The Passion of Christ: God’s Self-Sacrifice? By Andrew Davis

In a couple of recent public debates between Trinitarians and Biblical Unitarians on the Trinity, an argument has come up from the trinitarian side that I would like to address here.
The argument is this: the passion and death of Christ is not God’s sacrifice of another, but God’s self-sacrifice for us.
This is then praised for its beauty, its show of love and its demonstration of humility. This is something, according to these trinitarians, that Biblical Unitarianism misses, much to its own hurt.

But here I want to ask the question: is this idea of God’s self-sacrifice biblical?

The answer to this is short and simple: NO! - The Bible repeatedly and explicitly tells us not that God gave Himself for our sins, but that He gave His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
John 3:16-18 NASB

Notice the clarity here is this most famous verse: God gave who?

God so loved the world that He gave Himself? NO; God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Now, anyone can understand that a son is not one and the same with the one whose son they are, but must be another; for the very nature of sonship is to denote a relationship between two different individuals, as being father and son.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. 10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.
Romans 5:8-11 NKJV

God demonstrated His own love for us how? By who dying for us? The trinitarians in these recent debates want to answer ‘God!’. But what does the Bible say? God demonstrates His own love for us by Christ’s death for us. We are reconciled to God, not through His own death, we are told, but through the death of His Son. And His Son is, of course, another besides Him, or else he is no real Son at all. This passage is clear in telling us that we are reconciled to God through the death of a third party, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him. 14 But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.
Acts 3:13-15 NASB

Notice that the one God raised from the dead was not God Himself, but another “the one whom God raised”. Who is this? The Prince of Life, God’s servant Jesus Christ. Notice that Jesus is hear clearly distinguished from YHVH, the one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as being His servant. No one is their own servant, but to be a servant of someone denotes a relationship between two distinct individuals.

“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— 23 this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. 24 But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.
Acts 2:22-24 NASB

Who got nailed to the cross and raised from the dead, God, or another, according to Peter here? Clearly another, Jesus the Nazarene. We are told that God performed wonders and signs through him; an action which again shows that they are two distinct beings, as it would be meaningless to say that one performed an action through their own self. Here we see clearly again that the one who died for our sins is not the one God, but another, His Son, Jesus Christ.

There are many other passages we might go to as well. To the claim that God redeemed us with His own personal sacrifice and not through a third party, we may simply quote 1 Timothy 2:5 (“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” NASB) and be done with it, but all these other texts quoted above only serve to irrefutably demonstrate the point that much more clearly. God did not suffer and die for anyone’s sins, and He didn’t sacrifice Himself. Rather, the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins and sacrificed Himself for us.

If we value the beauty and nobility of self-sacrifice, let us look to Jesus, the Son of God, who willingly gave himself up for us in obedience to the Father. Here we see not only a glorious example of great humility, as the Christ of God suffered and died like a common criminal, but also a glorious and noble example of obedience, as Philippians 2:8 points out:

Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:8 NASB

If we instead say that God gave Himself for our sins, we lose this example of obedience; God is not subject to another, to obey another. But Jesus Christ the Son of God gives us the perfect example of willing obedience to God, in dying for our sins according to God’s plan.

We must remember that our notions of what is beautiful or noble don’t trump truth. If God had really died for our sins, then we would have to appreciate the beauty of that. But if God didn’t die for our sins - if another besides God died for our sins - then there is no beauty in this falsehood that God died for us. In fact, we would be so far from advancing what is beautiful and noble, that we would be robbing the one who did suffer and die for us the glory due him. Jesus Christ the Son of God must get the glory for what He has done for us; it is unacceptable to rob him of that glory, by ascribing the extremely noble and praiseworthy things he has done to another, Who in fact did not do them.

While hoping to glorify God, these trinitarians are greatly dishonoring the Lord Jesus Christ. That is not pleasing to God, Who wills that on account of his obedience and sacrifice, Christ should be highly exalted to God’s right hand, should receive the name above all names, and should have every knee bow to him. All this is to the glory of the Father (Phil 2:11); if we really want to glorify God, we must stop ascribing the work of Christ to God, and glorify Christ for his amazing accomplishments, which is, we are told, to the glory of God Who sent and empowered him. In this way, we will honor both Christ and God, according to the will of God.

