; 1 Pet. 5:1-4; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15. The fact that there were no priests and Levites in the New Testament church is one of the reasons why tithes were not paid to anyone in the first century churches.

5. The New Testament did not start with the opening verses of either Mark or Matthew. The New Testament church started on the day of the first Pentecost, after Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven (Acts 2). It should, therefore, be understood that the Jewish festivals that were celebrated in the gospels were all under the law. The priests or high priests mentioned in the gospels were not Christians. Jesus Christ himself was not a Christian. He was born under the law and obeyed the law perfectly (Gal. 4:4-5; Matt. 5:17-18). The church he promised to build in Matt. 16:18 was born in Acts 2. That church was not a physical building, but a body of believers who placed their faith in him as the Messiah and became his followers.

6. In the New Testament, no one was forbidden from engaging in productive activities. Now, everyone must “work with your own hands” (1 Thes. 4:11). Now, anyone who is unwilling to engage in economic activities shall not eat (2 Thes. 3:10). Apostle Paul also said, “Now, we work wearily with our own hands” (1 Cor. 4:12). “But if someone does not provide for his own [by engaging in any economic activity], especially his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” (1 Tim. 5:8 NET).

Conclusion

No Christian is commanded by God not to engage in any productive activity to earn a living. This is because the perfect sacrifice has been made by Jesus Christ once and for all time. This brought to an end the Levitical order of worship in physical temples. That is why the work of priests who offer daily sacrifices as well as those of Levites did not find a place in the New Testament church. That also put an end to the payment of tithes to the tribe of Levi, who were commanded not to work in theocratic Israel.

Let the pastors who are still pushing the tithe debate stop displaying either their ignorance of the word of God or their belly-serving agenda. They should teach the truth on giving as it was done during the time of the apostles. Should they insist on collecting tithes from their followers, they should as well teach them to practise the three types of tithe commanded by God through Moses.

Finally, any pastor who teaches that tithes should be more than 10% has gone beyond what is commanded in the law. Those who use threats of hellfire or other forms of threat to extort money under the guise of collecting tithes are barefaced thieves and robbers. They are not serving our Lord Jesus Christ.

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What Does “Touch Not Mine Anointed” Mean?

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The phrase, “touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm” was used by King David in Psalm 105:15 and 1 Chron. 16:22. (Although 1 Chron. 16:7 says David gave Asaph and his brethren this psalm (song of thanksgiving), what is seen in 1 Chron. 16:8-36 is a medley of psalms (or songs) written by David. It has been observed that 1 Chron. 16:8-22 is taken from Psa. 105:1-15 while 1 Chron. 16:23-33 is taken from Psa. 96:1-13. The other verses are equally found in other psalms. This means that 1 Chron. 16:22 is the same text as Psa. 105:15.)

It is common to find many pastors, especially Pentecostal and Charismatic preachers, use this verse to warn people that they should not dare to criticise or question them on the wrong things they do or the false things they teach. They often threaten that God’s wrath will befall whoever speaks against them.

We have noted that King David did not use the phrase in reference to a particular individual, although Abraham was called a prophet by God (Gen. 20:7). David used it to refer to the Israelites as a people in their early years and their forefathers – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). The plurals used by David in the context are instructive. The words “mine anointed” found in the KJV should actually read “mine anointed ones.” He recounted the wonderful things God did for them, beginning from the patriarchs,  down through the time of Joseph to the time when Moses led them out of Egypt.  David recalled that in those years when  the Israelites “wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another, He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake, he rebuked kings: ‘Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.’” (Psa. 105:13-15).

David called on his people to remember the wonders the LORD has done, his miracles, and the judgments he pronounced (Psa. 105:5). He reminded them of how God did not allow foreign kings to touch or harm the Israelites that were before their own time. For these great privileges, David called on his people whom he called “you his servants, the descendants of Abraham, his chosen ones, the children of Jacob” (Psa. 105:6) to praise the LORD their God.

The word “touch” in Psa. 105:15 (1 Chron. 16:22) connote the idea of causing them physical harm. It doesn’t in any way connote criticism or even rebuke for a wrongdoing by a leader. Therefore, the use of the phrase by modern-day pastors to threaten people not to ever talk against them amounts to an abuse of the verse.

Who were the anointed ones?

In the Hebrew Bible, known as Old Testament by Christians, kings and priests were anointed by pouring on their heads special anointing oil, made as prescribed by God in Exod. 30:22-25. Those anointed with the oil are consecrated or set apart for God’s service. The anointing was a symbol that God chose them as His servants. It is through the anointing that God possesses and empowers those He has chosen. Inanimate objects were also anointed, making them holy things. The word “holy” here means “set apart for use in God’s service.” See Exod. 30: 26-29. A typical example are the vessels used in the temple for the sacrifices. They are called “holy vessels” (1 Kings 8:4; 1 Chron. 22:19; 2 Chron. 5:5) because they are used wholly for the service of God. It is not because they are sinless; inanimate things cannot commit sin.

Those anointed in the Hebrew Bible included Aaron and his four sons as priests (Exod. 28:41; 29:7; 30:30-33; 40:13-15). Israelite kings were also anointed.  Saul, the son of Kish, was the first (1Sam. 9:27-10:1; 15:1, 17). David, his successor, was anointed three times. He was anointed by Samuel to replace Saul as king over Israel (1 Sam. 16:12-13). While in the waiting, the people of Judah anointed Him as king over Judah (2 Sam. 2:4). Later, he was anointed by the elders of Israel as the king over the whole twelve tribes of Israel (2 Sam. 5:3). There were other kings whose records of being anointed with oil are in the Bible. They included Solomon (1 Kings 1:32-39, 45) and Jehu (2 Kings 9:6-10), just to mention a few.  There is no known record of any of the patriarchs being anointed with oil. Neither was any found in regards to the prophets. Although God instructed Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor, the record seen is that Elijah threw his cloak on Elisha (1 Kings 19:15-19). Thereafter, his cloak fell on Elisha on the day he was divinely transported through the sky (called heaven in KJV) to an unknown destination where he lived the rest of his life before he died (2 Kings 2:9-15; cf. 2 Chron. 21:12-15, John 3:13, Heb. 9:27, Heb. 11:13).

In summary, the anointed ones in the Hebrew Bible were priests and kings. Were they the anointed ones in Psa. 105:15 (1 Chron. 16:22)? They were not. The context in which the verse is found seems to point to Abraham and his early descendants, known as the nation of Israel. God indeed rebuked kings for Abraham’s sake. First was a Pharaoh of Egypt who took Sarah, Abraham’s wife (Gen. 12:14-17). Later, God rebuked Abimelech, the king of Gerar, for doing the same thing (Gen. 20:2-7). Isaac also lied to Abimelech, the king of Gerar, that Rebekah was his sister. But Isaac was the one who was rebuked by Abimelech (Gen. 26:6-11). We have seen from these accounts that kings were rebuked for Abraham’s sake. But David seemed to reckon him and his early descendants as the anointed ones in his psalm. His use of the words “mine anointed” can be interpreted as God’s “my chosen ones” (Psa. 105:6). This interpretationis supported by the translators of English versions suchas ERV, EASY, FBV, ICB, NCV, NET, and NLT.David recalled that God rebuked the foreign kings “when they were only a few people in number, very few” (Psa. 105:12; cf. Gen. 34:30 & Deut. 7:7, bold emphases are mine throughout). The term “anointed” in David’s psalm does not mean a priest or king who was anointed with oil. It connotes all the chosen people of God. What David was saying was God telling the foreign kings, “Do not hurt my chosen ones.”

Who is anointed in the New Testament?

In the New Testament, there is no record of oil being poured on the head of an apostle, pastor, bishop, evangelist, prophet, et alia. The holy spirit of God, which comes into any genuine Christian, is the anointing (1 John 2:27). New Testament believers are anointed with the holy spirit just as our Lord Jesus Christ was anointed with the holy spirit which came on him in the form of a dove on the day he was baptised on River Jordan by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:16; Acts 10:38). The anointing is the holy spirit of God, which fills the hearts of all genuine believers, whether or not they are apostles, bishops, pastors, evangelists, elders, lay men or women. The anointing is what most Christians know as the baptism with the holy spirit. Apostle Peter said, “The promise [of God pouring out His spirit on all people, vv. 16-18, 38] is for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39 NIVUK, words in square brackets are mine throughout).

Apostle Paul told the Corinthian believers this: “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He [God] anointed us, (2 Cor. 1:21 NIVUK).

Here, Paul made the believers in Corinth to know that God is the one who anointed both the Corinthian believers and themselves who preached the message of Christ to them. See also Acts 10:45; 1 Cor. 3:16; Rom. 8:9. It is a gross error to think or say that it is only the apostles, bishops, or pastors that are anointed in the Church of God. The truth made known in the Bible is that anyone who is baptised with the holy spirit of God is an anointed person.

Another text that affirms this fact is found in 1 John 2. A part of it reads, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One [God], and all of you know the truth… [26] I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. [27] As for you, the anointing you received from him [the Holy One, God] remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit – just as it has taught you, remain in him.” (1 John 2:20, 26-27 NIVUK).

Who did the apostle refer to as the anointed ones in this place? They were the members of the churches spread across the interior of Asia Minor, whom some false teachers were trying to lure away from the truth they have been taught. He referred to them as “my little children” (2:1; 3:18), “little children” (7 times), “brethren” (4 times), “fathers” (twice), “young men” (twice). The apostle probably used these terms because he knew that his addressees had different levels of Christian experience. But despite the fact that some were new converts while some have been grounded in the faith, they have been anointed by God. There were no mixed multitudes in the first century churches. Only those who genuinely received the gospel and repented of their sins were baptised and added to the church (Acts 2:41, 47; 5:14).

Apostle John wrote to believers whom he said had been anointed by God with His holy spirit. It is very clear from the New Testament that it is not pastors alone that are anointed in the true church of God.

The Appeal to Romans 14:4

A verse that is now often quoted by Pentecostal pastors who think no one should criticise them is Romans 14:4, which says, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” (Rom. 14:4 NIVUK).

To them, whatever they do or teach should not be criticised by anyone. They say they are being judged when they are called out for their wrongdoings or false teachings. One of them wrote in his daily devotional these words: “Leave the judgement of anointed ministers who cheat you to God” – Open Heavens Daily Devotional, Monday, April 8, 2024.

But what Apostle Paul wrote in Rom. 14:4 has nothing to do with telling fellow believers, including ministers, the truth about their wrongdoings or their false doctrines. If their twisted understanding of the verse were correct, Paul himself would have been guilty of what he wrote in this verse. This is because Paul openly rebuked Apostle Peter when he observed that Peter’s hypocrisy led other Jewish believers, including Barnabas, into the same hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-14).

Paul did not stop with Peter. He instructed young Timothy, the first pastor of the church in Ephesus, to publicly rebuke elders who sin to serve as a deterrent to others. He wrote, “Do not listen to [entertain, act upon] an accusation against an elder unless it is confirmed by two or three witnesses. [20] Those [elders] who sin should be reprimanded in front of the whole church; this will serve as a strong warning to others. (1 Tim. 5:19-20 NLT).

The elders were the leaders [of the church] (1 Tim. 5:17), and they were called bishops (1 Tim. 3:1, 2; Tit. 1:7), overseers (Acts 20:28), shepherds (or pastors) (Acts 20:28). These titles mean the same thing. No one was known as “General Overseer” or “General Superintendent” in the Bible. Neither did any overseer in the Bible exercise control over many churches at the same time, as if he were an emperor.

What Apostle Paul meant in Romans 14:4 can be understood by reading verses 1 to 3. He meant that we should not judge one another on dietary rules that were in the Mosaic law. Jesus Christ himself said that what goes into the stomach and is passed out as faeces cannot make anyone unclean (Matt. 15:10-11, 17-20; Mark 7:18-23). And Apostle Peter was told, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” (Acts 10:15).

Paul told Timothy, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, [2] speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, [3] forbidding [others] to marry [forced celibacy], and commanding [people] to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. [4] For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; [5] for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” (I Tim. 4:1-5 NKJV).

However, this does not mean that a believer can eat foods he knows have been offered to idols. The apostles have expressly forbidden this, according to the authority given them by Jesus Christ. See Acts 15:28-29, Matt. 16:19, Matt. 18:18, and 1 Cor. 10:20-22.

Can Pastors be Criticised, Corrected, or Rebuked?

Apostle Paul told Timothy not to talk rudely to the older people in his church just because he is their pastor but to treat them respectfully as fathers and mothers (1 Tim. 5:1-3). Paul went on to instruct him to ensure that he always applied the biblical witness law (as given in Deut. 19:15; 17:6; Num. 35:30; Matt. 18:16; John 8:17; 2 Cor. 13:1) whenever an accusation was brought against an elder (1 Tim. 5:19). This should not be interpreted to mean that Paul was saying that Timothy could take action on an allegation brought by one person against anyone who was not an elder. In all cases, the witness of only one person would not suffice. Paul specifically addressed how Timothy should relate with the elders of the church in chapter 5. Therefore, the fact that he said more than one witness was needed to prove the guilt of an elder does not mean that the same number of witnesses were not needed to prove the guilt of anyone who was not an elder.

In verse 20, Paul instructed Timothy thus: “Publicly rebuke those who sin, so that the rest will be afraid” (1 Tim. 5:20 CSB).

