God Is One
‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.’ In its context, these words from Deuteronomy 6:4 show the fundamental importance of God’s oneness. They are the substance of everything God commands in His law, and on them depends all that is written in the law and the prophets (Matt. 22:35–40; Luke 10:25–28). There really is no other law!
That God is one, therefore, is the foundation for our whole calling as God’s people (Deut. 6:5). It is the truth that must be hung at the entrances to our houses, that it may be always at hand and always before our eyes (8–9). It must be the heart of what we teach our children—the gist of all our speech, our guiding principle, the theme of our meditations, and the foundation of our prayers (7). It is the source of every blessing (10–11) and the cornerstone of our righteousness before God (25). To forget it is to forget and forsake the Lord who brought us out of bondage (v. 12).
Why is it so important?
First, it is part of the truth of the Trinity, and therefore part of the truth that this God is the true God. He is three persons, yet one! To worship and serve any other besides this God, who is three-in-one, is to turn from the true God to idols. All our hope and salvation depend on that! Listen to I Corinthians 8:5–6: “For though there be [many that are] called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”
Second, God’s oneness also means that He is the only God. There is no other! This is why God’s oneness is a truth that governs our whole life. Because He alone is God, there is no other for us to love, worship, serve and obey. Him only may we know, honour and fear. To Him alone do we submit. In Him alone do we trust. From Him—and from no other—do we seek all things, and to Him alone do we pray.
That is what the Word of God means in I Corinthians 8:5–6. We are in Him and by Him only. At work and at play, at home and at school, at church, awake and asleep—eating, thinking, speaking, praying, walking—for all time and for all eternity, there is but one. All else is idolatry.
Thinking, then, of God’s oneness, Moses says: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Do you? Rev. Hanko
Love for Our Enemies (3)
“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you …” (Luke 6:27).
We are still dealing with the difficult question of how the Lord can use the word “love” (agape) in this passage, when love means the fellowship that unites morally holy people in a bond of friendship.
In the last article we said: (1) Scripture commands us not to love the world; (2) Jesus Himself explains this expression by telling us to do good to our enemies; and (3) doing good to others—even our enemies—includes seeking their salvation, even while we minister to their material needs. But Jesus surely has more in mind.
The point Jesus is making is that our Father in heaven loves us. He does not love us because we are worthy of His love, for “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He loves us in all our unworthiness, only for the sake of Christ.
We are called to reflect God’s love for us, and to show it in our lives and in our relationships with others. We are not only to love those who love us (Matt. 5:46–47); we are to love those who are “unworthy” of our love—those who hate us and persecute us.
When we show God’s love for us by loving others who are equally unworthy, we confess—by that very act—that we are not worthy of God’s love, and that we receive it as a gift, wholly unmerited. That is why refusing to love those who hate us and our enemies exposes something serious: it shows we have never truly tasted God’s love in our hearts. For God loves us even when we hate Him and are His enemies apart from His grace. To withhold love from our enemies is to show that we are not, after all, children of our Father in heaven—even if we claim to be.
So the first meaning of this verse is this: by loving our enemies, we reveal the great love of God for us—sovereign and unmerited. We are so overcome by that love that we not only speak of it to others, but we also show it in our life by helping others.
But there is more. To seek the salvation of others surely means that we earnestly desire our neighbours—even those who hate us and persecute us—to be saved as we are. We long that they would enjoy the same blessedness God has given to us. We show that earnest desire by seeking their good—by speaking to them of the salvation God has graciously and undeservedly given to us.
That is the Christian witness God calls us to be busy with in this life. We even desire the salvation of those who would harm us. We want it so much that we cannot hate them, but can only love them.
God is pleased to use this Christian witness in His own way and according to His own purpose. Just as the preaching of the gospel is a two-edged sword, so is the witness of God’s people. God will use that witness to bring to salvation and faith those whom He has ordained to eternal life, and He will also use it to harden the reprobate in their sin. God will accomplish His sovereign purpose through our witness.
This witness is so important that it is really impossible for the church to engage in missions unless she is a witnessing church. We must remember that in our calling here in the world.
