Word/Logos Library
THE WORD BECAME FLESH:
ONENESS PENTECOSTAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE INCARNATION
Annual Meeting of Society for Pentecostal Studies
Evangel University, Springfield, MO, March 11-13, 1999
By David K. Bernard
Beginning in 1914, the Oneness understanding of the Godhead became a significant viewpoint within the modern Pentecostal movement. Nevertheless, it is commonly ignored and misunderstood by Trinitarian Pentecostals today.
The purpose of this paper is to foster a greater understanding of the Oneness position. An earlier paper, which I presented to this society in November 1989 in Fresno, California, gave an overview of the Oneness doctrine. This paper focuses on the Incarnation, for this topic, more than any other, is the key to the Oneness position.
The Basic Oneness Position
Oneness believers do not accept three distinct centers of consciousness in the Godhead, but they hold that God is absolutely and indivisibly one. They affirm that in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily and that Jesus is the only name given for salvation. The Father was revealed to the world in the name of Jesus, the Son was given the name of Jesus at birth, and the Holy Spirit comes to believers in the name of Jesus. Thus the apostles correctly fulfilled Christ’s command to baptize “in the name [singular] of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost” by baptizing all converts with the invocation of the name of Jesus.
Oneness believers affirm that God has revealed Himself as Father (in parental relationship to humanity), in the Son (in human flesh), and as the Holy Spirit (in spiritual action). They acknowledge that the one God existed as Father, Word, and Holy Spirit before His incarnation as
Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and that while Jesus walked on earth as God Himself incarnate, the Spirit of God continued to be omnipresent.
Oneness Christology
Like Trinitarians, Oneness believers confess that Jesus is true God and true man. The
Incarnation joined the fullness of deity to complete humanity, resulting in one divine-human person. We can distinguish these two aspects of Christ’s identity, but we cannot separate them.
The Oneness view differs from Trinitarianism, however, in stressing that Jesus is the incarnation of the full, undivided Godhead, not merely the incarnation of one of three divine persons. When the Old Testament speaks of the Messiah as “God,” it does so in the context of absolute monotheism. Likewise, when the New Testament speaks of Jesus as “God,” it does so with the Old Testament definition of “God.” As to His eternal deity, there can be no subordination of Jesus to anyone else, whether in essence or position.
By contrast, Trinitarian scholar Norman Geisler stated that, for technical accuracy, Trinitarians should not say that “God” was manifested in the flesh but that “God the Son” was manifested in the flesh. Citing I Timothy 3:16, Oneness believers emphatically proclaim that the former phrase, not the latter, is accurate.
Turning to the humanity of Christ, Oneness believers agree with Trinitarians that Jesus possessed all the elements of authentic humanity as originally created by God. Thus we can speak of Jesus as human in body, soul, spirit, mind, will, and so on. According to the flesh, Jesus was the biological descendant of Adam and Eve, Abraham, David, and Mary. We must not speak of two spirits in Jesus, however, but of one Spirit in which deity and humanity are joined.
Christ’s humanity means that everything we humans can say of ourselves, we can say of
Jesus in His earthly life, except for sin. Moreover, in every way that we relate to God, Jesus related to God, except that He did not need to repent or be born again. Thus, when Jesus prayed, when He submitted His will to the Father, and when He spoke of “my God and your God” (John 20:17), He simply acted in accordance with His genuine humanity.
Trinitarians, however, see these examples as proving that the Father and the Son are two distinct persons. This difference of interpretation lies at the heart of the Oneness-Trinitarian controversy. Most of the passages that Trinitarians cite to demonstrate a distinction of persons, Oneness believers interpret as relating to the human identity of Jesus Christ. They understand the passages in a manner similar to the following explanation by Frank Stagg, a Southern Baptist seminary professor:
The prayers of Jesus belong to the mystery of incarnation, not to a threefold division in God. Jesus Christ was truly human as well as divine, and out of his humanity he did pray. This is not to be understood as one God praying to another God, or one part of God praying to another part of God. It is to be understood as the prayers which came from an authentic human life, one in which God was uniquely present.
The Trinity in Light of the Incarnation
We can go so far as to say that the Trinitarian doctrine stands or falls on the New Testament distinction between the Father and the Son. The Old Testament does not explicitly teach the doctrine of the Trinity. The New Testament says very little that could distinguish the Father and the Holy Spirit as two persons. The strongest texts that could establish a Trinity are those in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels, that make some sort of distinction between the Father and the Son. If the focus of these passages is the genuine humanity of Christ and not Trinitarian distinctions, then the doctrine of the Trinity loses it strongest support.
