What God Do You Worship?

Let me ask you a question.  Which God do you worship?  Some would say that ultimately we all worship the same God but by different names and in different ways, etc.  Yet if you are a “Christian” in the Biblical sense, that perspective holds no water whatsoever.  Instead what is more likely true is that people generally, and certainly Jews and Christians especially, do have a zeal for God, but it is not according to right knowledge as the apostle Paul stated (Romans 10:2).  Again, I am speaking through a Biblical lens, so my comments here reflect that perspective.

First point to be made is that the name of Jesus is the only name given among men through which a person can be saved from mortality to immortality (Acts 4:12).  The second point is that Jesus can be proclaimed and taught in ways that are false and produce a false gospel…making the ministers of such, the ministers of Satan (2 Cor. 11:1-15).  The result is a false Christ and false Gospel.

A third important point we must not minimize, is that a follower of Jesus Christ must not only believe that he is the son of God, but also must believe his words.  Believing in the words of Jesus is a prerequisite for salvation.  His words are spirit and life (John 6:63; John 15:7).

Now consider this; there is not one word in the Bible anywhere, either in the prophets or from Jesus and his apostles, concerning an immortal residence in heaven where God and Jesus are currently residing.  There are one or two verses that are extremely vague in this regard and are in no way references to a celestial, other worldly destiny of the saved.  Far from it!  There is not one mention of an immortal soul that leaves the body at death and flies off to some other dimension or plane of existence.  This idea is strictly from Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek speculations.

As far as the Bible is concerned, the saved from all ages are destined for a physical resurrection from the dead state…coming up from their graves changed from mortal to immortal human beings walking on the earth, indeed their inheritance.  Jesus said that the day would come when the dead would hear his voice and come forth from their graves, and that this would happen for believers on the last day of this current age (John 5:28-29; John 6:40).  He further said that these believers would reign on the earth as kings and priests under the King Jesus, and help establish his Kingdom over the nations (Rev. 5:9-10; Rev. 2:26; Rev. 3:21; Rev. 20:1-6).  Understanding that there would be a literal resurrection of the flesh from death to life has been the Biblical hope at least since the time of Job (Job 14:13-15; Job 19:25-27).  It was the apostle Paul’s hope also, as well as all other believers down through time (Acts 24:21; Acts 26:6-8; Hebrews 11:19, 39-40).

Indeed we also have the plain testimony of Paul to the Christians found in 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17.  Here are those much beloved and believed words respectively:

1 Corinthians 15:51-53

51 Behold, I am telling you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as indeed the rest of mankind do, who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, so also God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. 15 For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

So the question becomes, do we worship the God of the Bible and His Messiah Jesus?  That starts with believing and respecting their words, plans, and purposes.  God says His thoughts are higher than ours, but at the same time He’s given us plain words to understand those thoughts.  Or, do we believe in Egyptian gods who put forward other words and ideas?  According to the God of Jesus and the Bible, human destiny is this planet as immortalized human beings…not some other place we have never known or experienced.  The only thing wrong with this planet is sin, hate, wars, famines, disease, etc.  Eliminate those, which requires a change of heart via God’s holy spirit in us, and we’ve got ourselves a beautiful and wonderful creation upon which to grow, learn, and enhance according to the our God-given creativity, intelligence, and resourcefulness.

Along the same line of Biblical reasoning and truth, how many Gods are there, and more to the point here, is Jesus himself, God.  Do we worship a man as god?  Well, we do if we elevate Jesus to that place when the Bible gives him no such status.  Rather, Jesus is the Son of God, not God the Son.  He is the perfect representative and agent of God.  He is everything it means to be human made in God’s image. 

In the Hebrew language of the Old Testament, and in Biblical thinking of the New Testament, the word elohim translated into the English as, god, is used for human beings and angels, as well as for God himself.  Why? It is because both angels and humans can be spoken of as “agents” of God, where the agent is as the principal, speaking and acting on God’s behalf.

So in that respect alone, there are one or two verses in the New Testament that refer to Jesus as God.  However, there is an overwhelming preponderance of scripture referring to Jesus as a man where he is juxtaposed with God.  The verses are so numerous that this article is too small of a work to list them all, but here are just a small number of them.

1 Timothy 2:5

For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus…

John 20:17

Jesus said to her, “Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.’”

Revelation 3:12

He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from my God, and my new name.

Acts 3:13

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. 

Acts 3:22

Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren; to Him you shall give heed to everything he says to you. 

Acts 7:55

But being full of the holy spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; 

Acts 17:30-31

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.” 

Romans 5:1

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our lord Jesus Christ, 

Romans 5:15

But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, 

Romans 8:34

who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 

1 Peter 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Even Jesus when praying to the Father, made this confession:

John 17:3

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Again, there are probably over one hundred verses we could list here. Jesus has a God, even post resurrection and ascension. God cannot have a God.  Jesus is a unique and faithful human being who was filled with God’s spirit.  He sits at God’s right hand in heaven and will return to judge on God’s behalf.  What could be more plain?

Therefore I ask again, what God and what Jesus do we worship? By the way, the Greek word for “worship” is prokuneo.  It simply means to “bow down” or “prostrate” oneself.  The word is used for human kings, as well.  We can worship the Father/Creator as God, and worship Jesus as the Messiah and lord (master).  It’s all good…it’s all Biblical.  But to worship Jesus as part of a “God-head”; as the second person in a three-person God-essence (whatever that is!) is in this author’s view, worshipping a false god.  It’s called the Trinitarian doctrine and it is not Biblical.  God is strictly one, single person, the Father…the Creator.  Jesus is the son OF God, the Messiah OF God (in Greek the Christos), but not God.  We worship him as our Savior, Lord, and Christ.  To worship a man as God Almighty is a sin and to break the first commandment of having no other gods before the one rue God.  Romans, chapter 1 in verse 23 forbids it.  The notion of a “trinity” of gods comes from ancient Egypt and Grecian philosophy, not from the Bible.  We worship the One whose words we believe.  And those words are not hard to understand unless we make them hard.

There’s a lot involved with being a Christian, it’s not necessarily always easy.  In addition to believing what God says about Himself and His plan for human beings, we must be learning to walk according to His light.  That’s a big part of it, growth in His spirit…being His faithful and adoring children.  But it all starts with believing, and it would seem the world has a long way to go in that category.  Many haven’t even got off the starting blocks in that race toward understanding and knowing our Father and His mindset.