Here, anyone who sins is to be publicly rebuked. This verse follows from verse 19, which means that Paul meant that elders who sin should be rebuked publicly. This instruction agrees with the public rebuke he gave Peter when Peter was caught in hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-14).

There is no biblical support for the teaching that a church leader of whatever position or title cannot be critiqued, questioned, or called to order whenever he does what is wrong or teaches a false doctrine. All the pastors who always say, “touch not my anointed” whenever they are criticised are committing spiritual abuse. They make themselves religious tyrants. There is no one in any true church of God who is above constructive criticism or questioning.

God said, “I am the LORD, I do not change” (Mal. 3:6a). He used a donkey to rebuke Balaam, the powerful seer. He can use anyone and anything to correct, criticise, or rebuke any of His anointed servants. It, therefore, amounts to a display of scriptural ignorance when a pastor says “touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm” when he is called out about his questionable conduct or false teachings.

Besides Peter, who was rebuked by Paul, many anointed men of God have been criticised or rebuked by men, some of whom were inferior to them. Here are a few examples:

  1. David, who was anointed three times, was criticised by Joab for wanting to take a census of Israel’s fighting men. David refused to listen to him. The result was the death of 70,000 men of Israel (2 Sam. 24:3-4, 15; 1 Chron. 21:3-4, 14).
  2. The same Joab, who was not anointed, rebuked anointed King David when David exhibited a lack of care for his loyal fighters who risked their lives and helped him to defeat Absalom who overthrew him and went into battle against him (2 Sam. 19:5-7).
  3. Jehoshaphat, an anointed king of Judah, was upbraided by Jehu, the son of Hanani, a seer, for joining forces with Ahab, the king of Israel (2 Chron. 19:1-3).
  4. Peter once rebuked the Lord Jesus Christ without having a full grasp of the eternal purpose of the death of Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:22; Mark 8:32). Jesus immediately gave Peter a counter-rebuke for trying to go against God’s divine purpose, thus making Peter a satan (meaning an adversary) at that moment of time (Mark 8:33).

We see from these examples that there is no scriptural support for any pastor to claim immunity to criticism or correction by citing Psa. 105:15. The term “my anointed ones” simply means “my chosen people” and “touch not” means “do not harm or kill” my chosen people. The term “my anointed” used by David in Psalm 105:15 (1 Chron. 16:22) does not particularly refer to people who are literally anointed with God’s anointing oil. Any overbearing pastor who lays claim to this verse as a defence against criticism only exhibits his lack of biblical insight and should not be regarded as one rightly dividing the word of truth.

Conclusion

Let our pastors stop vaunting themselves as if they are the only ones who are God’s anointed. All of God’s chosen people who have the spirit of God dwelling in them are God’s anointed. Our pastors should also be bumble enough to receive correction from anyone, no matter the position of the one giving the correction. God used a donkey to rebuke Balaam. The same God, the Almighty, can use anyone to correct any pastor or prophet.

As long as criticisms are not done with malice, they should be accepted by those being criticised. God wants us to correct one another. No one, except God, is infallible. Any preacher who does not want to be criticised is foolish. We must all accept that constructive criticisms should be taken as judgments, which make us better Christians.

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Does Ephesians 6:1 Say That Your Pastor Is Your Father In the Lord?

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Apostle Peter said that many people who lacked proper understanding of the scriptures have twisted Paul’s letters and many other scriptures, making them to say what was not the mind of the writers (2 Peter 3:16). This is exactly the case in Ephesians 6:1, where Apostle Paul wrote, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. [2] ‘Honour your father and mother’ – which is the first commandment with a promise – [3] ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” (Eph. 6:1-3 NIVUK).

Here, Paul was reminding the Ephesian believers of the fifth commandment given by God in Exodus 20:12 and strongly emphasised all through the Bible. The apostle reminded them that, as believers in the Lord, it is a proper thing for children to obey and honour their parents. He reminded them that it was the first commandment given by God with a promise attached to it. Then, in verse 4, he advised the parents in the church not to provoke their children to anger by the way they treat their children. In the first four verses, Paul gave godly advice to both children and parents who are “in the Lord,” that is, Christians. This is similar to the advice he gave wives and their husbands in the church (Eph. 5:22-33), as well as servants and their masters (Eph. 6:5-9).  Paul balanced things up in this epistle by referring to the two sides in a relationship – wives and their husbands, children and their parents, as well as servants and their masters.

We must not forget that the letter was written to Christians in Ephesus. Paul was communicating with the believers who are in the Lord. In verse one, Paul was addressing the children who are in the Lord, that is, the Christian children in the church. Paul never meant any pastor in Ephesians 6:1.

What “in the Lord” means

The wordings “in Christ,” “in him,” and “in the Lord” were frequently used in the New Testament. Apostle Paul used these expressions a total of 137 times. These terms mean being a follower of Christ or those who belong to Christ. In other words, they are used for those who are in union with Christ.

The Lord Jesus Christ himself used certain expressions, which became the basis of these terms used by Paul and other New Testament writers. Jesus Christ had said, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me” (John 14:10, 11; 10:38). He also said that his true followers are in him and he in them (John 6:56; 14:20; 15:4; 17:23, 26). He likened the being in one another to a tree branch being attached to the tree (John 15:5-8). (The branch gets its needed supplies from the tree to stay alive. The tree itself, except in some rare species, bears its fruits through its branches.) Being in Christ, therefore, does not have the idea of wine being inside the bottle or of cookies being inside the jar. It means being attached to Christ and having a relationship with him. In other words, it means being a Christian.

From this brief explanation, and especially from the context of Ephesians 6:1-4, it is clear that Paul was addressing children and their parents. It is therefore wrong for anyone to say that the phrase “parents in the Lord” in this place refers to pastors.

A typical example

As said earlier, the phrase “in the Lord” is used many times by the New Testament writers. Apostle Paul used it 43 times in his epistles. One of the places where he used the phrase is Romans 16:2. The New King James Version (NKJV) renders versrs 1 and 2 in these words:

“I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church in Cenchrea, [2] that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever business she has need of you; for indeed she has been a helper of many and of myself also.” (Romans 16:1-2 NKJV, emphasis added).

Here, the phrase “receive her in the Lord” means to welcome her with a sisterly affection – the kind of welcome that ought to be given to someone of the same precious faith, a fellow Christian.

The use of the phrase “in the Lord” in Ephesians 6:1 is not different. It means being in the Lord. Paul was saying, in essence, that children who are in the Lord (Christians) are required by God to obey their parents. They are required to obey the fifth commandment because, as Christian children, they are children of obedience. Their failure to  obey the fifth commandment entails their forfeiture of the promises attached to it – wellbeing and longevity.

How some modern versions render the verse

There is nothing wrong with the traditional translation of the verse. However, since some people have misunderstood the verse, I quote below four modern versions that will help anyone have a clearer understanding of the first three verses, with bold emphases added by me:

“Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. [2] “Honour your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: [3] If you honour your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.” (Eph. 6:1-3 NLT).

“Children, it is your Christian duty to obey your parents, for this is the right thing to do. [2]  “Respect your father and mother” is the first commandment that has a promise added: [3] “so that all may go well with you, and you may live a long time in the land.” (Eph. 6:1-3 GNT).

“Children, you belong to the Lord, and you do the right thing when you obey your parents. The first commandment with a promise says, [2]  “Obey your father and your mother, [3] and you will have a long and happy life.” (Eph. 6:1-3 CEV).

“Children, obey your parents because you are Christians. This is the right thing to do. [2] “Honour your father and mother [3] that everything may go well for you, and you may have a long life on earth.” This is an important commandment with a promise. (Eph. 6:1-3 GW).

It can be seen from these versions that the phrase “in the Lord” refers to children rather than their parents. The fact that the phrase “in the Lord” (Greek: ἐν κυρίῳ·, en kyrio) is immediately preceded by “your parents” (Greek: γονεῦσιν ὑμῶν, goneusin hymōn) does not make “your parents” the referent. Greek is somehow different from English in word order. The fact that a noun is used before a verb does not necessarily make it the subject. Here, in Ephesians 6:1, “your parents” are not the referent of the phrase “in the Lord.”

In conclusion, it is wrong for any pastor to teach that Paul made him a spiritual father to any of his followers. That idea is a misrepresentation of what Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:1.

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Who Has The Higher Authority: Parent or Pastor?

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A popular Nigerian pastor once said, “If your physical [biological] father curses you, go to your spiritual father, he can cancel the curse. If your pastor, your spiritual father, curses you, run to the general overseer, he can cancel the curse. If the general overseer curses you, fast for forty days and nights, and beg his father in heaven, God can cancel the curse. If God curses you, where will you go?” (word in square bracket added by me).

Although he was talking on the subject of tithing, with reference to Malachi 3:8-11, his speech revealed what he believes to be the hierarchy of authority over individuals in the church.  It is evident from his speech that he considered the pastor as having a higher authority over a church member than the member’s parent.

In 2018, a young man in one of the leading Pentecostal churches got interested in my daughter. He was the youth leader in the church. He came to me and made his intention known to me. He also made his intention known to the Marriage Committee of the church, and was making himself available for their screening at their meetings. While the Marriage Committee was still doing their thing, his family came to see my family on August 4, 2018, to make a formal proposal to my family that they want to marry my daughter. This was the proper thing to be done. But the Marriage Committee suspended him from his duty in the church and placed the marriage process on suspension for a number of months. What was his offence? His offence was that he did not seek and obtain the permission of the marriage committee before he brought his family to see me and my family. This caused the marriage not to hold until November 2019. But for two major factors that restrained members of the committee, the marriage would have been cancelled by the committee on this singular ground, that they did not authorise the groom before coming to see me. First, the pastor who then had just been posted to the District Church told the committee that he had heard that many marriages had been stopped by the committee on very flimsy grounds. He insisted that my daughter’s marriage must not be frustrated by the committee like many others before. Secondly, the church had been using a flat in my house, free of charge, as one of its “Location Church” for many years. The members of the committee feared that I would throw the church out of my house if they should, in their usual tyrannical and hypocritical manner, mess up my daughter’s marriage. By saying the groom must not see the parents until he is permitted to do so, the committee had placed itself as having more power over the marriage than the parents of the bride.

Evidently, these churches and their pastors believe that they have a higher authority over the lives of their members than the parents of the members. But is there any biblical support for this belief and practice in our churches? Let the Bible, which is our final authority, speak.

The Authority of Parents

The authority of parents was divinely given by God. It forms part of the Ten Commandments  given by God, which eternally remains binding. The fifth commandment reads, “Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12 NKJV, bold emphases are mine throughout).

This commandment is one of the dominant topics that run all through the Bible. The commandment became one of the motifs in the Bible that underscores the importance God places on our need of obeying our parents. The most important persons in our lives, after God, are our parents. When the Bible commands that we honour our parents, it does not distinguish between Christian and non-Christian parents. We came into the world through our parents. If they did not want us to live, they could easily terminate our lives. All they did to sustain our lives made them the most important persons in our lives. They are the next after God. It should interest us to note that the fifth commandment is the only one with a promise attached to it – the promise of prosperous living and longevity. Therefore, whenever we read the promise, ”With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation,” (Psalm 91:16 ESV), we should understand that the promise here is not an unconditional one. Its fulfilment stands on our obedience to the fifth commandment in particular and the other nine commandments.  See Deut. 5:16,33; 6:2; 11:8-9.

As said earlier, the commandment that we should obey our parents is strewn over the pages of the Bible. A few of the passages are worth looking at:

Jesus Christ told the Pharisees, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? [4] For God said, “Honour your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.” [5] But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is “devoted to God,” [6] they are not to “honour their father or mother” with it. Thus, you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. [7] You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: [8]  ‘ “These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. [9]  They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” (Matt. 15:3-9 NIVUK).

Paul reminded the Ephesian church of the fifth commandment when he wrote, ”Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. [2] ‘Honour your father and mother’ – which is the first commandment with a promise – [3] ‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” (Eph. 6:1-3 NIVUK).

He again reminded the believers in Colossae of the importance of obeying the commandment. He wrote, “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord” (Col. 3:20 NIVUK).

It is important to note that God gave much authority to parents. He gave fathers and husbands the power to revoke any vow made to Him by a child or a wife under the care of a father or husband. No such power is given to any pope, bishop, pastor, reverend, or a self-acclaimed general overseer to revoke a vow made to the LORD:

“When a young woman still living in her father’s household makes a vow to the LORD or binds herself by a pledge [4] and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she bound herself will stand. [5] But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or the pledges by which she bound herself will stand; the LORD will release her because her father has forbidden her. [6] ‘If she marries after she makes a vow or after her lips utter a rash promise by which she binds herself [7] and her husband hears about it but says nothing to her, then her vows or the pledges by which she bound herself will stand. [8] But if her husband forbids her when he hears about it, he nullifies the vow that binds her or the rash promise by which she binds herself, and the LORD will release her.” (Num. 30:3-8 NIVUK).

As far as this law is concerned,  it is applicable to both males and females still under the care of their fathers. We know this because when Jesus was speaking against the distortion of this law by the Pharisees (Matt. 15:4-9), he did not say it applied to female children alone.

The singular fact that fathers are allowed by God to annul vows made to Him is a significant proof that a clergyman does not have superior authority over the biological  fathers of their members. It does not matter whether the fathers are themselves members of the church or not.

