Unique

“And eternal life is this: to know you the one true God, and him whom you sent, Yeshua the Messiah” (John 17:3, CJB).

The statement cited above was made by our Lord Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ) as part of His prayer to God the Father. In the verse, He distinguished between Himself and the Father whom He called “the only true God” and He said eternal life is gained by knowing the two of them.

What did He mean when He called the Father “the one true God”? After all, the Psalmist called Jesus God (Psalm 45:6) and Isaiah called Him “Mighty God” (Isa. 9:6). Apostle John called Him God who was with God in the beginning (John 1:1). One of His disciples named Thomas called Him ‘My Lord and My God” (John 20:28). All these passages have revealed that the Lord Jesus Christ is God or a God Being.

However, Psalm 45:7 says God is His God. Hebrews 1:8-9 which is a quotation of Psalm 45:6-7 makes us understand that the Psalm refers to the Son of God and someone else who is called His God. We therefore see Jesus Christ as a God who has the Supreme Being as His God. Jesus Christ Himself called the Father His God while He was on earth here and after His ascension to heaven. On the cross, He cried out to God the Father saying, “my God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). After His resurrection from the dead, He said to Mary Magdalene that God is His Father and His God (John 20:17). After His ascension to heaven, He made a very strong emphasis that God the Father is His God. He used the words “my God” four times in Revelation 3:12. Two glaring facts are seen in these texts – (i) Jesus Christ is God. What does that mean? (ii) There is a Supreme one who is the God and Father of Jesus Christ. The Supreme One is called the One God (Deut. 6:4; 4:35; Isa. 44:6, 8; 45:5; Mal. 2:10; Mark 12:32; 1 Cor. 8:6; 1 Tim. 2:5; Jam. 2:19; John 5:44; 17:3). Does this not mean that there are two Gods in the Bible? This article explains how the Godhood of Christ does not negate the oneness of God as clearly taught in the Bible.

The Dilema of Men Without Insight

The lack of scriptural insight has caused men to do wild speculations about God and His Son Jesus Christ. Some have said that since the Son is God, He is coequal with God the Father. Others have taken another extreme position by saying that inasmuch as God the Father is His God, the Son cannot be God. Some said that in His prehuman existence, the Son was archangel Michael, the first being created by God before God created all other things through Him. Oneness Pentecostals teach that the Father and the Son are not two separate and distinct persons. They teach that the Son was the Father in the flesh and, therefore, the name of the one God is Jesus Christ. On their part, Trinitarians say the one God is a union or conglomerate of three distinct, self-existed, coequal and coeternal Gods – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

These numerous speculations about God, His Son, and His holy spirit are clear evidences that many people who say they are Christians do not really know what the Bible teaches about God and the one He sent into the world to save the world from sin and death, the Lord Jesus Christ.

As rightly observed by Ellen Gould White (1827-1915), “The truth plainly revealed in the Bible have been involved in doubt and darkness by learned men who, with a pretense of great wisdom  teach that the Scriptures have a mystical, a secret, scriptural meaning not apparent in the language employed. These men are false teachers. It was to such a class that Jesus declared, ‘You know not the scriptures, neither the power of God’… If there were no false teachers to mislead and confuse their [people’s] minds, a work would be accomplished that would make angels glad, and that would bring into the fold of Christ thousands upon thousands who are now wandering in error.”

There Is Only One God

Our Lord Jesus Christ said that the Father is the one true God. Put another way, although Jesus Christ possesses Godhood which He inherited by being the only begotten Son of God, He is not the one true God. Put yet in other words, He said the Father is truly the one God. This is one truth that was well understood by His disciples. They knew that the one Supreme Being is the one God. In their writings, they affirmed this fact. Apostle Peter wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:3). Apostle John wrote, “To him [Jesus Christ] who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood, and he made us to be a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and the dominion forever and ever, Amen” (Rev. 1:6, WEB). Apostle Paul wrote severally that the Father is the one God. He wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing…” (Eph. 1:3, WEB). He also wrote, “I ask the glorious Father and God of our Lord Jesus Christ to give you his spirit. The Spirit will make you wise and let you understand what it means to know God.” (Eph. 1:17, CEV).

