The Christian world is plagued by an enormously problematic doctrine. That doctrine proposes that God died! Church members are invited to embrace a theological system in which the Son of God who died is actually fully God Himself. Pew-sitters are assured that both the Father and the Son are equally God, but they are immediately told that this does not mean that there are two Gods. No explanation of this amazing contradiction is offered, but questioning is discouraged. Since churchgoers have no analogy for the proposition that A is X and B is X, but this adds up to one X, they flounder consciously or unconsciously. The psyche is not helped by feeding it incomprehensible illogicalities.
The average believer has not given much thought to the issue of who God really is. They are expected to hold in their minds the following propositions. Jesus is God. God is the heavenly Father. Jesus is not the heavenly Father. There are not two Gods.
In addition they are urged to believe that Jesus, the Son of God who is also God, died. This latter idea surely adds to their perplexity. After all, Scripture declares in I Timothy 6:16 that the Father of Jesus “is the only one who has immortality dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” This text does not deter the churchgoer. He is apparently content to believe that the Father is not the only one who has immortality. He is assured that the Son of God also has it, and has always had it, since he is an uncreated being as much as his Father.
Most astonishingly, this same Son of God who they think is immortal — incapable of death — actually died.
It is surprising that intelligent members of the public, who sing the praises of critical thinking in other spheres of human endeavor, do not raise a hue and cry about this standard view of God — presented to them as unquestioned dogma and the only true faith. They are even able to bring themselves, without wincing, to sing these words of Charles Wesley: “Tis mystery all, the immortal dies. Who can explore His strange design?…How can it be that Thou, my God, should die for me?”
A God who dies? An immortal God who dies?
Are these concepts worthy of intelligent church members, professing to love God and the Messiah with all their hearts and minds? Or will Jesus have something stern to utter to those of us who sit week by week in church without flinching at the evident crucifixion of intelligence and language involved in the Church’s professed central dogma?
In reply to our complaint the opening of John’s Gospel may be advanced as good biblical support for the mind-numbing notion that God is One, and yet Father and Son are both equally God.
But would John, who wrote with the single purpose of getting us to believe that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (20:31) and that we should find the Life of the Age to come in that superb truth — would he have been able to sing or speak of “the immortal who dies”?
In order to understand the opening verses of John’s Gospel it is wise to consult the author John’s own commentary on the Gospel. This he provided in the opening verses of his first epistle.
If we combine John’s own commentary from his epistle we gain this understanding:
“In the beginning was the word [= epistle: “that which was from the beginning,” ep: “word of life”] and the word was with God [= ep: “eternal life was with the Father”] and the word was God.”
John shows us five times in the early verses of the epistle that he meant “that which was from the beginning.” He did not say “he who.” This demonstrates the fact that he did not mean that another person, the Son or the Word (as a person) was with the Father from the beginning. John first defines the word as exactly that, a word or self-expression of God. It was in fact that “word of life” or “the life” (I John 1:1-2). That same “eternal life was with the Father” (I John 1:3). It was later manifested to the apostles, when they met Jesus. The Son of God is what the word or promise became.
So, then, “the word became flesh” (John 1:14) cannot mean another “who” or person became a man, but that the promise of eternal life, the word, appeared as flesh, a human person. Later John says that “eternal life” was promised to us (I John 2:25). John also defined “God” for us in John 1:1. It was the Father (I John 1:2).
Since the Father is God in John 1:1, let us try reading the opening words like this: “In the beginning was the second member of the Trinity, the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was the Father.” That will not work. One cannot switch the word God, from Father to something else in the same sentence.
Try this: “In the beginning was the second member of the God family, and the second member of the God family was with the Father and the second member of the God family was the Father.”
That won’t work either. So another model must be tried. The only model that makes sense of John 1 and I John 1 is the one which treats “word” really as “word” and not another Divine Person. Note that Paul can speak of the Gospel = word as remaining “with (pros)” the converts, i.e. in their hearts (Gal. 2:5). The things “with (pros) God” are the things which concern God (Heb. 2:17; 5:1; Rom. 15:17).