Here is another authority given  to fathers by God with regard to their daughters. It cannot be overemphasised that this power is not given to any church leader, no matter the title he bears:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. [17] If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins.” (Exodus 22:16-17 NIVUK).

The father, not the pastor or papa, is the one given the right by God to decide who he wants his daughter to marry. No pastor, papa, bishop, or any committee of any church has the superior power over the social or private life of each member of the church. Marriage is part of the private affairs of church members. There is no single instance found in the Bible where any marriage was conducted either in the temple, synagogue, or the church. But since the pastors have taken over the joining of couples in the churches, the pastors have erroneously believed that they have the superior power over marriage matters than the parents of those wanting to get married. This power was never given to pastors.

The power given to parents by God was gradually usurped by power-hungry clergy after the death of the apostles. The Catholic Church started it by calling its head papa, meaning father.  Over time, priests of various religious orders began to bear the title father. But in the days of the apostles, all the believers referred to themselves as “brethren” as commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 23:8). See, for example, Acts 1:16; 6:3; 9:17;  15:7,13; 2 Pet. 3:15. Even when the apostles and elders made mention of their assigned roles, they still recognised that they were fellow brethren. In the opening letter, they wrote to the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. After the meeting in Jerusalem, they wrote, “From the apostles and elders, your brothers…” (Acts 15:23 NET). They did not consider themselves as the great ones who were superior to all others in the body of Christ.

Parents, on their part, should realise that there is power in their words. It is therefore expected of them to exercise maximum restraint in making pronouncements on their children. The power God puts in their tongues is not meant to be used to destroy the lives of their children. Therefore, all parents, whether they are Christians or not, must prat to have the grace not to be easily provoked to the extent that they lay avoidable curses on their children. Parents can destroy their children’s lives with their curses. They are, therefore, to have God-like patience. ”The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” (Psa. 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13).

 The power God gave parents over their children places on them great responsibility. They, like God, should be  compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love toward their children (Exod. 34:6; Num. 14:18; Psa. 86:15). Just as a parent cannot pick up a gun and shoot his child to death at any provocation, so is he not expected to lay a curse on his child no matter the provocation.

Can a pastor cancel a blessing or a curse placed on a person by his or her father?

If a father/mother blesses or curses his/her son or daughter, it will take someone with a higher power to cancel the blessing or curse. The only one who has a higher power than your parent is God. Your pastor has not been given any power higher than that of your father or mother. Therefore, no pastor can reverse any blessing or curse placed on you by your parent. The best your pastor can do is to follow you to go and beg your father or mother to reverse the curse. But if the parent is no longer alive or refuses to reverse the curse, your pastor can join you to pray to God to reverse the curse. No pastor can reverse or cancel any curse placed on you by the one who gave birth to you.

Let us learn a lesson from this episode:

“Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ [14] Jesus replied, ‘Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” (Luke 12:13-14 NIVUK).

The judgment of the world has been given to Jesus by God (John 5:22; Acts 17:31). But here, Jesus made it known to the person that he has not been given the power to arbitrate in the estate of this man’s late father. In the same way, no pastor is given the power to cancel or assume the power God has given parents over their children. It amounts to a teaching of disobedience when pastors tell their followers that they have the power to reverse a curse placed on them by their biological parents. It is sheer arrogance when any pastor says he has the authority to cancel a curse placed on someone by his or her parent.

There are those who may misunderstand the authority given, first to Peter, and later to the apostles. It says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 18:18 NIVUK, see also Matt. 16:19).

It should be understood that this is not the power to have dominion over others. It was an authority given to the 12 apostles of Jesus Christ, including Paul, to make declarations on doctrinal issues. The apostles were seen to have made use of this power jointly in Acts 15. The result was the declaration they made, which says:

“The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings. [24] We have heard that some went out from us without our authorisation and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said. [25] So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul – [26] men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. [27] Therefore, we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. [28] It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: [29] You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell. (Acts 15:23-29 NIVUK).

God led them by His Spirit to arrive at this conclusion. It was not an arbitrary, self-vaunting declaration by the apostles. Therefore, there was nothing in this declaration that contravened the written word of God. It is instructive to note that the apostles and the elders referred to themselves as “your brothers.” They didn’t consider themselves as lords or gods who needed to be worshipped by the Gentle believers.

There is not a single instance found in the Bible where our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles tried to lord it over others. They did not go beyond the authority gi ven them by God. They observed and operated within the boundaries established by God.

Pastors Are Called To Be Servants, Not Lords Over Other Humans

If we understand the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, we will know that he did not give any clergyman a superior authority  over our earthly parents. He once called his disciples together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. [26] Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, [27] and whoever wants to be first must be your slave – [28] just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:25-28 NIVUK).

Here the Lord said that he did not come to be served but to serve others. This means that he took the position of a servant. This is the position he wanted his servants to take. He told them in clear terms that they should be different from worldly rulers who “lord it over others” and who “exercise authority over others” (v. 25). They, like Christ himself, were to be different (vv. 26-28). They were not made CEOs over the flock of Christ. They were shepherds who tend to the flock. A shepherd is either the owner of the flock or someone employed to take care of the flock. Pastors are not the owners of God’s flock. They are, first and foremost, part of the flock. But they have been chosen as elders in the flock. God did not make them the lords of the flock. Jesus Christ has been chosen by God as the Lord and Chief Shepherd of His flock. No one else can be a lord of that flock. As shepherds, their duty is to faithfully and truthfully feed the sheep of Christ with the word of God. They were not called to be the lords over other humans. Neither were they chosen to control the homes of those they shepherd in the church.

In Matthew 23, Jesus exposed the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, also known as scribes. Many of today’s pastors are like them. In verses 5-12, Jesus said this about them:

“Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; [6] they love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; [7] they love to be greeted with respect in the market-places and to be called “Rabbi” by others. [8]  ‘But you are not to be called “Rabbi”, for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. [9] And do not call anyone on earth “father”, for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. [10] Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. [11] The greatest among you will be your servant. [12] For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matt. 23:5-12 NIVUK).

The Pharisees and the scribes were vainglorious. They loved to be revered by others. The reverence they wanted others to accord them was not different from that which properly should be given to God. This made Christ warn his disciples not to be like them.

True Ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ  do not curse anyone

For any pastor to say that a curse placed on anyone by a General Overseer requires fasting for forty days and nights is a statement made with a haughty and manipulative spirit. A true pastor is not permitted by God to curse anyone. The Lord Jesus Christ commanded his true servants to “bless those who curse you” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:28). Apostle Paul affirmed it when he wrote, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” (Rom. 12:14 NIVUK).

Apostle James also affirmed the same thing when he wrote, “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. [10] Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”(James 3:9-10 NIVUK).

It is not expected of any anointed minister of the gospel of Christ to curse anyone. It is instructive to read Luke 9:51-56. Part of it reads:

“But they [some Samaritans] did not receive Him because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. [54] And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?” [55] But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of.  [56] For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” And they went to another village.” (Luke 9:53-56 NKJV).

Curses destroy men’s lives. Pastors are supposed to be like their Master, Jesus Christ. It is not expected of them to curse anyone. Any servant of Christ who does that will earn a rebuke from the Lord.

By the way, why is prayer and fasting for forty days and nights required to cancel a curse placed on a person by a “general overseer” but that placed on someone by any other pastor who is not a “general overseer” does not require the same rigours? Is there any biblical support for that statement? My brothers and sisters in the Lord, there is none. There is also no office of a general overseer known in the Bible. The statements made by the general overseer mentioned earlier are characteristic of him. He makes such statements to project himself as a great man of God, one who possesses higher “spiritual power” than anyone else in his church conglomerate. They are statements deliberately made to intimidate and mesmerise the millions of his followers. This makes him another Simon the Sorcerer who projected himself so much that the people of Samaria were mesmerised by him and began to call him “the Great Power of God” (Acts 8:10). But he was as powerless as those who revered him (vv. 18-19). These statements by the general overseer are nothing more than  vainglorious, self-projecting gimmicks. He uses them to manipulate and cage his followers. It is a form of sorcery. Apostle Paul called these manipulative tricks bewitchment in Gal. 3:1.

Conclusion

The power given to parents by God has not been withdrawn from them and given to any pastor, bishop, apostle, or papa. But the clergy has usurped that power and now believes that the clergy has a higher power over the lives of their congregants than the parents of the congregants.

Marriage is purely an affair between the families of the two people who want to get married to each other. The church does not have the power to dominate the families on such matters. This is one issue on which the church has been repeatedly found in hypocrisy. The church wields so much power when the “poor” members are involved. But the church turns a blind eye on the same matters when the rich and powerful people in the society are involved. Things ought not be so in the church. Pastors should not deviate from their duty of feeding the flock of God with the pure word of God. They have not been called to dominate the membership of the church.

No pastor, bishop, reverend, apostle, papa (pope), or a so-called “general overseer” can reverse or cancel any curse placed on anyone by his or her parent(s). God is the only one who can do that. All that a pastor can do is to help the member beg the parent to reverse the curse, or to join the member to pray to God to cancel the curse.

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Who is the Comforter in John 14-16?

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“If you love me, keep my commands. [16] And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you for ever – [17] the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. [18] I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. [19] Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” (John 14:15-19 NIVUK).

The word “advocate” used here is is a translation of the Greek word παράκλητος (paraklétos). It is rendered  as Comforter in the King James Version (KJV), and as Helper in some English versions. Jesus called the advocate (or Helper or Comforter) the Spirit of truth (verse 17). In verse 26, he called it the Holy Ghost (KJV) or the Holy Spirit.

The mainstream teaching from John 14 to 16 is that the Comforter (or Helper or Advocate) is the third person of the Trinity or God the Holy Spirit. Did Jesus Christ talk of a third person here? Let us carefully examine the Scriptures.

The word παράκλητος (paraklétos) is used five times in the New Testament by John, four times in his gospel (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7) and once in his epistle (1 John 2:1). In this last place he wrote that the paraklétos is Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. The verse reads, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” (1 John 2:1 NIVUK).

Here John made it known that Jesus Christ is the paraklétos. But in his gospel, John wrote that Jesus promised “another Comforter” which Jesus himself called the Spirit of truth or the Holy Spirit. Is this one a different “person” from Jesus Christ? The answer is an emphatic NO! What Jesus promised here is that he will come back to his own in a different form, a nonphysical form, by means of his spirit. Observe these statements:

  • He said, ”But you know him, for he [now] lives with you [physically] and will [soon] be in you.” (John 14:17b NIVUK, words is square brackets are mine throughout). What Jesus meant here was that the one who was with them and talking to them was going to be the one who would live in them in a spiritual form forever.  This leaves us with no doubt  that the paraklétos mentioned in the gospel is Christ himself, who now lives in the true children of God by means of his spirit, which dwells in them. This is affirmed by  Paul when he wrote: “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.” (Romans 8:9 NASB2020). The Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ is the same spirit, known as the Holy Ghost (KJV) or Holy Spirit. God and Christ dwell in us by means of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us (John 14:23; 1 Cor. 2:12; 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16; Gal. 2:20; 4:6; 1 Pet. 1:11). What Christ meant in John 14-16 is that God and  himself  will dwell in the true children of God by means of the Holy Spirit (John 14:23) in order to give them help from above. The idea of a third person  or God is a wild speculation by the fourth century  church fathers. Christ’s statement that the Comforter is the one who [now] dwells with you (John 14:17) is another proof that the Comforter is not a “third” person or God as erroneously taught in the Trinitarian creeds. The Holy Spirit which is the Spirit of God or of Christ was not given until Christ ascended to heaven. See John 7:39; 16:7 and Acts 1:5,8. Evidently, Jesus Christ himself was the one who [then] dwelt or lived with the disciples and who would [soon] live in them in another form – a spiritual, incorporeal form.

(2) He also said, ”If anyone loves me, they will obey me. Then my Father will love them, and we [the Father and I] will come to them and live in them. (John 14:23 CEVUK). How do God and Christ live in God’s own children? It is by means of God’s spirit living in them: “Whoever keeps His commandments remains in God, and God in him. And by this we know that He remains in us: by [through, by means of] the Spirit He has given us.” (1 John 3:24 BSB).

(3) The question which Judas [or Jude, not Judas Iscariot] asked subsequent to the statement Jesus made in John 14:17 gives a clear affirmation that the disciples clearly understood Jesus Christ as referring to Himself as the Comforter. Jude asked, “how is it that thou will manifest thyself unto us and not unto the world?” (John 14:22). What was not clear to Jude was the form Jesus Christ was going to take. It was not clear to him that it was going to be in an invisible, spiritual form – by means of the spirit of Christ. He did not have any iota of doubt that Jesus Christ was talking to them about himself. The pronouns “thou” and “thyself” used by Jude in his question are plainly emphatic of the fact that Christ was talking to them that he is the Comforter who now lives with them in a physical form and who will soon live in them in another form.

What about the personsl pronouns used for the Comforter?

