The One God and His Very Good World
Restoring the Foundations · Article 2 of 14
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public-domain translation. The WEB renders God’s personal name as “Yahweh.”
The opening question
If we get the main character of a story wrong, everything after goes wrong with it.
So this article asks: Who is the God of the Bible, and what did he make the world and humanity for?
Many of us were given answers before we opened the text, from creeds or from an organization’s proof texts. This article sets both aside. As in Article 01, we label each claim as explicit (the text says it), a canonical connection (a later biblical writer takes it up), or our conclusion.
The text in context: who God is
The God with a name and a family history
The Bible does not introduce God as an abstract idea. He introduces himself by his relationships. At the burning bush he says to Moses:
“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3:6)
Then he gives his name:
God said moreover to Moses, “You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. (Exodus 3:15)
The apostles never traded this God for another. Peter preached at the temple in Jerusalem, “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his Servant Jesus” (Acts 3:13). The God who raised Jesus is the God of the patriarchs.
“Yahweh is one”
Israel’s central confession came from Moses, spoken to a nation about to enter the land:
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
This is not a philosophical puzzle but a call to undivided loyalty. Surrounded by nations with many gods, Israel was to have one.
“There is no other”
In Isaiah 45, an oracle addressed to Cyrus, the foreign king God would use (45:1), God speaks to the whole world:
I am Yahweh, and there is no one else. Besides me, there is no God. (Isaiah 45:5)
“Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:22)
And he ties his uniqueness to creation:
I have made the earth, and created man on it. I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens. I have commanded all their army. (Isaiah 45:12)
In Isaiah, being the Creator and being the only God go together.
Jesus affirms the Shema
When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment was greatest, Jesus did not revise Israel’s confession. He quoted it:
“The greatest is: ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’” (Mark 12:29-30)
The scribe answered, “Truly, teacher, you have said well that he is one, and there is none other but he” (Mark 12:32). Jesus responded, “You are not far from God’s Kingdom” (Mark 12:34). The scribe’s confession is singular, “he is one,” and Jesus approved it.
Jesus names the only true God
In his prayer the night before his death, Jesus lifted his eyes to heaven and said:
“This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” (John 17:3)
The one Jesus addresses as “the only true God” is the one he calls “Father” (John 17:1). Jesus places himself alongside, as the one sent. After his resurrection he still speaks this way: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).
The apostles: one God, the Father
Paul wrote to believers in Corinth, a city full of temples. He says:
we know that no idol is anything in the world, and that there is no other God but one. For though there are things that are called “gods”, whether in the heavens or on earth… as there are many “gods” and many “lords”… yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we live through him. (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)
Paul identifies the “one God” by a name: “the Father.” He also names “one Lord, Jesus Christ.” Both stand in the believers’ confession against the many gods and lords of Corinth. But Paul gives them different titles and different prepositions: all things are “of” the Father and “through” the Lord Jesus.
Paul says the same to Timothy:
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (1 Timothy 2:5)
The one God is God. The mediator stands between God and humanity, and Paul calls him “the man Christ Jesus.” Elsewhere Paul blesses “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:3).
The text in context: “through whom are all things”
Paul’s sentence raises a fair question: what part does Jesus have in creation? Several texts stand side by side.
- Yahweh says, “I am Yahweh, who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself” (Isaiah 44:24).
- Paul says there is “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6).
- John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him” (John 1:1-3), and then, “The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).
- Paul writes of the Son, “All things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16), and Hebrews says God has spoken “by his Son… through whom also he made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:2).
- In a passage about the Son (Hebrews 1:8-12), Hebrews quotes a psalm: “You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the works of your hands” (Hebrews 1:10; Psalm 102:25).
- Scripture also uses “through” of God himself: “For of him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36).
- After the resurrection, Thomas says to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
These are Scripture’s own statements (explicit), and we receive every one as given. Our Statement of Faith puts it this way: “We receive these declarations in their scriptural language without imposing later philosophical formulations upon them.” That cuts both ways. We do not bring in the vocabulary of later councils, such as “three persons in one being,” “one substance,” or “God the Son,” which Scripture never uses. And we do not explain away John 1:1 or Thomas’s words in the other direction, by calling the Word an angel, “a god” beside the one God, or “Michael.” Those definitions are not in the text either.
