YHWH of Armies, the God of Israel, who is enthroned among the cherubim, you are the God, even you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. (Isaiah 37:16)

Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. (Isaiah 44:24, KJV)

…I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me. –Jesus Christ of Nazareth (John 8:16)

Consider how simple the statements are in the two Isaiah passages above. They use two simple words that everyone knows and understands: alone and myself. From the Jewish, Onenessian, and our point of view, Trinitarians seem to want to either ignore or redefine these words . Instead of accepting the plain meaning in these verses, Trinitarians assert that God eternally existed as three “persons,” or individuals, within “one godhead,” and for them these verses must mean that the overall “godhead” was alone, but not so with “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” within the godhead. This is why we accuse the Trinitarians of redefining the words “myself” and “alone” as meaning something nonsensical, along the lines of, “he was not alone because he always had themselves.” They try to tell skeptics not to be concerned that this appears nonsensical, because, as they explain it, it is a mystery that “God has to reveal to you.”They also claim that three being one isn’t a contradiction, because God is above human reasoning. However, the apostle referred to this as handling the word of God deceitfully (2 Corinthians 4:2).

Now consider in contrast Jesus’ words, “I am not alone.” Everything that we just said about the way Trinitarians interpret the OT passages is true about the way Onenessians reinterpret these words of Christ himself to mean his dual natures.

It is the Bible that describes what we are to understand about God. The fact remains that God described Himself as one in the Bible. The fact remains that He says He is alone in the Bible. The very fact that He has said these things means that He believes we can understand these things. It isn’t our place to say that what He means is completely different than what He said, and then claim He was speaking in mysteries! If men can say, “God is three persons,” then certainly God could formulate those same exact words, but He didn’t. He said the opposite. He said I am alone and by myself! And it was God Himself who said that He has witnesses who know and understand Him!

You are my witnesses, says YHWH, and [you are] my servant whom I have chosen; that you may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. (Isaiah 43:10)

The reason Trinitarians view the “alone” and “by myself” declarations of God as meaning the opposite of what they say is because they view such passages through the darkened lenses of pagan mythology, philosophy, and even antichristian Gnosticism!

And once again, just as Trinitarians reject what the Scriptures plainly say, and interpret them to mean something the Scriptures don’t say, the Onenessians also do the same, interpreting the “I am not alone” statements of Jesus to mean something different than what was written.

It is ironic that Onenessians absolutely refuse to accept the very clear phrase that Jesus is “not alone” in exactly the same way that they rightly contend against Trinitarians for rejecting the very clear statements that God is “alone.”

If you can see in the above quotes that personal “whos” are being referred to, not impersonal natures, then you’ve grasped the simplicity of Jesus we wish Christians to return to.

Of course, it may be too simplistic for some who are steeped in their traditions to the contrary. So let’s take some time to review a sampling of the many Scriptures explaining that Jesus is not alone.

Even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who sent me. (John 8:16)

He who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him. (John 8:29)

Behold, the time is coming, yes… that you will be scattered… and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. (John 16:32)

According to Jesus, he and his God, who is the Father, are personally distinct. Through the third passage above we can see that they are personally distinct from each other in the same way that Jesus was personally distinct from the disciples (who would soon all forsake him for a short time).

Now watch how Jesus used the personal pronouns in the following verse:

Jesus said to her, ‘Don’t touch me, for I haven’t yet ascended to my Father; but go to mybrothers, and tell them, “ I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (John 20:17)

God the Father is Jesus’ God and Father in the exact same way, and in the exact same context, in which the Father is our God and Father. This couldn’t be any clearer.

Even when Jesus spoke in parables, those parables illustrated the truth; they didn’t hide the truth by teaching a completely opposite concept. Jesus didn’t try to teach the color black by painting a word picture of white. No, his parables were true, if only hidden by teaching with examples rather than being straightforward. The only way to teach that Jesus meant “natures” when he was talking about separate and distinct personal “selves” is to add to the word of God and to jump to conclusions in the way the devil interprets the Bible. But it is also to negate what Jesus did say. It is just that simple.

