Doctrine
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD."
Deuteronomy 6:4
Before we can know anything else rightly, we must know this: who is God? The Bible answers with a great confession that has been on the lips of God's people for thousands of years — the LORD our God is one. But how we understand that oneness makes all the difference in the world, for the same Book that tells us God is one also shows us that this one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
We begin where the Bible begins. There are not many gods, as the heathen imagined; there is one true and living God, and beside Him there is no other. This is the foundation of all true faith, and it is the death of every idol.
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD." (Deuteronomy 6:4)
God Himself declares it plainly, that no soul might be deceived into worshipping another:
"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." (Isaiah 45:5)
"I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God." (Isaiah 44:6)
We are therefore not worshippers of three gods. We worship one God, and one God only. Let that be settled before we go a step further, for everything that follows must be held within it.
Now here is a wonder that the careful reader of the Hebrew Scriptures has always seen. When Moses wrote, "The LORD our God is one LORD," the word he used for "one" is a word that can hold more than a bare mathematical one. It is the same word used when God said of the husband and wife that "they shall be one flesh" — two persons, yet one.
"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)
So the oneness of God is not a cold, empty singleness; it is a full and living oneness. And this is why, from the very first page of the Bible, God speaks of Himself in a way that no mere single person would. At the creation of man He said:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Genesis 1:26)
Not "let me make man in my image," but "let us... in our image." The one God speaks, and there is a fulness within His one being. The Scriptures were preparing His people, long before Bethlehem, to receive the truth that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
When we come to the New Testament, the veil is drawn back, and we behold the one God in three Persons — the Father, the Word (the Son), and the Holy Ghost — and these three are one.
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." (1 John 5:7)
Notice the words with care: three that bear record, yet "these three are one." Not three Gods — one God. And when the Lord Jesus Christ sent forth His disciples, He joined the three Persons under a single name:
"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Matthew 28:19)
He did not say "in the names" — as though there were three Gods — but "in the name," one name, belonging alike to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. One God; three Persons.
This is the truth over which many stumble, and yet the Bible could not state it more plainly. The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, is Himself God — the eternal Word who was with God and was God, and who was made flesh.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)
"And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh." (1 Timothy 3:16)
The prophet Isaiah, seven hundred years before the manger, foretold that the child to be born would be none other than the mighty God:
"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace." (Isaiah 9:6)
And the Lord Jesus Christ took to Himself the very name of God — the great "I AM" by which God revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush. When His enemies challenged Him, He answered:
"Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." (John 8:58)
They took up stones to stone Him, for they understood well that He was claiming to be God. He had already said it in the plainest words:
"I and my Father are one." (John 10:30)
And when doubting Thomas at last saw the risen Lord, he fell down and confessed Him for who He truly is — and the Lord Jesus Christ received that worship, which no mere creature, no prophet, and no angel would ever dare to receive:
"And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God." (John 20:28)
The third Person, the Holy Ghost, is likewise God — not a force or an influence, but a divine Person. When Ananias lied to the Holy Ghost, the apostle Peter told him plainly that he had lied to God:
"But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost... thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God." (Acts 5:3-4)
To lie to the Holy Ghost is to lie to God, because the Holy Ghost is God. And so, remarkably, one verse of Isaiah shows all three together — the Lord GOD who sends, the Messiah who is sent, and the Spirit:
"Come ye near unto me, hear ye this... and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me." (Isaiah 48:16)
Here the honest heart asks the question, and it deserves an honest answer. We do not claim to fully comprehend the infinite God with our finite minds — a God small enough to be fully understood would be no God at all. But we do not believe a contradiction. We do not say God is one Person and three Persons; nor that He is one God and three Gods. We say He is one God in three Persons — one in essence, three in Person. The Scriptures teach both His oneness and His threeness, and the believer bows before both.
Every earthly picture falls short, yet consider even the sun in the sky: there is the burning body of the sun, the light that streams from it, and the heat we feel — three, yet one sun. So the humble creature may bow before what he cannot fully measure, and worship the one God who has made Himself known as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
To the Jewish reader especially, we speak with affection, for salvation is of the Jews, and the promises were given to your fathers. The One whom Moses and the prophets foretold — the mighty God who would be born a child, the ruler of Israel whose goings forth have been from everlasting — is the Lord Jesus Christ, your Messiah.
"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." (Micah 5:2)
He who is from everlasting is no created being. He is the one true God of your fathers, come in the flesh to save His people from their sins. To believe on Him is not to forsake the God of Israel — it is to embrace Him.
There is one God, and there is one Saviour, and they are not two but one — for the God who made you has come down in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem you. He turns to you now with open arms and a plain command:
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:22)
Look away from every idol, from every effort of your own, from every other hope — and look to Him alone. The one true God, in the Person of His Son, is mighty to save.
"And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God."John 20:28