The Singular Nature of God

What we hope to show in this chapter is what the Bible tells us about who God is. Once we know who God says he is we can look at what that means for the Son. Since we know that God is knowable because he has revealed himself to us we will look at what he says about himself and compare any statements about who he is to those declarations. We will not take a doctrine and try to force the declarations to fit it.

Old Testament Testimony

God refers to himself in the first person singular when he speaks through the prophets. “I am God and there is no other.”¹ This statement is repeated throughout the Shema of Israel² and the Song of Moses³ as well as in Isaiah.⁴ God never claims to be one of many gods or one who shares his attributes with others. He refers to himself as the one who created everything and answers to no one and has the power to save.

There are certain things that we cannot know about God unless he reveals them to us. Paul tells us that we can see God's eternal power and godhood through the things he has created.⁵ We believe that creation shows that God exists and that he is powerful but we cannot use that to contradict what he has told us about himself.

We need to be fair to the Trinitarian position here. They do not believe that there are three Gods. They would not say that God is a collection of gods. They believe that God is one just like we do. So where do we disagree? We disagree that there can be more than one “I” in the Godhead. If your definition of God requires you to believe that there are multiple “I's” in the statement “there is no other” then we believe that definition goes too far.

What about the Son and God? We know that God has been around from eternity to eternity.⁶ The Son became a man at some point in time. The angel told Mary that she would give birth to a son and that he would be called the Son of God.⁷ We are not saying that the Son was just a body or that he only appeared to be human. He was human and God was in him. What we are saying is that there is a difference between God and the Son.

Some may argue that since God had a plan to save mankind there must have been a Son that was with him from the beginning. Yes God knew what he was going to do to save mankind. But that knowledge was in God's mind and does not require us to believe that there was someone else with him before the Son came.

We need to know why mankind needed salvation before we can talk about salvation. In this chapter we will simply state what the Bible says about the fall.

God told Adam that he could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He also told him that if he ate from that tree he would die.⁸ There was no confusion about what God told Adam.

The serpent came to Eve and told her that what God said was not true. That she would not die. She looked at the fruit and thought it was good to eat and that it would make her wise. She ate and gave to her husband who also ate.⁹ We know from later scripture that the serpent was the devil.¹⁰ We don't need to assume that he said anything to Adam that isn't written in the Bible. He convinced Eve to look at what the fruit could do for her instead of what God had told her and she listened.

Paul tells us that Eve was deceived but Adam was not.¹¹ We should not go too far with this statement. We know that the serpent spoke to Eve and we don't know if he spoke to Adam. We don't know what was going on in Adam's mind when Eve gave him the fruit. All we know is that Adam ate and that God told him that he listened to his wife and ate from the tree.¹²

So Eve being deceived does not excuse Adam. He knew what God told him and still ate. This is why Paul focuses on Adam and not Eve.¹³

Adam didn't think that God never told him anything. He knew what God said and still ate.

When Adam and Eve sinned they were kicked out of the garden and could no longer eat from the tree of life.¹⁴ Man began to die. Sin affected all of mankind that came after them.

Now that we know what happened when man sinned we can look at what God did to save us. We will look at the progression of salvation from the beginning to Christ.

After God told Adam and Eve that they were going to die he told the serpent that the seed of the woman would crush his head.¹⁵

We are not saying that this verse lays out all of the steps of salvation. But it gives us the beginning of a promise that the serpent would not win.

As we move through the Bible we see this promise being fulfilled. Sin caused death and the law showed the Israelites that blood was needed to atone for their sins.¹⁶ Hebrews tells us that the blood of animals could not save us.¹⁷ What we could not do for ourselves God did. The Son became flesh and lived a sinless life and died for us.¹⁸

This leads us to ask who saved us? We believe that God did not need anyone else to save us. He created the world and came to save those who live in it. By becoming flesh in Jesus Christ he experienced what we experience. We believe that the flesh died. But we do not believe that God died when the Son died. He gave us life through his death.

We also know that God did not come up with a plan to save us after man sinned. He knew that man was going to sin and he had a plan before the world was even created.¹⁹ Again we see the difference between the Son and God. The Son became flesh at some point in time but God has always had a plan to save us.

So from Isaiah's statement to the Gospel there is a thread that we can follow.

When we look at Christ we are looking at that same God that said “there is no other.”