At this point, we need to define the Trintarian distinction of persons. According to classical
Trinitarian thought as formulated by the Cappadocian theologians of the fourth century, the one
Godhead mysteriously subsists in three coequal, coeternal, coessential persons. There is communion of substance but distinction of personhood. This Trinity is a perfect, inseparable union, and the persons work together in all things. The unique distinguishing characteristics of the persons are as follows: the Father is unbegotten (ingenerate), the Son is begotten (generated), and the Holy Spirit is proceeding (spirated). The generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit are mysteries, however. While the persons are coequal and coeternal, the Father is in some sense the head and the origin.
As Trinitarian scholars have pointed out, much of this formulation has no objective, understandable meaning to us. Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan commented on the problem:
This puzzling, indeed frustrating, combination of philosophical terminology for the relation of One and Three with a refusal to go all the way toward a genuinely speculative solution was simultaneously typical of the theology of the Cappadocians and normative for the subsequent history of Trinitarian doctrine.... Basil’s answer to ... difficult[ies] was to declare that what was common to the Three and what was distinctive among them lay beyond speech and comprehension and therefore beyond either analysis or conceptualization.15
Trinitarian scholar Harold O. J. Brown likewise acknowledged the problem:
It is not possible to observe the different Persons in action. Their distinction can only be learned from God’s self-disclosure in Scripture. It lies in the internal relationships or properties of the Persons: ingenerateness, begottenness, and procession. This sounds very theoretical. Reinhold Seeberg put it caustically: “Thus one arrives at an empty metaphysics or conceptual mythology; the Father begets the Son and causes the Spirit to proceed from himself. In this way the Persons are supposed to be distinguished from one another and also united to one another.”... To talk about properties and then say that we
cannot know what they mean is exasperating. It may help to remember that the properties explain nothing; on the contrary, they are merely conceptual tools or symbols to impress on us that the three Persons are and remain eternally distinct, yet also remain eternally one God.[14]
Despite its difficulties, this view is the position of Trinitarianism today.[15] In a textbook published by the Assemblies of God, Kerry McRoberts identified these unique personal properties as necessary to distinguish Trinitarianism from Modalism, even though they do not offer an explanation of the Trinity:
The personal properties (i.e., the inner workings of each Person within the Godhead) assigned each of the three members of the Trinity are then understood as follows: to the Father, ingenerateness; to the Son, begottenness; and to the Holy Spirit, procession. Insistence on these personal properties is not an attempt to explain the Trinity, but to distinguish Trinitarian orthodoxy from heretical Modalistic formulas.[16]
Although Trinitarians say that the unique property of each divine person is a mystery, perhaps we can explore the claimed distinctions by posing a hypothetical question, within the
Trinitarian framework: In principle, based on what we know about the nature of God, could the Father have become incarnate? Or is incarnation a unique action that only the Son could have taken? Let us examine the two alternatives.
1. If we say that the Father could not have become incarnate, then we have apparently discovered a further distinction between the persons, one that classical Trinitarianism does not proclaim. Unfortunately, it would make the divine persons different in essence, contrary to orthodox Trinitarian doctrine.
Specifically, the Son would be inferior to the Father. Indeed, some ancient writers held, in accordance with Greek philosophy, that the supreme God, being perfect and holy, could not have direct contact with the world of matter. They identified the Father as the supreme God and the
Son as a lesser deity. As Origen explained in refuting Oneness concepts of his time, “Some individuals among the multitude of believers … incautiously assert that the Saviour is the Most
High God; however, we do not hold with them; but rather believe Him when He says, ‘The
Father who sent Me is greater than I.’”[17]
Justin Martyr did not believe that the Father could manifest Himself even as a theophany:
You must not imagine that the unbegotten God Himself came down or went up from any place. For the ineffable Father and Lord of all neither has come to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor rises up, but remains in His own place…. Therefore neither Abraham, nor
Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man, saw the Father and ineffable Lord of all … but [saw]
Him who was according to His will His Son.20
Eusebius of Caesarea similarly argued that the Father is too pure to unite Himself to corruptible flesh except by an intermediary power, namely the Word:
For since it was impossible that perishable bodies, or the rational spirits which he had created, should approach the Supreme God, by reason of their immeasurable distance from his perfections, for he is unbegotten, above and beyond all creation, ineffable, inaccessible, unapproachable, dwelling, as his holy word assures us, in the light which none can enter; but they were created from nothing, and are infinitely far removed from his unbegotten Essence; well has the all-gracious and Almighty God interposed as it were an intermediate Power between himself and them, even the Divine omnipotence of his only-begotten Word. And this Power, which is in perfect nearness and intimacy of union, with the Father which abides in him, and shares his secret counsels, has yet condescended, in fullness of grace, as it were to conform itself to those who are so far removed from the supreme majesty of God. How else, consistently with his own holiness could he who is far above and beyond all things unite himself to corruptible and corporeal matter?
Finally, this line of reasoning concedes that the uniqueness of the Son lies in the Incarnation, rather than in the eternal generation that Trinitarianism teaches. If we reject the subordinationism of the foregoing writers, then we are led to the Oneness position, for it defines the Son in terms of the Incarnation while rejecting any subordination of Jesus as to His divine nature.