It is evident from the verses quoted above, among many others, that Yahweh who is the one and only Supreme Being is the one God and He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one and only self-existed Being. Every other being, including our Lord Jesus Christ, derived their existence from Him. There is no other being who came into existence by himself.

In the Old Testament, it is clearly and profusely stated that there is one God. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ and His apostles made it crystal clear that the one God is the Father of all beings. He is not the conjectured One God who is made up of three self-existent, coequal and coeternal Gods. If there are three self-existed Gods who are coequal and coeternal, none of them can ever claim to be the God of the other one. That teaching is totally at variance with the plain truth revealed in the Bible. In fact, there are only two God Beings known in the Bible – Yahweh, the Father and Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus Christ), the one and only begotten Son of God. Nowhere has the Bible said the holy spirit of God is itself God. The Godhood of the Son of God does not in any way deny the fact that the Father is the one God. This shall be explained in this article.

The only begotten of the Father

There are three classes of beings in existence. The first is the self-existent Spirit Being called God. The second class is composed of created spirit beings called angels (Heb. 1:7, 13,14). There is also the human being created by God (Gen. 1:26, 27). The angels and the human are called sons of God because they derived their lives from Him (Job 1:6; 2:1; Luke 3:38). Jesus is also called the Son of God because He derived His existence from God. But unlike the angels and the human who were brought forth out of nothing (Rom. 4:17; Heb. 11:3), Jesus Christ came out of God Himself, before the beginning. The eternal, self-existent God brought Him out of Himself through a divine, spiritual begettal which is different from and superior to our begettal by our parents. The Omnipotent One had no need of a female partner in order to bring forth another Spirit of His kind. See John 3:6 and John 4:24. That is why the Bible called the Son the “monogenes”, a Greek word which means “the only begotten”. He is the only Son of God who was begotten by God Himself. He did not self-exist. He derived His existence from God who begot Him.

By God’s divine and immutable law, every offspring of any living thing inherits the nature and attributes of its begetter (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21-25). That is why trees produce trees of their kind,  animals bear animals of their kind, and birds, fishes, reptiles and insects produce offsprings of their own kind. This is why the offspring of a human being is a human being. It is by that same law that the one begotten by God is Himself a God Being. He has the same nature as God who gave birth to Him.

When, therefore, the Psalmist called Jesus God in Psalm 45:6 (compare Heb. 1:8, 9), it was not in the sense that He is the supreme, self-existent one. It is purely in the sense that He inherited the same God nature as God Himself who gave birth to Him. That is why in the very next verse the Psalmist said God [the Father] is His God. This fact is made plain by Apostle Paul when he wrote of the Son that “He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force  he should try to become equal with God” (Phil. 2:6, GNB (TEV),1976 Edition). In many parts of the New Testament, Jesus Christ and His apostles testified to the fact that the one God is both God and Father to Jesus Christ.

The first thing that makes our Lord Jesus Christ unique is the fact that He is the only one who has the same nature as God Himself. This is so by virtue of His being the direct offspring of God. In His prehuman existence, He was not in the same class as humans (John 1:1, 14) neither was He in the same class as the created spirit beings called angels (Heb. 1:1-14). His becoming human amounted to a temporary break in His divinity so as to save us from the punishment that we deserve because of sin.

Life in Himself

Jesus Christ said, “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself” (John 5:26, NASB).           

This verse says that God has life in Himself. By the phrase “life in Himself” is meant that God has in Himself the “source” or “fountain” of life. It is from this fountain in God that life is derived. God is immortal because life resides in Him. By being the direct offspring of God, the Son got this attribute from God. So He too became a source of life. It is from this fountain that the Son gave life to all of God’s creation (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2; Col. 1:15-17). This power of creation was “given’ or “granted” to the Son by the Father (John 5:21-26). This is why the angels of God have a command to worship the Son (Heb. 1:6) because He is their creator. The Father who gave the Son to also have life in Himself is the principal creator.