What we are proposing is simply that the “word” of John 1 means word. The same word “word” had already meant “word, decree, promise” — but never once a person — in all of its 1400 occurrences in the Old Testament. And every scholar knows that John was thoroughly steeped in the concepts of his Hebrew background.
Translations of the Bible, starting with the King James, but not before, try to convince us that the word was really another person alongside the One God. They misleadingly put a capital W on word and then refer to it as “him.” The Greek does not require this at all. The “doubling” of God —introducing two different Persons as God — caused untold strife, division, excommunicating and the imposing of a tyrannical “orthodoxy” which was not really orthodox by the Bible’s standards. The results are obvious in today’s divided churches.
What John wrote was this: “All things were made through IT” (the word, John 1:3). That was how Tyndale (1534) and the Bishop’s Bible and the Geneva Bible translated John’s precious account. There is no warrant at all for calling “word” a person, until it (not he) was manifested as the Human Being, the Son of God of verse 14.
Making the word a second Person leads to belief in two who are God and thus “two Gods.” This breaks the foundational principle of all sound religion. The Shema had said that “the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4; Mark 12:28ff). One Lord cannot be two Lords. Two Xs cannot equal one X. Yahweh is the personal name of the single Person who is God, and it appears with singular verbs 7,000 times. A further 15,000-20,000 singular personal pronouns and verbs describe God in the Old Testament as One Person, and in the New Testament the Father is called God 1300 times. Hank Hanegraaf’s definition of God as “three Who’s in one What” is obviously false. Where in the Bible is God ever called a “what” or “thing”?
If we pay attention to John’s own commentary on the Gospel we should read:
“In the beginning was the promise or word of eternal life, and that word of eternal life was with God the Father [things which are ‘with God’ are things He decrees and promises for the future], and the word of eternal life was God, the Father” (or if we take theos in the adjectival sense, as many scholars do here, “the word was expressive of God, had the character of God”). God is said to BE light and love and spirit; Jesus said he IS the resurrection. The word WAS God means simply that God is what He thinks and His word is His creative activity and Plan, just as Jesus said “the words I speak to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63), i.e., spirit-imparting and life-giving. You cannot get closer to the heart of God than understanding His word. The word of God reveals to us who God is and what He is doing in His creation. The human being, the Son of God, procreated miraculously within the human biological chain in Mary (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35; 1 John 5:18, not KJV), reveals the very character and will of the One God, his Father. Jesus reveals God. Jesus is the perfectly obedient agent and Son of God. Jesus models the way human beings are to be in relation to God. To say that Jesus IS God simply destroys the monotheism of Jesus’ Jewish heritage, disturbs the first commandment, and makes him a totally unsuitable model of a human in relation with God.
Can an immortal Person who is God really provide a suitable pattern for us who are human? Would not a human being, mortal and subject to temptation as we are, fit immensely better the requirement of a perfect role model for the rest of mankind?
John tells us that “the word was with God in the beginning.” What else is “with God”? “Light dwells with Him” (Dan. 2:22). Wisdom is “with him” (Prov. 8:30). God supplies wisdom, knowledge and power (Dan. 2:21). All these are summed up as the light which is with God (Dan. 2:22). Life and light are said to be in the word in John 1:4. This is the creative energy of God and these qualities were manifested in the man Jesus. God must be permitted to produce His Son at the time He chooses. The Son was not, until he came into being in Mary (Luke 1:35; Gal. 4:4; Rom. 1:3). This exciting story is spoiled if the Son was always alive and active in Old Testament times. If the Son was active in the Old Testament where is he mentioned? What did he do?