2. On the other hand, if we say that the Father could have become incarnate, what would have been the nature of that incarnation? Would heaven have been devoid of the Father during His earthly manifestation? Surely not. The Father would have related in some fashion to the humanity that He thereby assumed. Would this human person have been born of a virgin? It seems that the nature of incarnation would have required it. Who would have been the Father of this child? Surely the Father. Would this man have prayed to the Father? Would he have obeyed the will of the Father? It seems that he would have done these things in order to be a righteous and holy man.
In other words, this divine-human person would necessarily have related to the Father in the same way that Jesus related to the Father as recorded in the Gospels. In short, the biblical distinction between the Son and the Father has nothing to do with persons in the Godhead, but it has everything to do with the Incarnation. The begetting of the Son occurred at the Incarnation; it is not an eternal, incomprehensible process within the Godhead. Thus there is no reason to explain the Gospel accounts of the Father and the Son in terms of a Trinity.
The conclusion is that the Father did become incarnate—in Christ. According to I John 3:1-5, the Father manifested Himself to take away our sins, and He will appear to us again one day. In a related vein of thought, Trinitarians typically recognize a certain positional subordination of Jesus to the Father, although they proclaim an equality of essence. In principle, then, could the Father become subordinate to Jesus? If not, then this subordination indeed seems to be one of essence.
With these thoughts in mind, let us turn to three key passages of Scripture relative to the Incarnation. We will explain them from the Oneness perspective as a means of providing a clear understanding of Oneness theology.
The Incarnation of the Word
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14, NKJV).
In the Old Testament, God’s Word (dabar in Hebrew) was not a distinct person but was God speaking, acting, or disclosing Himself. “He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions” (Psalm 107:20). “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). God’s Word was the expression of God’s mind, thought, purpose and personality, which was God Himself.
There was no hint of compromising the absolute oneness of God. The Hebrews knew that God stands alone and by Himself: no one is beside Him, no one is like Him, no one is His equal, and no one helped Him create the world. He is the only Creator and only Savior.26 In New Testament times, the Word (Logos) was a popular philosophical concept. In the prevailing Greek culture of the eastern Roman Empire, the Word meant reason as the controlling principle of the universe. In Greek the noun logos could mean thought (unexpressed word) as well as speech or action (expressed word). As an example, it could refer to a play as conceived in the mind of the playwright, as written in the script, or even as acted upon the stage.
For the apostle John, a Jew trained in the Old Testament, the Hebrew background of “the Word” was undoubtedly the most significant. At the same time, he surely knew how his pagan contemporaries used the term. Under divine inspiration he used it in a unique way to point both Jews and Gentiles to Jesus Christ.
John did not contradict the Jewish concept of the absolute oneness of God with no distinction of persons. In fact, he recorded Christ’s statement to a Samaritan woman that the Jews had the correct concept of God: “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). But John sought to reveal the identity of Jesus as the one God incarnate. He presented as true the words of Thomas, an enlightened Jew, who confessed Jesus as “my Lord and my God.” (See John 20:28-31.)
John used the Greek term for “the Word” as a point of reference for his readers, but unlike the Greek philosophers, he made clear that the Word was eternal, was actually God, and was revealed in the human person of Jesus Christ. The Word is our Creator, our source of life, the light of the world, and our Savior (John 1:3-13).
By contrast, Philo, a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria in the first century A.D., sought to blend Jewish and Greek thought by speaking of the Word as an impersonal agent of God by which He created the world and relates to it. Similarly, Justin, a philosopher in the mid second century who converted to Christianity, tried to express Christianity in terms of Greek philosophy.
He described the Word as a subordinate second person who was begotten by God at a point in time before creation and who became God’s agent of creation. Justin’s ideas, shared by some other second-century Greek Apologists, became influential for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the third and fourth centuries.
John’s usage is clearly incompatible with these ideas. The Word was not begotten at a point in time; rather, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Moreover, the
Word was not a subordinate agent, creature, or begotten being; “the Word was God.” John’s choice of word order in the Greek here is emphatic, signifying, “The Word was God Himself”
(Amplified Bible).
A Trinitarian explanation of John 1:1 is inadequate and would require a mid-sentence change of the definition of “God.” Is God “the Father” (as I Corinthians 8:6 states)? If so, “the Word was with [the Father], and the Word was [the Father].” Is God “the Trinity”? If so, “the Word was with [the Trinity], and the Word was [the Trinity].” But Trinitarians try to have it both ways, saying, “The Word was with God [the Father], and the Word was God [the Son].” Such an interpretation is inconsistent and erroneous.
John 1:1 is actually a strong statement of the deity of Jesus and of the priority of the Incarnation and Atonement in the mind of God. From the beginning God foresaw the need for the Atonement and so planned the Incarnation.28 From the beginning, God’s Word—His mind, personality, reason, thought, plan—was with Him. The Greek preposition here is pros, which is not the normal word used to mean “with” but a word most frequently translated as “to.” The connotation is not of one person sitting beside another, but of God’s Word pertaining to Him or being related to Him.