You ask: how can we desire the salvation of our neighbour when we know beforehand that God does not purpose to save all men? The answer is simple. We do not know who God’s people are—only God knows. And so we testify to all that God will surely save those who believe—not all men, but those who believe. And those who believe are those whom God has chosen to be His own eternally, and in whom He works faith.
Put it plainly. Suppose we have an enemy who truly persecutes us and despitefully uses us. He tries to make our lives miserable. He harasses our children. He even shoots at our homes. What then? Are we to retaliate? Are we to smash his windows? Are we to take up weapons to harm him? Jesus says, No!
We are to desire his salvation. Therefore we are called to go to him and tell him that we earnestly desire that he repent of his sin, come with us to church and enjoy with us the salvation freely given to us. We are to bring him food if he is hungry, give him furniture if he has none, and lend him our car if he has broken down.
But we must do this in the name of Christ, as a testimony of Christ’s great love for us. God will use that witness. If he is elect, he will repent, confess his sin, seek forgiveness from us and from God and come with us to church with joy. If he is not a child of God, he will be hardened: his hatred will grow more intense and his bitterness will finally show itself in an angry refusal of our gifts and offers of help.
Then we suffer for Christ’s sake, and must count ourselves blessed (Matt. 5:11–12). Prof. Hanko
Will There Be a Premillenial Rapture?
We have already shown that the rapture cannot be a secret, entirely unexpected coming of Christ—if we speak of a rapture at all, it must refer to Christ’s public appearance and return. Nor will it overtake God’s people “like a thief in the night” (I Thess. 5:4). Christ will not come at any moment in that sense of the word.
But when will this “rapture” take place? That is the question.
Scripture gives no support for the idea that the rapture will occur before a 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth—long before the end of all things. Nor do we believe that the rapture described in I Thessalonians 4:14–18 will be followed by other comings of Christ. Understood biblically, the rapture refers to the ONE coming of Christ AT THE END OF THE WORLD.
We note the following:
1) The resurrection of God’s people—one of the most important events involved in this “rapture”—will take place at the LAST DAY (John 6:39-40, 44, 54; 11:24—note the repeated emphasis in John 6). Those who believe in a premillennial rapture are really saying that this “last-day” resurrection will be followed by at least 365,000 more days!
2) In I Thessalonians 4:16 the rapture is announced with a trumpet. This trumpet is identified in I Corinthians 15:52 as the “last trumpet” (compare the two passages and you will see they speak of the same event). In Revelation 10–11 that last trumpet brings the end of time (10:6), the finishing of the mystery of God (10:7), the realization of the everlasting kingdom of Christ (11:15), and the time of God’s wrath—judging the dead, rewarding the saints and destroying the wicked (11:18). There is no 1,000-year interval between this trumpet and the end of all things, nor are there any further trumpets.
3) The separation of the righteous and the wicked takes place at the END and is immediately followed by the final judgment of both. The parable of the tares in Matthew 13 makes this plain: both good and bad seed “grow together until the harvest,” that is, the final judgment. The separation does not occur until that judgment; indeed, in the parable the tares are judged first (30). See also I Thessalonians 4:16–5:3, Luke 17:27–36 and Matthew 24:31–51, where this separation is tied directly to the final judgment. Premillennialism separates the judgment (and rapture) of the righteous from the judgment of the wicked by 1,000 years.
4) I Corinthians 15 connects the rapture with the destruction of death (26, 54) and the subjection of all things to Christ. Premillennialism says that there will still be death during the 1,000 years following the rapture. Death, then, would not be “swallowed up in victory” at the time of the rapture.
5) The Greek word used to describe Christ’s coming for His people in the rapture is the same word used to describe His coming with His saints (I Thess. 3:13, 4:16; II Thess. 2:1). It is also used to describe His coming for judgment and at the full end of the world (Matt. 24:3, 39; II Pet. 3:4, 12—the word “end” in Matthew 24:3 means “full end”). There will be only one coming of Christ, and that at the end of all things.
For that we watch and pray, believing that He comes quickly as He promised. Rev. Hanko