Psalm 36:9: “For with You is a fountain of life; in Your light we see light” (cp. “The word was with God”). The light that is “with God” is the light of God. And so the word that was with God was God’s word, His creative expression and His creative activity. That activity was uniquely displayed in a human being who is the model of man in unity with his Creator. Jesus is the perfect example of the created man, God’s masterpiece, in harmony with his Creator. The whole story is wrecked if it turns out that the model, masterpiece man, the Son of God, is in fact God Himself! Then the whole point of the Son of God as a human model is lost. Satan has in fact triumphed, because it is Satan who says: “The Son is too marvelous to be a man! He must be God.” No. God has ordained that His masterpiece created Son — the pinnacle of God’s purpose to produce sons for immortality, starting with Jesus (quite illogical if Jesus already had immortality!) — God has ordained that Jesus be the perfect human model whose sinless life and direct creation by God qualifies him, with his obedient cooperation, to do exactly what God ordains. And since God permitted even a turtledove to atone in some sense for sin, it is ridiculous to say that the life of the supreme sinless creation of God, whose glory is that he was tempted yet sinless, is inadequate to cover the sins of the world. It is in fact an attack on God to deny that His supreme creation, the second Adam, is incompetent or inadequate to atone for man’s sin. The people marveled rightly that “God had given such authority [to forgive and heal] to men” (Matt. 9:8). All this is undercut if in fact Jesus was God!
There are 1,440 occurrences of the Hebrew word davar (“word”) in the Old Testament and never once does it mean a person, or spokesperson. On what basis would one then import into John’s very Jewish theology a meaning for the word unknown to the Old Testament? This would be the essence of wrong method, since the fatal thing in theology is to cut oneself off from the Jewish roots of the Old Testament.
There is nothing in John 1 to lead us to think of another person with the Father from the beginning. That would make two who are God and Jesus himself said that the Father is “the only one who is truly God” (John 17:3). If God is “the only Person who is truly God,” Jesus cannot be the only true God. Jesus is the one Lord Messiah (Ps. 110:1; Luke 2:11; Rom. 16:18; Col. 3:24). He is not the Lord God. He is never called the Almighty. There is only one Lord God, and that is the Father. Jesus is the Lord Messiah. The Messiah is a created human being, the descendant of Eve and David, promised throughout the Old Testament, but never said to be already in conscious existence.
He is said to come into existence in the womb (to be begotten is “to come into existence”). As an ideal ambassador of the One God, Jesus expresses the will and character of his Father perfectly, such that to see Jesus is to see the Father (John 14:9). Yet no one has actually ever seen God literally (John 1:18). One can “see” God in the life and teaching of the perfect, supernaturally procreated Son. That virginal begetting is what makes Jesus uniquely the Son of God (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35; I John 5:18, not KJV). Jesus is the perfect shaliach, the Hebrew word for ambassador, “one sent on behalf of another,” of whom it is said “the agent is as his principal’s person.” Thus Thomas addressing him as God is only doing what was done to the angel of the Lord, given a divine title (Gen. 18:3), without actually being God. Rather the angel in the Old Testament and Jesus, God’s Son who was never an angel, are the accredited agents of the One God. Thomas finally realized that “God was in Christ,” just as the name of God was invested in the angel of the Lord (Exod. 23:21).
Psalm 110:1, which is the controlling Christological text of the whole New Testament, cited some 23 times, carefully tells us that the one at the right hand of God is not God. He is not ADONAI (the Lord God, all 449 times) but adoni (my lord), a non-Deity superior, all 195 times. Some Bibles have misleadingly put a capital letter on that second lord in Psalm 110:1, trying to force Deity on the Messiah. The RV, RSV and NRSV have correctly removed that capital L and written “my lord,” which is never a title for Deity.
Scholars of the first rank understand the meaning of “word” in John 1 well:
Dr. Colin Brown at Fuller: “To read John 1:1 as if it means ‘In the beginning was the Son’ is patently wrong.”