God’s Word is not a distinct person any more than a man’s word is a different person from him. Rather, God’s Word is the sum total of His mind, personality, reason, thought, plan, and expression, which is God Himself, just as a man’s mind is the true man himself.
In the fullness of time and exactly according to God’s predetermined plan, God’s Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God enacted His plan. He uttered Himself. The eternal Word was expressed in human flesh, in space and time. In short, the Word is God’s self-disclosure or
God in self-revelation.
The Christological scholar Oscar Cullmann has reached similar conclusions:
The author’s purpose [in John 1:1] is specifically to nip in the bud the idea of a doctrine of two gods, as if the Logos were a god apart from the highest God. The ‘Word’ which God speaks is not to be separated from God himself; it ‘was with God’
There is thus nothing here either of the Arian doctrine of the creation of the Logos from nothing, or of Origen’s doctrine of an emanation. The ‘Word’ of God is rather with God himself. Nor is the Logos subordinate to God; he simply belongs to God. He is neither subordinate to God, nor a second being beside God. Bultmann rightly emphasizes that the subject and predicate of John 1.1 cannot be reversed. One cannot say (God was with the Word), because the Logos is God himself in so far as God speaks and reveals himself. The Logos is God in his revelation. Thus the third phrase of the prologue can actually proclaim (and the Word was God). We ought not to reinterpret this sentence in order to weaken its absoluteness and sharpness....
The evangelist means it literally when he calls the Logos ‘God.’ This is confirmed also by the conclusion of the Gospel when the believing Thomas says to the risen Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20.28). With this final decisive ‘witness’ the evangelist completes a circle and returns to his prologue....
We can say of this Logos, ‘He is God’; but at the same time we must also say, ‘He is with God.’ God and the Logos are not two beings, and yet they are also not simply identical. In contrast to the Logos, God can be conceived (in principle at least) also apart from his revelatory action—although we must not forget that the Bible speaks of God only in his revelatory action....
The Logos is the self-revealing, self-giving God—God in action. This action only is the subject of the New Testament. Therefore, all abstract speculation about the ‘natures’ of Christ is not only a useless undertaking, but actually an improper one. By the very nature of the New Testament Logos one cannot speak of him apart from the action of God.
Frank Stagg offered a similar explanation:
Jesus Christ is God uniquely present in a truly human life, but he is not a second god nor only one third of God. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh (John 1:1). The Word which became flesh was God, not the second person of the Trinity. John does not say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was the Second Person of the Trinity” (1:1). Jesus Christ is more than “the Second person of the Trinity”;
He is Immanuel, God with us. Immanuel does not mean “the Second person of the Trinity with us.” Immanuel is God with us.
Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh. The Word is God creating, revealing, and redeeming. In his absoluteness and beyondness we cannot know God. In this sense, “No man has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). We know God in his relatedness, as he relates to us. The Word is God relating.[25]
Finally, James D. G. Dunn has offered illuminating comments in the same vein:
In John’s thought, “Wisdom/Logos is not a heavenly being over against God, but is
God himself, God in his self-manifestation, God insofar as he may be known by the human mind. It is precisely for this reason, because the Son is the incarnate Logos, God in his “knowability” and “visibility,” that the Son can say, “He that has seen me has seen the Father” (12:45; 14:9). In a similar way, the working out of the “glory” motif of the prologue (1:14) includes the otherwise puzzling 12:41 (“Isaiah saw his glory and spoke of him”), where Isaiah’s vision of the Lord sitting on his throne (Isaiah 6) is interpreted as a vision of Christ’s glory—presumably because for the Fourth Evangelist Christ is to be identified not with one of the seraphim, as in some later Christian thought, but as the shekinah of God, the visible presence of God himself….
The Fourth Gospel is not speaking to a trinitarian debate about the interior relationships within the Godhead. It is speaking to a discussion about monotheism, advocating the necessity of identifying Jesus with God insofar as God makes himself known to humankind. Thus, for example, to understand John’s frequent talk of the Son’s obedience to the Father as an assertion of the Son’s subordination to the Father is anachronistic and not quite to the point. It would be more accurate to say that the Fourth Evangelist’s intention was to emphasize the continuity between Father and Son, the continuity of Wisdom/Logos: he is doing the same work as God (5:17); his hand and the Father’s hand are one (10:28-29); he speaks with the authority of God (14:10). The issue here is not so much one of relation between Father and Son, as of the validity of the Logos-Son’s revelation of the Father.
In Greek, the word for “dwelt” in John 1:14 is skēnoō, which literally means “tabernacled” or “tented.” The eternal Word was robed in true humanity. God’s Spirit was not transmuted into flesh; rather, “God was manifest in the flesh” (I Timothy 3:16). Through this incarnation
(embodiment, human personification), we have access to divine glory, grace, and truth. The incarnate Word displays God’s glory, communicates God’s grace of salvation, and declares God’s eternal truth.
