Part 2) God is not a Trinity

God is not a Trinity

At the beginning of most of the New Testament letters written by the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter, we continually read this phrase or some variation of it. “Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In this article I would like to look a little closer at these two individuals and decipher who they really are and what their relationship is to one another. First, even since I was very young, I was taught and believed that Almighty God is a triune being, a three in one, a trinity. That he is 3 equal, yet distinct persons who together make up the one, true God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I believed this before I became a Christian and I believed this for over 10 years after I became a Christian. I debated Jehovah’s Witnesses and Oneness Pentecostals vigorously over this issue many times and even to this day I believe the trinity more closely fit’s the Biblical text than either of these other 2 views, so if you believe that these are the only 3 possibilities, the trinity actually stacks up pretty good against these other 2. But, as I hope to convey, there is another way to understand who God is and who Jesus Christ is. I’ll begin, though, with a subtle warning. Almost every church out there believes wholeheartedly in the trinity, it’s always included in their statements of faith and most churches will go so far as to say that if you don’t believe in the trinity then you cannot even be a Christian. Therefore, to step out and even question this view of the trinity puts you in a position of alienating yourself from just about every Christian group and Christian out there. Just a small warning before we begin. But if you are a lover of truth and if you have been a committed Christian for any length of time then I’m sure that you have learned already that there are many, many, false teachings out there in so-called mainstream Christianity. So we should be used to some degree of alienation, but no longer believing in the trinity and consequently, the deity of Christ (believing that Jesus Christ has been God from all eternity) takes things to a whole different level because this separates you from just about everybody and most people will immediately write you off because what you are espousing seems just way too far off the so-called orthodox path. But even with that being said, we are still called to be lovers of what is true. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We must love what is true even if it puts us in the unenviable position of being shunned by just about every group and every Christian person out there. I no longer believe in God being a trinity and I have been shown that there are very good reasons not to believe that God is a trinity. First off, the scripture never, ever calls Almighty God a trinity, not one time. It does refer to Him as a single or one person God over 6500 times. Please consider this fact alone. Almighty God is referred to in scripture as a single person being over 6500 times and is never once mentioned to be a trinity. Is there any wonder why Jews and Moslems who use the same Old Testament that we do, recoil at the idea that God is made up of three separate, distinct persons. So to begin, the whole of the Bible does not teach, even once, that Almighty God is a trinity. Next, Jesus Himself, never hinted once that God was a trinity BUT he did clearly say that his Father alone was the one, true God. Now how significant is that? Speaking to his Father in John 17:3 Jesus says, “And this is eternal life, THAT THEY MAY KNOW YOU, THE ONLY TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Now how plain and straightforward is that? Here Jesus clearly identifies his Father as the only true God. If ever there was a time when Jesus could have made things very clear on whether he also was God, it was right here, but he didn’t say, that “this is eternal life, that they may know us, the only true God“, instead he identified his Father alone as the one and only, true God. To me this is extremely, extremely significant. We also read of Jesus calling the Father, his God, (Jesus’ God) many, many times (Matt. 27:46; Rev. 3:11-12, etc.) and then we have to answer this question. Can the one and only God of the universe have a God? If you really think about it and if you are honest with yourself the answer has to be unequivocally, No! Now Jesus did call himself the Son of God time and time again, and so he is. No one who is semi-honest with the scriptures can deny that. But does being the unique Son of God make him Almighty God? The use of the terms Father and Son right away seem to preclude that. In natural terms a Father must exist before his son can come into being. Almighty God has no beginning. Yet Jesus the Son was born and had a beginning. Luke’s gospel confirms this. The angel Gabriel was sent to the virgin Mary to tell her that she was going to have a Son and that she was to name him Jesus. But Mary had a question. Beginning in Luke 1: 34 she asks, “How can this be (how can I bear a child), since I do not know a man? And the angel answered and said to her. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you, therefore also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” Now this passage tells us quite a lot. First, it clearly confirms the truth of the virgin birth. It also tells us why Jesus was going to be called the Son of God, because he was to be born of God, born of the Holy Spirit. God legitimately fathered Jesus and this is why they are always identified as Father and Son, because it truly and accurately describes their relationship to one another. But there is one last thing that cannot be overlooked. As we said earlier, Almighty God has no beginning. The Bible clearly teaches that He has existed for all eternity. If Jesus is also Almighty God then he also has existed for all eternity. But here in this passage we see that Jesus had his beginning in Bethlehem. I’ll read it again, the angel says to Mary, “ the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you, therefore also, that Holy One WHO IS TO BE BORN WILL BE CALLED THE SON OF GOD.” To be born means to come into existence. When the angel Gabriel was speaking to Mary here at this point in time, Jesus had not yet been born, he had not yet come into existence. He was going to be known as the Son of God only after he was born. So, to this point, the unique Son of God did not yet exist, other than in the Father‘s mind and eternal plan, which He had devised before the foundation of the world. The Bible teaches that the creation of all things was done in lieu of the unique Son of God eventually being born and coming into the world. God created all things for him and because of him. Why? Well in Galatians 4:4 we read, “But when the fullness of time had come (when it was the right time in God‘s plan), God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.“ Almighty God who knows all things, knew that His Son was to be savior of the world, so His whole plan of creation was centered around the coming and the redemptive work of His Son. But once again, God did not send His Son until he was born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem. Jesus could not possibly be Almighty God if he did not even begin to exist until Mary gave birth to him. Alright, there is one more passage that I want to look at before we move on to look at who Jesus really was and now is. That passage is 1 Corinthians 8:6. Here we have the apostle Paul writing and he clearly identifies who the one, true God is. He writes, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him.” and then he goes on to speak about the Lord Jesus Christ. But here, once again, it is plainly stated that the Father alone is the one, true God. In almost all of Paul’s letters he emphasizes this distinction, that the Father is God and that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you just check out the first few verses of his letters you will clearly see this. Peter’s epistles contain the same distinction. Both Jesus and his apostles taught that God the Father was the one and only, true God. There is once again, no mention from any of them of a trinity, a God who is three in one. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of a trinity until after more than 300 years after the death of Christ. No one in the early church believed in a trinity. It wasn’t until 325 AD at the Council of Nicea that Jesus officially became known as equal with Almighty God. But then, incredibly, the church went back and forth for the next 55 years changing their minds on whether Jesus was equal with God or not, they were constantly fighting, rioting, and even sometimes murdering one another, in the supposed church of God, they kept having council after council: one year he was equal with God, 2 years later he wasn’t equal with God, and this continued to go back and forth, with whoever was in power of the Roman empire at the time usually strongly influencing one side or the other. It is an incredible story but clearly not how you would expect such an important doctrine to have been established. Finally in 381 AD the trinity was established as church doctrine and all were killed who believed otherwise. Enough said on the history of this so-called essential Christian doctrine. So when your church teaches you that Christians have always believed the trinity, I’d advise you to look into that claim for yourself. I’ve found it not to be true at all, I’ve found it to be the exact opposite, no one believed in the trinity for over the first 300 years of Christianity and then even when the doctrine was conceived, it was conceived in the most ungodliest of ways. Please check out the history for yourself. So if Jesus is not Almighty God, then who is he? Well the scriptures tell us over and over again. Jesus called himself the son of man continually. He used this title for himself more than any other. Peter tells us in his first sermon, “Men of Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a MAN attested by God to you by miracles, signs, and wonders which God did through him in your midst.” (Acts 2:22) Peter proclaimed Jesus a man through whom God did miracles. Jesus wasn’t God performing miracles, Jesus was a man through whom God did the miracles. The apostle Paul in 1 Tim 2:5 writes, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” In Phil. 2:8 he wrote, “And being found in appearance as a man,” (speaking of Jesus) In 1 Cor. 15:21, “For since by man came death (speaking of Adam), by man (speaking of Jesus) also came the resurrection of the dead.” In Hebrew 10: 12 it says, “But this man(again speaking of Jesus) after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.” I could go on and on. The scriptures testify over and over again that Jesus Christ is a man. This is how he could be tempted in all points as we are, as it says in Heb. 4:15. The Bible