For there is one God …
Summary: As Paul begins his description of God’s salvation for mankind, he starts with the most difficult truth of all: There is only one God.
Paul has just said that God wants all people to be saved and know the truth. Now he begins to tell us what that truth is.
The truth is both simple and infinitely confusing, and it begins with this: There is one God.
Why does this need to be said?
For one thing, it is true. For another, when people lose sight of the one true God, they make up their own. Third, when people give credit to homemade gods for things the real God has done, the real God becomes jealous (Exodus 20:5).
This puts God in a difficult position.
When God created mankind, he created us in his own image (Genesis 1:27). As the one true God, God has the power to wipe humanity from the face of the earth (Genesis 6-8). Because we are made in God’s image, we are infinitely precious to him. When the people he made and loves turn their backs on him, his jealousy flares (Exodus 20:5).
Because he is a just God, his justice demands consequences for disobedience and disrespect (Deuteronomy 32:4).
What should he do?
What would you do?
Because of his great love for what he has made (1 John 4:8), God does something profoundly God-like. It is something so beyond human comprehension that our greatest minds fail to understand the full measure of what he did (Isaiah 55:8–9).
In essence, God sent a “mediator between God and mankind, the man Jesus Christ” (1 Timothy 2:5). This mediator, a man named Jesus, tells us that he and God are “one” (John 14:9). Not “of one mind” or “one in spirit” (Philippians 2:2), but one, as in “one and the same.”
How is this possible?
When Moses asks God what his name is, God’s answer is revealing. He says, “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Centuries later, when Ezekiel encounters the vision of God beside the Kebar River (Ezekiel 1:1), he notices that the “living creatures” with God each had four faces (Ezekiel 1:6).
If God can make a creature with four faces, is being in two places at one time really all that implausible?
That is the question we are confronted with whenever the Bible points us to Jesus Christ.
Application: We are subject to God’s rules, but God is not subject to ours.
Food for Thought: What happens when we attempt to force God to fit into human ways of thinking?
What happens when we attempt to force God to fit into human ways of thinking?
Ultimately we create an understanding of God based on our own image. We place ourselves above God and measure His ways against our ways. We place ourselves as the arbiter of what is good and evil. In the human way of thinking we are incapable of such a thing as we are corrupted. Only through Christ are we able to discern good from evil through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And since our thoughts are a precursor to our actions, if Force God into our way of thinking, we will ultimately act out of self-interest rather than seeking the Will of God. Reshape His Word to fit our agenda.
Isaiah 55:8-9
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Mark 7:20-23
20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Chris,
Very well said!
Thank you!