One God & One Lord

Is there not another class who may properly be named speculative Christians? Christians who profess to have attained a correct religious faith, but who do not exhibit a truly christian practice; whose evidence of discipleship proceeds from their lips, and not from their lives? If so, they do not comply with the injunctions of Christ Jesus. He has no where required a belief in any enumerated set of opinions as a condition of divine acceptance. Sincere obedience is his only test of a christian profession. “Ye are my disciples if ye do whatsoever I command you.” A good life is the only scriptural evidence of a saving faith. The only scriptural heresy is immoral conduct. Continual reference is made by him to the actions of men, and not to their speculative opinions. We are directed to judge of persons by their characters, and not by their creeds. And we are assured that God will render unto every man according to his deeds, and not according to his religious sentiments. A correct faith is indeed valuable. It is of great value, because it is more likely to produce correct conduct; and for this reason we should search for truth as for hidden treasures. But a correct practice is infinitely more valuable; because this is the sum and substance of the gospel requisitions; and this can be secured where the faith is erroneous. For every candid person will allow that there are obedient Christians in every sect; and no man can allow that all religious opinions of every denomination are true. Unreserved obedience is therefore the test of discipleship required by Christ; and without this, a belief in all the creeds in creation will not entitle us to his approbation and acceptance.

Quoted from The Unitarian Advocate and Religious Miscellany, Vol. 1—No. 1, January 1830.

This is actually the body of an email I sent to a friend back in October 2006. The subject of contemplative, or “centering,” prayer was recently brought to my attention again after hearing some young people talk about what they had learned at a Christian youth retreat from which they had just returned. They did not mention the words “contemplative” or “centering,” but were instead taught that they should be still and listen for God. The general idea seemed the same to me, so I searched through my email for items I may have saved on the subject. Instead I found one I wrote myself to a dear friend. Here it is.

Quiet is good. I often, when I’m in prayer, stop speaking and listen for a few moments. The difference is that in eastern meditation you are intentionally trying to clear your mind of thought (or sometimes concentrating your thought on one single thing or word) for the purpose of allowing the greater “whatever” to communicate with you. However, in the spiritual world that we know exists, such an emptying of our minds is only an invitation for evil (satan, demons) to enter into it and let us think that our “revelations” are from God. There is a reason God tells us to dwell on his word day and night.

The two Bible verses that are primarily used to support contemplative prayer are the following, and they are both used out of context! The first is —

• 1 Kings 19:11-12 NASB
  (11) So He said, “Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
  (12) After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.

Where NASB translates “gentle blowing” in verse 12, the KJV translates it as “still, small voice,” which is the translation that contemplatives latch on to. But nowhere does the passage indicate that Elijah was meditating or being intentionally quiet for God to speak to him that way. In fact, he had just experienced an earthquake and fire! Those things certainly got his attention. Maybe his alertness to what was going on around him following those things, NOT a turning inward, is what allowed him to know that God was there in the gentle breeze. But let’s also not forget that God also appeared to and spoke to Moses in fire (the burning bush), not a gentle breeze.

God knows how to get your attention when He wants it. We can’t force Him to come to us on our grounds, our terms, how WE think is best (e.g., quiet meditation). Our awesome God is not a “force” that we can tap into by practicing certain techniques. He is in control, not us. Jesus taught us how to pray, and “quiet your mind” was not one of his instructions! He did often go off alone to pray and that is something we all should do, even if the place we go off alone to is our bedroom.

OK, and the other verse is this one —

• Psalms 46:10 NASB
  (10) “Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The KJV says “Be still, and know that I am God.” This is also used heavily by contemplatives. The NASB translation is more accurate with the meaning in context. It has to do with not striving for things in our own power, in our flesh, without depending on God’s help and guidance. It has nothing to do with emptying or quieting the mind for meditation. It’s about not forging ahead with our own plans, forgetting about God in the process, forgetting to pray and asking for His guidance. About not trusting Him. Settle down, chill out, the Lord is with us, He is our stronghold (which is basically the very next verse) —

• Psalms 46:11 NASB
  (11) The LORD of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

I hope this has helped you, dear brother. Pray daily for God to give you spiritual discernment, to know good from evil, truth from falsehood. That is a gift we all need.

