One God & One Lord

There is a song sung in our church, and I’m sure in many churches throughout the world, titled We Fall Down. Here is a portion of the lyrics:

We fall down
We lay our crowns
At the feet of Jesus
The greatness of mercy and love
At the feet of Jesus
We cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
We cry holy, holy, holy
Is the lamb

I’m sure the person who wrote these lyrics believes it is biblically accurate, and I’m sure the people who select this song to sing in their church services believe the lyrics to be accurate, as well. But they are confusing Father and Son, and thinking the Son to be God Almighty.

Let us, however, review the scripture and see the truth.

The idea behind the song is taken from Revelation 4:10, the only verse in scripture that talks about casting crowns or laying crowns. The song lyric was probably from the New International Version, which uses the word “lay” rather than “cast.”

• Revelation 4:10 NIV
  the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne

• Revelation 4:10 NASB
  the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne
  

It is the 24 elders who fall down before the throne of God and cast their crowns. It was back up in verse 4 that we were told about the 24 elders and what they were wearing:

• Revelation 4:4 NASB
  Around the throne were twenty-four thrones; and upon the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white garments, and golden crowns on their heads.

Whether the 24 elders are literally 24 individuals or if they are symbolic of something else, we won’t discuss here. I’m sure there is no one who loves God who would hold back casting their crown at His feet, so for the purpose of this article, the song lyrics can refer to 24 elders or to every God-fearing person since the Creation, represented by the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles of Christ.

Getting back to Revelation 4:10, the elders fall down “before Him who sits on the throne.” The writer of the song We Fall Down wants us to believe the one on the throne is Jesus. Is it? Let’s find out.

To identify who it is that is sitting on the throne, we need to look at the text within its context; therefore, below is a large passage of scripture, spanning the last four verses of Revelation chapter 4 and the entirety of chapter 5. The key verse for the song lyrics is highlighted in blue.

• Revelation 4:8–5:14 NASB
  8 And the four living creatures, each one of them having six wings, are full of eyes around and within; and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.”
  9 And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever,
  10 the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
  11 “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
  1 I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals.
  2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?”
  3 And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the book or to look into it.
  4 Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it;
  5 and one of the elders said to me, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.”
  6 And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.
  7 And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.
  8 When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.
  9 And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
  10 “You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”
  11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands,
  12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”
  13 And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”
  14 And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen ” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

One of the first things we can note, and then move on, is that the four living creatures are saying, “Holy, holy, holy” to “the Lord God, the Almighty” and not to the Lamb. The Lamb is given much praise in verses 9 through 12 and is, indeed “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69), but that is not who the “Holy, holy, holy” is directed towards in this passage.

Beginning at Revelation 4:9, we read that the One who sits on the throne is “Him who lives forever and ever.” It is to this One that the 24 elders fall down and cast their crowns in verse 10 (highlighted blue, above).

Then in verse 11 (Revelation 4:11), we see the elders address the One on the throne as, “You, our Lord and our God.” So far, we are pretty certain that the one on the throne to whom the elders are bowing and casting crowns is God.

Continuing on into chapter 5, we see in verse 1 that the One who sits on the throne is holding a book in His right hand and that the book is sealed. In verse 2, an angel asks “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?” No one was found worthy.

In Revelation 5:5, we are told that “the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” has overcome and can open the book and its seals. And, behold (verse 6), the Lamb was seen standing between the throne and the elders. He (the Lamb) came and took the book out of the right hand of “Him who sat on the throne” (verse 7).

It should be clear at this point that the Lamb is not the One who sits on the throne because he takes the book from the One who sits on the throne.

We also know that the Lamb is Jesus (John 1:29 - The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”).

In Revelation 5:8-10, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fall down before the Lamb and sing a new song to the Lamb:

“Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.”

And later in verse 13 we are told that every created thing gave praise to both God and Jesus, saying “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever.”

And the four living creatures kept saying, “Amen ” And the elders fell down and worshiped. (Revelation 5:14).

We fall down
We lay our crowns
At the feet of … who?

The Almighty God, who is someone other than Jesus, the Lamb of God.

Maybe the song writer doesn’t claim to base his song on scripture, in which case he can say whatever he wants to say and cast his crowns wherever he wants to cast them.

If you think I’m being too picky, too pedantic, you should know that people memorize song lyrics more readily than they memorize the words in the Bible. I heard someone say once, “But doesn’t it say in the Bible that …” and she was corrected by her husband, “No, that’s just a song.” That’s why we can’t be too picky about the songs we sing, especially in church.

Addendum 03/03/08: One of the members of my congregation made an interesting comment about the song. He wrote, “I didn’t assume that the ‘We Fall Down’ song refers to Heaven. I assumed it was referring to our “earthly crowns” that we humans place so much value on, and the song is saying that we as Christians surrender them to Jesus while we are here on earth.” I think that’s a great way to interpret the song!

• Luke 16:16-17 NASB
  (16) “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.
  (17) “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.

