The God of the Bible Is One Person

The God of the Bible Is One Person

Churchgoers who have grown up believing that the true God is three Persons will be surprised (and we hope enlightened) to find out that Scripture says that God is in fact ONE Person. 

Turn to Galatians 3:20. Paul wrote: “God is one.” This cardinal doctrine originates in the famous creed of Israel: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE LORD” (Deut. 6:4). This is the creed which Jesus taught and believed. He quoted it in Mark 12:29ff. Jesus agreed with his colleague Jew about this, the greatest of all the commandments. So Jesus, as Israel always had, believed that God is one Lord, not two or three. 

An examination of the word “one” in a number of passages reveals that the proposition “God is one” means simply that He is one Person. Take, for example, the sentence: “Abraham was one” (Ezek. 33:24) or “Abraham was one when I called him” (Isa. 51:2). Does anyone have the slightest difficulty in catching the sense of “one”? Translators have recognized that the meaning is “Abraham is one party,” or “one person.” Take another example: In Ecclesiastes 4:9 we read: Two are better than one...If they fall the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is one [i.e., alone] when he falls. There is not a second [person] to lift him up.” To be “one” and “a second” in these verses means of course to be “one person” and “a second person.” In the Song of Solomon 6:9 the text states that “my dove, my perfect one, is one. She is the ‘the one’ of her mother.” In smooth English, “my dove, my perfect one, is unique. She is her mother’s only daughter” (NASV). In all these cases, and hundreds of others, one (echad) means one, or one single! That is its easy meaning. 

It is surprising that Bible readers sometimes react with perplexity when they encounter the biblical statement that “God is one.” Why should this be a problem? The Amplified Bible in Galatians 3:20 reads: “God is only one person. He was the sole party in giving the promise to Abraham, but the Law was contracted between two, God and Israel.” Only a few verses earlier, similar language describes Jesus as “one seed” as contrasted with many. As The Amplified Bible puts it: “God does not say ‘and to seeds,’ as if referring to many persons, but ‘and to your seed,’ obviously referring to one individual, who is Christ.” “Christ is one” obviously means that he is one person.

Could anything be clearer than 

that Christ is one individual and 

that God is one Person, one individual, one Father? 

“Do we not all have one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10). “God is only one Person” (Gal. 3:20). “There is one God, the Father” 1 Cor. 8:4- 6). This startling revelation could, if believed, put to rest centuries of wrangling about who God is. But few seem to be able to grasp this truth. Some search for more complicated views of God. They turn to John 10:30 where Jesus stated that he and the Father are “one.” 

Our English translation does not show that the word “one” in that verse is a neuter form of the numeral “one.” It means one thing, one in power and will. The verse does not say that the Father and the Son are one God. And Galatians 3:20 and Deuteronomy 6:4 say that God is one Person. The word in this case (i.e. Gal. 3:20) is not “one thing” (neuter) but “one person” (masculine). Thousands and thousands of singular personal pronouns to designate the One God tell us that He is one individual Divine Person. His personal name is Yahweh and it appears with singular verbs and pronouns 6,700 times.

The Biblical creed is that the Father is “the only one who is truly God” (John 17:3), the “one who one is God” (John 5:44). That, of course, means:
that no one else is God — not even Jesus, who is the Son of God, that is, the Messiah. Psalm 110:1 defines who God and who Jesus is with precision. The God who speaks is “Yahweh” and His Son is addressed as “adoni,” my lord — not Adonai which is another word for God. Check this special word adoni. It will tell you who Jesus is. This form of the word “lord” (adoni) is reserved in the Bible, in all of its 195 occurrences, for human superiors (occasionally an angel may also be addressed as adoni, my lord), as distinct from God Himself.
Jesus is that supreme human Lord, but he is not God. He is a different person from his Father. God, His Father, “is only one person” (Gal. 3:20). Paul summed up this simple truth in 1 Timothy 2:5: 

“There is one God, the Father, 

and one mediator between God and man, 

the man Messiah Jesus.” 

Do you believe this?                                                  

The above article is taken from
The God of the Bible Is One Person