God Is One

In Jesus’ name. This is Pastor Michael Lilienthal of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Albert Lea. Together, let us meditate on and wrestle with God’s Word: Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” From the ages, God’s people have known he is exactly one God. In the ancient Christian Creeds, however, we confess faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As one of those creeds says, though, “And yet there are not three gods, but one God.” We agree with the ancient Christians. We’re not going to try to come up with some new faith, but hold to the same faith which the church has held from the beginning and for which it will fight to the end. But it’s not something I can explain, and I’m not going to try. Instead, it’s something that has to be believed. To believe that God is the Father, uncreated and unbegotten, and the Son, uncreated and begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit, uncreated and unbegotten but proceeding from Father and Son, but all is also only one God, is an object of our faith. God has revealed this truth about himself, and we trust him. Not only do we believe in God’s Triune existence, but we believe all things that he has said about himself: that he is the Maker of all things, that he is eternal, spirit, omnipotent, wise, and good. We do see that he is good. Our limited natures, our sins themselves, cannot shake him in his unassailable goodness. And in Jesus, the Son of God made flesh, he brings that goodness, forgiveness and eternal life, to us. Amen. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.