Now that we have established that Jesus was not alone, and we can see clearly the context in which he was not alone, we are able to remove our darkened antichristian (against-the-anointed-one) glasses and read what was plainly written. The following passages make it quite clear that Jesus was, yet again, speaking in context of personalities, not mere “natures.” In light of these passages, Onenessians have no more evidence that Jesus and the Father are uni-personal than the Trinitarians have that they are multi-personal within the godhead. In fact, there are hundreds of verses that speak directly against the Onenessian theory. Now let’s consider Jesus’ words and see if this is what he is saying.

¹⁷“It’s also written in your law that the testimony of two people is valid. ¹⁸I am one who testifies about myself, and the Father whosent me testifies about me.” ¹⁹They said therefore to him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me, nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” ²⁰Jesus spoke these words in the treasury, as he taught in the temple. Yet no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. ²¹Jesus said therefore again to them, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sins. Where I go, you can’t come.”
²²The Jews therefore said, “Will he kill himself, that he says, ‘Where I am going, you can’t come?’”
²³He said to them, “You are from beneath. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. ²⁴I said therefore to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.” ²⁵They said therefore to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. ²⁶I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you. However he who sent me is true; and the things which I heard from him, these I say to the world.” ²⁷They didn’t understand that he spoke to them about the Father. ²⁸Jesus therefore said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I say these things.” (John 8:17–28)

Recall how Trinitarians ignore the context of Genesis 1:26–27 and zero in on the “let us make man” phrase while ignoring the words of verse 27? The Onenessians use that same selective interpretation tactic as Trinitarians do when they interpret John 8. They ignore the context and jump to verses 24 and 28 so as to put meanings into Jesus’ words that he did not say, and that are contradicted by the context and details of what he actually did say! That’s because their Gnostic-tinted glasses cause them not to be able to see “two people” so that they automatically reinterpret that phrase to mean “two natures,” even though that is not what Jesus said, here or anywhere else!

Notice all the personal pronouns Jesus used to distinguish himself from the person of the Father. Next notice verse 28, where Jesus explicitly states that his self is a different self than the Father’s: “I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I say these things.” These are very clear. Finally, notice that Jesus said, “Just what I have been saying to you from the beginning.” In other words, Onenessians don’t seem to hear Jesus’ words stating that he was in a continual dialog with these other people. He expected them to keep in mind what he had already said. And what he had already stated is what Onenessians must ignore or denigrate or redefine in order to force-fit their opinions upon the texts of this passage.

Notice what Jesus had said to them in John 5, just three chapters earlier:

¹⁹Jesus therefore answered them, “Most assuredly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing. For whatever things he does, these the Son also does likewise. ²⁰For the Father has affection for the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does. He will show him greater works than these, that you may marvel. ²¹For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he desires. ²²For the Father judges no one, but he has given all judgment to the Son, ²³ that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴Most assuredly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. ²⁵Most assuredly, I tell you, the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God’s voice; and those who hear will live. ²⁶For as the Father has life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself. ²⁷He also gave himauthority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. ²⁸Don’t marvel at this, for the hour comes, in which all that are in the tombs will hear his voice, ²⁹and will come out; those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. ³⁰I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous; because I don’t seek my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me. ³¹If I testify about myself,my witness is not valid. ³²It is another who testifies about me. I know that the testimony which he testifies about me is true. ³³You have sent to John, and he has testified to the truth. ³⁴But the testimony which I receive is not from man. However, I say these things that you may be saved. ³⁵He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John, for the works which the Father gave me to accomplish, the very works that I do, testify about me, that the Father has sent me. ³⁷The Father himself, who sent me, has testified about me. You have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form.” (John 5:19–37)

