one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
This is the last of the ones.
One God and Father of all. But some people may want to come to this verse and string it together with others and say Jesus is not God, since there is one God.
Yes, there is one God. But it becomes clear when we put together the overall evidence of Scripture that there is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The disciples saw how Israel got it wrong about Jesus. Some believed He was a prophet, but they could not get to the point that He is God, the Son of God. He is not normal. What they saw and knew was beyond comprehension and worthy of unending exploration.
They shared about Him in the gospels, the epistles and the book of Acts, a sampling of His glory and even at that it is still overwhelming. Our only response is to bow down and worship. And since we worship him, He is God. Not a high-ranking angel, not a special creature, but God in the flesh to the very max.
Jesus highlighted this when he said If you have seen me, you have seen the Father (John 14:9), telling you the equal-ness was complete.
Your belief in the Trinity is key to the Christian faith because it touches on the identity of Jesus.
Did Jesus' existence start in time or before time? If you say in time, you are calling him a liar when He said that before Abraham was I am (John 8:58). Not I was, but I am. It’s not the normal way to speak, but there is nothing normal about Jesus - infinity confining himself in finity.
We all know He has a birthday somewhere in the 4BC. But he is clearly more than that; the question is how much more than that. Really, really much more.
For starters, we need to start by not denying that He is co-equal with God.
For in him all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form,
He is not half God, not God in a rented body, or an upgraded body, or an angel; He is fully God. He is not less God than God. And we have the delineation of the Father, Son, and Spirit, as a good guide for us to construct the dimensions of divinity.
Some will say that it is one God who appeared as the Father in the Old Testament, the Son in the Gospels and the Holy Spirit afterward, like a very good shape-shifter. That also flies in the face of clear biblical testimony, except we think God was playing with our imagination when the Father spoke from heaven when Jesus was being baptized, and the Holy Spirit descended on him (Luke 3:21–22).
Some will say, but the bible did not preach the Trinity in a clear point-by-point way, so why should we? The issue is when people take the scriptures and begin coming to the wrong conclusion, saying Jesus was a creature, which lessens the glory of Jesus and lessens the lessons of the cross; the church had to sharpen the focus on the divine essence.
When we hear “one God,” we have to look into the context. One God means there is no difference in essence: the Father is God in the context of this passage (Ephesians 4:4-6), and the Son and the Holy Spirit “is” God: Father as source, Lord as ruler, Spirit as operator.
The trinitarian dogma is seen in Matthew's statement where Jesus told people to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).
Jesus said there were some things he wanted to tell the people, but they could not bear it. But the Holy Spirit would guide them to all truth (John 16:12–13). It seems that one thing that the Holy Spirit has done (and we should be grateful for those who have gone ahead of us and labored in this regard) is the establishment of the doctrine of the Trinity - God in three persons: One essence, three persons.
I know we can come to passages that express the subjugation of the Son to the Father, but we should not forget Philippians 2.
You should have the same attitude toward one another that Christ Jesus had,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself
by taking on the form of a slave,
by looking like other men,
and by sharing in human nature.
He humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death
—even death on a cross!
As a result God highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee will bow
—in heaven and on earth and under the earth—
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God the Father.
That is the fact of the incarnation. And then there is John 1:1-3.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
Not “in the beginning, the Word was created,” but WAS. Think about that.
And what about the Spirit? The Holy Spirit as a distinct personality is also revealed in Scripture.