Jesus gave a warning that should trouble anyone who takes religion seriously:
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.”
— Matthew 7:22-23
These people used His name. They were busy for Him. And He did not know them. So it is fair to ask: does it matter who we believe God is? Can a wrong picture of God bend the gospel itself? This page argues that it can, and shows where.
What each side believes
The TrinityOne God in three co-equal, co-eternal persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Son, the second person, became man in Jesus.
One God (Apostolic)One God, who is Spirit, revealed as Father in creation, in the Son by the incarnation, and as the Holy Ghost in His people. Jesus is that one God manifest in flesh.
Trinitarians believe in one God, the full deity of Christ, His death and resurrection, and salvation through Him alone. Many love Jesus sincerely. The disagreement is not about whether Jesus is God. It is about how God is in Christ, and what follows from it.
Where the word came from
“Trinity” is not a Bible word. Israel’s confession was “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The term first appears in the late 100s (Theophilus of Antioch’s trias, then Tertullian’s trinitas), and the doctrine was defined by church councils at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), centuries after the apostles had died. Trinitarians hold that those councils faithfully summarized Scripture. Apostolics hold that they replaced its plain language with philosophy.
Four places it blurs the gospel
1. Who saves you
Scripture says “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Speak of Jesus as the second of three persons, and the cross quietly becomes God sending someone else. The Bible’s wonder is that God Himself came: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
2. The Name
Jesus said to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19): one name, not three. Repeat the three titles and the Name itself is never spoken. The apostles spoke it every time: “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “In that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one” (Zechariah 14:9).
3. Baptism
Peter preached baptism “in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38). Every baptism in Acts whose words are recorded follows that pattern (8:16; 10:48; 19:5). Wherever the titles replace the Name, the Name Peter commanded is never spoken over the convert, and many churches now treat baptism as a symbol rather than “for the remission of sins.”
4. The Spirit in you
If the Holy Spirit is a third person, the one who fills you is someone other than Jesus. Scripture says the Spirit in you is “the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9), and Jesus promised, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18). The new birth is Christ Himself coming to live in you (Colossians 1:27).
What history records
A standard reference work, not an Apostolic one, puts it plainly: “The New Testament knows only baptism in the name of Jesus… which still occurs even in the second and third centuries.”1 To be fair to the record: the three-title wording also appears early, in the Didache (late first or early second century) and in Justin Martyr (about AD 155), and the same Didache still speaks of those “baptized into the name of the Lord” (9:5). The change did not happen overnight. But it did happen, and it moved away from what Acts records.
The hard verses, answered
A case that skips the difficult texts is not worth making. These are the ones most often raised:
“Jesus prayed to the Father. Was He praying to Himself?”
Trinitarian reading: the Son, a distinct person, speaks to the Father.
Answer: Jesus was truly a man, and a true man prays. “In the days of his flesh” He offered prayers “unto him that was able to save him from death” (Hebrews 5:7). Trinitarians agree He prayed as a man. The difference is that no second divine person is needed to explain it: the man Christ Jesus prayed to the eternal Spirit who dwelt in Him, “the Father that dwelleth in me” (John 14:10).
“At His baptism the Son was in the water, the Spirit came as a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven.”
Trinitarian reading: all three persons appear at once (Matthew 3:16-17).
Answer: God is everywhere at once. He can speak from heaven and dwell in Christ at the same moment, as at Sinai: “Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice… and upon earth he shewed thee his great fire” (Deuteronomy 4:36). The dove was a sign for John: “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending… the same is he” (John 1:33). One God, showing a witness who His Messiah was.
“The glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5).
Trinitarian reading: the Son shared glory with the Father in eternity as a second person.
Answer: The Lamb was “foreordained before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:20); God “calleth those things which be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17). The glory was His in God’s plan before it was His in history. In the same prayer Jesus says He has given that glory to His disciples (17:22), and they did not exist before the world.
“The only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).
Trinitarian reading: the Father and the Son are distinguished.
Answer: The man Christ Jesus rightly calls His Father the only true God: there is no other. John’s own letter then says of Jesus, “This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). Knowing the only true God and knowing Jesus Christ are one knowledge.
“One God, the Father… and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6).
Trinitarian reading: two persons, the Father and the Son.
Answer: Paul says all things are “by” Jesus. But the LORD says He made all things “alone… by myself” (Isaiah 44:24). If Jesus is the Creator and the LORD created alone, Jesus is that LORD, not a second one. Paul also applies to Jesus the LORD’s own oath, “unto me every knee shall bow” (Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:10).
Another Jesus
A concept wrongly perceived is not that concept at all; it is a myth. The New Testament uses that very word. Paul warned that people “shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4:4), and Peter wrote, “we have not followed cunningly devised fables” (2 Peter 1:16). The Greek word is mythos: myth.
Paul feared exactly this for a church that already believed: that someone would preach “another Jesus, whom we have not preached,” and they would receive “another spirit” and “another gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). Same name, different picture. Jesus said the same to the woman at the well: “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship” (John 4:22). The question is not only whether we say “Jesus,” but whether the Jesus we mean is the One who is.
“I never knew you”
Back to the warning, and notice exactly what Jesus says. Not “you never knew me,” but “I never knew you.” These people had His name on their lips and His works on their record. What they lacked was being known by Him.
And notice what Jesus said just before it, in the same sermon: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). Then: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord.” The many in His warning are religious people. Most of Christendom today holds the doctrine of the Trinity, but a majority has never been the measure of truth. The narrow way is not inherited from the crowd; it has to be found, and “ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Scripture says who He knows: “The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19). “I know my sheep, and am known of mine” (John 10:14). “Ye have known God, or rather are known of God” (Galatians 4:9). And how a person becomes His: “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9). He knows those who bear His name and carry His Spirit, the ones born of water and of the Spirit (John 3:5), in whose foreheads His name is written (Revelation 22:4).
So this page is not a verdict on anyone. Final judgment belongs to Jesus Christ alone. It is a warning to all of us, Apostolics included: if even those who used His name could hear “I never knew you,” how much more should we make sure we are known by Him, as His apostles taught? A blurred picture of God is a dangerous place to stand on the day He decides whom He knows.
Be known by Him
The God of Israel is one. He came in flesh, and His name is Jesus. When the crowd at Pentecost asked what to do, Peter answered for all time: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). That is how the apostles obeyed Matthew 28:19, and it is still how a person is born again (The New Birth).
1 Paul Feine, “Baptism,” I.1, in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 1 (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1908). Feine, a critical scholar, also doubted that Matthew 28:19 came from Jesus; Apostolics reject that view and accept the verse as His command. ↑
An Apostolic (Oneness) Pentecostal study of the doctrine of the Trinity and its effect on the gospel: the identity of the Savior (2 Corinthians 5:19; Colossians 2:9; John 14:9), the one Name of Matthew 28:19 and the baptisms of Acts (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5), the Spirit of Christ in the believer (Romans 8:9; John 14:18), the historical record of the baptismal formula, the hard texts answered (Hebrews 5:7; Matthew 3:16-17; John 17:3, 5; 1 Corinthians 8:6), and the warning of Matthew 7:21-23. The Trinitarian position is stated in its own terms. Bible Prophecy Explorer urges every reader to “prove all things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Scripture quoted from the King James Version.