There remains just two more things I’d like to briefly note in relation to this trinitarian argument we are addressing. Firstly, God is immortal, and to be immortal simply means you cannot die. Trying to define death in some special way here won’t help, because being immortal means that whatever death is, God doesn’t do it. God is the living God, and is immutable, unchanging; so then, He always lives, and never dies in any way, for a living unchangeable being must always and eternally live. Any experience of death would both mean that God had changed, and that He was mortal; but we are told that God never changes (Mal 3:6), and that He is immortal (1 Tim 1:17). It should be obvious then that its not even a possibility that God died on the cross for our sins. Rather, as the Bible says, the man Jesus Christ the Son of God gave Himself for us.

Secondly, I want to note how very modalistic this trinitarian argument is. This really goes to demonstrate what I have frequently tried to draw attention to, that most modern trinitarians are actually modalists. For them, Father, Son, and Spirit are all just the same rational individual being; and of course, a rational individual being is simply a person. Now, traditional trinitarian language prevents them from calling this being, this ‘triune God’ or ‘tri-personal God’ a “person”, but when you get down to the actual concepts in play, they believe that this entity is a single person which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus, for them, the Son dying is the self-sacrifice of the one God, because the Son just is that one God, that one individual who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Of course, if the Son just is the one God, however, then the Son isn’t really the Son of God at all. A son must be another besides the one whose son they are; a father-son relation necessarily denotes a relationship between two individuals. So if Jesus Christ just is the one God, he is not in any real sense the Son of the one God. Denying that Jesus is the Son of God, of course, is extremely problematic:

The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning His Son. 11 And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. 12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.
1 John 5:1-12 NASB

Its precisely because modalism denies the Son of God, and with it, the gospel and all true Christianity, that the early church rightly identified modalism as a dangerous heresy.

Of course, if the Son just is the one God, and the Father also just is the one God, then the Son just is the Father, too. This is the rational outcome of trinitarian dogma, but its a forbidden conclusion; a good trinitarian is not allowed to reason that far. But the logic holds;
if A=C, and B=C, then A=B; if the Father and Son are both identified with the entirety of the same individual being, then the Father is the Son and the Son is the Father, meaning, there really is no father-son relation at all. Father and Son become, logically, interchangeable titles for the same person.

In conclusion, then, this ‘trinitarian’ argument falls short; not only does it lack support from the Bible, but is contradicted by the Bible, which is clear in telling us that another besides God, namely His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, died for our sins. Not only this, but the argument implicitly denies God’s immortality and immutability, by claiming that the living God died. Finally, we may note that this argument would better suite a oneness pentecostal or modalist of some stripe than it would someone truly holding to a nicene trinitarianism. Most trinitarians, of course, do not hold to a nicene trinitarianism, but are very modalistic in their theology, meaning that sadly, this argument will probably remain popular among trinitarians for some time to come.

The above article was taken from:

The Passion of Christ: God’s Self-Sacrifice?

God is One in the New Testament By Anthony Buzzard

God is One

in the New Testament

By Anthony Buzzard

How can one possibly miss the New Testament confirmation of the unique status of God as

one Person? A well-known investigation into the Trinity reports: “The Jews believed in one God whom they called the Father…For an understanding of the growth of the doctrine of the Trinity the title ‘Father’ is of special importance, because in the Trinity one of the Persons is God the Father.”[1] Arthur Wainwright then presents the following New Testament texts to show “how New Testament writers expressed their belief in the unity of God and described Him as Father.”[2] This last statement would appear to be a practical admission that the New Testament writers were unitarians! What do you as a reader make of these statements?

Jesus:

“Why do you call me good? None is good except one, namely God” (Mark 10:18).
“The Lord our God is one Lord” (Mark 12:29).
“Call no man your father on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven” (Matt. 23:9).
“And the glory which comes from the only God you do not seek” (John 5:44).
“And this is eternal life: that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).