There are people who say that, in the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV) of the Bible, both personal and impersonal pronouns have been used for the Holy Spirit. They say that the personal pronouns  means that the Holy Spirit is a person. With regards to the Holy Spirit, there are five plausible reasons  why both personal and impersonal pronouns have been used:

  1. Rules of Grammar in Gendered Languages:

Many languages like Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Russian, etc. are gendered languages where all nouns are grammatically rendered either as masculine or feminine notwithstanding the fact that many of such objects, e.g. book, door, table, river, wisdom do not have biological gender. The word “Comforter” known in Greek as  παράκλητος (paraklétos) is a masculine noun (emphases added throughout). The rule is that if an object is grammatically gendered as masculine, masculine pronouns must be used for it but if it is gendered as feminine, feminine pronouns must be used in reference to it. Since the paraklétos is masculine in Greek grammar, only masculine pronouns must be used for it. But where the Holy Spirit is written as Πνεῦμα (Pneuma),  which is a neuter noun, a neuter pronoun such as “it” must be used for it. We need to understand that grammatical gender does not necessarily mean that the objects are literal beings, neither are they male or female. Examples are sea, ship, table  door, or book which are regarded as feminine or masculine nouns but are not persons and do not have biological genders. The use of personal pronouns such as “he”, “his”, “him”, “who” or “whom” for the “Comforter” or “Advocate” or “Helper” (Greek: paraklétos) or the Holy Spirit does not automatically confer personhood on the Holy Spirit. Such pronouns have been used in line with the rules of the grammar of gendered languages.

  • The Personal pronouns relate to persons:

In my own private study of the Bible, I have observed three things for which both personal and impersonal pronouns were used in the KJV. They are the tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, salt and the Holy Spirit. (I use the KJV here because it is a literal or word for word translation of the original languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek in which the original Bible texts were written). I believe there is a common reason for the use of personal and impersonal pronouns for them. An understanding of the reason behind the use of personal and impersonal pronouns for the tree and salt will help us understand why they are used for the Holy Spirit.

  1. The Tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream:

Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation by Daniel is recorded in chapter 4 of the Book of Daniel. The central object the king saw in his dream was a tree – very big and tall with many branches and fruits and luxuriant leaves. In verses 14 to 16, the personal pronouns “him” and “his” are used nine times for the tree and the impersonal pronouns “it” and “its” are used five times for the same tree in verses 12 to 15. Daniel told the king in verses 20 to 22 that the tree was a symbolic representation of the king himself. In verse 22, Daniel said, inter alia, “You, O king, are that tree” (NIV). 

b.Salt

Jesus Christ said, “Ye are the salt of the earth but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and be trodden under foot of men” (Matt. 5:13, KJV). (Mark 9:50 and Luke 14:34 are parallel verses.)

The use of both personal and neuter pronouns in the two examples above created an exception to the rule of the use of gendered nouns and pronouns for impersonal objects in gendered languages.

It is evident from chapter 4 of Daniel that the neuter pronouns are used for the tree, but the personal pronouns are used for the person symbolized by the tree which was king Nebuchadnezzar. In the same way, Matthew used “his” in Matthew 5:13 with “Ye” (You) in mind while the impersonal pronoun “it” relates to salt which is an impersonal object. The symbolic language used in the two passages is responsible for the use of both personal and impersonal pronouns in them.

c. The Holy Spirit:

It has been observed that both personal and neuter pronouns have been used in the KJV for the Holy Spirit. In chapters 14 to 16 of John, the Comforter or Helper (Greek: paraklétos) is said to be the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) and personal pronouns “he”, “him” and “whom” are used for the Comforter.

It has also been observed that genderless pronouns such as “it” and “itself” have been used for the Holy Spirit in some other passages. John the Baptist said, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove and it abode upon him [Jesus] (John 1:32). Apostle Paul wrote, “the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God … Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself make intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:16, 26). Apostle Peter wrote, inter alia, “the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow” (1 Pet. 1:11). Apostle John, on his part, wrote, “But the anointing [or the Holy Spirit, see Acts 2:2-4; Matt. 3:16; Acts 10:38] which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things [compare 1 Cor. 2:13] and is truth, and is no lie [compare John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13], and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him [Christ]” (1 John 2:27).

From the above passages we have the knowledge that the Comforter in John 14 – 16 is Jesus Christ represented by his spirit dwelling in God’s true children. The Comforter is Christ himself dwelling in the true believers by means of his spirit. It is no longer Christ dwelling with them in a restricted, physical form but Christ now dwelling in them by means of his spirit.  The disciples of the Lord understood him when he said, “he [the Comforter] dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:17). In modern English, the statement will read something like this: “he now lives with you [physically] and will be [or live] in you [in a spirit form]. It is evident that Jesus Christ was not talking about another literal and distinct person but himself.

Having seen all these scriptures it is evident that the personal pronouns used in John 14 to 16 were in reference to Jesus Christ who is the Comforter, while the impersonal pronouns are used for his spirit, the Holy Spirit. He told the disciples, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you” (John 14:18). In Matthew 28:20, He said, “I will be with you always, even until the end of the world [or this age]”.

Jesus Christ is the truth (John 14:6) and His Spirit is called the Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). The Spirit of truth is called the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9 -11). This one and the same spirit is called the breath of God (Job 27:3; 33:4). This Spirit or breath of God which is also called the Holy Spirit is what the invisible or incorporeal God uses as His invisible or incorporeal hand to do all His supernatural works in all of His creation.

With the exception of some places where God and Jesus Christ are referred to as the Holy Spirit, most of the passages in the New Testament use the term “Holy Spirit” or KJV’s “Holy Ghost” in reference to the breath or spirit of God. The Greek word

Πνεῦμα (Pneuma) which means “breath” or “wind” is used 383 times in the New Testament.  It is interesting to note that it is the word KJV translators translated as Holy Ghost. This breath or spirit of God with which the Almighty divinely anoints, sanctifies, empowers, and guides the true believers is not another “third” divine person or God.

An honest, objective, truthful and spirit-controlled study of the Bible has shown that the fourth and fifth century theology of a “third” person or “God the Holy Spirit” has no basis in the Bible. Unfortunately, most of Christendom gullibly imbibed this falsehood and almost all the people who have embraced this false doctrine have become “strongly” or “powerfully” deluded. Like the Jews who refused to believe in the Messiah despite the great light that was beamed on them, many Christians are refusing to accept the hard textural, exegetical, historical, and logical refutations of the Trinitarian dogma.

Noteworthy Commentaries:

I find it compelling to give excerpts from two different writings on the topic under discussion. I believe the authors were enlightened through illumination of the Holy Spirit:

Alexander MacLaren (1826 – 1910) called the Comforter “The Absent – Present Christ”. The following are excerpts from his exposition of John 14: 18 – 19:

“Now, what is this coming? It Is to be observed that our Lord says, not ‘I will’ as a future, but ‘I come’ or ‘I am coming’, as an immediately impending, and, we may almost say, present, thing. There can be no reference in the word to that final coming to judgement which lies so far ahead; because if there were, then there would follow from the text, that, until that period, all that love Him here upon earth are to wander about as orphans, desolate and forsaken, and that certainly can never be. So that we have to recognize here the promise of a coming which is contemporaneous with His absence, and which is, in fact, but the reverse side of His bodily absence”. He continued:

“It is true about Him that He ‘departs from’ His people in bodily form ‘for a season, that they may receive Him’ in a better form ‘forever’. This, then, is the heart and center of the consolation here, that howsoever the external presence may be withdrawn, and the ‘foolish senses’ may have to speak of an absent Christ, we may rejoice in the certainty that He is with all those that love Him, and all the more with them because of the very withdrawal of the earthly manifestation which has served its purpose, and now is laid aside as an impediment rather than as a help to the full communion. We confound bodily with real. The bodily presence is at an end; the real presence lasts forever.”

Thefollowingispartof an online articleby TrinityTruth.org:

“So who is the Comforter which is also called the Spirit of truth that guides us into all truth? It is in fact Christ by His holy Spirit. This is why the personal pronouns “he” and “him” are used as John was specifically referring to Christ even if it was by His Spirit … The “other comforter” is none other than Christ Himself in another form (Spirit form). He is not seen (physically) as He was when He was here on earth. He is removed from the eye of sense, but He is still with us in Spirit. Note also that the Comforter could not be given until Jesus had returned to His Father and was glorified because He comes back to us by His Spirit to be with us and comfort us unto the end of the world.”

Without doubt, we can conclude that the personal pronouns used for the Holy Spirit were purely in reference to Christ who is represented by his Spirit now dwelling emanatively in his true servants. The personal pronouns were used, not because the Spirit of truth is a literal person of its own but because it is the spirit of a literal person. Christ dwells in us through his Spirit which dwells in us (Rom. 8:9 – 11; 1 Cor. 3:16; Eph. 3:17; 2 Tim. 1:14). The Comforter which Jesus Christ said will be in you (John 14:17) is the very one Paul referred to as Christ is in you (Rom. 8:10).

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The Real Problem With The Trinitarian Dogma

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The Trinitarian doctrine says there is one God who is made up of three distinct, uncreated, coequal, and coeternal persons or Gods. This is, perhaps, the most popular doctrine in Christendom. But the vast majority of Christians who believe in the Trinity do not have an accurate understanding of what the Trinity doctrine is all about. For the sake of the sincere Christians who have been fooled into believing that the Trinitarian doctrine is from God, I want to draw their attention to how the concept of three coequal and coeternal Gods differ from the Bible, which is the basis of our faith.

The three persons or Gods, according to the Trinitarian dogma, are the Father (YHWH or Yahweh or LORD), the Son ( Yeshua or Jesus), and the holy spirit. The Trinitarian dogma says each of them is uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty, God, Lord (Athanasian Creed, lines 6-18). The Creed also says:

 24. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. 25. And in this Trinity none is afore [before] or after another; none is greater or less than another. 26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal. 27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. (Lines  24-27, word in square brackets and bold emphasis are mine throughout).

Let us examine what the Bible says about each of the persons or Gods.

What the Bible says about the Father

“Listen, Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD is one.” (Deut. 6:4 NET).

“You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other.” (Deut. 4:35 NIVUK).

“To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One”. (Isaiah 40:25 NIV).

“I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.” (Isaiah 45:5a NIV).

“With whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?” (Isaiah 46:5 NIVUK).

“…You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.” (Isaiah 44:8 NIVUK).

“The most important one, answered Jesus, is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.’” (Mark 12:29 NIVUK).

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3 NIVUK).

“For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), [6] yet for us there  is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.” (I Cor. 8:5-6 NKJV).

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” (Eph. 1:17 NIVUK).

“The one who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name.” (Rev. 3:12 NASB2020).

The Bible has clearly revealed that YHWH or Yahweh, which most English Bibles render as LORD, is the one God. For the avoidance of doubt, God has inspired Paul to write that the one God is the Father. In the Shema Yisrael (Deut. 6:4) it has been written that YHWH is our God and that He is a single being. God spoke in many other places that He is the only God and that there is no other true or real God apart from Him. This fact is what our Lord Jesus Christ affirmed in John 17:3 where he called the Father the only true God.

For us, who know the truth, there is one God, and the one God is the Father alone. In John 17:3 and 1 Tim. 2:5, our Lord Jesus Christ and Paul distinguished the Father as the one God. From these scriptures, among many others, it is evident that the Trinitarian theory of the one God being made up of three Gods is a conjecture that lacks biblical support. It is a naked lie.

It may interest you to know that, if the Father is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, he cannot be coequal with the one who is his God and Father. The Father is his God because he (Jesus), like all other beings, was brought into existence by the Father. The Father created him by bringing him forth out of His own being (Prov. 8:22; Col. 1:15; Rev. 3:14).

YHWH (or Yahweh) is called God the Father, not because there is another God called God the Son, and another called God the Holy Spirit. He is called “God, the Father” because He is the one who brought all beings into existence (Eph. 4:6).

More importantly, the Bible nowhere teaches that the one God is made up of three persons or Gods. The God of the Bible is a singular being, and His name is YHWH (or Yahweh).

What the Bible says about the Son

“Your throne, O God, is permanent. The sceptre of your kingdom is a sceptre of justice. [7]  You love justice and hate evil. For this reason God, your God has anointed you with the oil of joy, elevating you above your companions.” (Psa. 45:6-7 NET).

The King here who is also called God has been identified as the Son of God, Jesus Christ (Heb. 1:8). The one who anointed him with the oil of joy (Acts 10:38; Phil. 2:9) is his God. Therefore, this God (Jesus Christ) has someone else who is his God. He is therefore a lesser God than his God. He cannot be coequal with his God. This is what Jesus Christ himself affirmed many times. See Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 20:17; Rev. 3:2, 12). His apostles echoed the same thing (1Cor. 11:31; Eph. 1:3, 17;; 1 Pet. 1:3).

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16 NKJV).

This is, perhaps, the most popular verse in the whole of the New Testament. But many Christians do not know that the Trinity doctrine has rejected the fact that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. They say that the Son has eternally been with the Father, and that none of them existed before or after the other. In a nutshell, they rejected this statement from the mouth of Jesus that he is the only begotten Son of God, the only one whom God brought forth out of Himself. This fact means that Jesus Christ had a beginning. The Trinitarian postulation that he is coeval with the Father is unbiblical and, therefore, false.

