But this I confess to you, that… I serve the God of our fathers, believing all things which… are written in the prophets. (Acts 24:14)

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. (Galatians 3:23–25, KJV)

These verses tell us two things. First, Christianity began as a continuance of worshiping the God of the OT. Second is the idea that constitutes our second rule.

Rule #2: It is a simple, vital truth that the OT law is the schoolmaster, our “elementary school” if you will, that brings us to Christ.

Learning basic Bible interpretation can be like learning to read, write, and do arithmetic. That exact concept is spelled out in the above Scripture.

Now, in considering this rule, don’t forget the first rule and jump to conclusions about the OT. Notice in the same passage, Paul says that we are no longer under the schoolmaster, which he identified as the law. He means that the OT is no longer the Covenant that God’s people are under. So Paul isn’t trying to bring us back under the law’s ordinances (nor are we); rather, his point is that the OT teaches and prophesies about Christ so that we can recognize the true Messiah by how he is described in the OT.

Notice how clearly the topic is defined for us: “the… schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” The point is that we shouldn’t learn the basics of our understanding of Christ from paganism, or humanism, or philosophy, or Egyptian mysticism, or antichristian Gnosticism, or any other ism. Not even from leaning on our own understanding!

This is a critical point, because along the way we’re going to show you how Oneness theologians have lost sight of this simple biblical rule and in its place have allowed their ideas to be heavily influenced (whether admittedly or knowingly or not) by each and every one of those isms listed in the last paragraph.

It is typical for Onenessians to point out to Trinitarians that their teachings are just modifications of ancient beliefs in three gods. Unfortunately, Trinitarians rarely seem to listen; at least we’ve all failed to eradicate that false teaching once and for all. The reason seems to be because Trinitarians are usually so conditioned to “see” the Trinity in their proof texts that their biases and preconceptions won’t allow them to examine their beliefs critically. In Jesus’ words, they often don’t have “ears to hear,” as it were. Thus, Trinitarians often claim that they see the Trinity in the Bible, and that settles it for them.

It is as if modern Trinitarians have each inherited a pair of pagan-philosophy-shaded prescription lenses from Justin, Tertullian, and others. This seems to be the best way of explaining why they still insist on interpreting the Scriptures in line with philosophical concepts and ideas. The First Commandment’s “one” has become as blurred as if they had taken a big red marker and crossed it out and added the word “three” in its place! This is how that notion looks graphically:

(Note: if you are reading this in black and white, the word “one” and “Deut. 6:4” on the right are both struck through with a red line which will appear black).

Now, consider our discussion from the last chapter in light of the rule of this chapter. Instead of using the OT to understand the NT, Trinitarians use ideas from philosophy to interpret both! The graphic illustrates what happens to those who attempt to interpret the Bible through the wisdom of the world. To be fair, Trinitarians have noticed verses in the NT where personal distinctions between God the Father and his begotten son are indeed clearly stated. Yet they took such NT verses as liberty to impose plural personalities within the godhead, thereby changing God Himself to be something He never was, if we look at God as defined in the OT. They say they are interpreting the OT through the NT, but they were never given such authority to change God into a Trinity of persons in the godhead, and certainly the apostles never spelled out the Trinity doctrine.

In the last chapter we discussed how philosophy influenced the development of theology, which is the study of all things about God. We quoted Jesus’ view of God when he said, “You worship what you do not know; We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews ” (John 4:22). In the beginning of this chapter, we quoted Galatians 3:23–25, thereby switching to the topic of Christology, which is the study of all things about Christ. According to Paul, the OT was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Christology), and according to Jesus, the “what” of God (theology) is and was known and understood by the Jews. Putting these two verses together tells us that both the study (and our understanding) of God and the study of Christ have their firm basis in the OT, which means not in worldly or pagan views.

Concluding that Jesus was YHWH incarnate is problematic in two ways. First, it is not a biblically accurate view of the Jewish Messiah, since the OT was not a schoolmaster that taught or explained that concept. No Jew ever understood the Messiah that way.

