“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3) If Christianity as we know it is crumbling at the edges, we should inspect it to see whether it is still as soundly fixed to the truth on which it was founded, which is that God is One. Christianity is not an offshoot of the Jewish faith but rather its fulfilment, so its spiritual health comes from its connection to its Abrahamic roots (Romans 11:16).
However, for the purpose of this article, I’ll do what the apostle Paul did and switch metaphors from growing to building (1 Corinthians 3:9). This will allow me to better inspect the foundation of our Christian Faith.
While it’s true that Jesus Christ is that foundation, the footings that support that foundation are the truths of the Old Testament, in particular the truth of the One True God. When Jesus was asked which commandment was the greatest, he began by quoting the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God is one Lord.” (Mark 12:29)
“Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10) The final restoration before the return of Jesus Christ (spoken of by Peter in Acts 3:21) may be that He is the Father. This is the starting point. If we can establish this as a scriptural fact, we can then search out the true identity of Jesus. How is he God’s Son? What is his nature? And so on.
Sadly, the knowledge that the One God is the Father is unknown still by the vast majority of Christians. This despite the writings of pagan poets more than 2000 years ago that “in Him we live and move, and have our being” match Paul’s “one God…and we in him” statement. (Acts 17:28)
The emperor Constantine worshipped one god (albeit Helios, the sun god, also known as Solar Invictus). This may have been why he found it easy to switch to the Christian God (though many maintain that he simply changed names). Constantine erected a tall monument to the sun god and put his own face on it!
Matthew, Mark and Luke refer to “Jesus, the Son of God” many times, but never to a human manifestation of a pre-existent “God the Son”! The Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are, without doubt, monotheistic. Were God’s chosen people ignorant of His identity and nature? Of course not! Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “We Jews know what we believe.” (John 4:22)
If the Jews do not know God as intimately as they might, it is because they reject that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. This limits them to knowing God through the names that express his nature — rather than through His human Son, whom those names describe perfectly!
Jesus said, “No man can come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him. So everyone who has heard, and has learned from the Father, comes to me.” (John 6:45) We have a relationship, not just a religion. Moses desired that the “crooked and perverse generation” of his time would know that the Most High was their Father (Deuteronomy 32:6); and the Lord had earlier in time spoken of Israel as “My son, my firstborn.” (Exodus 4:22, 23)
It was Jesus who first called God “Father” in a personal sense, and he taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven…” (Luke 11:2) He also said, “I ascend to my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” (John 20:17)
If the foundation is immovable, so too the building. However, if the foundation is one of tradition or is based on Greek philosophy, then the Church as an institution will crumble and fall into ruin. But if the foundation of the Christian faith is that the God of both Jew and Christian is one and the same, Jews will likely accept Jesus as their Christ, and Christians will be more soundly grounded in the Faith.
The result will be that the last days of the Church era will prove exciting!
That the Son is the “express image” of the Father, “the image of God”, that “God was manifest in the flesh” and that “All the fullness of the Deity” dwells in Jesus, are truths that cannot be contradicted. Bible texts that harmonize with God being One and Jesus being His Son in a human body require that Christians study more than be read in a church’s Statement of Faith.
Bearing in mind, however, that in Psalm 131:2, King David prays: “LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me.” None of us know it all. There are “milk” truths for newly born Christians and there are “solid” truths for those who are mature. (1 Corinthians 3:2) Some of the Great Truths of the Bible were fought over by men who were Christians indisputably, yet the contests between them raged for years, and continues to this day by their followers under various church names (although, thank God, with less heat).
I avoid debates over Bible Prophecy because they result in division and at times angry outbursts unbecoming to Christians. PreTrib? MidTrib? PostTrib? In my opinion, it’s more CurrentTrib: an incoming tide of control that’s now on the rise worldwide.
Can a believer ever be lost? Or is he or she eternally secure? My reply is that “The foundation of God stands sure, having this seal: God knows those who are His; and Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” Two sides of the one coin, I think. The answer surely is found in God’s Foreknowledge — that God knew the End from the Beginning, which means that Whatever we do, God knew. The Eternal God, being outside Time, identified Himself to Moses as “I AM THAT I AM.” No “was” or “will be” — just “is”! Being human, not canine, I don’t ‘chase my tail’. Nor do I chase supposedly biblical tales.
Life’s good always, “In the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Love of God, and in the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit. (2 Corinthians 13:14)