Trinitarians do not openly reject what has been written in the Bible about the Supremacy of God over all beings. What they do is to falsely interpret the scriptures such that God becomes less than the Supreme God that He really is. They reject any true interpretation of the Bible which accords God His Supreme position. Here, I give three examples of this:

Example 1: The Bible says our Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. They pretended to believe in it. They wrote it in the Nicene Creed. But in the Athanasian Creed, they denied that God begot Jesus. They wrote that, in the Trinity, none of the three persons come before or after another; none is greater or less than another; the three persons are coequal and  coeternal. In their theory of the eternal generation of the Son, they say that  the begetting of the Son means that the Son has eternally been with the Father. They say there was never a time the Father was without the Son. In other words, each of the three persons self-existed at the same time. In the Athanasian Creed, they say the same thing – that each of the three persons is uncreated. By this, they subtly rejected the fact that the Father produced the Son.

Example 2: Jesus said, the Father is greater than I (John 14:28). They say the Father is only greater than him in his humanity, but in his divinity, he is equal with  the Father. Unfortunately for them, they had postulated that Jesus was fully God and fully man during his Incarnation. If their theory were true, that would have made Jesus equal to, and less than, the Father at the same time. That would have also made Jesus to have mortality and immortality subsisting in him at the same time. And that would have made Mary to be the Theotokos (the mother  of God or the God-bearer). This teaching that Christ possessed two natures at the same time elicits at least three impossibilities and absurdities.

Example 3: Prov. 8:22-31 teaches that God first brought forth His only begotten Son out of Himself before He created the universe, using the begotten Son as a creative agent. Trinitarians reject the fact that the Son was begotten by the Father because that would mean that the Father pre-existed and birthed the Son. That makes the Father greater than the Son. They, therefore, want people to see Prov. 8:22-31 as a mere personification of wisdom, which is one of God’s attributes. But the truth is that the passage gives us the clearest knowledge about the origin of our Lord Jesus Christ. It makes us know that Jesus was not uncreated. He was brought into existence by Yahweh, the Father. Verse 22 says, “The LORD created me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old.” (NASB2020). The NIV renders it this way: “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old.”  This verse and Col. 1:15, Rev. 3:14, and Sirach 24:7-9 have irrefutably proved that our Lord Jesus Christ was first created by God before God created all other things through him.

What the formulators of the Trinity have done is to oppose God by creating two equals for Him. To this day, all the efforts of Trinitarians are to oppose the statement that Yahweh is the only true God and that He has no equal.

What the Bible says about the Holy Spirit

“For who among people knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of the person that is in him? So also the thoughts of God no one knows, except the Spirit of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:11  NASB2020).

Here Paul compared the Spirit of God, also known as the Holy Spirit, with the human spirit which is in the human. Just as my spirit, within me, is not a different person from me, so is God’s holy spirit not another person from God. It is a part of God. That is why it has been called the hand, eyes, finger, mind, etc, of God.

“But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.”  (Matt. 12:28 NKJV).

“But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 11:20 NKJV).

What Matthew called the “spirit of God” is what Luke termed the “finger of God.” What this teaches us is that the invisible breath of God is what God uses as His hand or finger to do His works in His creation.

God is a spirit being. So also are angels and the pre-incarnate Jesus. They are literal spirit persons. But the Holy Spirit is not a literal spirit being. It is the invisible breath of God which God uses to do His numerous works in our lives.

If anyone will do a proper study of the Bible, he will discover that the Bible has not portrayed the Holy Spirit as a literal spirit being, let alone “Lord and giver of life.” The spirit beings in heaven are God, Jesus, and the angels.

I have done a three-part write-up on the Holy Spirit. They are parts 1 and 2 titled “Is the Holy Spirit a person?’ The third part is captioned “The Holy Spirit is not Lord and giver of life.” You may read them to get a better biblical understanding of who or what the Holy Spirit is. My web address is www.jude1v3.com.

The Real Problem With the Trinitarian Dogma

Besides the absurdities, confusion, and self-contradictions that are in the Trinitarian dogma, the worst thing about it is that it attacked the Supremacy of the Almighty God. It denied that God the Father is the only true God and that He has no equal. Trinity created two Gods and made them equal with the Most High God. To this day, the spirit behind the Trinity theory is still pushing spiritually blind Christians to belittle and insult YHWH or Yahweh, the Most High God. Trinitarians don’t want to accept that He is the only true God, the only self-existent being, the only one who has no beginning, the Creator of all things and all beings, including our Lord Jesus Christ. Every testimony in the Bible that places God above all beings must be, and has been, rejected by Trinitarians. Anything and everything has been done by Trinitarians to maintain the God-denigrating dogma. This include deliberate false interpretation of the Bible, and deliberate interpolations in some texts, e.g. in 1 John 5:7-8.

The trick that the Trinity is an incomprehensible mystery beyond any investigation of the human mind is what has kept Christendom caged by this manmade doctrine to this day. And the pity of it all is that Christians, who are supposed to see and oppose this false doctrine, are the ones defending it. This bizarre situation makes the Trinity the most dangerous false doctrine in Christendom.

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What does John 1:1-3 say about Jesus Christ?

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Debates have been going on over the ages about the Godhood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is he a coequal God with YHWH (Yahweh)? Was he begotten but not created, according to the Trinitarian creeds?

The passage I want us to examine is John 1:1-3 which reads as follows:

[1] “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] He was with God in the beginning. [3] Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” (John 1:1-3 NIVUK).

In this article, I want to add my little observation about the passage. I will not go into any argument about Greek grammar since I have not learnt Greek. My approach is to compare scripture with scripture so that we can gain insight into what has been written by the apostle.

Are Yahweh and Yeshua Coequal?

Verse one reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Here, Apostle John used the phrase “in the beginning” to allude to the time of the creation of the universe as recorded in Gen. 1:1. John wrote that “the Word” (Greek: ὁ Λόγος, ho Logos): (1) was in the beginning; (2) was with the God; (3) was God. Does this statement mean that the Word was YHWH (Yahweh)? Some people have thought so. Ot does it say that the Word and YHWH are coequal? That is what the Trinity dogma has taught since the fourth century CE. Let us examine the scriptures to know the truth about the subject.

Who or what is the Word?

The second and third parts of John 1:1 have posed some interpretation problems to many scholars and commentators. They wonder how the Word could be with God and still be God. The conviction of many people, including myself, is that the author had two Gods in mind. The first God whom John termed “the God” is YHWH (Yahweh) the Father, while the second God is the Word. John could not have written about one God in the first verse. If the Word was with “the God,” it means the Word was a different entity from “the God.” Who is the Word that was God?

In the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the Old Testament, there was one literal spirit being who was often referred to as the word of the LORD. In the KJV, the term “the word of the LORD” was used 244 times in the Hebrew Bible. Sometimes, it means God’s word spoken by a prophet of God (Isa. 1:10; 2:3; 28:13, 14; 39:5; Jer. 2:4; 7:2; 9:20; etc). At other times, it refers to a particular being who acted on behalf of God. He always went to people to deliver messages from the LORD. They included Abraham (Gen.15:1, 4); Samuel (1 Sam. 3:7, 21); Nathan (2Sam. 7:4);  Solomon (1 King 6:11);; Elijah (1 King 17:2, 8; 18:1; 19:9; 21:17, 28); David (1 Chron. 22:7-8); Isaiah (2 King 20:4); Jeremiah (Jer. 1:4, 11, 13; 34:12).

In Gen. 32:24-28 is written how a “man” came to Jacob and wrestled with him all right. Hosea called him “Angel” and “God” ( Hos. 12:3-4). He appeared again to Jacob in Padan Aram and changed his name from Jacob to Israel (Gen. 35:9-15). Here, he was called God five times. He was called God, not because he was the Almighty YHWH (LORD), but because he was the visible representative of the YHWH (LORD), whom no one has seen or can ever see (Col. 1:15; John 1:18; 1 Tim. 6:16; 1 John 4:12). He was the same being called “the Angel of the LORD” (Gen.16:7-13; 22:11-19; Num. 22:22-35; Judg. 2:4;  6:12, 21; 13:3-21; 1 King 19:7; 2 King 1:1, 15; etc.). He was called the angel of the LORD in the sense that he was a messenger of the Almighty YHWH (Yahweh or LORD). This being was the pre-incarnate Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Some scholars and translators have concluded from John 1:1 that John meant that Yahweh and the Word (Yeshua or Jesus) are coequal. That is why the translators of the NET Bible render the third clause as “and the Word was fully God.” The CEV translators render it as “and was fully God.” The Amplified Bible healed healedrenders it as “the Word was God Himself,” meaning the Word was Yahweh, not another God. But most versions render it as “and the Word was God.” Does this clause mean that Yahweh and Yeshua are coequal Gods, as taught in the Trinitarian creeds? The Bible has revealed that Yahweh and Yeshua (Jesus) are not equals in any way. Consider the following points:

  1. The Psalmist called the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, God (Psa. 45:6; cf. Heb. 1:8). In verse 7, the Psalmist said God is his God. So, the Son of God is a God who has YHWH (LORD in English Bibles) as his God. Jesus Christ himself affirmed this several times while he was on the earth (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 20:17). Even after he had ascended to heaven, he reiterated the fact that the Father is his God (Rev. 3:12). The apostles said the same thing (2 Cor. 11:31; Eph. 1:3, 17; 1 Pet. 1:3). It stands to reason that Jesus cannot be coequal with the one who is his God.
  2. Jesus said the Father is the only God, whom Moses proclaimed in the Shema Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4 NIVUK). See John 5:44. He also said that the Father is the only true God (John 17:3). By these statements, Jesus has revealed that there is not more than one person who is truly God, the only uncreated being who created all things and gave life to them. Paul said, “yet for us there is only one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. (1 Cor. 8:6 NASB2020). The one God is here identified as the Father (Yahweh) alone.
  3. Jesus is not the only one, besides Yahweh, who has been called God in the Bible. God made Moses a god (Hebrew: elohim; Greek (LXX): theos) to Pharaoh ( Exod. 7:1). The judges of Israel were also called gods or Gods (Deut. 1:16-17; 2 Chron. 19:6;  Psa. 82:1-6; John 10:34-35). They were called gods (or Gods) because they were given power or authority by God to act in His stead. Their Godhood is not because they were uncreated; it was derived from the power they were given by God to judge, which is the prerogative of God. They were therefore gods (or Gods) by reason of the powerful office they occupied. Hence, the Psalmist call them the mighty and gods (Psa. 82:1). In other words, they were mighty gods. But none of them was called the Almighty. It may interest us to know that our Lord Jesus Christ was also called the mighty God (isa. 9:6). He, too, has never been called the Almighty.
  4. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” (Matt. 28:18 NIVUK). The power Jesus was given by God include “life in himself,” that is, the power to give life to others (John 5:26). He was also given the power to be the judge of the world (John 5:22; Acts 17:31). The power or authority he was given by God enabled him to act on God’s behalf. The fact that he was called God was not peculiar to him and should not be viewed as making him coequal with YHWH (Yahweh) or the LORD.

In John 1:2 the apostle wrote, “He [the Word] was with God in the beginning.” Assaid earlier, the beginning mentioned by John was a reference to the time of the creation of the universe.Does this imply that the Word, Jesus Christ, was not created? That is what Trinitarianism want the world to believe. But the Bible has taught us something quite different. The Bible has revealed that Jesus Christ was brought into existence by God before the beginning. God brought him forth out of Himself, an act similar to the birthing of a child. But Trinitarians who have created two Gods and made them coequal with the only God will not accept the truth revealed in the Bible. They will rather deny every biblical truth than reverse their erroneous interpretation of the Bible. The biblical evidence that God created Jesus Christ will be given soon in this article.

In verse 3 John wrote, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

This is the verse Trinitarians use as proof text that our Lord Jesus Christ was not created. They argue that, since all things were created by him, he cannot be a creation. But they have got John wrong. What the Bible has revealed is that God created him before the beginning when God used him as an agent of creation. Here are some of the biblical texts that say Jesus Christ was begotten or created by God:

“The LORD created me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. [23] “From eternity I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. [24] “When there were no ocean depths, I was born, When there were no springs abounding with water. [25] “Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, I was born; [26] While He had not yet made the earth and the fields, Nor the first dust of the world. [27] “When He established the heavens, I was there; When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, [28] When He made firm the skies above, When the springs of the deep became fixed, [29] When He set a boundary for the sea So that the water would not violate His command, When He marked out the foundations of the earth; [30] Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; And I was His delight daily, Rejoicing always before Him, [31]  Rejoicing in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of mankind.” (Prov. 8:22-31 NASB2020, boldface emphasis added by me).

The Lord Jesus Christ, here personified as wisdom, made it known that God created him before the beginning when he was beside God as a master workman in the creation of the heavens and the earth. But Trinitarians always try to cleverly reject this evidence by saying the passage is a mere personification of wisdom, one of God’s attributes. They will reject anything which proves that the Almighty God has no equal (Isa. 40;18, 25; 44:8; 45:5; 46:5).

“He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15 NASB2020, words in square brackets and emphasis added by me).

Here we have the irrefutable fact that Jesus was a creation of God. Paul called him “the firstborn of all creation” of God. It is instructive to note that a person cannot be the firstborn of any family, class, or group unless he is one of the persons in that family, class, or group. Whether the word “firstborn” is used in the literal sense of being the first to be born, or in the figurative sense of being the preeminent one, anyone called “firstborn” is invariably a member of the family or group of people of/over which he is the firstborn. The fact that our Lord Jesus Christ was called “the firstborn of all creation” irrefutably means that he is one of the creation of God. Prov. 8:22-31 has shown that God gave birth to him before creating all things through him in the beginning.

