45 Va’etchanan (Part C) - I pleaded - Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11 Deuteronomy (Messianic) Vol. I - The Harvest
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- Religion & Spirituality
"Blurring the Lines" According to some scholars every instance when a mortal encountered the divine God they were in some way beholding Yeshua! In this understanding Yeshua is the common factor in every single revelation of God in the Scriptures. To be sure, they declare that "No one has ever seen God; but the only and unique Son, who is identical with God and is at the Father's side," (read John 1:18). Yet Yeshua is also uniquely the Son of Man. Yeshua is NOT the Father, nor is God Yeshua. Rather, and I'm stretching human language to its limits to explain this, Yeshua is the Word made flesh, the Word which was WITH God, and the Word which WAS God! It is not as if Yeshua became God somehow. It is rather that God the Word became a human being and we beheld such glory in the person and work of the Messiah named Yeshua. Such profundity! So, by understanding what the B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant) teaches believers about the unity of Yeshua and the Father (John 10:30), we are given the ability to interpret the Shema in a more theologically correct light. ADONAI is echad…. Yet, according to Yeshua’s own testimony, He and the Father also constitute an echad. Is HaShem more than one?! No! Is Yeshua "meshugga" (Yiddish for "crazy")? Of course not! This relationship of the Father to the Son has long since been a problem for my people to grasp. It also continues to baffle anyone attempting to put God in a neat, theological box. Do we believe in three gods? No. That is the heresy called "Tritheism". Do we believe in one God who simply wears three different "masks" to interact with mankind? No. That is the heresy called "Modalism". What we believe in is ONE God who expresses his existence in a "unity of three". The mystery is that each expression is uniquely God and yet uniquely single. Ontology is defined as: "a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents". The ontological implications of the very words, names, and "titles" used in the Scriptures help us to relate to God himself. Observe: All of what the word "God" implies is not exhausted in the use of the words "his Son"; all of what the name "Yeshua" implies is not exhausted in the term "the Father"; all of what the term "Ruach HaKodesh" implies is not exhausted in "the Man Yeshua" and so on and so forth. We cannot logically collapse each name, phrase, and title into the others without doing damage to the import of the Scriptural references. Indeed to attempt to do so is to approach the Scriptures from an incorrect mindset. Historically, the Hebraists thought of God in concepts of "this" and "that"; conversely, the historic Greek mindset approached God in concepts of "this’ or "that". Some scholars refer to this as "Hebrew tension". Yeshua is God veiled in flesh and the Spirit of God is God himself. The matter of authority comes into play when I examine some of the roles of each deity. The role of God is as head over Yeshua and the role of the Ruach is as witness to Yeshua. Yet the role of Yeshua is as witness of the Father and the role of the Spirit is as active agent of the Father as well. Obviously this list is not exhaustive. The part that brings it all together is when we remember that true worship belongs to God and God alone! As such, whenever Yeshua or the Ruach is also worshipped we catch a glimpse of the "oneness" of the "three-ness" of God.
"Blurring the Lines" According to some scholars every instance when a mortal encountered the divine God they were in some way beholding Yeshua! In this understanding Yeshua is the common factor in every single revelation of God in the Scriptures. To be sure, they declare that "No one has ever seen God; but the only and unique Son, who is identical with God and is at the Father's side," (read John 1:18). Yet Yeshua is also uniquely the Son of Man. Yeshua is NOT the Father, nor is God Yeshua. Rather, and I'm stretching human language to its limits to explain this, Yeshua is the Word made flesh, the Word which was WITH God, and the Word which WAS God! It is not as if Yeshua became God somehow. It is rather that God the Word became a human being and we beheld such glory in the person and work of the Messiah named Yeshua. Such profundity! So, by understanding what the B’rit Chadashah (New Covenant) teaches believers about the unity of Yeshua and the Father (John 10:30), we are given the ability to interpret the Shema in a more theologically correct light. ADONAI is echad…. Yet, according to Yeshua’s own testimony, He and the Father also constitute an echad. Is HaShem more than one?! No! Is Yeshua "meshugga" (Yiddish for "crazy")? Of course not! This relationship of the Father to the Son has long since been a problem for my people to grasp. It also continues to baffle anyone attempting to put God in a neat, theological box. Do we believe in three gods? No. That is the heresy called "Tritheism". Do we believe in one God who simply wears three different "masks" to interact with mankind? No. That is the heresy called "Modalism". What we believe in is ONE God who expresses his existence in a "unity of three". The mystery is that each expression is uniquely God and yet uniquely single. Ontology is defined as: "a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents". The ontological implications of the very words, names, and "titles" used in the Scriptures help us to relate to God himself. Observe: All of what the word "God" implies is not exhausted in the use of the words "his Son"; all of what the name "Yeshua" implies is not exhausted in the term "the Father"; all of what the term "Ruach HaKodesh" implies is not exhausted in "the Man Yeshua" and so on and so forth. We cannot logically collapse each name, phrase, and title into the others without doing damage to the import of the Scriptural references. Indeed to attempt to do so is to approach the Scriptures from an incorrect mindset. Historically, the Hebraists thought of God in concepts of "this" and "that"; conversely, the historic Greek mindset approached God in concepts of "this’ or "that". Some scholars refer to this as "Hebrew tension". Yeshua is God veiled in flesh and the Spirit of God is God himself. The matter of authority comes into play when I examine some of the roles of each deity. The role of God is as head over Yeshua and the role of the Ruach is as witness to Yeshua. Yet the role of Yeshua is as witness of the Father and the role of the Spirit is as active agent of the Father as well. Obviously this list is not exhaustive. The part that brings it all together is when we remember that true worship belongs to God and God alone! As such, whenever Yeshua or the Ruach is also worshipped we catch a glimpse of the "oneness" of the "three-ness" of God.