Secondly, it is a view that comes directly from paganism, which makes paganism, rather than the OT, the schoolmaster to bring us to “that” Christ! This we can see clearly in our Bibles by simply reading Acts 14:8–15:

⁸At Lystra a certain man sat, impotent in his feet, a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked. ⁹He was listening to Paul speaking, who, fastening eyes on him, and seeing that he had faith to be made whole, ¹⁰said with a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet!” He leaped up and walked. ¹¹When the multitude saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voice, saying in the language of Lycaonia, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” ¹²They called Barnabas “Jupiter,” and Paul “Mercury,” because he was the chief speaker. ¹³The priest of Jupiter, whose temple was in front of their city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates, and would have made a sacrifice along with the multitudes. ¹⁴But when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of it, they tore their clothes, and sprang into the multitude, crying out, ¹⁵“Men, why are you doing these things?” (Acts 14:8–15)

The writers of the Bible knew how to form a sentence that reads, “the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.” But nowhere in the whole Bible will you read such a clearly stated sentence about the biblical YHWH “coming to us in the likeness of men.” Looking for such a phrase or statement in the Scripture is just as fruitless as looking for the word “Trinity” or a definition of the Trinity in the Bible. Onenessians are quick to point this out to Trinitarians. But that doesn’t stop the Onenessians from interpreting the Bible the same way Trinitarians do through their mutually held pagan idea of incarnations of deity!

The prescription-glasses analogy shows us that the Trinitarian view reads certain passages within a narrowly prescribed “lens” or “filter” that distorts the image of what those words were meant to say. The issue is, what was the original intent of the passage? And then, what “filter” or preconceived notion or jumped-to conclusion is being used to alter that intent and arrive at a nonbiblical conclusion. This is what we mean by saying they use theological lenses, or filters, through which to interpret the biblical descriptions of God and Christ.

The problem is that filters aren’t merely used to view an image; they are actually used to creatively change an image! When Trinitarians and Onenessians interpret the Scriptures, they are using their “gods come down in the likeness of men” or their “Gnostic dual-nature” shades, or some combination of those or other “filters.” Whatever lens they are using, the effect is changing the view of the OT Schoolmaster. Unfortunately, the more they practice using these filters the more creative they get at doing so. This is why the apostles warned, “impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). Both positions believe they are getting better at explaining their position, when in reality they are just getting more sophisticated in their deceptions, as this passage warns.

In a manner of speaking, those others are “Photoshopping” the biblical doctrines of Christ in order to “doctor them up.” Even after they have managed to “noticeably alter” their “image,” they still claim their views are biblical. But honestly, this just isn’t the case. Pre-Photoshopped images may form the basis of a final product in photography, but once the original has been noticeably altered, it is dishonest and deceptive to pass off the change as being identical with the original. This type of “change” being made to the understanding of Christ is precisely what we are warned against because it moves us away from the original Jesus to another Jesus.

The proper “shades” would be the OT-as-schoolmaster shades; that is, the “lens” the good physician of the Bible prescribes! Rather than darkening our view, the prescribed shades work to lend clarity and magnify the truth of God’s words!

Since the OT is to be our foundation, or “lens,” when interpreting the NT Scriptures, then it stands to reason that worldly philosophy and pagan ideas and myths are to be soundly rejected as views used to interpret the Bible.

Trinitarians seem to be oblivious to the magnitude of what it would have taken to transform Christianity into a Trinitarian religion from its beginnings in strict Jewish monotheism. They want us to believe that this transformation happened without any discussion whatsoever in the biblical records. In fact, all the discussions about the Trinity appeared after the apostles because the idea of God in three persons wasn’t even invented, as far as Christianity was concerned, until after they were gone! So, in effect, Trinitarians want us to believe that such a fundamental doctrine as the Trinity was transmitted in only a few gray-area biblical verses that the apostles gave us for the purpose of negating the fundamental concept of Jewish monotheism. This is simply theological dishonesty and deception on a grand scale!

By the same token, Oneness theologians assert the same thing about their view of God the Father incarnating Himself into a man. Both groups want us to believe that only they (or those who have had their same special revelation) can interpret the Scriptures correctly for us so we won’t be confused. And they both condemn us as being blind if we don’t share their interpretation of these scant proof texts. If that doesn’t sound like con-artistry, pray tell what does?