The message Paul was giving in Col. 1:15-20 is that Christ is the preeminent one among all of God’s creation. The fact that he is the preeminent one means that he is among God’s creation. “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old.” (Prov. 8:22 NIV).The first thing God ever did was to bring forth His only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, out of  Himself. God did this before creating the universe in the beginning.

“And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, ‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God:  (Rev. 3:14 NKJV).

Here, the Lord Jesus Christ called himself the beginning (Greek: ἀρχή arché) of God’s creation. The word arché has about five meanings. Trinitarians, in their bigoted zeal to equate Christ with God say that the word “beginning” means he was the originator of God’s creation. But what Christ was saying here was that he was the first-created. He wanted the Laodiceans to know that it was possible for them to be faithful just like himself who was faithful even though he was their fellow creation of God.

“Among all these I sought a resting place; in whose territory should I abide? [8] Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, ‘Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.’ [9] Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.’” (Sirach 24:7-9 NRSV-CI).

Here, Wisdom made it known that God, his Creator, was the one who chose Israel as the place where he should take up residence during his incarnation. Jesus Christ is here personified as Wisdom, as is the case in Proverbs.

Apostle Paul must have read these scriptures and known that they alluded to the Lord Jesus Christ. So he had no inhibition in his mind when he wrote that Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 2:2-3).

There are some who may say that Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus) is not one of the 66 canonical books. They need to ask themselves if the Song of Solomon is more inspired than any of deuterocanonical books. They also need to do their research on the men who removed the apocryphal books from the Bible.

Without him nothing was made that has been made

Trinitarians will throw this up and say, “There you are! He created all things! He was not created!”

Yes, Jesus created all things except himself. Trinitarians will have no problem agreeing with this axiom. But we must accept that while there are biblical texts which say Jesus was the first of God’s creation, there is no single Bible verse that supports the Trinitarian theory that Jesus was uncreated. Moreover, if indeed Jesus Christ was uncreated, as taught in the Trinitarian creeds, Jesus Christ would be wrong to have said that the Father (YHWH or Yahweh) is his God and Father.

John 1:3 does not say Jesus was uncreated. The fact that other Bible passages, some of which have been examined earlier, say he was the first of God’s creation nullifies the wrong conclusion people have made about the verse.

Conclusion

When John wrote that the Word was God and that he has been with [the] God in the beginning, he wrote what has been clearly taught in the Hebrew Bible. He used “Word” for the Son of God who was called “the word of the LORD” in the scriptures. By writing “the Word was with [the] God, and the Word was God,” John did not mean that the Word and [the] God are one and the same person. The Hebrew Bible has revealed that “the word of the LORD” and “the LORD” are two different persons. See Jer. 34:12 where it is written, “Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, [13] “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel says: ‘I made a covenant with your forefathers on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage…” (Jer. 34:12-13 NASB2020). The LORD sent His righteous servant (Isa. 53:11), known then as ”the word of the LORD” to Jeremiah.

Trinitarians want us to understand John 1:3 as saying that our Lord Jesus Christ was uncreated. But Bible passages such as Prov. 8:22-31, Sirach 24:7-12, Psa. 2:7, Col. 1:15, Rev. 3:14, are among the scriptures that indisputably prove that our Lord Jesus Christ was begotten by YHWH, the Father. There is no single Bible verse that supports the imagination that Jesus Christ was uncreated. But Trinitarians, in their usual manner, falsely interpret passages such as Phil.2:5-8, Col. 2:9, Gal. 4:4-5, and Heb. 2:9 to make them agree with their unbiblical doctrine.

Unknown to many Christians, the greatest danger of the Trinity dogma is the denial that God is the Supreme Being and that He has no equal. They do not openly deny many Bible truths about the Supremacy of God. They make the denial by twisting the scriptures and making them say something else (2 Pet. 3:16).

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What Does “The Father Is Greater Than I” Really Mean?

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In the closing hours of his ministry on earth Jesus told his disciples, ”You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28 NIVUK boldface emphases are mine throughout).

What did our Lord Jesus Christ mean when he said that the Father is greater than him?

Some Bible scholars say that Jesus made the statement in the sense that the Father is the one who sent him (John 14:24); and as he is the one sent, the sender is greater than him, the sent (John 13:16). It is true that the sender is greater than the one sent. This conclusion has a scriptural support. Therefore, it is plausible. But this may not be the only reason why Jesus made the statement.

Most Bible scholars and commentators say that Jesus Christ did not mean that he is inferior to the Father as a literal interpretation of the statement would suggest. They say that our Lord had two natures while he was on the earth; that he was God as well as a man. They say that, as God, he was equal to the Father, but inferior to the Father with regards to his manhood. They conclude that the statement made by our Lord Jesus Christ in John 14:28 was in regard to his human nature. This perspective is purely in conformity with the Trinitarian Christology. In the Athanasian Creed, it is written in lines30-35 the following:

30. “For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. 31. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world. 32. Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. 33. Equal to the Father as touching His Godhead [Godhood], and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood. 34. Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. 35. One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.”

This is where the vast majority of Bible scholars get their own ideas from. But there are theological and logical arguments that can be brought against this teaching:

  • There is no single passage in the Bible which says that Christ had two natures while he was on the earth.
  • Line 35 says that Christ did not convert his Godhood into flesh but that he, being God, simply put on human flesh. So, while he was on the earth, he was 100 percent God and 100 percent human. This is what the Creed meant by “perfect God and perfect man.” Three problems are present in this: (i) God is immortal (1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16); humans are mortal (Psa. 103:15; Isa.  51:12; Heb. 9:27). Mortality and immortality cannot coexist in the same body. Mortality must give way to immortality (1 Cor. 15:51-54). In the light of this, what Trinitarians have written about Christ is false. (ii) Since Christ, according to the Creed, was God and man in one body, he was equal to God and less than God while he was on the earth. This is logically impossible. It is an absurdity. (iii) If he was God and man in one body, what happened to his Godhood on the day he was hanged on the cross? Did God die?
  • The statement, “the Father is greater than I” is so explicitly made that there is no tenable reason not to accept it on its face value. It is as plain as when Christ said that God is in heaven. It is very bewildering and unfortunate that most Christians are defending a doctrine that is glaringly unbiblical and hopelessly full of absurdities and confusion. Unfortunately for Trinitarians, it does not matter if the Trinity dogma is unbiblical; what matters is that the Trinity dogma stays. Therefore, the Bible must be twisted and recklessly misinterpreted until it conforms to the Trinitarian hoax.

What did Jesus and his apostles say about God?

Before we can make an acceptable conclusion about what our Lord Jesus Christ meant in John 14:28b, it is helpful to consider what Christ and his apostles said about God.

Jesus called the Father “the one God,” “the only true God” (John 5:44; 17:3). He said the Father is his God and Father (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34; John 20:17; Rev. 3:12). In John 17:3, he made a distinction between himself and the true God. By implication  he has said he is not truly the one uncreated, supreme God who is called the Father of all (Eph. 4:6). He called himself the son of God (John 10:36). By these statements it is evidently clear that he placed himself in a class lower than that of the Father. It need not be the same as that of lesser Gods (or gods) among whom are some human beings (Psa. 82:1-6; John 10:34-36), it is nonetheless not that of God. Satan the Devil has been called the God (or god) of this world (2 Cor. 4:4). Therefore the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ has been called God in some places does not necessarily equate him with God.

We must understand that there is more than one definition of god. There is the Supreme God known in the Hebrew Bible as YHWH (or Yahweh). He is the only uncaused being (Psa. 90:2) who brought all other beings, including Jesus Christ, into existence. He has no equal (Isa. 45:5, 21, 22; 46:5, 9; 47:8; 43:10-12; 44: 6, 8). Only Him is called the Almighty in the Bible.

Another definition of God is “a spirit or being that has great power, strength, knowledge, etc., and that can affect nature and the lives of people.” The God or god of this category is not the perfect and supreme God, the All-powerful YHWH (Yahweh). By calling the Father ”the only true God,” and by calling Him his God, our Lord Jesus Christ impliedly placed himself in this second  category of God. Therefore, even though Jesus is called God in John 1:1 and 20:28, John and Thomas never regarded him as coequal with his God and Father. The modern day Trinitarian argument that Christ and God are coequal because they have the same nature is deceptive. The inferiority of Christ arises from having the same nature as God. The Godhood of the only begotten Son of God is not of the same status as that of the Almighty God. Jesus Christ is a God who has someone as his God (Psa. 45: 6-7; Eph. 1:3, 17; Rev. 3:12).

Apostles Peter and Paul  said the Father is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 11;31; Eph. 1:3, 17; 1 Pet. 1:3). They heard this from the mouth of Jesus Christ himself and they believed just what he said. But those who have been fooled by the Trinitarian dogma will not believe the words of the Master unless it agrees with the God-denigrating doctrine of men called the Trinity. Paul went further to say that the Father is the one God and that Jesus Christ is the Lord and mediator between men and God (1 Cor. 8:5-6; 1 Tim. 2:5). Apostle Peter informed us that God is the one who made Jesus the Lord and the Christ or Messiah (Acts 2:36). Paul made an analogy where he showed that Jesus is subordinate to God. He said:

“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. (1 Cor. 11:3 NASB2020).

We need not be great thinkers before we understand that, if Christ is God, and someone else is his God, then his Godhood must be in an inferior position when compared to the Godhood of that other person. This is what the Psalmist has said under the inspiration of God’s spirit in the verses quoted below:

[6] “Your throne, O God [Jesus, cf. Heb. 1:8], will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. [7] You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God [Yahweh], your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Psa. 45:6-7 NIVUK, words in square brackets added for clarification).

These scriptures have shown that God’s superiority over our Lord Jesus Christ is not in regard to Christ’s manhood. Even as God, Yahweh was his God. Contrary to the imaginations of the formulators of the Trinity, Christ has never been equal with God the Father in any sense of the word. He will never be (1 Cor. 15:24-28).

Salvation Issue in the New Testament

The New Testament nowhere requires us to believe that Jesus Christ is God. The thrust of the New Testament message is the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. John 3;16 is well known by all Christians. Although John’s prologue started in the first verse where he said “and the word was God,” he did not call on anyone to hold on to the Godhood of the Son as a canon of faith. This is evident from his epilogue where he wrote, ”but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31 NASB2020).

The apostle stated here that the purpose of his writing the fourth gospel is to make his readers believe in Jesus as the Messiah and as the Son of God. In his epistles, he laid a very strong emphasis to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. He wrote, “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. [15] Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:14-15 NASB2020).

“Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. [13] I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:12-13 NIVUK).

After Philip had preached to an Ethiopian eunuch on his way back home from Jerusalem, the man asked to be baptised. Philip said he was willing to baptise him only if he believed. The man said he believed. Believed that Jrsus is God? No! Read his confession below:

[37] “And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” (Acts 8:37 KJV).

The belief that was needed in the New Testament was that Jesus is the Messiah and is the Son of God. The other thing was that God raised him from the dead (Rom. 10:9).

What Does Son of God Mean?

The Bible makes us know that the angels, Adam, Israel, Solomon, and believers in Christ, are sons of God (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:4-7; Dan. 3:25, 28; Luke 3:38; Exod. 4:22; 2 Sam. 7:14; John 1:12; 1 John 3:1, 2). Therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ is not the only son of God. But he is the only begotten Son of God. However, one thing common to them is that they are all sons of God. The term “son of God” simply means that God is the one who brought them into existence. This is true of the angels and humans. It is also true of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no single biblical support for the Trinitarian conjecture that the term “Son of God” connotes Godhood with regards to Jesus Christ. Neither has the Bible ever taught that Jesus Christ self-existed. All the spirits and humans who are called the sons of God derive their existence from God. They are members of God’s family in heaven and on earth ( Eph. 3:14-15). The idea that the sonhood of Jesus connotes Godhood stems from the Trinitarian conjecture about God. It is not derived from the Bible.

Conclusion

We have seen from Psa. 45:6-7 (quoted by Paul in Heb. 1:8) that Jesus, the King/God has someone who is his God. Jesus and his apostles  affirmed the fact that God is his God. Therefore, his Godhood (or godhood) cannot be equated with the Godhood of the Father. The fact that the Father is greater than him has been from the beginning when God brought him into existence. It is not only in the sense that he was human that makes God greater than him. Moreover, God has ever been greater than our Lord Jesus Christ before God sent him into the world for the reconciliation of mankind back to God.

It is ridiculous to teach that Christ was equal with God and less then God at the same time. This teaching has no shred of support in the Bible. It is an absurdity. It is equally fatuous to say that God put on flesh. This suggests that mortality and immortality coexisted in Christ during his incarnation. This is scripturally false (cf. 1 Cor. 15:51-54) and logically untenable. If he was a perfect God while he was on the earth, how was it possible that he died? God is immortal (1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16).

It is spiritually unwise for any Christian to try to magnify Jesus Christ while at the same time demean the Almighty Father. What the Trinitarian dogma has succeeded in doing is to strip God of His excellent position and supremacy and give it to Jesus. But they need to know that such things never glorify God nor gladden the heart of Jesus Christ.

