One God

“…keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. ”

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: Deut. 6:4

Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? Malachi 2:10

Is it a crazy question for me to ask you: “How many Gods are there?” It is perhaps a less crazy question to ask you, “How many gods do you serve?”

Students of religion regard the development of monotheism to be a great step forward in man's evolving practice of his religion. Experts and people of differing backgrounds may disagree whether it was Abraham or Zoroaster who was the father of the faith in One God first, but no matter. There is, I believe, an innate function of our being that seeks one, only one God to be the source of all that is.

It is an illogical thought to say that many gods created and rule all things. Even pagan nature religions inevitably have a supreme deity: Zeus, Jupiter, Thor, Brahma, the Great Spirit. Even a religion with no god at all has a supreme being, or a place for him. Buddhism has no god, but there is a source and a place of return for the wandering souls, Nirvana: the impersonal god of that religion. Modern atheists still raise God a throne, if only to claim that He is not upon it.

So: there is One God. For each nation and tribe of man, we have erected a notion of that One, and made it after ourselves, however. Every religion on earth, except Christianity, is in essence a tribal religion and its god the tribal, ethnic, or national deity. Zoroastrianism and its god, Ahura Mazda, became the religion of the Persians. We know Zeus of the Greeks, Jupiter of the Romans, Ra of the Egyptians, Oden of the Norsemen, Brahma of the Hindus, the Great Spirit of the American Indians, and of course, Jehovah of the Hebrews. Even after Christianity's rise, Mohammed brought about unity of the warring Arab tribes under a single god, Allah.

Is a belief in One God, then, sufficient for a person to be faithful to God and live forever? St. James wrote: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” James 2:19 If Satan knows there is One God, and will still suffer forever, we must know more than this one inescapable fact ourselves.

Christianity, among all the world's religions, is essentially non-ethnic. Breaking free of Judaism by distinguishing itself in a mission to the Gentiles through St. Paul, Christians quickly spread the Gospel through the lands of Asia, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Ethiopia, North Africa, Spain, Gaul, and eastward into Persia and India. In many ways, Christians proved that there is only One God, by making all people one under Him.

But what of our Trinity? Is that doctrine a confusion of the concept of One God? Moslems claim it is. Do we worship three instead of One?

Only God can reveal God to us. The claims of Christians rest on the evidence of one man. Is Christ the Son of God? Is He the true Messiah? Is He crazy, or immoral, or God's unique and only Son? If crazy, how can the followers of insanity number 1/5 of the world's population today? How can the words of a crazy person change the world and its philosophies so radically that nations have been built on the premise that He is God the Son? If immoral, if He were only a dishonest trickster, the evidence of many miracles seen by innumerable eyewitnesses is hard to explain. Okay, a guy claims to be blind, and then sees: we know such a show is easy to arrange. But a man known to be dead four days is raised from the tomb and released from his grave clothes. Jesus was in Jericho when word came to Him about Lazarus' illness, and He tarried there until Lazarus was surely dead. And what of His own resurrection? How do you arrange a fake of your own crucifixion? Islam claims it was Judas who died there, and that everyone mistook him for Jesus. Can you believe Mohammed when he comes up with that explanation six centuries later?

The only reasonable explanation for what Jesus was able to do is that He is Who and What He says He is. And He shows us He is God's Son from eternity, and that the Holy Ghost is also God. He commands Baptism to be in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Matthew 28:19

And He repeats the Mosaic pronouncement: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One.” No contradiction here. We may not understand, three Persons, One God; but we believe, for He that told us is He who has the words of life. We have no one else to believe.

So if the One who shows us the Father and sends us the Holy Ghost tells us there is only One God, and that He is three Persons, we believe. And this strange tale went out and united white and black, Asian and European, Gentile and Jew, men and women into one faith under One God.

So if this One God, through His faithful apostle Paul tells us that we must be one as He is One, should we trust that? What is He saying? In our Epistle today, Paul instructs the Church at Ephesus, to be humble and stay worthy of its precious calling. With patience and love, stay unified by the Holy Spirit who alone can insure peace. Observing that there is only one Body, meaning one Church, under One Spirit, One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all; Paul seals the believers in unity.

How is that to look today, in the face of so many denominations, such turmoil and betrayal? Paul knew betrayal also, and cut off the traitors to Christ's truth. You can't unify with falsehood and remain true yourself. But Christians have been charged to hold two essential commands in balance, a trick only the Holy Spirit can do in us. We must raise up truth and never deny it, as we do in the Creeds. Deny these truths and you have no part in the Church of Jesus Christ. And we must hold unity with our Christian brothers and sisters who may be at variance with us in lesser disciplines, but believe as we do in Christ and His teachings. Without this balance, we cut ourselves off from the Body of Christ universal and thus cut ourselves off from the God who is One. How can there be a God of the Protestants and another God of the Catholics? A Christ for the Orthodox and another Jesus for Baptists?

How, then, are we to regard One God? To spread the blanket of oneness over all mankind and his various religions, to declare that all faiths are one, is false. God is One, but Jesus Christ has declared Him—One in Three, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, an irreducible truth. Christianity is the only faith that has successfully bridged mankind. It is the only true faith of love. And in love we must find unity with each other, and outside the boundaries of the faith, love for the stranger. Hatred may not be known among us.

When you hate, you declare that there is another god. You, or a reflection of you. When you love, you declare that there is one God, and that you are His.

PFH+