Furthermore, Trinitarians want us to believe that what was finally hammered out in the fourth century was what apostolic Christians had always believed, even though we can see in the historical records every step in the evolution of the doctrine, moving them step by step away from the “One God” faith once delivered. Imagine if evolutionists could produce a complete skeleton of every transitory life form they claim emerged in their theory that humans evolved from amoebas. It would be irrefutable evidence of their theory. But they don’t have such observable, irrefutable evidence; all they have are their jumped-to conclusions derived from how they interpret the data of the fossil records.

The reverse is true of the development of the Trinity. We have a record of every single step of its evolution from pure Jewish monotheism to full-blown Nicene, coequalist/coeternalist Trinitarianism. And there are some absolutely incompatible thought forms they had to go through to get to Nicaea. They even admit it! See, for example, newadvent.org under “Monarchians” for this little gem: “There was much that was unsatisfactory in the theology of the Trinity and in the Christology of the orthodox writers of the Ante-Nicene period.” In other words, before Nicaea, the so-called orthodox writers did not know how to properly speak of the Trinity! None of them!

Onenessians don’t acknowledge that the idea of the incarnation of deity is clearly one of those extrabiblical steps that led to Nicene Trinitarianism. When Onenessians resort to using the incarnation theory to interpret the Bible, they also have to resort to a step in the development of the Trinity for “opening their eyes” to the idea. The truth is that adopting the incarnation idea didn’t open their eyes, but rather meant putting on the dark shades of paganism, which clouded their clear vision to the words and teachings of the Scriptures.

Again, it isn’t as if Onenessians and Trinitarians don’t have their proof texts; it’s that they don’t have any clear biblical statements that God personally incarnated Himself into a human being. Probably the closest proof text they have is John 1:14.

The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

It is very clear that John did not say “God was made flesh, became Himself human, and lived among us” or that “God was incarnated.” The following graphic shows how Onenessians and Trinitarians believe John should have written it. By means of the graphic, we can see they really don’t believe it the way it was written:

Recall that the phrase “God has come down in the likeness of men,” from Acts 14:11, was a false, pagan-inspired response to the gospel. We could even say it is a pagan confession in the sense of a statement of belief, or conviction. Paul was appalled at such a response; he found nothing redeemable about it.

You see, John 1:14 purposely doesn’t say “God was made flesh.” It says the word was made flesh. It is only by imposing an artificial interpretation that the passage is made to appear to say God was incarnated in Jesus.

How do we know that? How can we be so sure? For two reasons: first, no biblical writer ever clearly said that is what it means; and secondly, they did describe something different. We know this by looking at the “it is written again” Scriptures. None of these next passages is compatible with the idea that Jesus was the “person” of God incarnate:

The words… I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me. (John 14:10)

The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:24)

He who sent me is true; and the things which I heard from him, these I say… (John 8:26)

… I do nothing of myself; but as my Father taught me, I speak these things. (John 8:28)

For I spoke not from myself, but the Father… he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak… The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak. (John 12:49–50)

Now… t he words which you have given me I have given to them , and they received them… (John 17:7–8)

For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God… (John 3:34–35)

For Moses indeed said to the fathers, ‘The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you. It will be, that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people.’ (Acts 3:22–23)

If Jesus is “the word incarnate,” then why weren’t the words he spoke his
own words? It is simply because the word being made flesh means something completely different than the pagan idea that a god-person named “Word” was incarnated.

If we really “hear” Jesus, we find that his explanation of himself isn’t an explanation of an incarnated deity (as in paganism), but rather, is the thoroughly biblical concept of “agency.” We can see a classic description of agency at work in the very words of Jesus himself: “The words… I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me” (John 14:10). This is agency. Jesus just defined himself as an agent of the Father, and, at the same time, absolutely refuted that he was claiming to be the person of the Father.

Agency (Hebrew shaliah) is a biblical concept that I never heard of in all my years as a Oneness Pentecostal. It is shameful that it isn’t taught in Incarnationist camps, because it clears up so much confusion about what Jesus explained! It is amazing how clear Jesus’ words become in the light of the OT teaching of agency!