Trinitarians use the terms “Son” and “Word” as if they were completely interchangeable, but the Bible speaks of the Son only in reference to the Incarnation. Jesus is the Son of God because the Spirit of God miraculously caused His conception in the womb of the virgin Mary (Luke 1:35). The Son was “made of a woman, made under the law” (Galatians 4:4), and therefore begotten on a certain day (Hebrews 1:5). The Son is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). The Bible never speaks of an eternal Son, but of the “only begotten Son”
(John 3:16). By contrast, the Word is God in self-revelation without necessary reference to the Incarnation, and therefore is eternal and invisible.
The two terms, then, are closely related but distinct. The Word was made flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Only at that point did people behold “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” The Word was revealed in the Son. In other words, the invisible God was made visible in the Son, who, as a man, has the closest possible relationship or companionship with God. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18).
In I John 1, the apostle John used the same themes of the eternal Word and the begotten Son, identifying “the Word” as the eternal life of the Father. That life was always with the Father, but not as a distinct person any more than a man’s life is a different person from him. And that life was manifested to us in the Son. Therefore, we enjoy spiritual life today not only because God our Father created us but specifically because He provided a plan of salvation for us through the Son. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (I John 1:1-3, NKJV).
According to John 1 and I John 1, then, Jesus is the plan of God enacted, the mind of God disclosed, the life of God manifested. In short, Jesus is the one God Himself revealed in flesh for our salvation. He explained, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him” (John 14:6-7). When we see Jesus we see the
Father in the only way the Father can be seen, for the invisible Father dwells in the visible man Jesus (John 14:9-10). When we accept and apply the atoning work of Jesus, the Son of God, then God’s eternal Word is revealed to us. We find the way, the truth, and the life, and thereby we are reconciled to the one true God, our Father.
The Mediatior
“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (I
Timothy 2:5).
Jesus is the only “mediator between God and man,” and as such, He came to “give his life a ransom for all” (I Timothy 2:5-6). He was able to be the unique mediator because He was God manifested in the flesh. Both His humanity and His deity are essential to His mediatorial work. As a true man, He represents the human race to God; and as the one God incarnate, He reveals the eternal, invisible God to man.
Jesus was the only sinless man who ever lived. Thus He was the only man who did not deserve eternal death for sin, and the only person who could be a substitutionary sacrifice for sinful humanity. Just as Adam was the first representative of the human race, leading us into sin by his disobedience to the plan of God, so Jesus serves as the new representative of the human race, leading us into righteousness by His obedience to the plan of God (Romans 5:19).
When we speak of Jesus as the mediator between God and humanity, we must not think of
Him as a second God or a second divine person. The Old Testament emphatically proclaims, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The New Testament does not change this message, for there is no contradiction in the Word of God. Rather, it reiterates the same truth and builds upon it. The new revelation of the New Testament is not that there is another God or an additional person in the Godhead, which would contradict the faith and doctrine of the Old Testament saints. Rather, the New Testament reveals the same God of the
Old Testament in a greater dimension: His coming in flesh to redeem His fallen creation. Significantly, I Timothy 2:5 does not say the mediator between God and men is “the second person,” or “God the Son,” or “the eternal Son.” It identifies the mediator as “the man Christ Jesus” (emphasis added). Christ’s role of mediation does not imply a separate divine identity; it simply refers to His genuine, authentic humanity. As God incarnate, Jesus Christ literally unites both deity and humanity in His own person. He Himself is the meeting place of God and man. He becomes the place and means of mediation, not by pointing us to someone else, but by bringing us to Himself, placing us in His body, and filling us with His Spirit.
He is not an agent who leads us into fellowship with another person. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (II Corinthians 5:19). Christ died so “that he might present it to himself [not to someone else] a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27). When we see and know Jesus, we actually see and know God the Father, because the Father dwells in Jesus (John 14:7-11).
If there were a second divine person, such a person could not be the required mediator between the holy God and sinful humanity. Only a sinless man could be the mediator, the kinsman redeemer, the sacrifice of atonement, the one to shed blood for the remission of sins. For the sake of argument, let us image that there were two divine persons who were coequal in every way and, in particular, equal in holiness. If a mediator was necessary to bring sinful humanity back into fellowship with the first person, then a mediator would be necessary to bring sinful humanity back into fellowship with the second person. The second person could not serve as the mediator; being just as holy as the first person, he also would need to find or supply someone else as the mediator! In short, it is not a second divine person who is the mediator; it is “the man Christ Jesus” who is the mediator. And this man is specifically the one man in whom the fullness of God dwells by incarnation (Colossians 2:9).