Paul:

“…if so be that God is one. We know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no God but one…Yet to us there is one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:4-6).
“For God is one and will justify the circumcised on the basis of faith and the uncircumcised through faith” (Rom. 3:30).
“Now a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one” (Gal. 3:20). “God is only one Person.”[3] “One God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:6).
“Now to the King, eternal, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. 1:17).
“For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5).

James and Jude:

“You believe that God is one; you do well” (James 2:19).
“One is the lawgiver and judge, who is able to save and destroy” (James 4:12).
“To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time and now and forever” (Jude 25).

God is explicitly distinguished from Jesus Christ

“God” is here the Father, as is true some 1317 times in the New Testament. God is explicitly distinguished from Jesus Christ. Wainwright comments on the list of texts above: “The evidence shows that God was regarded as one; and the one God was believed to be the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Statements of this nature hardly seem to provide fruitful ground for the growth of a doctrine of the Trinity.” He then says that “if they are taken in connection with other statements in which the divinity of Christ is affirmed or implied, they lead immediately to the Trinitarian problem.”[4]

Wainwright is right about the Trinitarian “problem.” The problem does not arise however until the unitarian texts above are rejected. As to statements about Jesus’ supposed “divinity,” none of them challenges the statements about the Father being the only God. If they did challenge those unitarian statements they would contradict them. This in turn would lead to the conclusion that the
New Testament contradicts itself in its definition of God. This I do not accept. And Jesus, the Jew and founder of our faith, as well as his chosen Apostles, knew who God was.

Once the New Testament unitarian texts are accepted for what they plainly say (in harmony with the whole of the Old Testament and with Jesus in Mark 12:28-34), the verses describing the so-called “divinity” of Jesus can easily be explained as descriptions of Jesus as the man Messiah, in whom the One God was uniquely active through His spirit, and who was exalted to the supreme position assigned to him by God the Father, as predicted in Psalm 110:1. Jesus in the
New Testament is seen as the unique agent and reflection of the One God. His “equality” with his Father does not make him God. He is still the man Messiah. The truth then emerges that there is indeed still “one God,” but He has next to Him now “one mediator, the man Messiah Jesus,” as
1 Timothy 2:5 says so lucidly and simply.

Buzzard, Anthony (2007). A Simple Creed. In, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian (pp. 48-50). Restoration Fellowship.

________________

[1] The Trinity in the New Testament, SPCK, 1980, 41.

[2] Ibid., 41, 42.

[3] Amplified Version.

[4] The Trinity in the New Testament, 42.

The above article is taken from

God is One in the New Testament

What is Biblical Unitarianism?

What is Biblical Unitarianism?

What is Biblical Unitarianism?

In the name “Biblical Unitarianism”, “Biblical” denotes faith in the Bible; serving to distinguish from Unitarian Universalists, a liberal non-Christian group. “Unitarian” simply refers to the belief that the one God of the Bible is only one person, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.
A “Biblical Unitarian” then is a Bible-believing Christian who believes that the God of the Bible is one person, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, rather than a Trinity of three persons.
Biblical Unitarians believe in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but do not believe that they are all one God; rather, the one God is the Father alone.

Biblical Unitarians note that in the Bible, God is never spoken of as being a Trinity, or as being multiple persons. Rather, they note that all throughout the Bible, God is always spoken of as a single person, indicated by the use of hundreds of singular personal pronouns, and that the one God is expressly equated with the person of the Father alone several times:

Therefore concerning the eating of things offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one. 5 For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as there are many gods and many lords), 6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live.
1 Corinthians 8:4-6 NKJV

Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 17:1-3 NKJV

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Jude 1:24-25 NASB

There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6 NASB

These passages of scripture all expressly equate the one God of the Bible with only one person, the person Jesus calls His God and Father. Biblical Unitarians note that Jesus never claimed to be the one God, but rather taught things which clearly distinguish Him as another person or being besides God:

“Believe in God, believe also in me.”
-Jesus, John 14:1 NKJV

“Jesus answered, “If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing. It is My Father who honors Me, of whom you say that He is your God.” -Jesus, John 8:54 NKJV

“I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.”
-Jesus, John 20:17 NKJV

Biblical Unitarians thus conclude that Jesus is not the one God of Israel, but another person and being besides the one God- His only-begotten Son, His appointed Christ, the one mediator between God and man, as the following texts say:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
-John, John 3:16 NASB

“The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him.”
-Peter, Acts 3:13 NASB

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”
-Peter, Acts 2:36 NASB

“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”
-Paul, 1 Timothy 2:5 NASB

Biblical Unitarians note that the apostles call Jesus a man, repeatedly, and without qualification; for this reason, Biblical Unitarians confess that Jesus Christ is a true man, fathered uniquely by God in the womb of Mary, by the agency of the Holy Spirit. Not only did Jesus’s apostles call him a man, but he also called himself a man -and so do the Old Testament scriptures:

“But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do.”
-John 8:40 NASB

“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know—”
-Peter, Acts 2:22 NASB

“Because [God] has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”
-Paul, Acts 17:31 NASB

“He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”
-Isaiah 53:3 NASB

Thus the simple confession that the one God is one person,
the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and that Jesus is the human Son and Christ of God,
forms the heart of Biblical Unitarian faith in God and Christ. 

But what about the traditional doctrine of the Trinity? That there exists one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Biblical Unitarians note that besides the fact that this doctrine is absent from the Bible, it also conflicts with several things the Bible teaches. If we have to choose between tradition and scripture, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29 NASB).

We must “Test all things, and hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thess 5:21) rather than simply believing something because it is traditional.

Biblical Unitarians note that the doctrine of a triune God is incompatible with some of the Bible’s clear teachings about God and Jesus. Where the doctrine of a triune God teaches that the Father and Son are equal and identical, the Bible repeatedly marks God and Jesus as distinct and different from one another:

1. God is the Almighty (Greek “Pantokrator”, meaning, ‘Ruler over all’); He is supreme in authority over all (Rev 4:8, 2 Cor 6:18). Jesus is subject and obedient to the Father as His God, and so is not supreme over all in authority (1 Cor 11:3, 1 Cor 15:28).

2. God is uncaused, the Maker of all things. Jesus is caused by the Father, as the very name ‘Son’ implies; He also expressly declares that He lives because of the Father (Jn 6:57).

3. God is immutable, meaning He is eternally unchanging. He is also not a man, for the Bible says “God is not a man” in Numbers 23:19, and “For I am YAHWEH, I do not change” in
   Malachi 3:6. Thus it is impossible that God would have gone from not being a man to being a man, as this would obviously be a change in God. This contradicts the Trinitarian teaching that the one God became a man.

4. God is invisible, having never been seen by man, and is declared to be incapable of being seen (1 Tim 6:16). “No one has seen God at any time.” -1 John 4:12 NKJV.Yet Jesus Christ was seen.

5. God is omniscient; He knows all things absolutely (1 Jn 3:20). Jesus declares plainly that He did not know something, which only the Father knew: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” -Mark 13:32 NKJV.If only the Father and no other person knows this, then the Father alone knows all things; and so, the one God, Who knows all things, must be only one person, the Father, and no other.

6. God is immortal; He is not subject to death (1 Tim 1:17). Whatever death is, an immortal being, by definition, cannot experience it. Yet Jesus Christ died (and rose from the dead); and this is a central part of the gospel. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” -Romans 5:8 NKJV

7. “God cannot be tempted by evil”; yet Jesus “was tempted in all things” (Ja 1:13, Heb 4:15).

8. Jesus is the Christ of God; that is, the anointed king, prophet, and priest of God, sent and empowered by God. Is the one sent by God the same as He Who sent? Is the one who is anointed the same as He Who anoints?