“In the beginning” deliberately echoes Genesis 1:1 (canonical connection). In Genesis, God creates by speaking: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Israel sang, “By Yahweh’s word, the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:6). John tells us why he wrote: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Any reading of John 1 should serve that goal, and should sit beside John 17:3 and John 20:17, where Jesus calls the Father “the only true God” and “my God.”
A note on the Greek. In John 1:1, “God” (theos) has the definite article in “the Word was with God” and lacks it in “the Word was God.” Some argue the missing article means “a god.” But John uses theos without the article for the Father himself: “sent from God” (John 1:6) and “No one has seen God at any time” (John 1:18). Those are not the same construction as 1:1c, so they prove only this much: the missing article does not, by itself, mean “a god.” Grammar does not decide the verse; John’s context and his stated purpose do, and he wrote “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31), the one sent by “the only true God” (John 17:3).
Our conclusion is that the Word of John 1 is God’s own word and purpose, the word by which he created when “God said” (Genesis 1:3) and by which “the heavens were made” (Psalm 33:6), and that this word “became flesh” (John 1:14) in the man Jesus. The prologue never calls the Word the Son before it became flesh, and Luke ties the title Son to the birth: “the holy one who is born from you will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Our conclusion: Jesus did not personally exist before his conception, and the Word was God means God’s word was fully his own, not a second divine person and not a god. Article 10 makes this case alongside Thomas’s confession, John 17:5, Colossians 1:16 and Hebrews’ use of the psalm, and The Hard Texts answers John 1:1 (Article 1, The Word Was God) and John 8:58 (Article 2, Before Abraham Was). Paul says it plainly: “to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6), and Jesus calls the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3).
Our conclusion, then, is that the Bible nowhere teaches the Trinity. Scripture names one God, the Father (1 Corinthians 8:6; John 17:3), as the prophet asks, “Hasn’t one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). The doctrine of one God in three persons developed gradually over several centuries and was stated as one essence and three persons only later in the fourth century (Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Trinity”).
The text in context: a very good world
Creation in Genesis 1
The Bible’s first sentence names the Creator and his work: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Then, day by day, God evaluates what he makes. Six times the text records that God saw what he made was “good” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). At the end comes a stronger word:
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)
The physical world is not a mistake, a prison, or a shadow. Paul agrees: “For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).
Isaiah adds the purpose. God “didn’t create it a waste,” but “formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18). The earth was made as a home.
Humanity in God’s image
On the sixth day God makes humanity:
God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26-28)
The text joins image and rule in one breath, for male and female alike. God’s first words to humanity are a blessing and a job, and he provides their food (Genesis 1:29-30).
The text does not give a full definition of “image.” What it does show is that the image is tied to a role: representing God’s rule over his world.
Dust and breath
Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)
The man is made of earth and given life by God’s breath. The text does not describe a soul placed into a body. It says the man formed from dust “became” a living soul (explicit).
Life with God in Eden
“Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:8). Genesis describes a real place on the earth, watered by a river that parts into four, two of them named elsewhere in Scripture: the Euphrates, and the Hiddekel, beside which Daniel stood (Genesis 2:10-14; Daniel 10:4). It is not a heavenly realm or a state of mind. Its trees are “pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (Genesis 2:9): beauty and nourishment together.
And there is work. “Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). The first verb is the ordinary word for working the ground. The second means to watch over or guard. Work is not the curse. It comes before anything goes wrong, as part of the good life God gives.
Some readers see Eden as the first sanctuary and the man as its first priest, since the same two verbs later describe the Levites’ duties (Numbers 3:7-8), and Ezekiel calls Eden “the garden of God” (Ezekiel 28:13). But both verbs are common, Ezekiel is poetry addressed to the king of Tyre, and no biblical writer calls Eden a temple or the man a priest. Our conclusion: Scripture never calls Eden a sanctuary or the man a priest, and we do not build on it.
Then God speaks:
Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
The command begins with generosity: “You may freely eat.” The one restriction sits inside a world of provision. Life with God included listening to his word and trusting it. Two trees stand in the middle of the garden: that one and “the tree of life” (Genesis 2:9). Genesis never calls the first humans immortal. Later it ties living forever to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22), which we take to mean God’s provision, not something humans possess in themselves (our conclusion). Life, from the first page, is a gift.
“Yahweh God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him’” (Genesis 2:18). After six verdicts of “good” and one of “very good,” here is the first thing God calls not good: the man alone. “Helper” does not mean an inferior. The same Hebrew word is used of God himself: “He is our help and our shield” (Psalm 33:20). The man names the animals (Genesis 2:19-20), and God makes the woman (Genesis 2:21-22). Jesus later pointed back to these chapters as God’s design “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:4-5).
