What the Bible says about At One with God
(From Forerunner Commentary)

Haggai 2:7

Jesus Christ is the desire of all nations; people are yearning for Him, longing for Him, even though they do not know it. They are yearning for solutions, wisdom, power, understanding, vision, and love, and He is all those things. He will bring them all with Him. He is going to bring with Him what He is—His undivided mind that is filled with the way that He and the Father have lived for all eternity. He will instill this way of life into their minds.

The solutions to man's problems will come because He is sitting on the throne of nations. But we have been called to seek Him now and not fail where Israel failed. It is in the process of seeking Him that we become just like Him. This is what God expects us to do with our life now, and we must do it. We must show Him that we are thankful for our calling, for His forgiveness, for His Spirit, and then seek Him to be one with Him.

This is the solution now to both coming out of Babylon and avoiding Laodiceanism. It is to seek God with all of our heart in order to have the oneness of His mind. We are not to seek Him just to find Him, because He has already taken care of that by calling us to give us access to Him. Our seeking is to facilitate our coming to know Him so that we can be like Him. Thus, prayer, Bible study, meditation, occasional fasting, and obedience, driven by gratitude and passionate desire to be like Him and with Him, are the keys to oneness with Him.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Knowing God

John 1:14-18

In John 1:14, 18, the Greek term translated as “only begotten” is monogenes. Only John uses this adjective to describe Jesus, and he uses it five times. Its most common usage in Greek is as a term of endearment, though that is not all it adds to Jesus' standing before humanity. The way John uses it also specifically indicates a human family relationship.

It also carries the sense of “only,” intensifying the sense of endearment with the idea of singleness or uniqueness. Thus, the sense of “only” becomes an important addition. There are no others like Him, and Scripture adds that there never has been. He is unique even in respect to all other usages of “son of God” in the Bible. He stands alone. Our Savior has no competition.

At this point, we need to grasp a simple, Greek grammatical rule that most English-speakers are not normally exposed to. In Greek, ho is the equivalent of the English definite article “the.” However, the apostle John does not place ho before “only begotten” in verse 14, nor before “Father” in verse 18 (though most English translations supply it anyway). Its absence is legitimate in Greek usage, as it intensifies the descriptive power of the term “only begotten”—and thus what John is attempting to explain. It amplifies its power.

By writing it in this manner, John specifically signifies that Jesus is the single, sole, exclusive, only representative and—this is important—character (image) of the Being, the Father, who sent Him. This lays additional, greater glory upon the characteristics revealed about Jesus in context.

The apostle's object was to demonstrate and emphasize as best he could through mere words the height of the level of glory he and his fellow apostles witnessed in their three-and-a-half-year relationship with Jesus. With words, He severs Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary, from all other set-apart sons of God in the Scriptures, as well as from any kind of earthly, human, generational relationship.

Essentially, he is stating that Jesus' relationship with the Father was unoriginated. All human relationships are originated and continue through the pairing of a father and a mother. Jesus' relationship with the Father was not so. There is nothing we humans could conceive of as a sexual act by the Father that produced Jesus.

This reality should have a major impact on how we understand Their unity. Recall that Jesus says in John 10:30, “I and My Father are one.” Therefore, everything the Father is in character Jesus is also, even though Jesus is a separate personality from the Father. Just as the Father has always existed, so has the Son. The apostle John used this grammatical rule five times, so we would get the point. Jesus was and is every bit as much God as the Father.

Thus, the term “begotten” as used regarding Jesus does not apply in the same way it does for humans. Nevertheless, John used it to establish the concept of a family relationship so we could understand our relationship to God, as Father and child, more clearly.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Why Hebrews Was Written (Part Eight): Hebrews 1

John 17:11

It is a measure of how important "being one" with the Father and Son is that, in this most important prayer delivered on the last night of Jesus' life, Jesus requested of the Father that we be "one with Them" four times! In that sense, it is the most important request in this prayer that we become one with Them.

Will a human being sacrifice for a good and moral purpose? Yes, we will if we believe God, and believe that He loves us. That last element is not easy, as it takes a lot of experience with Him to know that He loves us, and that He loves us every bit as much as He loves Jesus Christ. Notice what verse 23 says: "You . . . have loved them as You have loved Me." As means "equal to"! We have no trouble believing that God exists, but we have a great deal of trouble believing that God loves us. Yet, it is necessary for becoming one with Him, and returning that love back to Him. Human beings will sacrifice if they can get a good handle on their lives, believing God, and believing that He loves them.

Becoming one with the Father and the Son is accomplished through a number of factors, but none is more important for us right now than beginning to live as They live in preparation for being with Them. No other way of life is acceptable to Them, because no other way of life is in harmony with the way that They live.

John W. Ritenbaugh
Knowing God


 

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