One God in Three

One God in Three

 The Gospel asserts that the Word, Jesus, “was God” (1:1). Jesus also said He was the Son of God, and “in the Father” (14:10). Yet when asked what the most important law was, He cited the creed of the Jewish people, first expressed in Deut. 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart (Mark 12:29, 30).

 The Lord is one. Not two. Not three.

 So how can the Lord be one, as Jesus admitted, and yet seem to be more than one, with the Son on earth praying to the Father in heaven?

 The Gospel of John doesn’t explain how, but the Prologue clearly asserts that the Word-Son-Jesus is God, yet distinct from God the Father (1:1–18). And the end of the book includes another testimony to Jesus’ unique identity. After he touches the wounds of the risen Jesus, Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). In telling us who Jesus is, John stresses both identity (Jesus is the Lord God) and distinction (the Son is closely related to but not identical with the Father or the Holy Spirit). The earliest Christians lived with this complex relationship but left it to theologians in later centuries to explain the complex oneness of God in the doctrine of the Trinity, when the divine nature of Jesus was challenged in the late third and early fourth centuries of the Christian era.