The Unity Of God
THE UNITY OF GOD
God is One.
Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4). This is known among the Jews as the Shammah - “that which is to be heard.” It is one of the foundational truths of the Old Testament. It is a proclamation of the unity of God. It says that God is one. If we were to examine this verse in the Hebrew language in which it was originally written, it would read like this:
Hear O Israel: JEHOVAH is our Elohim, JEHOVAH is one. (Deuteronomy 6:4). This is interesting. It is interesting because the word Elohim (“God”) is found in the plural. But even though Elohim is plural, it does not mean that we are to think of God in the plural. This instead is a literary use known as the “plural of majesty.” It was a way of ascribing greatness to a person or thing. (The Mormons hold to a multiplicity of gods. They teach that Adam became
Elohim and joined with a “mother god” in order to produce two sons – Lucifer and Jesus.) This principle of the unity of God is not merely an Old Testament teaching. The God of the New Testament is not different from the God of the Old Testament. This same truth was taught by Paul. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 2:5). The unified teaching of the Bible is that there is only one God. This means that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity can never be used to indicate a multiplicity of Gods.
God is Unique. To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him (Deuteronomy 4:35). The question is sometimes brought up as to whether there could be another god over God. Was God created by a Being that was superior to Himself? The answer is given in the book of Isaiah.
“You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “And My servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe in Me, and understand that I am He. Before me there was no god formed, and there will be none after Me.” (Isaiah 43:10).
God is unique. He is one of a kind. In all of the universe, there is not another who is like Him. He is the only God. If this is true, then we would not expect anyone else beside God to be called God. It is then striking that Jesus is described in terms of deity.