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While
in prayer, Jesus confessed:
“And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3)
Clearly,
an obvious
distinction exists between Jesus and the Father, in this passage.
However, since God can dwell in two places at one time, He
can exist as a timeless Spirit and a man at the same
time.
Inside of the
Son of Man, God perceived everything from within a human mind,
through human eyes. Therefore, God incarnate is a much
lesser being than the timeless Spirit of the Almighty God.
Therefore—from within a human consciousness—God as aman
could truthfully say that the Father was the only
true God. The man Christ Jesus (the "Son of Man" or "Son of God")
was not omniscient, omnipotent or
omnipresent.
Furthermore,
God cannot be “sent” because He is immutable, and can see the
end from the beginning. It is not possible for someone who exists in
an unchanging essence and knows all things to be
sent from one place to another. He would know where
and when to go before He was every asked or commanded.
For this
reason, it is not possible that a Deity called “God the Son” was
sent from heaven. It must be the Son of Man who
was “sent” by God, by being formed in the womb of Mary, and
commissioned by the Spirit of God to be sent into the world with
God's message.
Despite the
obvious distinction between God and Christ in this passage, Christ’s
words prove that He must be the one God of Israel—God the
Father—incarnate in human flesh. It is not possible for Jesus to
truthfully say that the Father is the only true God if
the Son and Holy Spirit is also the “only true
God.”
The exclusion
of the Son and Holy Spirit in Christ’s words also excludes the
trinity as a viable New Testament concept. Of course, Jesus is also
called the “only God” in the New Testament, but that is because
Jesus taught the “Father dwelt within Him” (John 14:10) and the
apostle Paul wrote that “all the fullness of the Deity dwells in Him
bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
Jesus is the
“only true God” in a lesser human form, with a human consciousness.
Therefore, since the timeless Spirit of God continued to exist
in a separate Divine consciousness, God as a man,
perceiving an existence from within a human mind, in a lesser
state of being, taught that the Father was God
alone.
©
2008 By Russell Redden. All Rights Reserved
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