Frank Stagg stated this position well:
Jesus Christ … is not a third party between God and men but rather one in whom God and men meet directly. In Jesus Christ is neither a link nor a wedge between God and men. He is the union of God and men. Jesus Christ is not a second God nor just a third of God. He is the eternal God uniquely present in a truly human life. This is what is meant by the incarnation, and it is in this sense that Jesus Christ is our mediator.
The mediator had to be a genuine man, but He also had to be God incarnate, for only God can forgive sin. Only Jehovah is the Savior (Isaiah 45:21-22).
Specifically, the mediator had to be the manifestation of the Father, the Creator, the Lawgiver, the One against whom the human race has sinned from the beginning. If one person wrongs another person, he must confess and apologize to the person he has wronged in order to obtain forgiveness. A third party cannot grant forgiveness and reconciliation. For example, a thief must make restitution to the rightful owner; he cannot give the stolen goods to a third person and secure forgiveness from him. Likewise, as rebellious children we can only go to our heavenly Father to obtain forgiveness and reconciliation. If we look to Jesus as our Savior, we should also acknowledge Him as the revelation of the Father to us. Significantly, Isaiah 63:16 says the LORD (Jehovah) is simultaneously our Father and our Redeemer.
In short, no one else could qualify as the mediator except God Himself coming into this world as a human being. God knew that no one else could be the saving intercessor for the human race, so He provided the means Himself. “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation” (Isaiah 59:16).
The only way for us to be saved from eternal death, then, is to turn to Jesus Christ. In a prayer addressed to the Father, Jesus stated the basis of salvation for all humanity: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”
(John 17:3).
It should not surprise us that Jesus prayed to the Father; in fact, it should surprise us if He had not prayed. Jesus was a real man in every way; as such, He participated fully in every aspect of human experience, enduring hunger, thirst, weariness, and temptation. As a sinless man who served as the new representative of the human race, He exemplified perfect humanity as God intended it to be, including prayer, obedience, and submission to the will of God. He could do no less and be a righteous man. He could do no less and be a role model for us.
The prayers of Christ do not point to an internal division within the Godhead, but they simply attest to His authentic, complete humanity. If the prayers of Christ proved that He was a second divine person, they would also prove what kind of second person He was—not a coequal person, as Trinitarianism teaches, but an inferior person who needed help from the first person. In this case, the second person would not truly be God, for by definition God is all powerful and has no need of assistance. Instead of seeing Jesus as a second, inferior divinity, we must simply recognize that He prayed because He was a man. As Hebrews 5:7 says, He prayed “in the days of his flesh.”
In John 17, Jesus prayed as a man to God, addressing the eternal Spirit of God as “Father,” even as He instructed us to do in what we call the Lord’s Prayer. In John 17:3 He identified the twofold basis of our salvation: knowing the one true God and knowing Jesus Christ. By this spiritual knowledge we can inherit eternal life instead of eternal death.
Like I Timothy 2:5, this verse builds upon the Old Testament truth that there is only one God. Jesus identified the Father as “the only true God” and said that knowing Him is vital to our salvation.
But knowing about the one true God is not enough. Many Jews of Christ’s day worshiped the
God of the Old Testament but rejected Jesus, and He said they would die in their sins (John 8:24). Believing in the existence of the Creator and Lawgiver is necessary, but this knowledge alone does not reconcile a person to Him. The only means of reconciliation is through Jesus Christ, for He is the mediator that God has provided. We must specifically know Jesus—the manifestation of the one God—as our Savior. Only when we know Him do we truly know the Father (John 8:19).
We must understand that Jesus was sent from God. As a human being, as the Son of God, Jesus was sent out into the world from the womb of Mary, empowered by the Holy Spirit and ordained by the plan of God to be our sacrifice of atonement.
John 17:3 says we need to know “the only true God, and Jesus Christ.” This phrase does not refer to two distinct persons in a Trinity. If there were a Trinity of coequal divine persons, then knowledge of each of them would surely be the necessary basis for salvation, yet there is no mention of a third person. If John 17:3 referred to two persons, then the status of the third person would be compromised. How could knowledge of two persons be required for salvation, yet knowledge of the third coequal person be unnecessary?
Moreover, if John 17:3 referred to two persons, then only one of them is God. A comparison of verses 1 and 3 shows that Jesus addressed the “Father” as “the only true God.” If Jesus were a different person from the Father, then in this passage He would not be God at all. If “and” in verse 3 distinguishes two persons, then it separates Jesus from God.
That was not the message of either Jesus or John. As we have already noted, in John 20:28 Thomas confessed Jesus to be “my Lord and my God.” Jesus commended Thomas for his insight and pronounced a blessing on all those who would believe the same truth even without having seen Jesus in the flesh as Thomas had. John recognized the immense significance of this incident. He recorded it with approval and used it as the climax of his Gospel, following it with the thesis statement of the book. Elsewhere, in language reminiscent of John 17:3, John wrote that the Son, Jesus Christ, is “the true God, and eternal life” (I John 5:20).