It is not surprising that Trinitarians are twisting the unambiguous statement from the mouth of Jesus to mean something else. See 2 Pet. 3:15-16. It is part of the grand Trinitarian scheme to reject anything that shows the Most High (known as YHWH in the Hebrew Bible) as the Supreme, Almighty, All-wise, and the only true God. Unknown to many Christians, no other teaching rejects the Supremacy of the Almighty Father like the Trinity has done. It is an anti-God doctrine.

Trinitarians should stop deceiving themselves and the world by using their cliché that the Trinity is a mystery. The Trinity is not a mystery; it is a mischief packaged in the fourth century against the Almighty God. There is perhaps no doctrine in Christendom which is so insidiously dangerous and heretical as the Trinity dogma.

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What Does Colossians 1:15 Mean?

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”He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col. 1:15 NASB2020).

There have been debates about this verse. While  some believe that this verse proves that Jesus was the first person brought into existence by God, others believe this verse is talking about his pre-eminence over the whole creation of God. Does this verse prove that Jesus was indeed brought into existence, that is, created by God?

One writer had this written in an online article captioned “What Does Colossians 1:15 Mean?”:

“Readers often pause and puzzle over Colossians 1:15 and its statement that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is “the firstborn of all creation.” Firstborn of all creation? Does that mean that Christ was “born” and that, therefore, there was a time when he did not exist? Sure, he would then still be the first to exist, which would be a place of primacy of sorts, yet he would be a created, finite being. But then wouldn’t that mean that he isn’t the second person of the Trinity, that he isn’t “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,” as the ancient Nicene Creed puts it? What would this all mean for what the orthodox Christian church has always otherwise confessed concerning the person of Christ? (Christopher A. Beetham, “What Does Colossians 1:15 Mean?”).

Beetham’s words here are typical of the way many Christians, including theologians and Bible translators now reason. They now use the Trinitarian creeds as the basis for interpreting and understanding the Bible. Without their knowing it, they place the creeds above the Bible. So, their line of thought is something like this: if the interpretation of the Bible is correct, it must conform with the Trinitarian creeds. Can we see how Trinitarianism has subverted the Bible, the inspired word of God?

Does Colossians 1:15 mean that Jesus was brought into existence, that is, created by God? Let the Bible interpret itself.

To start with, the word “firstborn “ (Greek: πρωτότοκος prōtotokos) is defined in Strong’s Greek Lexicon #4416 as the firstborn (a) of man or beast; (b) of Christ, the first born of all creation.

The Bauer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (BDAG), third edition, defines πρωτοτοκος (prōtotokos) on page 894 in two senses: 1. Literally, pertaining to birth order, firstborn; 2. Figuratively, pertaining to having special status associated with a firstborn.

The word under consideration is πρωτοτοκος (prōtotokos). It is made up of two words, πρωτό (proto), meaning first, and τοκος (tokos), derived from the root word τίκτω (tikto), meaning “to give birth.” Put together, the word prototokos literally means the first or eldest child born to a parent.

In the Hebrew Bible the firstborn child usually has a preeminent position in the family in the sense that the firstborn has a double portion in the inheritance of the father. If the father is a king, the firstborn is usually the heir apparent to the throne on the death of the king. Therefore, the literal and the figurative senses in which prototokos (firstborn) is defined in Bauer’s Lexicon (BDAG) are not mutually exclusive. An example is seen in Deut. 21:15-17 which says, [15] “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, [16] then it shall be on the day that he wills what he owns as an inheritance to his sons, he is not allowed to treat the son of the loved wife as the firstborn, at the expense of the son of the unloved, who actually is the firstborn son. [17] On the contrary, he shall acknowledge the firstborn, the son of the unloved wife, by giving him a double portion of everything that he owns, for he was the beginning of his strength; to him belongs the right of the firstborn.” (Deut. 21:15-17 NASB).

So, in Colossians 1:15, where the Son is called the “firstborn” of/over all creation, Paul’s mind was that the Son was both the first in time and the preeminent one in the group of God’s creation. It does not matter whether the preposition “of” or “over” is used by any translator. The truth is that no one in the Bible is called “firstborn” of/over a group of people  of which he is not a member. For example, what made Paul and John call Jesus Christ “the firstborn of/from the dead” (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5) is the fact that Jesus Christ had tasted death. Therefore, among those who died, Christ is the greatest. The apostles would not have used that title for him if he had not died, and resurrected. By calling Christ the “firstborn of God’s creation,” Paul has regarded our Lord Jesus Christ to be the first and the greatest of God’s creation. Insomuch as the Son was brought forth out of God’s own being, he was created by God. Humans beget humans, and Spirit begets spirit (John 3:6). So too, God begets God (Psa. 45:6-7). The Godhood of Jesus is different from that of the Father. While the Father, whose name is YHWH (or Yahweh), is the only self-existent being, thus making Him the one, Supreme God, Jesus is God because he was begotten by the one God. Jesus is not the one God. He is the only begotten Son of God. God brought him forth out of Himself before creating all other beings and things through him. When Paul wrote, “he is before all things” (Col. 1:17), the apostle was simply stating the fact that Jesus was already existing before other things were created by God through him. But Paul didn’t  mean that Jesus self-existed or that God did not pre-exist him. If Jesus self-existed, making him coequal and coeternal with the Father, then he couldn’t have been the Son of God. Moreover, our faith cannot be said to be monotheistic. If Jesus was indeed begotten by God, which is what the Bible has revealed, we cannot deny the fact that he was first created by God, before God created all other things through him. This is affirmed by other Scriptures. Proverbs 8:22 says, “The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old.” (Prov. 8:22 NIVUK). The NASB2020 renders it, “The LORD created me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old.” This verse reveals that the first thing God ever did was the bringing forth of His only begotten  Son.

Another wisdom book says the same thing about the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ was first created by God before God did any other thing. It says, “Then my Creator, who created the universe, told me where I was to live. ‘Make your home in Israel,’ he said. ‘The descendants of Jacob will be your people.’ [9] He created me in eternity, before time began, and I will exist for all eternity to come.”  (Sirach 24:8-9 GNTD).

Some people say these are mere personifications of wisdom. But the truth is that the Son of God, in his pre-incarnate existence, is the one personified as Wisdom in Prov. 8:22-31 and Sira 24:1-12. He is the wisdom of God and the power of God (1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 2:2-3).

Let me state here now that I am not a Jehovah’s Witness, neither do I agree with all their doctrines. But I am fully convinced that they got it right when they said that God first created Jesus Christ  before God created other things through him.

Do the verses that follow Col. 1:15 prove that Jesus was uncreated? Not at all! In Col. 1:15, Paul made us know that Jesus is the first and the preeminent one among God’s creation. He then gave proof of what he wrote in verse 15 in the next five verses. Verses 16-20 do not contradict the fact that Jesus Christ was created. What Paul described in verses 16-20 serve as proof that Jesus Christ is the preeminent one among God’s creation. Once again, I need you to know that Jesus Christ could not have been the preeminent one over God’s creation if he was not one of the beings created by God. This is an indisputable fact.

The Testimony of other Scriptures

There are other Bible passages which testify to the fact that Jesus is indeed created by God. Here are a few of them:

“I will declare the decree: The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.” (Psa. 2:7 NKJV).

Apostle Paul quoted this verse three times in Acts 13:33, Heb. 1:5, and Heb. 5:5. The Hebrew word יָלַד (yalad) used in Psalm 2:7 is defined in Strong’s Hebrew Lexicon at #3205 as “to bear young, to beget, medically, to act as midwife, to show lineage.” Its Greek translation in the Septuagint (or LXX) is γεγέννηκά (gegennēka) which is defined in Strong’s Greek Lexicon at #1080 as “to procreate; figuratively, to regenerate.” The same Greek word γεγέννηκά  (gegennēka) is used by Paul in all the three places where he quoted Psa. 2:7. It is evident that the concept of procreation of a young one is used both in the Hebrew and the Greek. Having seen these verses, we are left no ground of arguing that our Lord Jesus Christ self-existed, making him coequal and coeternal with the Father.

“And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, ‘These things says the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God” (Rev. 3:14 NKJV).

Here, our Lord Jesus Christ called himself “the beginning of the creation of God.” The word “beginning” is a translation of the Greek word ἀρχὴ (archē or arkhē). The word archē or arkhē has five basic meanings:

  • Beginning, origin;
  • The person or thing that commences, the first person or thing in a series, the leader;
  • That by which anything begins to be, the active cause, the originator;
  • The extremity of a thing, as of the corners of a sail;
  • The first place, principality, rule, primacy, magistracy, as of angels and demons.

Without doing arbitrary cherry-picking, the second definition is the most appropriate in this verse. Here  Jesus was saying that he was the first of God’s creation. This second definition is the one that harmonises with other Scriptures. It is instructive to note that, even though all things were created by him, he was never found at any time vaunting himself. So, he couldn’t here be telling John to write to the Laodiceans and remind them that he was their creator or originator. The message he was sending here is that he was the first of God’s creation. And as the Laodiceans themselves  are the creation of God, it is expected of them to be faithful witnesses just like himself who was also created by God, albeit in a different form.

The last Bible passage I want to cite is the most telling but also the most controversial of the passages:

[22] “The LORD created me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. [23] From eternity I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. [24] When there were no ocean depths, I was born, when there were no springs abounding with water. [25] Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was born; [26] while He had not yet made the earth and the fields, nor the first dust of the world. [27] When He established the heavens, I was there; when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, [28] when He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed, [29] when He set a boundary for the sea so that the water would not violate His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth; [30] then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was His delight daily, rejoicing always before Him, [31]  rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of mankind.” (Prov. 8:22-31 NASB2020).

The common argument is that Solomon was personifying wisdom in this passage which forms a part of the immediate context  from verses 8:1 to 9:18. That is true. But there is more to verses 22 to 31 of chapter 8. The ten verses are an allusion to the Lord Jesus Christ, the power of God and the wisdom  of God (1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 2:2-3). As one of the prophets of Israel,   Solomon wrote Prov. 8:22-31 as he was carried along by the Spirit of God (2 Pet. 1:21). He was carried in the Spirit back in time to the pre-incarnate existence of the Messiah.

The Hebrew word קָנָה (qanah or kanah) used in verse 22 is defined in Strong’s Hebrew #7069 as “to erect, create, to procure, by purchase, to own.” It should be noted that wisdom is one of the attributes of God. It has been part of God right from dateless eternity. We therefore do not expect it to be erected or created. The word qanah or kanah only makes sense in this verse when used in relation to something created. As an indirect reference to the Son of God, it clearly shows that he was created and owned by God “at the beginning of His way, before His works of old;  when there were no ocean depths, I was born (or brought forth).” Then in verse 30 wisdom said, “Then I was beside Him, as a master workman; and I was His delight daily, rejoicing always before Him.” This was the person who God was giving the command “let there be …” in Genesis 1 and 2. He is the one through whom  God created the heavens and the earth (Heb. 1:2). Wisdom, as an attribute of God, does not stay beside God. It is a part of God. The one who was talking in Prov. 8:22-31 must be  a literal being, not an abstract thing. In verse 31 “she” said, “Rejoicing in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of mankind.” Compare this verse with Job 38:4-7 where we are told that the sons of God, also known as the morning stars, rejoiced when they saw what God created. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the bright morning star (Rev. 22:16) said in verse 31 that he also rejoiced over “the world, His [God’s] earth.” The words in Prov. 8:22-31 are too pungent and too telling to be waved away as mere poetical personification of wisdom by Solomon. They affirm the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ has an origin which is God Himself. God brought him forth out of Himself, unlike the other creation of God who were brought forth out of nothing (Rom. 4:17b) before the breath of God gave them life (Gen. 2:7; Job 33:4). The Bible has no iota of support for the Trinitarian teaching that Jesus self-existed.

With regards to the use of the feminine pronouns “she” and “her” for wisdom, I  remind my fellow Christians of the fact that Hebrew is one of the gendered languages in which every noun is given either the masculine or feminine gender. The law of the gendered language is that a masculine noun must have a masculine pronoun, and a feminine noun must have a feminine pronoun.. Since חָכְמָה (chokhmah, wisdom) is feminine, it must be assigned feminine pronouns. Therefore, the feminine pronouns which chokhmah (wisdom) has do no make it a literal being with a biological gender. As an abstract thing, wisdom is neither a male nor a female being. If a dynamic translation of Proverbs had been done, the pronoun that should have been used should have been the neuter “it.” No one should therefore be confused by the fact that the pronouns “she” or “her” used for wisdom means the passage cannot be applicable to our Lord Jesus Christ, who was a male being.

Conclusion

Our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Bible, was brought forth out of the being of God. As an offspring of God, he possessed the nature of God. Therefore, the Bible was not wrong when he is called God. But it should be noted that in the place where he is called God is the very place where God, that is the Father, is said to be his God (Psa. 45:6-7). So, Jesus is a God that has someone else as his God and Father. His Godhood is therefore derived from, subordinate to, and subsumed in the Godhood of the Father. Nothing could be  further from the truth than to teach that Jesus Christ self-existed, making him coequal and coeternal with the Father. If that were the case, he couldn’t have been called the Son of God. Neither would YHWH God have been his God and Father. If we believe in more than one self-existed, Almighty, God we cannot claim to believe in one God.