9. Jesus is the Son of God; and no son is the same individual being as their father.

10. Jesus is the one mediator between God and man, and by definition, no mediator is a party to their own mediation. “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” -1 Timothy 2:5 NKJV.Notice, Jesus is simply described as a “man”, not a “God-man”, as trinitarianism says.

11. Jesus is the Lord appointed by God over the universe, subject to God.
    “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” -Acts 2:36 NKJV.A person who is the one God has no need to be made Lord by God, for God has always been Lord.

12. Jesus is the High Priest of God; a high priest worships His God, and is necessarily distinguished from the God whose priest he is. “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.” -Hebrews 4:14 NKJV.

Biblical Unitarians note that these truths about God and Christ make it impossible to reasonably believe that
they are together one being or one God.
Rather, the one true God, the God of the Bible, is only one person, the one Jesus Christ calls His God and Father.

The above article was taken from:

What is Biblical Unitarianism?

That YHVH is One Person and Jesus Christ Another, Proved from Acts 4:24-30 By Andrew Davis

That YHVH is One Person and Jesus Christ Another, Proved from Acts 4:24-30

And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, “O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, 25 who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said,

‘Why did the Gentiles rage,

And the peoples devise futile things?

26 ‘The kings of the earth took their stand,

And the rulers were gathered together

Against the Lord and against His Christ.’

27 For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur. 29 And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence, 30 while You extend Your hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Your holy servant Jesus.”

Acts 4:24-30 NASB

In this passage we read a prayer of the apostles Peter and John after they had been released from prison, and had been threatened by the Sanhedrin. In it, we have a window into the theology and christology of these two preeminent apostles, and of the early church in general. Of particular interest here is the fact that they quote Psalm 2:1-2 in their prayer, as having been fulfilled in the events that they had witnessed surrounding Jesus the Nazarene, thus giving us an apostolic commentary on Psalm 2.

Of note firstly is that in Psalm 2, the title “Lord” is used as a filler for the proper name of God, YHVH. Given that, if we interpret this prayer as being consistent with itself, we may reasonably understand ‘Lord’ throughout the prayer to be a filler for this name. Sometimes people run away with this idea of ‘Lord’ being a replacement for YHVH, and subsequently read the name ‘YHVH’ into many texts where the authors likely never intended it, but only intended to say ‘Lord’, the equivalent of ‘Master’. But here, especially given the connection with Psalm 2, I will suggest we have good reason to see ‘Lord’ as a placeholder for the divine name YHVH.

We may note then that the prayer begins by addressing YHVH as the Creator of all things- “the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them”. The person being prayed to is the one Creator, then, the same YHVH Who said “I, YHVH, am the Maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself And spreading out the earth all alone” (Isa 44:24 NASB). If all things were made by this one Creator, then it follows necessarily that He alone is uncreated. The person being addressed here as YHVH then is the Supreme Being, the one uncaused Creator of all things, the God of Israel.

They next make mention of what YHVH spoke by the holy spirit through David, and quotes the first two verses of Psalm 2. Note the end of verse two: the rulers were gathered together “against YHVH and His anointed” (that is, His Christ), who is also identified as “Your holy Servant Jesus”. Here we have nothing less than Jesus Christ being clearly distinguished by the apostles Peter and John as another person besides YHVH, the one God, the Maker of all things.

We must read the passage so, since it’s obvious that the anointed and the Anointer cannot be one and the same person, or that the servant of one cannot be the same with the one they serve. The anointed of YHVH is clearly one besides YHVH here, one who He has acted upon to anoint as His Messiah. And in calling Jesus the Servant of YHVH, YHVH and Jesus are again clearly distinguished; since it’s obvious that the servant and the one served are persons distinct from one another, according to the very definition of the term ‘servant’.