This passage causes a real dilemma for Onenessianism. In this passage Jesus clearly and thoroughly described himself as personally distinct from his Father. There are no such verses in the Bible that say Jesus is an incarnation of the Father, or that he is made of dual natures of humanity and deity. Modalism rejects these clear, emphatic descriptions, just as Trinitarians reject biblical descriptions of God. If Modalism is true, then Jesus was lying. Remember how in John 16:32, Jesus established the identities of the personal pronouns by including the disciples? Thus, in context, the natural reading is that Jesus was just as personally distinct from the Father as he and his disciples were to each other and the Father. Well, in the above passage Jesus did the same thing. But here he used John the Baptist to help reveal the subject identities. Notice his topic was the testimony of two people, which he clearly stated to mean personalities, not natures. He used the example of John as one witness and the Father as another witness. Now unless someone wants to claim that John was another one of Jesus’ natures, then we have it from Jesus that he and his Father are as personally distinct from each other as John the Baptist was to them, or else Jesus’ testimony is not true!

Indwelling Does Not Mean Identity

One of the big problems with the Onenessian viewpoint is that “indwelling” does not equal “identity.” This is very similar to what Trinitarians do. When Trinitarians read about the Son of God in distinction to the Father (take, for example, Jesus praying “not my will”), it is understood by them as one God-Personality speaking to another God-Personality rather than as clear evidence of the human Christ in distinction from the personality of the one God. Similarly, when Onenessians see the “indwelling” of God in Christ, somehow for them it means “incarnation,” even though they know very well that when saints are indwelled by God’s Spirit that does not make them incarnations. The word “indwelling” simply does not mean or signify “identity”! How many of us would say that our soul indwells our body? No, we are by definition “soul and body,” we don’t indwell ourselves!

Let’s consider what happened when man was first created:

YHWH God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)

This is the source of our understanding that man does not indwell his body; man is himself complete only as long as he is composed of body and soul as one unit. This is the biblical view. To speak otherwise, as if a man’s soul or spirit could exist apart from his body, is totally of pagan philosophical origin. [See the next chapter for discussion of spirit beings coming to earth as humans.]

Let’s look at some passages that help us see clearly what indwelling means biblically.

And if the Spirit of Him who did raise up Jesus out of the dead doth dwell in you, He who did raise up the Christ out of the dead shall quicken also your dying bodies, through His Spirit dwelling in you. (Romans 8:11, YLT)

Don’t you know that you are a temple of God, and that God’s Spirit lives in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

Or don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have from God? You are not your own. (1 Corinthians 6:19)

The good thing committed guard thou through the Holy Spirit that is dwelling in us. (2 Timothy 1:14, YLT)

Unless someone wants to believe that Christians, who are indwelt by the Spirit of God, become one and the selfsame person with the person of God the Father, then these passages thoroughly disprove the idea that indwelling equates to identity or incarnation of the one who indwells another. When Paul the apostle was struck down by a brilliant light, he asked the Lord, “Who are you?” and Jesus replied, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Does that mean that the saints that Paul had been persecuting were all themselves little incarnations of the person of Jesus? Of course not! Rather, they were certainly in a real sense “members of his body.” But being members of the body of Christ does not make us incarnations of Christ, and it does not cause us to relinquish our own personalities. And the Scripture is very clear that God is the head of Christ, just as Christ is the head of us. That certainly doesn’t make us all the person of God the Father, but it does explain God’s language regarding the members of His body in Christ.

¹²For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. ¹³For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all given to drink into one Spirit. ¹⁴For the body is not one member, but many. (1 Corinthians 12:12–14)

But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)

So there we have the truth of the matter: God is the head of Jesus in the same way that Christ is the head of the ekklesia, which is in the same way that a man is the head of the woman in marriage. Certainly no one believes that a woman is therefore without her own personality and becomes an incarnation of the person of her husband when they say their wedding vows! And yet that is exactly how unbiblical it is for Onenessians to claim that Christ is an incarnation of the person of God because he is indwelled by the Father.

The very fact that Jesus was indwelt by the Spirit of God proves he wasn’t a personal incarnation of God.

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