God is One
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
The Lord our God is one. One is an interesting number, for “one” has more than one meaning. All of them come to bear on our God. Numerically, there is only one God. In the context of ancient Israel, that is an astonishing statement. The Baals, the Molechs, and the other pagan gods are not gods at all. Isaiah mocks these “gods” saying that they must be carried around on beasts of burden, whereas our God carries us from before we are born down to “gray hairs.” (Isaiah 46:1-6). Our God is the one God, the one Creator, the one Redeemer, the only One whom we should petition.
Now, before we sit upon our high horses and mock these backwards people, look around. How far away is your phone? We carry it around, and we bow down to it. We may not have a structured worship to our technology, but let us ask a practical question. When danger arises, what do we do first? Grab our phone, or pray? For God says, “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me.” (Ps. 50:15) The one we call for help is the one we worship. We have one God, one Creator, one Redeemer, and only One worthy of worship.
But God is one in more ways than simply numerically. God is one of a kind. When we talk of God, we often imagine God as a superhuman. We compare mankind to God in the same way that we compare paper airplanes to jet fighters, but it isn’t quite right. We use analogies to understand God’s power, wisdom, and goodness; but we should never let these analogies hide the truth that God is one of a kind. We call God infinite, eternal, immutable, and the like. These are all negative terms – not finite, not in time, not changing. We have no practical experience of these truths because God is different than us. God is the only infinite being, the only eternal being, the only immutable being, and so on. God is one of a kind.
Reader, marinate on that for a moment. God is one – numerically and categorically, and He freely chooses to make His home with the humble and contrite in spirit (Is. 57:15). Is that not amazing? He freely chose to take on flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). He calls sinners, polluted lumps of clay, into fellowship with Himself (1 John 1:3, 7). If we will drop everything when a VIP comes into town, how much more should we overflow with joy when THE VIP walks to and fro among us (Lev. 26:12)? Delight yourself in the oneness of our God.