We see therefore that another thing that makes Jesus Christ unique is the fact that He, like the Father, is a giver of life (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:6, 17; Col. 1:15-17). Being the one through whom God created all things is another reason He is called God like the one God. But we must always remember that the Father forever remains His God (Ps. 45:7; Rev. 3:12). Therefore the Godhood of the Son is derived from, subordinate to, and subsumed in, the Godhood of the only self-existent One who is “Supreme over Christ” (1 Cor. 11:3, GNB).

The Old Testament says that Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one (Deut. 6:4). The New Testament affirmed it that God is one and He is the one who made His “monogenes” a Creator, Saviour, Redeemer, Lord of lords, King of kings, etc, on a secondary or subordinate basis. But the principal Creator, Saviour, or Redeemer is God Himself. Though the Son is called King of kings or Lord of lords, the Supreme King of kings and Lord of lords is the Father. Only Him is God of gods. Only him is called God, the Almighty. Both the Father and the Son share the title of Alpha and Omega (Greek) or Aleph and Tau (Hebrew) because both of them were there at the creation of all things (Gen. 1:26, 27; John 1:1-3) and they’ll live forever and ever.

The Almighty God whose name is Yahweh or Yehowah is the one called God in the Bible. His Son whose name is Yeshua, although He has the same nature as God, is called the Son of God. There is no one called God the Son or God the Holy Spirit in the entire Bible. The Son will rule alongside the Father in the eternal Kingdom of God (Eph. 5:5; Rev. 11:15; Rev. 21:22-23) but not as equal Kings. The Son will rule over the Kingdom of God but in subjection to the Supreme authority of God the Father (1 Cor. 15:24-28).

Damnable Doctrines

Having seen the relationship of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Father, it is easy to point out some false doctrines that have been imbibed by uninformed Christians.

1. That God is made up of three persons or Gods- the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.

2. The Son and the Holy Spirit are coequal with the Father.

3. The Father and the Son are one and the same person.

4. God is one Being who manifest Himself at different times as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

5. The name of the one God is Jesus Christ.

6. While Jesus Christ was on this earth, He was a perfect God and perfect man residing in the same body at the same time.

7. The Holy Spirit is the “third” divine person in a Trinity. He is also a giver of life.

These and many more are mere human conjectures and Satan has sown them into human hearts to cause confusion and to lead people into damnable heresies. Disappointingly, many ignorant but proud people have taught them to ignorant people who now resist and reject God’s truth.

Satan has always employed two weapons in his war against God’s people. He uses the force of persecution against the truthful ones of God and the fraud of perversion of the truth in order to lead people astray from the truth. All he wants is to ensure that people don’t know the true God. His schemes have been exposed to God’s people but those who are unwise and proud are falling prey to his evil traps. They get so deceived that they begin to falsely interpret the Bible.  That is why some Bible translators have twisted Philippians 2:6 and made it say that Jesus Christ is equal with God. Many are doggedly defending the Trinitarian dogma which is manifestly contradictory to the doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy apostles. Many are refusing to accept the truth that there is no literal “third” divine person or God, the one Trinitarians call “God the Holy Spirit”. The fact that the Bible talks of only two divine Persons, God and His Son, makes the doctrine of Trinity which means “three divine Persons or Gods united in one God” a blatantly unbiblical, false and preposterous one.

The Spirit of God which is also called the Holy Spirit is within God just as man’s spirit is within him (1 Cor. 2:11). A man’s spirit is not another person from the man; it is part of the man. So too, is the Spirit of God, also known as the Holy Spirit, not another person from God. It is grossly illogical and absurd to imagine God having another God inside Him. How terribly deluded Trinitarians are!

