Unitarianism debunked

Trinitarianism Versus Unitarianism

This morning we're gonna just go through something a little bit different than normal, although it certainly will be a Bible study. Hold on a second, I gotta move something around here, okay. It certainly will be a Bible study.

This is something that recently I was asked to do a debate against a Unitarianism, a Unitarian. So my initial reaction was, of course, I'll debate a Unitarian. My mouth is cutting checks that my mind can't cash.

So now I had to start doing some research and understanding what exactly a Unitarian believes and how it differs from what we believe as Trinitarians. So this morning we're gonna talk about Trinitarianism versus Unitarianism.

And the verses that I'm going to use come right out of John chapter 1. It's gonna be John chapter 1, verse 1 through 18. The topic of the debate is, does the Gospel of John teach the deity of Jesus? Now I've done previous videos where the doctrine of John is in every single chapter of the Gospel of John.

But my goal is going to go through verses 1 through 18 and show you how everything in the Gospel of John must be viewed through that prologue. Because John tells us some very, very important and pertinent information that's gonna affect the rest of the Gospel.

But as a way of review, as Trinitarians we believe in one God in three persons. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In fact, if you go onto the website, the Reform Rookie, you can look up the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed that would go through this.

For a Unitarian, they believe in one God and one person. The Father only. Jesus is not God. He's not co-equal with God. He's just an exalted man. He is the Messiah. You do need to believe in Him. You do need to trust in Him.

In fact, some Unitarians actually worship Him, but He's not God. Different, right? And then they believe that the Holy Spirit is God's power. Very similar to like a Jehovah's Witness, the Holy Spirit is a force or a power to be reckoned with.

They deny the incarnation and the pre-existence of Jesus. Now again, I think John 1 through 118 is gonna completely debunk that, and hopefully we're gonna see that. They believe that Jesus did not become a man, and you know what that means, right?

No Christmas. Hopefully by the end of this, we'll all be sharing gifts together because we're gonna understand that Christmas is all about Jesus. Okay, so let's quickly go through John 1 through 118, and I'll read it for you.

It says, He was in the beginning with the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.

He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about Him and cried out, This was He of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.

For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

The Word, the Logos, and Genesis 1

Now what I want you to key in on this, it's very, very important, is that John 1 .1 is a parallel to Genesis 1 .1. Both verses start off with, in the beginning. Genesis starts off with, in the beginning, God.

John, echoing that, says in the beginning, the Word. John uses this word, Lagos, as a synonym for God. Those two words are parallel to one another. Now when we say, in the beginning, the grammar of this verse explains that as far back as the beginning goes, the Lagos, the Word, was there.

So as far back as the beginning goes, the Word was there. Now this Word, the Lagos, that was in the beginning with God, was face-to-face. In Greek it's prosthantheion. And what it means is an intimate, face-to-face relationship.

So God the Father and God the Son, the Lagos, were face-to-face in an intimate relationship with one another. And then John finally tells us the Word was God. Everything that God was, the Word was also.

They both share the divine nature. So John seems to be associating these two words, Lagos and God, but also expanding on and revealing more than the creation account in Genesis 1. These two words, God and Lagos, are synonymous.

But not only is the Lagos in the beginning, John immediately follows by telling us that the Lagos was with God, face-to-face, and was God. So this Lagos that was in the beginning alongside God is God, the very same God that we know of in Genesis 1.

So for John, the Lagos and God are the same. And if the Lagos and God are the same, and God is personal, well then the Lagos would also be personal. And believe it or not, this was nothing new for the Jews.

They understand, they heard about the Lagos, which we're going to come to know later as the Word of God. The Jews, who were monotheistic, they believed in one God only, but they also believed that the Word of the Lord was a separate person.

And that was listed, wrote down by them in the Targums. And we're going to see that in a minute. Okay, so now Unitarians see a break. They see a difference between God and the Word. They see a break in the parallel.

They see God and Lagos as two completely separate things. In Genesis 1 .1, they would agree with us and say, in the beginning God, meaning the God, and God is personal. But when they see in the beginning was the Word, the Lagos, they call that the thought or plan in God's mind.

So Lagos to them is a plan, a reason, a thought. Now if you look it up in the lexicon, obviously the word Lagos means thought, plan, idea. And one of their arguments is, well, when I look up Lagos in the lexicon, it doesn't say thought, plan, idea, and this is Jesus.

