Upvote:1
This question asserts much in order to falsely conclude certain ideas that cause confusion over simple spiritual things revealed to children. Lets just take a look....
After sifting through the OP's personal opinions, interpretations, and conclusions... I believe the following is his question:
1. Since you do not believe Jesus Christ is God, then by what means do you pretend to know or have any experience with Jesus Christ?
2. How can you have had any experience with him and how can He "know" you (intimately, experientially as in the Gree, ("ginosko") if He is NOT God?
3. So if you know him and if you are known by him, how is that even possible unless he is God? This kind of relationship is only possible with someone who is omniscient and omnipresent?
Lets try to answer each of these questions 1 at a time.
Why is it necessary to believe Jesus is YHWH in order for us to experience the son of YHWH? We experience Jesus as he is sharing his Father's Spirit through himself. He has the same Spirit as his Father, YHWH.
I think this is simply just a repeat of the first question...Why is it asserted here that Jesus must be God to experience him?
The OP fails to understand the glory Jesus received after he was risen by his God and Father. Jesus shares in the divine nature as his Father now. So will all of the children after the resurrection. We will all be within the Godhood (not Godhead) and one in Spirit with our Father-YHWH and our brother/master/teacher- Jesus Christ.
The spirit of Christ is the same Spirit of the Father. Why? Because there is only 1 eternal Spirit. Mark tells us the Spirit of our Father dwells in us. How? The Spirit of our Father dwells in us by means of His Risen Son who was gifted his own holy spirit(the parakletos) within the Greater Spirit of his Father, YHWH. Jesus is the only personified holy spirit within the Spirit of our Father..After the resurrection we will all have our own holy spirit and be ONE with the Spirit of our Father.
Spirit is consciousness. Jesus is in the same room as Thee Almighty Father and us at the same time by the means of his holy spirit which comes forth from the Father, goes through him - the True Vine - to the rest of the Children of YHWH.
This was the entire purpose of Jesus... to provide a new WAY to the Father.
Perhaps the OP forgot what Jesus says in John 17:3... That to know his Father, the 1 True God, is eternal life.
Upvote:1
This is a serious question and deserves a serious answer. It is impossible to please God with erroneous ideas about who He is when one has all the Bible at one's fingertips. If we must truly "know" God, then thinking He is a Trinity, when He isn't, would hardly qualify. In fact, it would mean that, in place of worshiping the True God, one were worshiping a philosophical idol in His place.
The first and most important point to knowing and understanding who Jesus is can be found in Jesus' own testimony.
When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? (Matthew 16:13, KJV)
Jesus was the son of man.
But look carefully at the testimony which immediately follows this verse.
14And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 16:14-17, KJV)
Jesus had not revealed this to Peter. Jesus' Father, who was "in heaven," had revealed it.
In order for Peter to have this necessary experience and relationship, he needed the revelation of the Father that only the Father could give, and that Jesus himself, who was flesh and blood like us, was not giving.
The next most important point to understand is again taught by Jesus himself.
Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. (John 8:38, KJV)
But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him. (John 10:38, KJV)
For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. (John 12:49, KJV)
Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. (John 14:10, KJV)
Again and again Jesus tried to help his listeners understand the simple truth that the Father was dwelling in him, and that his words were commanded him by the Father--they were not his own words.
The Father's indwelling presence in Christ is made clear elsewhere in Scripture as well.
To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:19, KJV)
Note the language here. The Bible does not say that God was Christ. It says God was in him. Those who think Jesus was/is God do not understand what the Bible teaches, nor even what Jesus himself taught. How can they be worshiping the true God?
Jesus said:
These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: ... And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:1-3, KJV)
Knowing the Father, who is "the only true God," was uppermost in Jesus' mind as he prayed for his disciples. In fact, the prayer implies that to know Jesus Christ one must first know his Father. How can Trinitarians know the Father if they stop looking for God at His son, and think the Son is God?
So important was this matter to Jesus that even to the last he was trying to teach it to us.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. (John 20:17, KJV)
The Father was Jesus' own God. And he is our Example. Should we, Jesus' disciples, worship a different God than Jesus himself did? Jesus told us that his Father was to be our God, too.
In fact, to worship any other than the Father is to have the spirit of antichrist. Consider the following three verses.
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24, KJV)
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (Luke 24:39, KJV)
Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. (1 John 4:2-3, KJV)
Those verses detail the truth for us in point-by-point fashion.
A Trinitarian must necessarily contradict these truths in one of two ways:
One of these conclusions is unavoidable when making the man Jesus into a spirit God. And this Trinitarian theology is what the Bible calls "the spirit of antichrist."