The teachings of Modalists or Oneness Pentecostals who say that the one God is the one who manifests Himself in the Persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are also bizarre and incongruent with the revealed truth in the Bible. The one who became flesh or human being is the Son of God. God the Father Himself did not become flesh. The fact that two beings are called Father and Son are enough proof that they are two separate and distinct Persons. The Son is the one called Yeshua the Messiah or Jesus Christ. Those who say that the name of the one God is Jesus Christ only exhibit the fact that they have been strongly deluded (2 Thes. 2:10-12).

Jesus Christ is the one who became flesh (John 1:14; Heb. 2:14,17). He is the one who suffered and died (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 5:5-10) and who was raised from death the third day by God the Father (Acts 2:24,32; 3:15,26; 4:10; 5:30; 10:38-40; 13:33; Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; etc). The Son died on the cross to save us from our sins. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. On the third, the Father who alone is called the Almighty raised the Son from death. Now, the Son is sitting on a throne on the right hand side of the throne of God the Father and is making intercession for humanity (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). Salvation is gained by believing in God and His Son (John 14:1,6; 17:3). Two of them will rule in the eternal Kingdom of God (Eph. 5:5; Rev. 3:12; 11:15; 21:22-23), the Father as the Supreme King and the Son as the subordinate king (1 Cor. 15:24-28).

There are too many scriptures that show God and His Son are two separate Spirit-Beings. The Father is a Spirit-Being (John 4:24). As a Spirit-Being, He gave birth to another Spirit-Being (John 3:6). That is why His only begotten Son is also a Spirit-Being (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:6,17). He was sent to the earth in the form of a human being to die for our sins so that we can obtain the salvation of God. Even babes in the faith know that God and His Son are two separate Beings. But Modalists who are wise in their conceit have deluded themselves so much that they say that when God spoke to His Son in Gen. 1:26, He spoke to Himself. They say that whenever our Lord Jesus Christ prayed to the Father, He prayed to Himself. No wonder they find it easy to believe that the name of the one God is Jesus Christ. They forget that Christ or Messiah means anointed Saviour or Deliverer. How can the Supreme God have Christ as part of His name? Who will anoint the Most High God?

Our Lord Jesus Christ, while He was on the earth, was not a hybrid of divinity and humanity. He was in every respect like us (Heb. 2:17). This means that He was 100 percent human. That was why God had to anoint Him with His Spirit or power (Matt. 3:16; Acts 10:38) the same way God anoints all other human servants of His (2 Cor. 1:21). That was why our Lord had to hide each time the Jews tried to stone Him. He did that to avoid being killed before the time appointed by God for Him to be crucified (John 7:1-9; 8:59; Matt. 12:14-16). All the signs and wonders Jesus Christ performed on earth were the direct result of the spirit or power of God which was in Him (Acts 1:8; 10:38). It was not because He was God. On earth, He was purely human. All the miracles performed by Him were the work of God Himself (John 14:10; Matt. 12:28). Our Lord Jesus Christ was not God in the flesh. He was the Son of God in the flesh. God the Father was not, and is not, the Son. Neither was, or is, the Son of God the Almighty God who is the God and Father of the Son. Two of them are separate and distinct from each other.

The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is unique because He possesses Godhood like God Himself. His Godhood was granted by God the Father. And this places Him in a unique position as the only God who has a God. He is superior to all beings except God alone. He is subordinate to only God the Father. God the Father who brought Him forth is the only Supreme Being. The Father is the only One called the Almighty. As the Supreme Being, the Father is the only one God. No one is coequal with Him. Jesus Christ is not coequal with God. If He were coequal with God, God will not be His God. By openly declaring that God is His God, our Lord Jesus Christ has made an admission that God is Supreme over Him.

The Son of God was the one used by God to create all that exists in creation. This includes the planets, the angels and humanity. As God’s agent of creation, He is superior to all the angels and all the other beings created by Him. Like the Father, He is also God to all of God’s creation. This is another fact about the uniqueness and the preeminence of Christ over all living beings except God Himself.