So based on that, they say, okay, Jesus is not the Lagos. But my counter to that would be, every time I would look up the word door in the lexicon, I see what it means, but it doesn't say Jesus is the door.

Every time I look up the word way, okay, road, it doesn't say Jesus was the road. Every time I look up the word bread, like Jesus says, I am the bread from heaven, I look up the word bread, it doesn't say this is Jesus.

Okay, every time we look up all those things that Jesus says he is, the lexicon doesn't say, well, this is Jesus. We have to look at the context of this verse, again, in parallel with what Genesis 1 .1 taught us, that in the beginning was God.

John is saying in the beginning was God, and that God was the Lagos, okay? So for us, Genesis starts off with a personal God, a God-centered creation, a personal creation. While for them, John starts off with an impersonal plan, a reason, an abstract idea or thought.

And here, my question to the Unitarian is going to be, can you show us why there's such a stark break in the interpretation between these two parallel and very personal verses, okay? John would have to explain to us that, here's something.

So for them, they say in the beginning was the thought plan or idea, and the thought plan or idea was with God, and the thought plan or idea was God. So do you think somebody would have to explain to somebody else that the thought plans and ideas that are with God are with God?

Are anybody's thoughts or plans that are in their mind right now not with them? Like, is he telling us something that, like, would anybody really question God's thoughts or plans are with him? Of course they would be with him.

It's ridiculous to come to that interpretation when it's obvious that our thoughts and plans are with us all the time. So rather than paralleling Genesis 1, the Unitarian understanding of John 1 -1 radically departs from the central idea of Genesis 1 -1, rendering both of them in conflict with each other.

However, both Genesis 1 and John 1 are revealing that God was with the Logos and is the Logos, and both were in the beginning. So John is now giving us, this is his divine commentary on Genesis 1 -1. He's giving us a fuller and more deeper revelation of the God of Scripture.

And here's the spoiler alert, and this is something very important. God was never alone. He always was and is a relationship. He is a unity. He is a unity in community and a community in unity. And this unity grounds the basis of love, communication, and logic.

So when God says, when the Bible says God is love, love is a verb, and love is relational. If there was ever a point in time where God was alone, just the Father, alone, he could not be love because there's no object for him to love.

He would have to create a race of people in order to become loving, which would mean that there would be a break in the nature of God from not being love to being love. And it would also make God contingent on his creation in order to be love.

Follow? So God was and is a relationship from eternity past. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is love. The Father loved the Son. The Son loved the Father. There's an object-subject distinction, and the action of the verb is love.

So for God to be love, he has to be a unity. In fact, we see this, and I'm going to go through this when I debate this guy. On the first day God created, he saw it was good. Second day, good. Third day, good.

Fourth day, good. Fifth day, good. Sixth day, he created man. It is not good. Why? It's not good for man to be alone. Why? It doesn't reflect the nature of God. So he brought forth Eve. He brought forth Adam and Eve and called the both of them Adam.

He created them and called them Adam, a singular noun. So it's the combination of Adam and Eve that form mankind and reflect the nature of God who's never been alone. Is that making sense to everybody?

So that points to the fact that God was never alone. If there was ever a God that was alone, he's contingent on his creation. He isn't love, and it would be wrong for him to call, after creating Adam, it would be wrong for him to say, this is not good.

Okay? God is and always will be love. He didn't become love after he created someone to love, like on Unitarianism. Again, it's a verb. So by nature, prior to creation, it requires more than one person and something a Unitarian God isn't and cannot be.

If God was alone for all eternity, he was not love, and he's contingent on his creation in order to become love. And we're going to see this more fully in John 1 .18. Okay. Genesis 1 .1 speaks of creation and the God who created it, as does John 1 .1.

Now, in John 1 .2, John says all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. So we can conclude that all things were created through Jesus and not without Jesus.

So if there was any creation to be going on, Jesus would have had to be there in the beginning. Okay? Nothing was created apart from Jesus. And the context implies personal agency. John himself, in 1 John, would describe Jesus as the eternal life that was with the Father.

Again, Jesus, the logos, is not a thought or plan in the mind of God. He is a person alongside God, face to face with him, as per John 1 .1. Okay? In fact, Paul would tell us in Colossians 1 .16. This gives us clearer insight.

For by him, Jesus, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible, invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. Now, when Paul says, all things were created, he now goes through, what are all these things that are created?

Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, that's everything, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities. All things were created through Jesus and for Jesus. Now the logos is just a thought or plan in the mind of God.

All things were created by a thought or plan for a thought or plan. This is completely abstract to what John is trying to tell us. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. Are all things being held together by a thought, a plan, or an idea?

No, all things are being held together by Jesus and the word of his power. So, since Jesus is before all things, he could not be a thing itself. Is that making sense? So, Father and Son were in eternity past, decided to create.

God used Jesus to create all things. That's where we get the term Father and Son. There is a differentiation. Not that they are different in that sense, but the term Father and Son is a term of intimate relationship.

Alright, let's go. Again, are we to believe that all things were created through an idea, for an idea? No. The book of Hebrews, if you want to look that one up, chapter 1, confirms the personal agency of the Son, of Jesus.

It says, God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. So, each verse, that's expanded upon by Paul and the author of Hebrews, implies personal agency.

It's a person that creates, not a thought or an idea that creates. It's not an abstract idea that's bringing everything into the world that God is operating through. No. In fact, we see in Genesis 1 .1, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all three in the works of creation.

The Father himself credits the Son with creation in Hebrews 1 .10. And he says, and you, Lord. Lord is the word kurios. In the Septuagint, that's the word that they would use to describe God Almighty.

So, we could say, and you, Lord, God, God Almighty, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. This is the Father speaking to the Son, saying that the works, the creation of the heavens and earth are the work of his hands.

Again, this is not an impersonal thought or idea. Isaiah would say, I am the Lord, Yahweh, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. Now, how would we understand that from a Trinitarian point of view?

Again, God is one in being, three in person. So, when we talk about Yahweh, it includes Father, Son, and Spirit. For a Unitarian, it's the Father only. But if it says that it's the Father only who's creating the heavens and the earth, who is the Logos that's beside him, face to face with him, through whom he's making all things?

See, the Unitarian understanding is not going to make sense of all of the Scriptures. They're going to have to start explaining certain things away. They're going to have to explain that he came into existence at the birth, when Mary gave birth to him.

That's when Jesus begins, according to them. That's a little bit different than a Jehovah's Witness. A Jehovah's Witness believes that Jesus was created prior to the creation. That's called Arianism. So, as Trinitarians, we can look at Arianism and we can look at Unitarianism and say, these are wrong, biblically.

So, we have to ask ourselves, is John's point really to tell us, not just that God's thoughts and reasoning were with him, but now he's using his thoughts, ideas, and reasoning to create everything else.

So, God, your thoughts and plans are with you and you're going to use your thoughts and plans to create everything. Is that earth-shattering for anybody? Is that like, oh my goodness, I never would have known that.

God has an idea and he's going to use his idea to bring forth the creation. Of course God's thoughts, ideas, and plans are with himself. And of course he has a decree to create. What's different here is the fact that the Logos is in personal relationship with God and it's the Logos through whom he is going to create the heavens and the earth.

Now, it becomes even more interesting when you see Jesus, the Logos who was God and was with God and is God, becoming flesh in verse 14 and dwelling with humanity. So, now we're going to have something a little bit different.

So, Jesus, the Word, the Logos, became flesh and dwelt with us. So, the question for the Unitarian would be, did a thought or plan become flesh? An impersonal, abstract, or a plan now became personal?

No. No. Jesus was the Word that was with God and was God as a person. Now, this is going to be really cool because we're going to see all the verses in the Old Testament where God says, I will dwell with my people.

And who fulfills all these? Jesus. So, let's look at Leviticus 26 verses 11 through 13. The author of Leviticus writes, I, meaning Yahweh, will make my dwelling among you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. So, the God who delivered the Israelites out of Egypt is the one who is going to come back and dwell with them. We see this in Exodus 29, 45.

I, Yahweh, will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. So, who do you think it was that was dwelling in the land of Egypt, bringing them through to the promised land?

Any ideas? It's the easiest answer to answer for every Sunday school question when you're below 10 years old. Thank you, Jesus. And where are we going to find this? Look, Jude 5. Now, I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

Here's a New Testament writer saying that Jesus was in the wilderness, okay, delivering the Israelites out of Egypt. But it doesn't stop there. We see Malachi 3 .1. Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And the Lord, it's the word ha 'adon in Hebrew, only of the Lord, that term ha 'adon is only used of the Lord in the whole Old Testament. You can look up Isaiah 1 .24 and 3 .1. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple.