says that God cannot be tempted by evil but we know that Jesus was tempted. He could be tempted because he is a man. Jesus taught that God is spirit, and we know that men consist of flesh and blood. Jesus was flesh and blood, he is a man. The Bible teaches that no man has ever seen God, yet many men have seen Jesus. Why were they able to see Jesus? Because he is a man. God cannot die, yet Jesus died. How could he have died? He died because he is a man, God cannot die. Jesus Christ is a man. He is not Almighty God, he is not God the Son, he is not the God-man, he is not an angel, he and his disciples and the scriptures testify, over and over and over again that he is a man. A man conceived by the Holy Spirit to be the second Adam. He is mankind’s final representative. He is our forerunner, our example. He obeyed God perfectly. Now that wouldn’t have been very difficult if he was God. But how incredible is it that he obeyed God perfectly being a man! Now we have no more excuses. The Bible says that we are to walk as Jesus walked. An impossibility if he was God but he is a man as we are men and after we too are born from above, by God‘s spirit, we can walk in obedience to God, just as Jesus the man did. But what about the scriptures that call Jesus, Lord? Can a mere man be Lord over all things? Yes, if God appoints him to be. Back in Peter’s first sermon where he began by asserting that Jesus was a man attested by God (Acts 2:22-36) he goes on to say that this Jesus that God has raised from the dead has been exalted to the right hand of God and then he explains to the people in verse 36, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” The risen man Jesus has now been made both Lord and Christ. So Jesus became Lord after he was resurrected from the dead. Jesus proclaimed this same thing. In Matt. 28:18, after he was risen from the dead, he informs his disciples that, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” Paul gives us the same message. In Philippians chapter 2 beginning in verse 8, he writes, “And being found in appearance as man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God has also highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Jesus Christ, a man attested by God by miracles, signs, and wonders, who was perfectly obedient to God unto death, who has been raised from the dead has now been made both Lord and Christ to the glory of God his Father. He is a man who has now been made Lord. God has put him on his throne and given this man all power and all authority in heaven and on earth. God has, for now, made Jesus, “God” to us. He is currently functioning in the role of God, because God has given him, a man, this authority. The account of Joseph’s appointment by Pharoah as head over all of Egypt is a perfect type for what has occurred between Jesus and his Father. So, the truth of the matter is that God is one person, namely Jesus’ Father, as Jesus and his apostles testified. Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit, who was born in Bethlehem as a man. He is a man who, because of his perfect obedience, has been made Lord over all things, by his God and Father. The Father alone is Almighty God. Jesus Christ, the man, is our Lord and master. What God the Father has planned for man is beyond belief. We, who were made for a while, a little lower than the angels, can now inherit a more excellent name than they, because of the man Jesus Christ. We can now be crowned with glory and honor and all things can be made subject to us because of the man Jesus Christ. We can be raised from the dead unto eternal life because of the man Jesus Christ. And here and now, we can walk free from sin because of the man Jesus Christ. We can follow in his footsteps and sit with him on his glorious throne if we overcome like he overcame. Jesus exhorts us in Rev. 3:21, “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne.” Now I certainly do understand that much more could be said about this topic. I also do realize that there are certain verses in the Bible which seem to indicate that Jesus could possibly be God. One example: Jesus said in John 10:30 that he and his Father are one. At first glance you may take this to mean that Jesus is equally God with God the Father. But later in John we read that this clearly is not what Jesus was meaning to convey. In John 17:20-22 Jesus, while praying to his Father says, “I do not pray for these alone (meaning those present disciples), but also for those who will believe in me through their word (this speaking of us), that they all may be one, as you Father are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them THAT THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE.” So here Jesus says that all of his disciples will be one just as he and his Father are one. Are all of Jesus’ disciples Almighty God? No, obviously not. So when Jesus says that he and his Father are one and later goes on to say that we are one with them also, it becomes very clear that Jesus did not mean that he and all of us are Almighty God together. Once again, much more can be said, but if you are a lover of truth, and if you are willing to look closely for the truth of this matter by examining all of the evidence I believe that God will show you the truth about who He really is. I hope that I’ve presented enough evidence to make you question this doctrine of the trinity just a little bit. I pray that the Lord Jesus will lead you and guide you into all truth.