One God and One Lord

The foundation

The LORD alone is Israel’s God

Deuteronomy 6 begins Israel’s central confession: ‘Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one.’ The Hebrew can be represented with slightly different English phrasing, including ‘the LORD is our God, the LORD alone.’ The immediate demand is clear across those renderings: Israel must love Yahweh wholly and refuse the gods of the surrounding nations.

Isaiah makes both uniqueness and creative identity unmistakable: Yahweh is the first and the last, there is no God besides Him, and He says He stretched out the heavens ‘by Myself.’ Any Christian account of Jesus must preserve this uncompromising monotheism rather than quietly adding another god or created divine assistant beside Israel’s God.

• Israel is called to worship and love the LORD alone.
• The Creator has no divine rival.
• The New Testament inherits this confession rather than replacing it.

Paul's starting point

There is no God but one

First Corinthians 8 addresses food associated with idols, but Paul begins with theology: idols do not represent additional real gods. He explicitly repeats the confession that there is no God but one.

This matters for what follows. Paul is not relaxing monotheism when he speaks of the Father and Jesus Christ. His next statement must be read inside the one-God confession he has just affirmed.

Paul's confession

One God, the Father—and one Lord, Jesus Christ

Paul distinguishes the Father from Jesus Christ: the Father is the ‘one God,’ and Jesus Christ is the ‘one Lord.’ He then relates all things to both. All things are from the Father, and all things are through Jesus Christ.

In the Greek Scriptures familiar to Paul, the Shema names ‘the Lord’ (κύριος) as Israel’s one God. Paul’s paired phrases—‘one God’ and ‘one Lord’—therefore do more than assign Jesus a generic title of respect. Many interpreters understand them as an intentional echo of the Shema, with Jesus included within the identity and rule of Israel’s one God while remaining distinguished from the Father.

The full doctrine of the Trinity does not depend on proving that literary echo. The explicit claim is already substantial: inside a passage that has just insisted there is no God but one, Paul says the entire created order is from the Father and through Jesus Christ.

Keep every distinction

From the Father · through the Son

Paul does not identify Jesus as the Father. He distinguishes them through the words ‘from whom’ and ‘through whom.’ Their distinction remains real even as the whole created order is related to both.

Nor does the word ‘through’ by itself settle Jesus’ nature; Scripture can describe God accomplishing work through human agents. What makes this statement different is its unlimited scope and setting: ‘all things’ are through Christ within a confession that there is only one God. Read alongside Isaiah’s claim that Yahweh created alone, and with John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1, a merely external created-agent explanation becomes increasingly difficult. The cumulative language places Jesus within God’s unique creative work rather than among the things made.