In sum, our salvation is based upon knowing the true God and specifically knowing Jesus
Christ as the manifestation of the true God for the purpose of our salvation. We must act in faith upon this knowledge, applying Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection to our lives. “Everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord” will come upon “them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (II Thessalonians 1:8-9). In other words, the path to eternal life is to believe and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Him, we encounter the fullness of the Godhead, and in Him we are complete (Colossians 2:9-10).
The Form of God and the Form of a Servant
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:5-11).
The subject of this passage is Christ’s human life and earthly ministry. Verse 5 introduces the thought by saying, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” The focus is not on the transcendent nature of God, which we humans cannot duplicate, but on the attitude and conduct of the man Christ Jesus, which we can imitate. The passage recognizes Christ’s identity as the almighty God incarnate but emphasizes His human role as a lowly servant.
Verse 6 reminds us that Christ is the true God in order to point out that He had every right to live in this world as a conquering king instead of a humble servant. Nevertheless, as verses 7-8 describe, Jesus did not hold on to His divine prerogatives but relinquished them, living a simple life and enduring a humiliating death. He could have displayed His divine glory to the world and demanded luxury, obeisance, and submission, but instead He voluntarily laid aside these prerogatives in order to atone for our sins.
The New International Version (NIV) translates verses 6-8 as follows: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross.” Trinitarians interpret this passage to mean that a second divine person (the eternal Son) existed; he was equal to but distinct from the Father, and he became incarnate. But this view destroys the numerical oneness of God as taught in Scripture.
As we have seen, this passage draws attention not to the eternal nature of God but to the historical person of Jesus Christ. Verse 6 speaks of One who is both God and man and says that by right He was “equal with God.” In other words, Jesus, as God incarnate, was fully equal in every way to God before the Incarnation. God incarnate is the same as God preincarnate. In the
Incarnation, God did not lose any of His nature or attributes, which makes the servant role of
Jesus all the more amazing.
The use of “equal” does not require Jesus to be a second person. If it did, the Bible would have a contradiction, for God has no equal and there is none like Him (Isaiah 46:5, 9). Moreover, if “equal with” indicates a distinct person, then Jesus would not merely be a distinct person from the Father, as Trinitarians teach, but a distinct person from God altogether, which they deny; for verse 6 does not say “equal with the Father” but “equal with God.” If God is a Trinity and if equality implies a personal distinction, then Jesus is equal to the whole Trinity yet a distinct person from the Trinity.
The proper understanding of “equal with” in this context is “the same as; identical to.” Acts
11:17 provides a similar example in which the same Greek word (isos) is translated as “the like,” meaning “the same.” In John 5:18 some Jewish leaders accused Jesus of “making himself equal with God.” They were not accusing Jesus of calling Himself a member of a Trinity, for such a
concept would have been completely foreign to them. As John 10:33 shows, they were accusing Jesus of claiming to be the one God Himself: “Thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” They understood His assertion, but they erred in rejecting it. He was not a man trying to make Himself God, but He was actually God coming as a man.
There may be a further significance in the use of the plural neuter form in the Greek here, as John Miller, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian minister, explained:
A simple singular masculine might at once be expected. ‘Thought it not robbery to be an equal Person with God.’ Instead of that, it is neuter: and instead of the singular, it is plural.... He was truly God. But His humanity was not truly God. And, therefore, there were certain definitions to be made.... Hence the beauty of the language, ‘that there should be equal respects with God’ (to eina isa).
This is no ... fixing of a Second Person. It is the portrait of a man: of a man claiming to be divine; of a man, actually God in the incarnation of the whole of Deity; but a man not ceasing to be man; and therefore, when stating His equality with God, exquisite in His speech, and carefully reserving respects in which He has still humanity.[3]
Philippians 2:5-6 refers to “Christ Jesus,” namely to the divine-human person after the
Incarnation took place, not to a second divine person before the Incarnation. Some Trinitarians say that the word “being” (Greek, huparchō) in verse 6 means “originally being, eternally being, preexisting” and thus speaks of an eternal Son before the Incarnation. But the simple meaning of “being” is more appropriate, as all major translations and Greek dictionaries recognize.
As an example, Luke 16:23 uses the same Greek word to describe a rich man in hades as “being in torments.” Clearly he was not in torment originally, eternally, or by preexistence. Similarly, I Corinthians 11:7 uses the same Greek word to teach that man “is the image and glory of God”; it does not speak of an eternal, preexistent state or merely of man’s original state, but primarily of his present state.