We can see that the concept is entirely biblical if we look at one of the prime examples of “agency” at work: the scene of Moses at the burning bush.

I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Exodus 3:6)

Most Incarnationists conclude that this was literally God Himself speaking to Moses. But is that true? Is that what the Bible actually teaches? We find the answer by backing up a few more verses and reading the setting of the narrative:

The angel of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” (Exodus 3:2)

This tells us so clearly that God didn’t, Himself, literally talk to Moses; rather, it was actually God’s angel, His messenger, that appeared and spoke to Moses as a faithful agent of God’s exact words! In fact, we even have Stephen explaining this very thing to us in the NT:

When forty years were fulfilled, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush. (Acts 7:30)

This Moses, whom they refused, saying, “Who made you a ruler and a judge?”—God has sent him as both a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. (Acts 7:35)

So you see, when Moses spoke to God, he actually only spoke directly with the angel of the Lord. But the profound thing is that the angel of the Lord, as God’s agent, acted and spoke precisely as if he were God Himself! Chances are, if you are Oneness like I was, you were taught that Moses was literally speaking to God. But that is not the case, according to Exodus 3:2 and Stephen’s Spirit-inspired preaching in Acts 7:30, 35.

Now let’s look at how the Jewish law of agency captures and describes in detail how things work with God’s messengers:

AGENT (Heb. shaliah): The main point of the Jewish law of agency is expressed in the dictum, “a person’s agent is regarded as the person himself” (Ned. 72b; Kidd. 41b). Therefore any act committed by a duly appointed agent is regarded as having been committed by the principle, who therefore bears full responsibility for it with consequent complete absence of liability on the part of the agent… The agent is regarded as acting in his principle’s interest and not to his detriment… R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and G. Wigoder, editors, The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion (New York: Adama Books, 1986), 15.

This is how Jesus comes to be confused with God Himself: Onenessians and Trinitarians interpret his ministry through the lenses of pagan incarnation. They aren’t using the OT schoolmaster to bring them to Christ. If they did view him through the OT schoolmaster, they would see that Jesus was acting as an agent of God the Father, not as an incarnation of God.

For further study on the biblical concept of agency/shaliah, a good place to start would be this introduction: http://www.21stcr.org/multimedia-2012/1-articles/re-shaliah-introduction_law_of_agency.html.

Let’s look at another clear example and explanation of agency. One of the favorite proof texts of Onenessians comes from Zechariah:

The word of Yahweh concerning Israel… They will look to me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and will grieve bitterly for him, as one grieves for his firstborn. (Zechariah 12:1, 10)

This verse, taken out of context, initially appears to support the idea that Messiah would be an incarnation of the person of God Himself. But again, that is only when the Bible isn’t consulted for context and explanation. In fact, in context, this passage prophesies explicitly that Messiah would be an agent of God, and not God Himself. We find clarification by simply backing up a couple of verses:

In that day Yahweh will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem… and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of Yahweh before them. (Zechariah 12:8)

There we have it: the Bible actually explains to us in prophecy that God’s Son, whom we have seen was born of the house of David and was David’s heir, would be “like God,” thus not actually God but acting as God’s agent, “like the angel of Yahweh” who acted as an agent (shaliah) of God and spoke in God’s place; that is, both of them acting with God as their principle.

This is how pagan doctrines (like incarnation) are superimposed upon, and end up replacing in some people’s minds, scriptural doctrines (like agency). This is how people end up adopting or assuming pagan concepts (as in Acts 14:11) rather than biblical explanations.

When we choose to interpret John the way Jesus taught us, we find that the words Jesus spoke were not his words; they were simply the words that God gave and commanded Jesus to speak. These words were with God, and these words were God, and then the Son came and spoke and lived God’s words as God’s agent! It is in this way that “the word was made flesh.” Jesus became an embodiment of God’s words, just as a book embodies the words of the author, but a book is not an incarnation of the author. Again, the concept that God was incarnate was never stated in the Bible. That idea can only be reached by imposing later thoughts upon the text. But when we interpret by letting the Bible explain itself, as Jesus taught us, the false idea of incarnation completely disappears from the Bible.