He is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Now, again, is this a thought or a plan or an idea that's coming to us? Or do we see John 1 .14, the word became flesh and dwelled among us? Zechariah 2 .10 and 11, sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I, Yahweh, come, and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord.

And many nations shall join themselves to the Lord in that day and shall be my people. And I will dwell in your midst, and you shall know that I am the Lord of hosts. He has sent me to you. You see it becoming clearer and clearer?

The Old Testament prophets said that the Lord, at some point in time in the future, would come and dwell with his people and walk among them. Who does John the Baptist say that is? Jesus, right? We also see Jesus fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy in 7 .14, saying that a virgin will give birth to a child and they will call his name Immanuel, which means God is with us.

Right? Guess what? We saved Christmas. The Bible saved Christmas. Right? Thankfully, we can look at the Old Testament saints. We could see what they said about the future coming of the Messiah and know that the Messiah is not just an exalted man.

He is God in the flesh. That's what we're going to celebrate on Monday. Monday, Wednesday. I'll be celebrating Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but that's okay. I celebrate Christmas every day. Why? Because he's Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Right? If you're a Christian, you really should be celebrating Christmas every day. God entered into his creation something that cannot happen on a unitarian understanding of God, of Jesus. Jesus is just an exalted man.

Their God cannot enter into creation and do what the prophets said Jesus would do. Jesus is only a man that represented God because God can't dwell in a body on unitarianism and live alongside humanity like Leviticus, Exodus, Zechariah, Malachi, and Isaiah said he would.

Right? John would later even tell us that we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. So this wasn't a thought or plan or idea rattling around in the mind of God that he now manifested in a person and sent.

This was an eternal life. God the Son alongside the Father in relationship to him who voluntarily came into the world to die, to suffer and die on a cross in place of the people whom God gave him. Again, the Unitarian Jesus cannot do what the God of Scripture clearly can do and prophesied would do.

In fact, the God of Unitarianism is locked out of his own creation. This is very similar to Islam. This is very similar to Judaism. Neither one of them believe that Jesus is another person and he cannot walk among us.

However, the real Jesus, the Jesus of the Scriptures prophesied by the Old Testament prophets can and did do this. So you can see that in the parallel accounts of Genesis 1 .1 and John 1 .1, the Unitarian view is in complete conflict with what Genesis 1 .1 says.

It's either in the beginning God or in the beginning an idea. If it's in the beginning God and John comes along and says in the beginning was the Word, he's paralleling God with the Word. And we know Jesus to be God throughout the book of John.

No One Has Ever Seen God Except the Son

So now, this is what I really wanted to emphasize today and I'm so excited that we do have enough time to do it. So, John 1 .18. In your Bibles, you have to highlight this. This is very important. No one has ever seen God.

The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. The NASB translator says, no one has seen God at any time, ever. Okay? So now, if no one has seen God at any time ever, and a lot of people in the Old Testament claim to have seen God, who did they see?

Ah, we're going to get into that, right? Even Jesus would say in John 6 .46, no one has seen the Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. So Jesus is the only one who has seen the Father.

No one else could see him. Okay? No one knows the Father except the Son. And to anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him, Matthew 11 says. So Jesus, the only God who is at the Father's side, has been revealing the Father to humanity for all time, from the beginning.

No one has ever understood, ever, apart from the Son, who God is. Now that word see, no one has ever seen God, does not necessarily mean visible sight, physical sight. You see what I'm saying? Right? The word see can mean perceive or understand.

So the people in the Old Testament, although they were looking at something, they didn't perceive or understand who this was. And whatever they saw, we know that it wasn't God, because no one has seen God at any time.

So the question becomes, what did they see? So that's what I'm going to go through right now, and I'm excited to do it. So, we're going to see this clearly in Genesis 15, with Abram. After these things, the word of the Lord, right?

This is what the word lagos means. The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Okay, so now this is only a vision. And the word of the Lord speaks to him and says, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great.

But Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my house, behold, will be my heir.

And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. First it was a vision, now the word of the Lord comes to him. And the word of the Lord speaks to him and says, This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir.

And he, talking about the word of the Lord, the word of the Lord is now called a he in the Hebrew scriptures. He brought him, Abraham, outside. So the word of the Lord must have come into the tent, spoken to Abraham, and now brought him out of the tent.