Inasmuch as Jesus was not self-existent, Trinitarians are left with no tenable ground of claiming that he was not created. The Father who brought him into existence automatically  becomes the one who created him. In the Nicene Creed, they confess their “belief in Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of the Father, before all worlds;…begotten, not made.”  But in their doctrine of eternal generation of the Son, they deny the begottenness of the Son. They say that the eternal generation of the Son means that the Son and the Father have been coexisting eternally, and that there was never a time the Father was without the Son. In other words, the Son was never the offspring of God. They expressly stated this in the Athanasian Creed where they wrote, “And in this Trinity none is afore [before] or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.” (Lines 25-26).

To me, this amounts to a denial of the sonship of Jesus Christ (cf. John 20:31; 1 John 2:23). See also John 14:28 where our Lord Jesus Christ said, ”the Father is greater than I.” So long as the Trinitarian  Creeds are diametrically opposed to the ipsissima verba of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says or teaches nothing except what  God has commanded him to say or teach (John 12:48-50; 7:16), the Trinitarian doctrine is a human supposition and a false one. Its orthodoxy does not confer on it any truthfulness.

In the Bible, the word πρωτότοκος (prōtotokos, firstborn) is used either literally of the first child born to a parent, or figuratively as the preeminent child. The first child can still be the preeminent  child. But whichever the sense in which “firstborn” is used, no one can be called “firstborn” unless the person belongs to the group, family, or class of/over which  he or she is the firstborn. The phrase “firstborn of (or over) the creation of God” used by Paul in Col. 1:15 necessarily means that our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the creation of God.  This is an irrefutable fact.

Too often, Bible scholars fail to bring together the many passages of the Bible which teach on a subject and draw out the truth revealed in them. They focus on the semantic of just one word in a verse and make their conclusions based on that word alone. The result of this unsatisfactory exegesis  is that many learned men are ever studying but not getting the truth taught in the Bible. While a sound knowledge of the original words used in the Bible is necessary, it should not be the only basis on which we draw our conclusions. Good biblical hermeneutics demands the consideration of many factors in determining the truth in the Bible.

There are Bible passages which explicitly show that the Lord Jesus Christ was the first creation of God. They include Prov. 8:22-31, Sira 24:8-9, Rev. 3:14, and this passage under discussion, Col. 1:15. God first created him before using him as a creative agent.

The Trinitarian phrase, “begotten, not made” is dubious. If he was begotten, it automatically means he was made or created. Conclusively, what Paul wrote in Col. 1:15 is that our Lord Jesus Christ is the first of God’s creation. God brought him into existence before using him as a creative agent.

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Should You Believe In The Trinity? Part 2

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In this second part of my article, I will briefly discuss two more reasons why the Trinity is not a Bible doctrine, and then conclude the article.

Point #6: The Trinitarian Internecines

Unknown to many Christians today is the fact that people in the past centuries accepted the Trinitarian dogma, not because it was a good doctrine or because it was biblical; it was neither. It became accepted because people were forced not to criticise it or reject it. There were people who were imprisoned or killed for criticising the dogma or openly rejecting it. The history of Western Europe between the fourth century CE, when Trinity was invented, and the eighteenth century was one painted with gory stories of Christians killing Christians for speaking against what was regarded as orthodox belief.

In their book entitled The Age of Faith, Will and Ariel Durant wrote on the period 325-1300 CE. They explained that more Christians were killed by their fellow Christians during the dispute over the meaning of the Trinity than those who were killed during the persecution of Christians by Pagan Rome.

In Western Europe and in some parts of the USA, the state joined hands with the church to persecute those who denied the Trinity. These persecutions came to their climax in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. It was during this period that England enacted The Blasphemy Act in 1697. The Trinitarian aspect of the Act was repealed by the The Doctrine of Trinity Act, 1813. The act made it a crime for ‘‘any person educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion … to deny the Holy Trinity.’’ History tells us that, in England, between 1548 and 1612 seven men were put to death for their anti-trinitarian view.

One death that was particularly painful was that of a 20-year-old medical student whose name was Thomas Aikenhead. He was hanged on January 8, 1697 for denying or criticising the Trinity.

There were other people who were martyred all over Europe for committing what was then tagged the “heresy of Unitarianism.” Anyone who had an anti-trinitarian conviction was then called a Unitarian heretic. Those killed included:

Ludwig Haetzer who was beheaded in Konstanz, Germany, in 1529.

Katarzyna Weiglowa, a Polish woman who was burned at the stake at age 80 for “apostasy to Judaism.” She was killed in 1539 for converting from Roman Catholicism to Judaism which does not believe in the Trinity.

Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He also devoted much time to the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages. In 1531, he published a treatise in Latin entitled “De Trinitatis erroribus libri vii” (“On the Errors of the Trinity”). For attacking the Trinity, he incurred the anger of the Trinitarians. He was arrested in Geneva by the Calvinists, tried from August 1 to October 26, 1553 and was condemned to death for heresy. The next day, he was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland. The notable theologian, John Calvin, was one of those who hunted Michael Servetus all over Europe until they got him and killed him.

Iwan Tyszkiewicz, a Polish member of the Socinian church who was beheaded in 1611 for the so-called “blasphemy of Unitarianism.”

There were also people who, though were not killed for denying the Trinity suffered some form of loss for the “blasphemy of Unitarianism.” One of them was a friend of the notable English mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton. His friend, William Whiston lost his professorship at Cambridge for his anti-Trinitarian stance in 1711.

Sir Isaac Newton himself wrote a dissertation in 1690 entitled “An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.” These notable corruptions were found in 1 John 5:7-8 and 1 Timothy 3:16, corruptions that were made in some late manuscripts to make these passages appear Trinitarian in their content. Newton did not publish the dissertation during his lifetime, likely due to the persecution of non-trinitarians in England at that time. The dissertation was first published in English in 1754, 27 years after Newton’s death.

There was also a pamphlet published in 1693 which criticised the Trinity dogma. It was burnt by order of the House of Lords, and in the next year its printer and author were prosecuted.

Many people who were discerning have, over the past seventeen centuries, seen the falseness of and absurdities in the Trinity dogma and they have attacked it fairly and honestly. But the brutal force of secular governments in the past seventeen centuries have kept that manmade doctrine alive to this day.

The way the Western world is now forcing people to accept LGBTQIA+ lifestyle as normal was the same way they forced people to accept the Trinitarian hoax over many centuries. State enforcement of the Trinity started with Emperor Constantine I in the fourth century and continued up to the eighteenth century in Europe, spanning a period of about 1400 years. Its acceptance today by many Christians, be they Catholics, Protestants, Pentecostals or Evangelicals should never be taken to mean that it is a biblical and true doctrine. Anyone who takes time to do a personal study of the Bible will see that the Trinitarian teaching is one dogma which insults the Supremacy and the Almightiness of God. It is full of absurdities, contradictions and confusion. It is grossly unbiblical and glaringly uninspired. The Trinity dogma is not from God because the one God of the Bible, the Almighty YHWH (Yahweh), is not a God of confusion, but of peace (1 Cor. 14:33).

Point #7: What History says about the formulators of the Trinity

Some historical details about the men who invented the Trinity dogma leaves no honest person with any doubt that they were not inspired by God in their adventure to redefine the One God. Here, I cite a few excerpts from chapter one of my book, The Truth About The Trinity:

“The bitterness and hatred many of the bishops had toward one another often played out during the ecumenical councils or the local synods. Much of the attacks against one another were instigated, not by their zeal for the truth, but more often by envy, jealousy and selfish ambition. Any cleric that was becoming popular either in his See or monastic circle or that was recognized by the imperial leaders was targeted and the weapon was often a charge of heresy, if there was nothing in the man’s life that could be used to bring him down. Many of the church fathers, in a manner of speaking, bit and devoured one another (Gal. 5:15).”

“The church fathers held the writings of men, rather than the Bible, as their final authority on doctrinal issues. A typical example was the condemnation of Eutychius by Patriarch Flavian of Constantinople in 448 CE. Eutychius had taught that Jesus Christ in his incarnation had only the human nature in him. His teaching was contradictory to the Nicene Creed which stated that Christ had two natures, divine and human, in him during his incarnation. He was accused of heresy by Domnus II of Antioch, and Eusebius, the bishop of Dorylaeum. This dispute prompted Archbishop (or Patriarch) Flavian to summon a synod of forty bishops in Constantinople. The Patriarch presided over the synod. On November 8, 448 CE when Eutychius appeared before the council, he was asked to defend his teaching of Christ having only one nature in his incarnation. Eutychius stood by his teaching. Then the Patriarch showed him proof of his error. What proof did he show Eutychius? It was not relevant passages from the Bible. Patriarch Flavian showed him proofs from the writings of Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria which were regarded as authorities. Eutychius was condemned of heresy and was deposed as archimandrite (leader of a monastery) or presbyter.”

“Perhaps the biggest of the evils found in many of the church fathers was political manoeuvring. History is replete with how the bishops always tried to gain the attention and support of the emperors, especially during the Ecumenical Councils where the emperors were physically present. Hosius, Athanasius, the three Cappadocians, Arius were just a few of them. It was this overplay of politics that led them to confer the title of Pontifex Maximus (greatest pontiff) on Constantine I and the emperors after him. Before his becoming an emperor that title was conferred on only some select, notable and worthy clerics. The church fathers used their connections with the emperors as a weapon to fight against one another. Deposition, exile or imprisonment of church fathers by the emperors (or by Archbishops or Popes so authorized by the emperors) became a common experience.”

“The unholy romance between the church fathers and the emperors, beginning from Constantine I, became an albatross that prevented spiritual growth and maturation for the church. As at the time the church fathers were deposing one another for heresy while decreeing the heresies that appealed to them into creeds for the Church, little did they realise that they, as an ecumenical body, had transformed into the “Great Harlot, the Mother of Harlots” (Rev. 17). They rode on the beast having seven heads and ten horns (the emperors of the Roman Empire) and the emperors destroyed them spiritually by corrupting them with pseudo political power. It is not surprising that they called themselves the Great Church (Latin: “ecclesia magna”) at that time. However, little did they know that they had become the Great Harlot in God’s sight.”

“About 150 bishops, mostly from the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, were at the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. But does it not sound bewildering that when Gregory stepped aside as the leader of the Council, no other bishop was found fit to lead the Council proceedings? Nectarius, a city official had to be brought in, hurriedly baptized and made to preside over the Councilproceedings. These men who were so terribly divided that they were pleased to be led by a layperson were the ones who formulated the Trinitarian dogma.”

“Christians should also not lose sight of the fact that the church fathers were not the only ones who promulgated the Trinitarian creeds. The emperors, apart from promulgating the decrees which enforced the Council decisions, also had major inputs in the creeds. With regard to the Council of Nicaea, the Encyclopaedia Britanica wrote: “Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed … the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the Council …. Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination.” – (1971 edition, Vol. 6, “Constantine” page 386).”

“These historical bits and pieces have been written out to let my fellow  Christians know that the Trinitarian creeds were not given through either divine dictation, such as the one that took place at Mount Sinai, or through God’s inspiration. That is the reason the Trinitarian dogma is grossly at variance with the revealed truth in the Bible.”

The unsavoury historical details about the men who formulated the Trinitarian dogma cannot be overlooked. Both the fawning bishops and the overbearing Roman emperors, with their idolatrous background, gave the world the  Trinity. This fact stands as the seventh major reason why the Trinity is a hoax.

Conclusion

The Trinitarian dogma rejected the biblical fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. It says the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are coequal and coeternal Gods. It also rejected the unambiguous statement by Jesus Christ that he is less than the Father (John 14:28).

The Trinity teaches many absurdities, as well as contradict both the Bible and itself.

Over a period of about 1400 years, Christians worldwide were forced by many governments in Europe to accept the Trinitarian dogma. Many people were imprisoned or made to lose valuables or even killed for standing up against the God- denigrating theory of Trinitarianism. When worldly governments get involved in religious issues  it is often not to glorify God.

History has painted unsavoury stories about the hatred the formulators of the Trinitarian dogma had for one another. Moreover, the Roman emperors made significant contributions to the Trinitarian creeds despite the fact that they were babes in Christian matters, lacking sound biblical knowledge and insight.

The Trinity teaching simply refused to accept the biblical teaching that the Father is the only uncaused cause of all lives, including that of our Lord Jesus Christ. It refused to accept that the Father is the only self-existent being, the only Supreme and Almighty God, who pre-existed our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son that He brought forth out of His own being.

The Trinitarian instruction that the Trinity should be regarded as an incomprehensible “mystery,” which should not be questioned, but be accepted by “blind faith” negates the injunction of the Bible which requires of us to test all things and hold firmly to only that which is good and true (1 Thes. 5:21; 1 John 4:1; 1 Cor. 14:29; cf. Acts 17:10-12). The Trinitarian instruction not to probe the Trinity teaching is a Satanic ploy that has held Christendom under the spell of this false teaching to this very day.

Everyone has the right to choose what to believe and what not to believe. Thankfully, we are no more in the Christian era when people were forced by the state to believe in whatever they have approved. But as a Christian, you need to be sure that your belief is well founded on biblical truth rather than the fantasies and theories of men. You also need to grow beyond the level where you indiscriminately or incuriously believe in all doctrines just because they are taught by your church or pastor. Take time to critically review what your church or pastor has been teaching you. There should be no excuse that the reason you believe in a doctrine is because your church or pastor is teaching it. The Trinity teaching is a hoax.

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