Genesis shows God speaking to the man, bringing the animals to him, and bringing him the woman (Genesis 2:16, 19, 22). Later Scripture traces God’s desire to live among his people, from “Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8) to “God’s dwelling is with people” (Revelation 21:3). Genesis does not say God dwelt in the garden, so reading Eden as the first step of that thread is our conclusion. But the direction of the whole Bible is already visible: God near his people, on the earth he made.
Psalm 8 and Psalm 115
Israel’s songs kept this vocation in view. In Psalm 8, David looks at the night sky and asks:
what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet: (Psalm 8:4-6)
And another psalm says plainly:
The heavens are Yahweh’s heavens, but he has given the earth to the children of men. (Psalm 115:16)
The earth is still Yahweh’s (Psalm 24:1), entrusted to humanity to manage under him.
Where Psalm 8 leads: the man Jesus
The letter to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 and admits the obvious: “now we don’t yet see all things subjected to him” (Hebrews 2:8). Then it adds:
But we see him who has been made a little lower than the angels, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, (Hebrews 2:9)
This is a canonical connection: the calling God gave humanity in Genesis 1 and celebrated in Psalm 8 is being fulfilled in a man, Jesus. That is why the story does not end with escape from the earth. It ends with “God’s dwelling is with people” (Revelation 21:3) and creation “delivered from the bondage of decay” (Romans 8:21). Article 03 will show how the vocation was broken. Articles 08-14 will show how it is restored.
Where we stand
What Scripture says explicitly
- One God, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; besides him there is no God (Exodus 3:15; Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5, 22).
- Jesus affirmed the Shema and called the Father “the only true God” and “my God” (Mark 12:29-34; John 17:3; 20:17).
- Paul names the one God as “the Father,” and Jesus as the “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” and “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 8:6; 1 Timothy 2:5).
- In the beginning the Word was with God and was God; all things were made through him (the WEB’s rendering; the Greek autou can also be read it), and the Word became flesh (John 1:1-3, 14; see Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2). Our conclusion: the Word is God’s own spoken word and purpose, which became flesh in the man Jesus.
- God’s world was “very good”; humanity, male and female, bears his image and was given rule on the earth (Genesis 1:26-31; Psalm 115:16).
- The man, formed from dust, became a living soul by God’s breath and was placed in a real garden “to cultivate and keep it”, with one command inside great provision (Genesis 2:7-17).
Canonical connections
- John’s “In the beginning” echoes Genesis 1:1. Hebrews reads Psalm 8 as fulfilled in Jesus and applies Psalms 45 and 102 to the Son (Hebrews 1:8-12; 2:6-9). Jesus points back to Genesis 1-2 (Matthew 19:4-5).
Our conclusions
- The high texts about Jesus are received in their own words, not replaced by later formulas, and never in a way that removes the Father’s place as the one God.
- Jesus did not personally exist before his conception, and the Bible nowhere teaches the Trinity, a doctrine settled in the fourth century (our conclusion).
- Life is God’s gift, not a human possession.
- Eden is the first step in the thread of God dwelling with his people. (A conclusion; Genesis does not state it.) Eden as a sanctuary with Adam as priest is not stated in Scripture, and we do not build on it.
In one sentence (our conclusion): The Bible’s God is one, the Father, the God of Israel’s fathers. Humanity’s calling is to bear his image on his good earth. The rest of the story is about how that calling was lost and how God restores it through the man Jesus, his Son.
What it does not say
- It does not define God with later philosophical terms, or name Jesus “the archangel Michael” or “a god.”
- It does not say the physical world is evil. God called it very good, and Paul says nothing God created is to be rejected (1 Timothy 4:4).
- It does not say humanity’s original destiny was to leave the earth. The texts describe a vocation on the earth (Genesis 1:28; 2:15; Psalm 115:16).
- It does not explain the “us” in Genesis 1:26. See below.
Objections answered
“Doesn’t ‘Let’s make man’ (Genesis 1:26) reveal more than one person in God?” The text does not explain the plural, and the very next verse returns to the singular: “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27). Genesis does not explain it, and no later biblical writer quotes this plural as teaching more than one person in God. Some also point to the Hebrew word for God, elohim, which is plural in form. But in this very verse it takes a singular verb, vayyomer, he said, and in verse 27 he created and his own image are singular too (Hebrew, OSHB). The same word is used of Moses (Exodus 7:1). Our conclusion: the plural form alone does not show more than one person. We let the silence stay silent, and we do not let an unexplained plural overrule the many plain statements that God is one and “there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22). The Hard Texts weighs the verses most often read as showing more than one person in God, beginning with John 1:1 (Article 1, The Word Was God) and John 20:28 (Article 3, My Lord and My God).