I started thinking about Jesus’ family in relation to him being God (if he was God, that is).

There’s Mary, of course, the “mother of God.” The Roman Catholic Church has already gone down that path, elevating Mary even to co-redeemer with Christ. Even some Protestants have conceded that Mary in some sense is the mother of God. How could they possibly deny it if they believe that Jesus is God?

What about Jesus’ siblings? He had at least four brothers and two sisters (Mark 6:3). Wouldn’t that make them half brothers and half sisters of God? True, only on God’s mother’s side, but that doesn’t change the fact that their mother is also the mother of God. Did any of Jesus’ siblings get married and have children? The scripture doesn’t say, but I’d guess the odds are against all of them (at least six) remaining unmarried and childless. That means that Jesus probably had nieces and nephews (who also grew up and got married and had children). No wonder the perpetual virginity of Mary is so important to the Roman Catholic Church!

I can see how this could have been a problem with the doctrine of the deity of Christ from early on.

• Imagine to be able to say that your ancestor was the half brother of God!

• Or that your great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother was the mother of God!

• Or better still, that your great-great-great-great-great-great uncle was Jesus… God in the flesh!

To maintain the doctrine of Christ’s deity and prevent the possibility of such claims, some creative explanations would have to be developed.

As already mentioned, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, claim that Mary had no other children, the perpetual virgin. That is by far the best explanation to prevent such claims of ancestry. Unfortunately for those churches, that doctrine is in direct contradiction to scripture (Mark 6:3, 1 Corinthians 9:5, Galatians 1:19).

You don’t need to make up a fictional story like Jesus and Mary Magdalene getting married and having children (a la The Da Vinci Code) when there exists the potential and likely reality that Jesus was somebody’s uncle. Probably several somebodies.

Another measure to prevent such claims might be to say that Jesus’ siblings were actually the children of Joseph from another marriage. I think that is probably the explanation used by the “perpetual virgin”-believing churches to explain the verses cited above. With that explanation, while there might have been children that could call Jesus “uncle,” there would be no actual blood relationship.

However, in scripture, Jesus’ brothers and sisters are never mentioned as being the children of Joseph only, or that Joseph had children prior to marrying Mary. While this scenario is possible because of the absence of information, it is highly doubtful (also because of the absence of information). If Jesus was God in the flesh, it would have been more important for the scriptural record to make clear that his brothers and sisters were not biological; but the omission supports what would naturally be assumed, that they were other children born to Mary.

There is another incredible doctrine that later developed and may also have hoped to play a part in combating this little problem of Mary having biological descendants beyond Jesus and his siblings. That being the doctrine of the “hypostatic union,” that Jesus has two natures. Here is one defintion of the hypostatic union:

“Jesus’ two natures are not ‘mixed together,’ nor are they combined into a new God-man nature. They are separate yet act as a unit in the one person of Jesus” (carm.org).

So Jesus’ two natures are separate, but act in unison in Jesus. Therefore, since only his human nature came from Mary, then his siblings are only siblings of his human nature, not his God nature. Now no one can technically claim that there are descendants of half brothers and half sisters of God here with us today. Problem solved!

Well, not really. Even if Jesus wasn’t God in the flesh, it would still be awesome to know that you were related to the Messiah, the Son of God. It’s not as big of a concern, theologically speaking, but it would still be a significant claim of astronomic proportions, wouldn’t it? But of course we are all related in a really Big Picture sense, via Adam and Eve, and later Noah.

While researching for this article, I found a couple of websites that addressed this same concern that I’ve brought up here. They are both Catholic websites, so their argument is that Jesus had no siblings. However, the points they raise are good ones:

And finally, if Jesus had brothers and sisters, don’t you think their descendants would know it? At least in the first 300 years or so of the Church? Where were they? Did they speak of “Uncle Jesus” often? I’d think that if He had all of these brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews around, there’d have been some word of it. (fisheaters.com/mary.html)

We know the family trees of kings and earthly monarchs.
Are you going to tell me that if Jesus had borthers and sisters that no one in the christian community would have cared about their descendents?
Are you going to tell me that no one would care that men and women would be speaking of Uncle Jesus or Uncle God?
And even if no one in the the chritian communinity on Earth cared about such relatives are you going to tell me that the roman and Jewish authorities wouldn’t care about such descendents and that no one in the world would ever write about them? (A forum post by “Jerry-Jet” at forums.catholic.com. Misspellings in original.)