There are then two ways to “interpret” John 1:14: through the pagan viewpoint, which allows that gods/God do/did indeed personally come to earth in the form of men (which the Bible never, ever clearly describes Jesus as being); or, by removing the pagan-shaded lenses and viewing this passage from the OT point of view. When we view John’s words through a Jewish viewpoint, it clears things up immediately and makes the whole passage very clear, simple, and understandable… and it also refutes both Trinitarianism and Onenessianism:

In the beginning was the plan, and the plan was with God, and the plan was God… The plan became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14, for use of “plan” see below)

Britannica defines the Greek word logos, used above in John, as, “word, reason, or plan.” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos). There is a world of difference between God being made flesh and his plan being made flesh. Onenessians typically agree with interpreting logos (word) as “plan”; for example, “In Greek usage, logos can mean the expression or plan as it exists in the mind of the proclaimer… ” (David Bernard, The Oneness of God, 60).

To say the plan was made flesh simply means that God’s plan was made a reality in our natural world. This is a literal interpretation; it is not jumping to a conclusion. A plan being made flesh is like saying an architect’s plan has become a reality when the actual building is finished. In such cases, the builders don’t take the paper on which the plans were drawn and transform it into a building. Rather, they gather the needed raw materials (steel, wood, and the like) and use them to actually craft the building. Nevertheless, when the building is done the architect can say, “My plans have been made physical reality.” In light of the Jewish understanding of “word,” this is all that John clearly said and likely meant when he stated, “And the plan/word was made flesh.” That is because God’s plan became a very particular and definite type of physical reality: the Messiah of God’s foreknowledge became a flesh and blood human being just like the rest of us.

Now let’s take a brief look at what John meant when he said, “And the plan/word was with God and the plan/word was God.” It is obvious that John didn’t simply say “and the word was a second deific person in the godhead, and he joined himself to human flesh.” Well, neither did he simply say that the word was God. He said, “the word was with God and was God.”

So John was telling us something different in his first chapter. In no way was he saying that God and His word are exact synonyms. Nevertheless, God was all about His plan and His plan was all about God. We know architects in the world who make their living at that trade. Even when they take their work home with them, they generally have a life outside of their “job.” They have their family and recreation and you get the idea. That’s not the case with God. God is totally wrapped up in His plan, and His expressed plan (logos) reveals everything that God felt was critical for us to know, and this plan was made into a human so we could see it! If that is “jumping to conclusions,” then try finding a Scripture that negates what was just written here.

But while you’re looking, consider the magnitude of what John said if he meant it to be interpreted in light of paganism; namely, that God had been made flesh just like pagans believe happens! It would have been as big a Christological explosion as the change from monotheism to a trinity. Remember, up until right around the time John wrote his gospel, Christianity was still a sect within Judaism. The sheer magnitude of these two doctrines (Trinity and God-became-man) alone would have ousted early Christianity completely out of Judaism. But the fact is, Jews didn’t reject the God of the earliest Christians any more than they rejected the idea of the Messiah. The first Christians were preaching the same Messiah that was foretold by the prophets of the Jewish Bible. Most Jews had only rejected Jesus himself as personally being that Messiah! They rejected Jesus’ message as being in opposition to their man-made traditions, but they did not rejectthe Jewish idea of a Messiah. So what a complete turnaround for the later Christians to build up pagan-influenced, man-made traditions about the Messiah and then reject what the Messiah was from a Jewish standpoint in order to adopt pagan views instead!

