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God is not merely a
“force” or “energy,” He is a person—yet far beyond the “human
definition” of a person. The one personal God who revealed Himself to
Israel is a spiritual entity beyond anything that can
be imagined. This one God revealed and expressed His own self
in a form billions upon billions of times lesser than His omnipotent,
omniscient Spiritual essence. This form is the Son of Man, Jesus Christ,
born of a virgin.
GOD IS ONE PERSON
Hundreds of passages in the Bible teach that God is
only one individual person. In both the Old and New
Testaments, the personal pronouns “He” “Me” and “Him” are applied to God.
God spoke this commandment to Israel:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD
our God is one LORD.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
Some believe that
because the Hebrew word for “one” is plural in this passage,
this must mean that God is one only in essence, but as a person.
However, consider the Greek of this passage in Matthew:
“And one
of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and
perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first
commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the
commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one
Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength: this is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:28-30 28)
The word “one” in the Greek in this passage is masculine in
gender. Therefore, if Jesus meant that God was only “one in essence,” John
would have used the neuter gender in his account. Yet, it is in
the masculine, which means that Jesus interpreted the first commandment to
mean that God one both in essence and in
person.
The plural word “one” is used many times in the Old Testament in a
singular sense, for one person. In the Old Testament, Zechariah wrote
that this “one person God” will have only one name:
“And the
LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one
LORD, and his name one.” (Zechariah 14:9)
In this passage,
one singular personal pronoun is used for YHWH. We are told “HIS name”
will be one. God would not mislead us.
The singular personal pronouns were placed next to the name of “God” in the
Bible for a reason. It is not intellectually honest to interpret these
single pronouns as merely “unity.” They mean what they mean. However, after
God became a man, He dwelt within two distinct consciousnesses—human and
Divine. Therefore, the Bible can use a plural pronoun to facilitate this
distinction. See the next section: The
incarnation
A list of texts that use singular personal pronouns for God can be
found at: http://www.whoisjesus.com/onetexts.html
© 2008 By Russell Redden. All Rights Reserved
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