Development of a Doctrine

If you examine the progression in the content of the creeds, from the Apostles’ Creed (estimates range from A.D. 120 to A.D. 215) to the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) to the Confession of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) to the Athanasian Creed (A.D. 500) you will see the development of the deity of Christ, the two-natured Jesus, and the doctrine of the Trinity. To read these creeds in English, see this website. It seems obvious that the doctrines about Jesus, such as the hypostatic union, developed progressively as whatever needs arose to require something be defended or proven to overcome “problems” with the earlier creedal declarations that Jesus is God.

It’s like computer programming. If you introduce an error early in the process, then keep adding patches to correct the errors that have snowballed from the first one, you end up with a jumbled mass of spaghetti code that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense (the Trinity!) It appears to work on the surface, but there are all kinds of holes in the logic.

If Unitarianism is true, how can the scriptures refer to Jesus as having created, or as having existed before the creation (or even before Abraham)?

There is a straightforward, simple explanation given to us by example in scripture.

• Hebrews 7:9-10 (NKJV)
  9 Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak,
  10 for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.

This concept of having done something before his actual existence because he was “in the loins of his father” may also explain the preexistent sounding verses concerning Jesus. He was, after all, “conceived” by the Holy Spirit and thus “in the loins” of his Father from eternity.

• 1 Corinthians 8:6 NASB
  (6) yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

The above is the most straight forward creed of the Christian faith regarding God and Christ that is found in the Bible. Notice that God is identified as the Father and only the Father. Confirmation of this is also found in a very straight forward statement, this one by the Lord Jesus Christ while praying to his Father.

• John 17:3 NASB
  (3) “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

See how this is in beautiful harmony with the Jewish “Shema” found in the book of Deuteronomy:

• Deuteronomy 6:4 NASB
  (4) “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”

Jesus himself affirmed the Shema in Mark chapter 12. When he was asked which commandment is the foremost (greatest, first) of all of the commandments, Jesus answered:

• Mark 12:29-31 NASB
  (29) Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
  (30) AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’
  (31) “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

When the scribe who asked him the question agreed with Jesus’ answer, Jesus told him that he was not far from the kingdom of God.

There is much debate about the verses that claim to support a “Trinity” doctrine. (The above clear verses are not those.) If disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ would study the trinitarian claims with an open heart, they would find that those claims are not as strong as their trinitarian teachers would have them believe. The plain words of Jesus and Paul, along with the foundation of the Old Testament prophets, will prevail over the interpretations of men handed down over the centuries.

After his resurrection, Jesus told Mary Magdalene to go tell the brethren that “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” (John 20:17) Just a few chapters earlier, Jesus identified his Father (and our Father) as the only true God. Do you believe Jesus? Do you have the same God that Jesus has? Do you “worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:23), the same one-person God that Jesus prayed to? Or do you worship a man-made three-person god that is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible?

Friends, read your Bibles!

1 John 2:19 is a verse often used by proponents of OSAS (Once Saved, Always Saved) to show that the truly regenerated will never depart from the faith. In other words, if they fall away, they were never saved to begin with. However, 1 John 2:19 is not about salvation security at all. What is it really about then? Let’s find out.

• 1 John 2:18-19
  18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.
  19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
  

Who went out from them? Verse 19 states that “they” went out from them. Who are “they”? Verse 18 provides the answer: Antichrists. Who are antichrists? Those who deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

• 1 John 2:22 - Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.

Why did they go out from them? “So that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

John is the only one who writes of “antichrists.” These are the same ones that Matthew, Mark, and Luke write about: false prophets. Antichrist is John’s word for a false prophet. He says as much himself:

• 1 John 4:1-3
  1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
  2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
  3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
  

In 1 John 2:19, these were not mere “false conversions” dropping away from the flock, these were false prophets speaking lies and convincing disciples to follow after them.

• Matthew 7:15 - “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
  

• Acts 20:29-30
  29 “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
  30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
  

How many “church splits” over the centuries have these false prophets, these ravenous wolves, these antichrists, been responsible for, taking gullible disciples along with them and forming new denominations?