And said, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them. Then he, the word of the Lord, said to him, So shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord and counted it to him as righteousness.

Now, where do we see that verse, Abraham believed the Lord and it was counted to him as righteousness, in the New Testament? You guys read the Bible? Romans 4. And what does it tell us happened to Abraham at that point in time?

He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. What do we call that as Christians? Justification. So, think about this. Abraham knew God since chapter 12. It was only in chapter 15 where the word of the Lord, who we know as Jesus, comes and reveals the Father to him, makes a promise to him, that now Abraham believes God and it's credited to him as righteousness.

The only way Abraham was justified was until he met Christ. Salvation in the Old Testament is no different than salvation in the New Testament. It comes through an encounter with Jesus. No one gets to the Father except through the Son.

So, we see the word of the Lord called a he. It's not just a voice, it's a he. It's a person who comes to Abraham, gives him this vision, then goes into the tent, brings him out. Then, Abraham's understanding is his eyes are opened and now he believes God and it's credited to him as righteousness.

So, the only way Abraham was justified was upon and through meeting Jesus. You guys aren't excited about this as I am. I thought that was like, wow, the word of the Lord. He was there in the Old Testament.

And no one saw God except through Jesus revealing the Father to them. We're going to see this again somewhere else in Jeremiah 1, 4 -10. Do not say, I am only a youth, for to all whom I send you, you shall go and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord. Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. Okay, so this is obviously a person. The Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth.

And the Lord said to me, behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have set you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms to pluck them up and break them down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

So, who's the word of the Lord? Jesus. Jesus is the logos, the word made flesh to dwell among us. So, when somebody tells you, well, Jesus is a created being. He didn't start to exist until he was born to the Virgin Mary.

You say, no, the word of the Lord existed in the Old Testament. We see that in Genesis 15. We see that in Jeremiah chapter 1. In fact, when I started going through it, I saw all of the prophets, usually, the beginning, the opening of their messages say, the word of the Lord came to me.

The word of the Lord is this. So, again, we know that no one has ever seen the Father. John's clear about that. No one's perceived him or seen him visibly, but they claim to have seen the Lord. So, no one has seen God except the only God who is at the Father's side has revealed him to us.

Yes. Yes. They say that the word is the thought or plan in God's mind. They would say, with regards to the Old Testament passages, this was the audible word, the voice of God. Okay? But the voice of God and the word of God are two different things.

Okay? The word of the Lord, as we saw, is a he. He touched him with his hand. He led Abram out of the tent. He, the Hebrew word says. Amen. Exactly. Again, you have to take into context certain things that Jesus says he is.

When Jesus says, I'm the good shepherd, I challenge you, go open a lexicon, look up what the definition of shepherd is. It's not going to say, oh, yeah, and it was Jesus. The word shepherd, it has a specific meaning.

But when Jesus says he's the shepherd, it now takes on new meaning. It gives you a picture of what Jesus is. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. Look up those three words. You're not going to find, and it's Jesus.

The lexicon dictionary, the lexicon understanding of that is not going to spell that out for you. You have to put those pieces together. So when John says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, face to face, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, we understand that as a person, as a he.

Okay? Let's go to the next one. Zechariah 4. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, the hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house, and his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.

For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. So the word of the Lord came to him. Okay? And then what is the word of the Lord say?

It says the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. This is a plurality. Throughout the Old Testament, we see plural names being used for God. The word for God in Hebrew is Elohim, which means gods. Now we know that there's not more than one God, but God is a plurality.

So when God says, let us make man in our image, in our likeness, He's not making man a single solitary person alone. He makes man, He makes them, Adam and Eve, and calls them both Adam. Again, He's using a singular noun to describe a plurality of persons.

Again, without a triune God, you cannot have love, you cannot have logic, you cannot have communication. All things that God are essentially. Okay, without the triune God of scriptures, you would not be able to know anything for certain because logic would not exist.

Okay? We also see this in Isaiah 6. Right? Who does Isaiah see in chapter 6? I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Was that God the Father? How do you know? Say again?

Thank you. So when somebody says, oh look, he saw God, you just go right back to John. John gives you an inspired commentary of Genesis 1 -1 in the Old Testament. He says, no one ever at any time has seen God except the Son of God, the God who is at the Father's side, reveals Him to you.

That excites me. I don't know. All right. All right, next one. This is Samuel. And then we're going to have to wrap it up quick. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days.