Many commentators say that the word “form” (Greek, morphē) refers to a visible form or an external appearance. While morphē has this general meaning, the context establishes its precise meaning here. Verse 7 uses morphē again (“the form of a servant”), and verse 8 uses a synonym, schēma (“found in fashion as a man”). Both Lightfoot and Trench assert that here morphē connotes what is intrinsic and essential while schēma connotes what is outward and accidental. The main subject of the entire passage is the mind of Christ, not His body. “The form of a servant” refers primarily to the nature or character of a servant, not to the physical appearance of a servant. Likewise, since God is an invisible Spirit who does not have a physical body apart from the Incarnation (John 1:18; 4:24), it seems that “the form of God” refers primarily to God’s nature or character, not to a visible manifestation, much less a second divine person. Thus, for Jesus to be “in the form of God” means that He was “in very nature God,” as the NIV renders.
From eternity the Spirit of Jesus was God Himself, and from birth Jesus was the one true God incarnate and not some lesser being.
If “the form of God” means a visible image, then it refers to Jesus after the Incarnation, for it is as the begotten Son, who was “made of a woman,” that He is the “image of the invisible God” and the “express image” of God’s nature.At any time in His earthly life Jesus could have appeared in His divine glory, as in the Transfiguration and in the postascension appearances to Stephen and John. But instead He veiled His glory and displayed an ordinary human appearance, revealing His true identity only to those who had the eyes of faith.
Philippians 2:7 says that Jesus “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant.” Again, this verse does not focus on the act of incarnation, but upon the total human life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Certainly the phrase “was made in the likeness of men” has the act of incarnation in view, but the phrase “being found in fashion as a man” includes the whole scope of His life. Moreover, verse 8 shows that the culminating act in this process was not the Incarnation but the Crucifixion: “he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
The Greek word translated as “made of no reputation” is kenoō, which has the general meaning of “to make empty.” Consequently, some Trinitarians say that their second divine person surrendered the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience in the Incarnation, but this view would mean Jesus was merely a demigod on earth. How could Jesus have lacked divine attributes and still have been God? How could God divest Himself of His essential nature?
The Scriptures reveal that in His Spirit Jesus was everywhere present, knew all things, and had all divine power. The King James Version (KJV) and the NIV convey the correct meaning here: Jesus did not surrender His attributes but His privileges. As the lexicon of Bauer et al. translates, “He emptied himself, divested himself of his privileges.”
Isaiah 53:12 shows that the supreme act of “emptying” occurred at Christ’s death: “He hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” As a man, Christ was completely submissive to the indwelling Spirit of God. He was obedient to God’s plan even to the point of death.
As the result of Christ’s humble, obedient life and sacrificial death, God has highly exalted
Him and given Him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9). By implication, if we adopt the same humble, obedient attitude, we can also expect to be exalted (although not in the same measure).[7]
The emphasis here is first on Christ’s humanity, for only as a man could Christ be exalted.
As to His deity, Jesus always was the Lord, but by virtue of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension He conquered sin, death, hell, and the devil in the flesh. He thus openly declared His lordship and earned the right to be called Lord as to His glorified humanity. He is not only the King of eternity but also the human Messiah and Savior.
If this passage spoke of one divine person exalting another, the first person would actually have to be greater than—not equal with—the second person in order to exalt him. And if the second person were preexistent and coequal, why would he need to be exalted? If he ever lost his exalted status, how was he still deity?
Philippians 2:9-11 again affirms that Jesus is truly God and not merely a man. The indwelling Spirit of God resurrected, glorified, and exalted the humanity. As a result, one day all creation will meet God in the person of Jesus Christ and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the
Lord of the universe. In doing so, they will glorify the Father, for the Father has chosen the Incarnation and the name of Jesus as the means of revealing Himself to the world.
The creation will not confess Jesus as a second divine person, but as the one true God of the
Old Testament revealed in flesh. Philippians 2:9-11 is actually the fulfillment of Isaiah 45:23, in which Jehovah (“the LORD”) declared, “Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” All will confess Jesus as the incarnation of Jehovah, who is the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11 shows that Jesus is the supreme name by which the one God has revealed Himself to the world. Many Trinitarian scholars say that the supreme name described in verse 9 is Lord. In other words, God has given the man Jesus the supreme title of Lord. It is true that throughout His life Jesus was known as Jesus but was openly and miraculously declared to be
Lord by His resurrection and ascension. Nevertheless, this observation does not detract from the supremacy of Jesus as the personal name of God incarnate, for the added title of Lord serves to magnify the name of Jesus and underscore its true meaning.
As an analogy, the highest political office and title in the United States is that of president. George Washington was the president and thus had the highest title; nevertheless, his unique name—the name that embodied his legal identity, power, and authority—was still George Washington. He could not merely sign documents as “Mr. President”; he had to sign them as “George Washington” in order for his signature to be effective.
Likewise, verse 10 says it is specifically at the name of Jesus that every knee will bow. Philippians 2:10-11 does not merely say that everyone will acknowledge the existence of a supreme Lord, for many unsaved people already do that; the significance of these verses is that everyone will specifically acknowledge that Jesus is the one Lord. As the lexicon of Bauer et al. translates, “when the name of Jesus is mentioned” every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.