Dr. T.W. Manson of Oxford: “I very much doubt whether John thought of the Logos as a personality. The only personality on the scene is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth. That personality embodies the Logos so completely that Jesus becomes a complete revelation of God. But in what sense are we using the word embodies?...For John every word of Jesus is a word of the Lord.”
But did not Jesus say “I am God”? It is well known that he never uttered such a statement. When accused of usurping the Father’s position, Jesus always countered by stressing his entire reliance on and submission to the One God, his Father. Jesus certainly made extraordinary and unique claims. This was because of his unique origin without a human father. “Of the ‘I am’ sayings in this gospel, those with a predicate (I am the bread of life, the door, the way, the good shepherd, etc.) certainly do not imply that the subject is God.”
“T.W. Manson has proposed that the formula [ego eimi] really means, ‘The Messiah is here.’ Mark 13:6 says: ‘Many will say, I am,’ which Matthew understands to be ‘Many will say, I am the CHRIST’ (Matt. 24:5).” John wrote his whole Gospel to convince us that Jesus is the CHRIST (John 20:31).
Note: “In John 4:26 ‘I am (he)’ (as the original reads) obviously means, ‘I am the CHRIST.’”
It is true that in the Old Testament God the Father speaks the words “I am.” But in Exodus 3:14, God said “I am the Existing One” (Ego eimi ho own). Here the name of God is ho own. Jesus never used that title of himself. It is inaccurate therefore to claim that Jesus used the language of Exodus 3:14 in John 8:58. Ho own is used of the Father, not Jesus in Revelation 1:8. Red-letter Bibles which make that verse the words of Jesus are misleading. Having the same title does not prove that one is identical with another with the same title. Many are saviors in the Bible, but the Lord God is the only ultimate Savior-Deity. Jesus is the supreme Messiah-Savior. Many are lords in the Bible, but God the Father is the only ultimate Being who is Deity. The Son is the Lord Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Others can bear the title Lord or God without being the one supreme Lord or God.
John 17:11, 12 says that the Father has given Jesus his name. Jesus therefore can bear divine titles as God’s representative. The Son is like his Father as a true “only begotten of a father” (John 1:18), but he never claimed identity with God. He claimed to function in perfect harmony with God and expected his followers to do the same (John 10:30; 17:11, 22). He denied that he was usurping the position of God in any way, since he “could do nothing of himself” (John 5:19-24). Jesus said he was the Messiah, but never said he was God.
Note John 1:15: “He who was following me has moved ahead of me because he was (always) my superior” (protos mou, my chief, my superior). Note the Geneva Bible: “He was better than I.” Pro is the much commoner word for before in time, in John. No verse says that Jesus returned to God, but note the false translation in NIV at John 13:3, 16:28, 20:17; KJV is correct. Jesus went to God, not returned to God.
John 17:5: “The glory which I had with You.” You can “have” something as a reward laid up “with God” without meaning that you were actually there conscious when the promise was made in advance. Christians had already been given the same glory (John 17:22, 24), although they were not yet born. This is glory in prospect and promise, not actuality. Christians are said to be “in Christ” before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). “Grace was given to us in Christ before the ages” (II Tim. 1:9). Christians were also foreknown (I Pet. 1:2). So was Jesus (I Pet. 1:20). So was Jeremiah (Jer. 1:5). Moses was planned from the beginning in Jewish writings (Assumption of Moses). In Jewish theology the name of Messiah was named before the world was created. In Revelation 13:8 the lamb was crucified before the foundation of the world, and all things “were and were created” (Rev. 4:11). Of the latter passage Dr. Mounce says in his commentary: “This unusual phrase suggests that all things which are, existed first in the eternal will of God and through His will came into actual being at His appointed time.” So the Son of God “existed” in the Plan of God and then was brought into actual existence by creation, begetting, at the appointed time. To say that the Son or a Second Person was actually in existence before coming into existence is to confuse the whole issue, by making Jesus a hybrid and turning God into two Persons! This results in a plain contradiction, when it is then asserted that God is One.²
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