GOD is ONE

ONLY ONE GOD HAS SPOKEN

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

When God revealed Himself through His prophet Moses, God described Himself. He said that He is one God, not many "gods." The one and only God deserves all of our love, not just a part of it.

CONFIRMED BY JESUS

When Jesus, the Prophet like Moses, came, He drew special attention to these verses from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. A leader asked Jesus about the most important command of the Law. Mark 12:29 reports Jesus’ reply:

”The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…’ ”

Jesus continued then to quote from God’s message in Deuteronomy 6. This truth is the foundation for all God’s other commands. If many gods had made us, they might all have a right to our love. But the greatest fact of God is that He is one. One alone created us! One alone gives us life! One alone, therefore, has the right to our love. That leads to the greatest command, that our whole heart, soul, mind and strength should go to Him alone.

CAN WE LOVE ANYONE ELSE?

If all our love goes to God, then it cannot be divided. Does this mean that we should never love anyone else? What about loving one’s own husband or wife or children? What about loving other people? Jesus went on immediately to say that the second most important command is this:

Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31, quoting Leviticus 19:18).

The Christian husband should love his wife (Ephesians 5:25). Neither Moses nor Jesus thought that these kinds of love took love away from God.

Why? Because it is God’s will that we so love others. The true way to show love for God is to obey God.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments (1 John 5:3).

If God is truly "LORD" He deserves our full obedience. We cannot claim to love Him while forgetting who He is and what He deserves. Real love treats Him as the real God He is. So, when we love others, as He commanded, that fits perfectly into true love and devotion to Him.

WHAT, THEN, IS LOVE DIVIDED?

By this we mean: What kind of love takes away from the full love we owe to God? The prophets of the Old and New Testaments answered this question very clearly. We take love away from God by treating God as if He were "second best." We do this when we follow another’s will instead of keeping God’s commandments. We do it when we trust people or things more than we trust the God who made us. We do it when we worship or pray to others. When an enemy tried to make Jesus divide His love in these ways, Jesus replied,

"You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve" (Matthew 4:10).

God desires and demands first place in our hearts and lives. He cannot accept second place, for that would be a lie. Simple honesty requires that God alone be recognized and treated with the highest honor. No other can claim the kind of honor that should go to God.

I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols (Isaiah 42:8).

ERV: I am the LORD. My name is Yahweh. I will not let statues take the praise that should be mine.

THE NAME OF THE ONE GOD

The prophet Isaiah, in the passage just mentioned, was very certain of the true God. He is the One named "the LORD." Isaiah wrote in the Hebrew language, and in Hebrew that name is YHWH. (YHWH may be pronounced as Yahweh.) In many English Bibles, when you see the word LORD in large letters, it stands for this great name of God, YHWH.

When Eve gave birth to a child she said, "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD" (Genesis 4:1). She knew God’s name, for He had dealt personally with her and her husband, Adam. Later, her children who turned to God "began to call on the name of the LORD (YHWH)" (Genesis 4:26). So "the LORD" is the One known from the very beginning as man’s Creator. When God told Moses to go to Egypt, Moses asked what name to use for God. In answer (Exodus 3:14-15) God said to Moses,

God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’" God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations."

The name YHWH shows that God is the "I AM," that He continues TO BE. (The name YHWH sounds like the verb "to be" in the Hebrew language.) God is the self-existing One. God does not depend on anything else for His being. Instead, all others depend on Him for their being. It does not matter whether they are angels or spirits or humans or material things—they all exist only as long as God lets them.

NO OTHER GODS

The first of the Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai was this:

You shall have no other gods before Me (Exodus 20:3).

When we understand who the Lord is, it is easy to see what is wrong with having other "gods." No one else can compare with God! Yes, there are some beings who have power. But all their power simply points to the far, far greater power of the true God who made them. He made everything "alone" (Isaiah 44:24). He does not need or depend on anyone else. If God gave them power, He can also take it away from them. He who gave them life can just as easily end it. Before Him, they are powerless!

