There is ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST, Saviour and Mediator, in whom is the ONLY WAY of salvation
The Son Divine but NOT Co-eternal with the Father…
“The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the SON of GOD” (Luke 1:37)
“To us there is but One God, the Father, of whom are all things…and ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST…howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge” (1 Corinthians 8:6-7)
“There is One God, and ONE MEDIATOR between God and men, the man CHRIST JESUS” (1 Timothy 2:5)
“One Lord (JESUS CHRIST)…and One God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:6)
“Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles, and wonders, and signs which God did by him” (Acts2:22)
“God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38)
All these statements are consistent with the proclamation of God through Moses. They refer to God as one, the Father, and to the Lord Jesus Christ as His only begotten Son, born of the virgin Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit (God’s power). They provide no support for the doctrine of the Trinity, but the very reverse.
Recognising that God seeks those who would worship Him in truth (John 4:23), let us, in respect for His teaching, and in love of His person, quietly search out the truth of this important doctrine, that we may render to Him the honour due to His holy name.
It is sometimes claimed that Christadelphians reject the divinity of the Lord Jesus. This is INCORRECT. Whilst Christadelphians repudiate the doctrine of the Trinity as unscriptural, they do not go to the extreme of Unitarianism, which views Jesus as nothing more than “mere man,” the son of an earthly Father.
There was something more than “mere man” in one who could, under such provocations as he endured, exhibit the wonderful restraint, the beautiful character and the sinless life that he Lord revealed.
That “something more” is revealed in the manner of the Lord’s begettal, and the way in which he was anointed with the Holy Spirit “without measure” (John 3:34).
Jesus was the MANIFESTATION of God, as he, himself, testified (John 6:62-63). In nature he was the same as all mankind, “tempted in all points like his brethren” but in begettal and character he was divine (Hebrews 4:14-16). In that, he differed from all men before or since.
Jesus was “made of a woman, made under the law” (Galations 4:4), and therefore, in nature, identical unto “his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17). But he was also begotten “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). The Holy Spirit came upon the virgin Mary, and by this miraculous means, the Son of God was born (Luke 1:35). After his birth, he was anointed with the Holy Spirit without measure (John 3:34), so that God overshadowed his development.
This was all for the purpose of saving those who would accept the Divine help. Christ led the way to life eternal for all such. As he was strengthened by God to overcome, so believers can also be strengthened (Phil 4:13), as he was crucified upon the cross, so they, too, must learn to deny the flesh to serve God in truth (Galations 5:24).
The very expressions that Christ used constantly show that he did not claim to be God in the absolute sense. He prayed: “Not my will but Thine be done” (Matthew 26:39). He told his disciples: “My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me” (John 7:16). If he claimed equality with God, he would not have used such expressions but would have claimed the will and the teaching of the Father as emanating equally from himself. On the contrary, he taught: “I can of mine own self do nothing” (John 5:30), and “my Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).
It is true, that Jesus Christ, as the manifestation of God, as one who completely gave himself to the will and purpose of the Father, could say: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and that this statement is often mistaken as a claim of equality with God. Those who do so, however, overlook the fact that what Jesus claimed for himself, he also requested for his disciples. In John 17:21, he prayed: “That they all may be one: as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” If the former statement implies the equality of the Son with the Father, the latter statement includes it to involve all believers!
In fact, the Bible does not set forth God as a Trinity, but God in multiplicity, God manifested in the multitude of the redeemed of whom Christ is the chief. So Paul taught: We are “heirs of God, and JOINT-HEIRS with Christ” (Romans 8:17).
But if Jesus were actually God, how can it be said that we are “joint-heirs” with him of God! It would be a contradiction to so write. Consider also the statement of Hebrews 2:10-11: “For it became him (ie, God), for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth (the Lord Jesus) and they who are sanctified (the redeemed) are all of one (ie, God) for which cause he (the Lord Jesus) is not ashamed to call them brethren.”
So Jesus calls the redeemed “brethren” because they, like him, will owe their condition when glorified to the Father. But if he were God in the absolute sense, how could he so speak of the redeemed? It would make them part of the Godhead also!
The Bible, therefore, does not set forth the Lord Jesus as the second person of the Godhead, but displays him as the ideal man. It refers to him as “the man Christ Jesus” (Acts 2:22; 1 Timothy 2:5, Romans 5:15), the “prophet like unto Moses” (Deuteronomy 18:15, Acts 3:22, Matthew 21:11), made of a woman (Galations 4:4), “touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” “in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin” (Hebrew 4:15), “learning obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), “offering up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save him from (Greek ek out of) death, and was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7).
How can these terms possibly relate to one who is God in the absolute sense? It would be impossible! For example, the Bible teaches that God cannot be tempted (James 1:13), and yet Jesus was subject to temptation; the Bible teaches that God cannot die (1 Timothy 6:17), and yet Jesus died; since the Bible teaches that Jesus offered up prayers to God, did he offer them to himself?
Further, the Lord disclaimed equality with God. When the disciples asked certain information of him at one time, he declared: “Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father” (Mark 13:32).
In this statement, the Lord confessed that he was limited in knowledge. How would that be possible if he were God? Some reason that he was speaking from the standpoint of his humanity, which, they allege, he had assumed for the purpose of saving mankind, but there is no Scriptural evidence for such a theory. Moreover, if it were true, he should have possessed all knowledge when he ascended into heaven, whereas Revelation 1:1 teaches the contrary. It claims that the Revelation was added knowledge “that God gave unto him to shew unto his servants” things to come.
If it were necessary for God to give the Revelation unto the Son, it is obvious that he did not possess equality of knowledge with the Father, but was subordinate to him. Indeed, Christ, himself, taught his disciples that such was the case when he failed to answer questions they submitted to him, on the grounds that the Father retained the knowledge in His power (Acts 1:6).
The Bible uses terms in relation to Jesus that are incongruous if he were God. It describes him as being weary (John 4:6), as weeping (John 11:35), as praying for strength (Hebrews 5:7), as possessing a nature subject to death, common to all mankind (Hebrews 2:14), as being in need of redemption (Hebrews 9:12, 13:20), as “striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4), as conquering the flesh (John 6:63).
Because of his perfect obedience, his complete conquest of the flesh, he was raised from the dead (Acts 2:24). In thus opening the way for redemption through the forgiveness of sins, he became the Author of eternal salvation to all who come unto God in the way appointed (Romans 4:25, Galations 3:26-29).
If Jesus was the second part of a triune God, what is the reason for the lonely cry that issued from his lips during the agony of Calvary, when God withdrew His spirit from him: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)
If Jesus was the second person of a trinity, how could Paul write concerning him at the epoch of his greatest triumph when every enemy is crushed before him: “then shall the Son himself be subject unto Him, that put all things under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28)?
At that epoch, when the triumph of the Son is complete, he will still be subordinate to the Father; a fact that is completely at variance with the teaching of the churches of Christendom but is fully in accord with that set forth in this article.