Verse 17 speaks of the difficulty, the unwillingness, of the Jews to depart from the Law to which they were married and enter the kingdom of God, the very thing to which the Law and the Prophets pointed: the coming of the Messiah, ushering in the kingdom of God. Jesus here was addressing the Pharisees specifically, who John tells us are “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14).

“But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away” is an exageration to mark the difficulty the Jews would have. Jesus here is basically saying the same thing that he said in Luke 18:

• Luke 18:24-25 NASB
  (24) And Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God!
  (25) “For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

“For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…”
“But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away…”

Both describe the difficulty of leaving one and entering another.

Note also that in Luke 16, Jesus follows up with a word about divorce and adultery:

• Luke 16:18 NASB
  (18) “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.

Every transgression is a betrayal of the Law; unfaithfulness to it and dishonoring to God. (See Romans 2:23-25, James 2:10.)

Likewise, he also follows up the same in Luke 18 with a word about leaving things (divorcing) to follow him (enter the kingdom):

• Luke 18:28-30 NASB
  (28) Peter said, “Behold, we have left our own homes and followed You.”
  (29) And He said to them, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God,
  (30) who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life.”

The old must be completely left behind in order to fully embrace the new. They cannot be mixed without disaster:

• Matthew 9:16-17 NASB
  (16) “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results.
  (17) “Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

And to leave the old only to long for it and turn back to it is equally as disastrous:

• Luke 9:62 NASB
  (62) But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

• 2 Peter 2:20-22 NASB
  (20) For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
  (21) For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.
  (22) It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.”

For Jews, it was life under the Law that they had to choose to leave and follow Christ. For Gentiles, it is life in the world, a life ruled by the desires of the flesh. Both are wide paths to condemnation. Only in Christ, the narrow path to Life, can we be redeemed from the sins committed in the past. And all of us have sinned, there is no denying it.

• Romans 3:23 NASB
  (23) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

• 1 John 1:8 NASB
  (8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Do you want your old sins forgiven and forgotten? Do you want the power to deny the temptations of the world and of your flesh, the power to live righteously in this life?

• Titus 2:11-14 NASB
  (11) For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,
  (12) instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,
  (13) looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus,
  (14) who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

Do you want the promise of eternal life?

• John 3:16 NASB
  (16) “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

• John 14:6 NASB
  (6) Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

If you are a Jew following the Law of Moses, do not turn your back on your Messiah, sent to you by God the Father. Read his words for yourself; let him speak to your mind and to your heart. If you are not a Jew, but just someone wondering about God, if he exists, pick up a Bible and start reading. The words of Jesus, who proclaimed the very words of life given to him by God, are contained in the four gospel records: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read and pray. Ask God to lead you to the truth.

Jesus said that if you continue to learn about him through his word, if you believe him and follow him, then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:31-32).

What a question! But for the child of God, it is a question with an easy and obvious answer. Love is supremely important! Here are some reflections on love from the scriptures.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, puts it quite bluntly: Without love, dear Christian, you are nothing. You can be abundant in spiritual gifts or have faith that can move mountains, but without love, says Paul, you are nothing. You can donate to charity, feed the poor, or take any other action of sacrifice to help others, but if you do it without the motivation of love in your heart, it profits you nothing. Or to put that in the words of Isaiah the prophet, all your righteous deeds are as filthy garments (Isaiah 64:6).

Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 13 to describe the markers of love. If we have the love of God in our hearts, these are the markers of our character: patience, kindness, not jealous, not boastful, not arrogant, we will not act unbecomingly (in other words, we do not act outside the boundaries of love), we are not provoked to anger or improper action, we do not keep track of the times when someone wrongs us, and we do not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoice in the truth.

He goes on to say that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that love never fails. Wow.

Some want to believe that this agape love that is to characterize the child of God is meant to apply within the body of Christ. In other words, it is how Christians are to be towards one another. This is true in a sense, as Paul writes in Galatians 6:10 that we are to do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. But do note that he wrote “all people.” Jesus said that we are to love even our enemies and to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us and pray for those who mistreat us (Luke 6:27-28).

The apostle John wrote that If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen (1 John 4:20). And if we can’t love our brothers and sisters in Christ, how can we possibly love our enemies? It begins with God, beloved. When we love God, we will love our brothers and sisters. And if we love God and we love our brothers and sisters, we will love our enemies.

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” What are his commandments? Just read through the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They contain the words that Jesus wants us to keep. And his commandments are God’s commandments because “he whom God has sent speaks the words of God” (John 3:34) and Jesus said that he did not speak on his own initiative, but the Father who sent him commanded him what to say and what to speak (John 12:49).

Whoever keeps his word (the words of Jesus, the commandments of God), in that person the love of God has truly been perfected (1 John 2:5). By this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and observe His commandments (1 John 5:2).

Peter speaking to Jesus, said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life” (John 6:68). How right he was. Jesus himself said, “the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63).

• John 12:49-50 NASB
  (49) “For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.
  (50) “I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.”

How important is love? The kingdom of God is promised to those who love Him (James 2:5).

We started by defining love from the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, so let’s end with the very last verse of the same chapter:

• 1 Corinthians 13:13 NASB
  (13) But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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.