v. 25 – to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,

Devotional:

As His people wander the wilderness, God leads Moses to
the top of Mt. Sinai and reveals to him the very fabric of the universe in the first commandment, “‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me’” (Exodus 20:1- 3).

And then again, He gifts the knowledge of Himself as the cornerstone on which all life is to be understood through prayer. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).

To the prophet Isaiah, He said, “For I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me”(Isaiah 46:9).

And in the New Testament, the one and only true God gifts Himself not only in promise but in the flesh. “And this is life eternal, that they might know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

The exclusivity of God being God is the most central and important doctrinal tenet which must be accepted and believed in order for any of the rest of the Gospel of God to be understood. This truth is known as monotheism. Christianity is not the only monotheistic religion in the world. Judaism and Islam are both monotheistic as well, but Christianity is distinct because it is Trinitarian, meaning we believe God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three in one. And we embrace this as the foundation stone of our faith that the one God who created our universe is eternal. We believe He is all- knowing, all-present, and all-powerful. And while it is supremely important to believe in the one, true living trinitarian God of the Bible, that belief alone does not lead to salvation. It is easy to believe philosophically there is one creator God or to make a logical defense of His existence. The Bible tells us even the demons believe (James 2:19). So yes, monotheism is needed, beautiful, fundamental, and to be rejoiced in, but it is not enough to set us free from the wage of sin.

Jesus, monotheism in the flesh, tells us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Jesus is the God-man. He is the one true living God and He came to earth to save us from our sins. Salvation comes to those who believe in the truth that Jesus is God and He came as a man who lived a perfect life and then died a sacrificial death on the cross as the penalty for the sins of all those who would believe, but He did not stay dead; He rose again three days later. We don’t only believe in this truth as a concept, we believe in true events that happened to a real person in Israel more than 2000 years ago.

Paul says if we “confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead then we shall be saved” (Romans 10:9). Paul doesn’t say we might be saved or God would consider saving us if we confess and believe; he assures us we shall be saved. What Jesus has done could only be done by God Himself, and it is upon this miracle – and the One and only God who could do this miracle – we stake our very eternities through faith.

REFLECTION:

If you were going to explain the means by which we are saved to a non-believer, what would you say?