So God’s “logos” was both God’s architectural plan and God’s self-expression. But that doesn’t mean that the material on which the plans were conceived in the mind of God was also to be the raw material by which the plan would be made into reality. Let’s look at it from another angle. If John had said, “In the beginning was love, and love was with God and love was God… and love was made flesh,” would we interpret that as meaning that God was made flesh? No, because we understand that love describes an attitude, not a substance, and every time anyone loves does not mean those persons who are in love are incarnations of God. To say “love” is made flesh is simply a way of saying that love has been manifested through something or someone in our observable world, and that is what Jesus the Anointed One is! Jesus said as much when he said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father… I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me… ” (John 14:9–10). Onenessians read right over the part where Jesus said he didn’t speak from himself, and turn Jesus’ words completely around to mean the opposite of what he explained. This is a clear case of confirmation bias on the part of Onenessians. Yet Jesus’ words, which are right there in black and white in our Bibles, state: “I speak not from myself.” Jesus himself thus refutes and rejects Onenessianism. If Jesus wasn’t a Trinitarian, should we be? No. If Jesus wasn’t Oneness, should we be? Again, no.

What the OT Schoolmaster Teaches Us

The Bible tells us clearly, explicitly, consistently and emphatically that the raw material that God used to make Jesus was the seed of Eve, Abraham, and David. This is what we are saying when we say that the law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. In the OT and the NT, the raw material that the Son of God is “made out of” is spelled out. And using such Scriptures is the key to rightly, biblically interpreting and understanding what John said in John 1:1, 14. Let’s look at some passages that describe what the Messiah was to be. These passages lay out God’s plan, His word, which was made into fleshly human reality upon the birth of Jesus:

When your days are fulfilled, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who shall proceed out of your bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son… Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before you: your throne shall be established forever. (2 Samuel 7:12–16)

[Moses said] YHWH your God will raise up to you a prophet from the midst of you, of your brothers, like me; to him you shall listen; according to all that you desired of YHWH your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of YHWH my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I not die. YHWH said to me, They have well said that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. (Deuteronomy 18:15–19)

Such OT Schoolmaster verses as these clearly show that the Messiah was always part of God’s plan, but not that the Messiah was to be God Himself. These passages clearly teach us that the Messiah would be made out of one substance; as the genetic offspring of King David, he would be made just as human as Moses and his Israelite brothers were. This was God’s plan from the very beginning.

But this plan (or “word,” Greek logos) wasn’t merely some external building or non-living shell that was only “animated” as long as the glory of God abode in it, such as the “figure of Christ” that the temple in the OT was. Nor was he, being God’s very word, completely unrelated to God. As these Scriptures plainly declare, this word made flesh was God’s plan for God’s revelation of Himself made through a complete and entire human being distinct from the person of God Himself. This whole human has become the temple of God! This human being had absolutely every faculty of humanity that you and I possess, including our strengths and weaknesses, abilities and limitations. That means he necessarily had a human heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. It also means he had to have had a human—that is, a completely human, and only human—self-awareness. For this man was made like his brothers, that means you and I, in all things. This is what Hebrews 2:14–18 explicitly teaches: by obligation, he was made like us in all things.

Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same… Therefore he was obligated in all things to be made like his brothers, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people… (Hebrews 2:14–18)

This verse clearly disallows Christ as a God-man hybrid by clearly defining him as being made in all things like his brothers. This verse simply reiterated the description that God gave to Moses, namely that the Messiah would be like his brothers. Onenessians deny God’s clear definition of messiahship in order to justify adopting a pagan view of incarnation. There are no such corresponding passages where Jesus is clearly explained to be a God-man hybrid. It wasn’t a God-man hybrid that came to save us, so the God-man hybrid doctrine must be rejected as contrary to salvation because it is contradicted by the aforementioned clearly stated passage.

When we remove the dark shades of paganism, we are left with two foundational, biblical truths that ought to “color” or inform all of our “views” of God and His Anointed One. This is what we see through those biblical glasses:

This is our “revelation”! This graphic shows how our biblical revelation has moved the false, pagan views of Christ out of our field of vision!

Now we confess “Jesus is the Christ—the Anointed One, the Son of God” (Matthew 16:16; Mark 8:29; John 11:27). We are able to say we believe every word of this foundational, apostolic confession without any pagan, philosophic, or gnostic influences upon what any of those words mean, either individually or collectively.

Summary: The intent in these studies is to show what can be discovered simply by reading what is plainly stated in the Scriptures and confirmed by applying these simple, basic, biblical methods of interpreting the Bible. And yes, the answer is profoundly different than what is influenced by extrabiblical ideas!

 Print This Post