Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

These verses, known as the Sh’ma, essentially sum up the first two commandments given to Israel at Mount Sinai. Just to refresh our memories, they are, “I am the LORD your God who brought you up out of Egypt” and “You will have no other gods before me.” In other words, collectively, these verses accentuate what all believers must embrace — there is no other God but the God of Israel; He alone is God. By and large, at this point any way, only God’s people acknowledge this. But even in the Body, there are some followers of Messiah who have a hard time understanding how God is one (echad) and, yet, is manifest as Father, Son and Spirit.

Quite frankly, this is something that is beyond human comprehension. How can we, as finite beings with limited understanding of life and the Universe, possibly ascertain and then explain the One who has no beginning and end? How can we define the One who is all powerful and who exists in yesterday, today and tomorrow simultaneously? Put simply, we can’t. Nevertheless we try. One rabbi likened this conundrum to seeing a ray of light seen through a prism. Though the viewer sees a myriad of different colors, it is, nevertheless, a single ray of light. Likewise, God manifests Himself in different ways and yet He is one.

Still when it comes to this issue, human intellect fails to provide the conclusive answer whereby we may say, without any question, that we fully understand the oneness of God. Therefore, we must go on faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. I would add that, without faith, we can’t really comprehend God at all. Eventually, we will come up against something we can’t possibly understand with our minds that would, without faith, likely cause us to falter. So we must continue walking by faith knowing that there is coming a day when all our questions will be answered and all issues resolved. In that day, the entire world will acknowledge that the LORD is One, as it is written: “And the LORD shall be King over all the earth. In that day it shall be ‘The LORD is one,’ and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9). 

Blessings and Shalom,  

Bill 

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