We have here then the testimony of two leading apostles, that the Lord Jesus Christ is another person besides the one God, YHVH, the Maker of all things. Let us note, lest any trinitarian try to escape these conclusions, that if Jesus were here said to have been anointed by the Father, any trinitarian would regard it as a proof that Jesus is a distinct person from the father; if Jesus had here been called the Servant of the Father, likewise, no trinitarian would shy from declaring, against modalism, that this is proof that Jesus is another person besides the Father. But here we have something far less comfortable for the trinitarian: Jesus is not merely said to be the anointed of the Father, or the Servant of the Father, although he is these things, but is clearly said to be the anointed and Servant of YHVH, the Maker of all things.
Just as much, then as such statements would rightly be said to prove that Jesus is a distinct person from the Father, so these statements prove that Jesus is not YHVH the Maker of all things, but another person distinct from Him.

Later in Psalm 2, we further read that the Messiah, or anointed, of YHVH is His Son:

“He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.”

verse 7

Notice, then, that Jesus Christ is not simply said to be the Son of the Father, but of YHVH. It is clear, here, that YHVH is indeed a person, the Father of Jesus, not a multi-personal being. YHVH here [in Acts 4:24-30] is spoken to as a person:
“You made”, “Who… said” “You anointed”.
This YHVH created, planned and purposed, anointed, spoke, healed, and is being asked to intervene on behalf of men - it is obvious from these things that the YHVH being spoken to is a person.

But perhaps a trinitarians will still try to object, despite all the evidence, that this is a ‘being’ and not a ‘person’ denoted here by the name YHVH. Why then is a ‘being’ spoken to as a person, then? It is granted that YHVH is a being; but is this being a personal or impersonal being? If it is impersonal, then how does it speak? How does it create, or act, or heal? Why pray to an impersonal being? Undoubtedly the being spoken of here is a personal being. We must then ask, does any peculiar term exist which denotes ‘a personal being’? The word ‘person’ denotes just such a thing. To say that the YHVH spoken of here then is truly a person could not be more appropriate.

We must recall that a person is, according to definition, a rational individual being - and YHVH here clearly fits that description. That YHVH is spoken of as one singular entity here, anyone will admit: that is, He is an individual being. That YHVH is ‘rational’ is clear from the fact that He speaks, purposes and plans, intelligently creates, etc.

By definition then, YHVH here is indisputably a person. And this person is clearly distinguished from Jesus Christ, who is the “Anointed”, “Servant”, and “Son” of this person.

We see then that for the apostles Peter and John, the one God, YHVH, the Supreme Being, the Creator of all things, is only one person, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ is a person wholly distinct from YHVH.

And, of course (lest the trinitarians try here to insert their cavil of distinguishing being and person) that to be a distinct person means that he must necessarily be a distinct individual being also; for a person just is a rational individual being, as we have said. To be another person, then, is to be another rational individual being; and so we see that the one God is one rational individual being, and Jesus Christ is another.

Finally, a brief thought experiment: if the doctrine of triune God were true, and YHVH God Almighty were one being that is three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then how would this passage read? Would this prayer, and Psalm 2 quoted in it, make any sense? Is a triune YHVH an interpretive option? Let us consider, if YHVH is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then it follows that: Jesus Christ will be the Anointed of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, and of himself; Jesus Christ will be the Servant of not only the Father, but also the Holy Spirit, and also, of himself; and finally, Jesus Christ will be the Son, not only of the Father, but also of the Holy Spirit, and also, of himself. 

This is very obviously both impossible and utterly contrary to the teaching of the Bible; Jesus was not anointed by Himself; and to suppose that Jesus has the Holy Spirit as a second father, is quite absurd; and how absurd is it to suppose that anyone could be their own servant, or their own Son, such that Jesus should be a servant and Son to himself? Yet let us mark well, that if YHVH the God of Israel, God Almighty, is three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then for Jesus to be the Anointed, the Servant, and the Son of YHVH will require all of the absurdities mentioned above.

It is clear then, that not only is the trinitarian position foreign to the text of the Bible, but would make the passage’s meaning totally unintelligible and contradictory here. We must stick to what is clear from the text: YHVH, the Creator of all things, the one God, is one person, and Jesus Christ is His Anointed, His Servant, and His Son, another person and individual being distinct from the one God.

The above article was taken from:

That YHVH is One Person and Jesus Christ Another

A Kingdom on Earth by Alfred Norris

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