The apostle Paul helped people to leave their useless "gods." He wrote letters to those who believed his message. Here is what Paul said about idols:

For we know that ”an idol has no real existence,” and that ”there is no God but one.” (1 Corinthians 8:4)

… you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9).

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods (Galatians 4:8).

ERV: In the past you did not know God. You were slaves to gods that were not real.

 

GOD IS SPIRIT

Why have people made up their own ideas of "god"? Perhaps they feel that they can more easily understand and control a "god" they have made for themselves. The true God is so great that He is beyond all that we can understand or imagine. When King Solomon (David’s son) built a temple for God, he prayed to God,

But will God indeed dwell [live] on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27).

When we think of just that part of the heavens we see, this is truly amazing. How can one Person fill the whole universe, and even go beyond it? Yet the New Testament also says of God,

For in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

How can He be so far away, and yet also be all around us? If "He is not far from each one of us" (Acts 17:27), why do we not see Him?

The answer is in a basic truth of God’s nature. Jesus stated,

God is spirit (John 4:24).

How is "spirit" different from an earthly "body"? Jesus said that a spirit does not have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). The normal human body is very limited by the weaknesses of its flesh. It is tied down to one time and place. It cannot see or be in two places at the same time. Such limits or weaknesses do not have to apply to spirit. They especially do not limit the One who is called the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9).

God, as spirit, is so great that He is always present at all places. He can hold all in His control. There is no way ever to hide from Him.

Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol [death], You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost [furthest] parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me (Psalm 139:7-10).

And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed [shown] to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:13).

DOES GOD HAVE HANDS AND EYES?

If God is spirit, and not fleshly body, how can the Bible speak of His "hands," "arms," "eyes" and other parts? The following picture may help us to see the answer.

Imagine a man talking to an ant. He is trying to explain to the ant what a human city is like. The ant has never seen anything as large as our buildings and city streets. Yet the ant does have small paths and tunnels in its ants’ nest in the ground. So the man speaks of his streets as if they were like those ant paths. He speaks of the human city as if it were like a very large ants’ nest.

In the same way, God uses things that we can understand to talk of things much greater. He does not have our earthly kind of eyes and hands. But He uses "eyes" to speak of His seeing. He uses "hands" to speak of His power and action.

Though He uses these helpful words we should remember that we are still so very small beside Him. Like the ant with the man, some things about God will remain beyond our full understanding. We accept what God says in simple trust that He knows how best to tell us of things far greater than us.

THE HOLY SPIRIT

One of the things that may be difficult to understand is how God is one, and yet also be above our limited idea of one. For example, the Bible begins by speaking of both "God" and "the Spirit of God."

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… and the Spirit of God was hovering [floating] over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1-2).

Look again at the quotation from Psalm 139. The writer of that Psalm asks God, "Where can I go from your Spirit?" Then he says, "If I go up to the heavens, You are there." Why say "You" and "Your Spirit"? Why speak in two ways of God? We may not fully understand why. Yet God surely knows most about Himself. He knows how best to describe Himself, and He expects us to trust the words He chooses. Scripture talks often about the Holy Spirit. He is not just some tool or force of God. He is not a ”thing.” Instead He is Divine Person, described in ways that can only fit a person. Although He is sometimes spoken of as if He is part of God, yet the Holy Spirit is truly God, the only God.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom… For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

God has revealed Himself as both "Lord" and "Spirit." This in no way goes against the truth He also revealed, that He is one. This oneness is above our full understanding. Such mysteries should not surprise us, for God is so much greater, and we are so much smaller.

LET'S SUM UP

We would know nothing of God if He had not chosen to speak to us through nature and the prophets. He has revealed that He is one, and that there is no other god besides Him. Yet His oneness includes the Holy Spirit. He knows best how to tell us about Himself. Since He alone made us and cares for us, our hearts and lives belong wholly to Him.

Yahweh, great "I AM," no one is like You. Who has fully understood You? Yet, You have said that we can know you in such a way as leads to eternal life. Help us to know You in this way…