But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Heb. 1:8). Here Christ Jesus is addressed as ‘God’.
“He who has seen Me has seen the Father .. do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. Or else believe Me for the very works sake” John 14 9-11. The Father is in Jesus and Jesus in the Father.
When Yahshua (Jesus) hung on the cross He called out, quoting Psalm 22 ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’. Obviously the Son and the Father are two separate beings. When Yahshua was asked, “Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” Matthew 19 16-17; He replied “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is God.” We learn from this that there is a difference between God and His Son.
Puzzling? This where some knowledge of the original Hebrew or Greek is handy, which can usually be found in a concordance such as Strong’s.
Let us examine the position. In the first quotation we have brought forward, viz. Hebrews 1, where the writer is quoting Psalm 45 6. ‘Your throne, O God …’ when we go to the concordance we find that the original Hebrew word used is ‘Elohim’. Elohim can apply to many people, for example in Exodus 22 8-9 ‘Elohim’ is translated judges. Knowing this it helps us to understand John 10 33-35 ‘The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods”? “If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came … do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, “I am the Son of God”? Some versions of the Bible in the margin refer us back to the Psalm 82 6, but the Psalms are not ‘the law’ that Jesus is referring to. He is referring to such passages as Exodus 21 & 22 where Elohim is translated ‘Judges’.
In the second quotation “I am in the Father and the Father in Me” or in other words ‘One with the Father’ as it is says in John 17 20-23 “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me … that they all may be one, as You Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us … that (believers) may be one just as We are one”. In 1 John 5 verses 7-8 quoting the New King James a footnote informs us ‘that from ‘in heaven’, v.7 to ‘on earth’, v. 8 that only four or five very late manuscripts contain these words in Greek’. They are not to be found in the original texts. In the quotation of the words of Christ when He was on the cross, ‘My God, My God why have you forsaken Me?;’ The Father had not forsaken Him. Yahshua used the Hebrew ‘El’ one of the singular words of which Elohim is plural. El, Strong’s concordance 410 means ‘strength’. His strength had temporally been removed. To sum up. Belief in the Trinity was not official Church doctrine until the 4th century. The words ‘Trinity’ or ‘Triune God’ are not found in the original manuscripts. The Scriptures teach, not ‘One in Three’ or ‘Three in One’, but many thousands in One and One in many thousands of believers, from righteous Abel, 1 Genesis 4 to all those referred to in John 20 29, ‘Jesus said to (Thomas), “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”’
Michael Gates