“Thomas called Jesus ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20:28).” He did. Eleven verses earlier the risen Jesus spoke of “my God and your God” (John 20:17), and three verses later John states his purpose (John 20:31). Scripture also uses “God” for one who is distinct from God. Psalm 45, addressed to Israel’s king, says, “Your throne, God, is forever and ever”, and then, “God, your God, has anointed you” (Psalm 45:6-7), and Hebrews applies this to the Son (Hebrews 1:8-9). Thomas’s words are true, and we receive them as written. They do not cancel John 17:3. Article 10 treats them in full.
“Doesn’t 1 Corinthians 8:6 put Jesus inside the Shema?” It places “one Lord, Jesus Christ” beside “one God, the Father,” a high place we will not shrink. But Paul still names the “one God” as “the Father.” Later he says the Son “will also himself be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). The Lord Jesus is exalted by God and to God’s glory (Philippians 2:9-11).
A note on John 10:30 and John 17:5. Jesus said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and in the same breath of controversy summarized his claim as “I am the Son of God” (John 10:36). In John 17:5 he prays for the glory he had with the Father “before the world existed,” two verses after calling the Father “the only true God” (John 17:3). Both passages are treated fully in Article 10, on Jesus’ exaltation.
From a Jehovah’s Witness background: “Isn’t Jesus the first thing God created, the archangel Michael?” Colossians 1:15 calls him “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Proverbs 8:22 speaks of wisdom: “Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work.” Neither verse says Jesus is an angel. Proverbs 8 is a poem about wisdom and does not name Jesus. “Firstborn” in Scripture can mark rank, not only order of birth: God says of David’s line, “I will also appoint him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27), and Paul, three verses after Colossians 1:15, calls Jesus “the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18). Nor does 1 Thessalonians 4:16 make Jesus an angel: the Lord descends “with the voice of the archangel and with God’s trumpet” and the trumpet does not make him God any more than the voice makes him an archangel. Hebrews goes further and sets the Son against the angels: “For to which of the angels did he say at any time, ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your father?’” (Hebrews 1:5). Scripture calls Jesus “the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5) and Paul calls him “The last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). The text presents him as the Son and as a true human being, not as an angel in disguise.
Verify it yourself
- Read Genesis 1:1-2:25 slowly. Count the times God calls his work “good.”
- Read Isaiah 45 and underline every “there is no other.”
- Read Mark 12:28-34. Ask: what does the scribe say, and how does Jesus respond?
- Read John 1:1-18, Colossians 1:15-20, and Hebrews 1:1-12, then John 17:1-5 and John 20:17-31. Write down what John says about the Father and what he says about the Word and the Son.
- Read 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 and 1 Timothy 2:5. Note who is called “God” and who is called “Lord” and “mediator.”
- Read Genesis 2:8-25. List what God gives before he gives the one command.
- Read Psalm 8, then Hebrews 2:5-9.
Scripture index
Genesis 1:1-31; 2:7-22; 3:22 · Exodus 3:6, 15; 25:8 · Numbers 3:7-8 · Deuteronomy 6:4-5 · Psalms 8:4-6; 24:1; 33:6, 20; 45:1, 6-7; 89:27; 102:25; 115:16 · Proverbs 8:22 · Isaiah 44:24; 45:1, 5, 12, 18, 22 · Ezekiel 28:13 · Daniel 10:4 · Matthew 19:4-5 · Mark 12:28-34 · John 1:1-3, 6, 14, 18; 10:30, 36; 17:1-5; 20:17, 28, 31 · Acts 3:13 · Romans 8:21; 11:36 · 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; 15:28, 45 · Ephesians 1:3 · Philippians 2:9-11 · Colossians 1:15-16, 18 · 1 Thessalonians 4:16 · 1 Timothy 2:5; 4:4 · Hebrews 1:2, 5, 8-12; 2:6-9 · Revelation 21:3
© 2026 Elvis Lucas, Open the Text. Original: https://openthetext.com/series/restoring-the-foundations/02-the-one-god-and-his-very-good-world/
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