What are the different meanings of “God” in the New Testament?

Upvote:4

All you need to get a list of all the times and places in the Bible where the word "God" appears, is a Bible Concordance. I have a printed copy for the New International Version, and there are 16 full pages, with 230 entries per page = 3,680. The number of times there is God's (with an apostrophe = belonging to God, or pertaining to God) is 205, giving a total of 3,885.

I believe you can access such Concordances on-line, but because I'm using a printed book, it only took me five minutes to count the number of times. There are a couple more columns (77 entries per column) but there's a need to discount mention of any of the gods of the pagans.

Don't forget, either, that you would also need to look at the entries for 'Lord' when it is printed in capitals (the way that the Old Testament God of the Israelites is sometimes written.) That comes to 6,973 times in the Hebrew Scriptures (but not even once in the Christian Greek scriptures.) The number of times Lord is written in the Christian Greek scriptures is approximately 690 times, but it can apply either to the Father, or to the Son.

This means there are some 11,548 times in the whole of the Bible where God, God's, Lord and Lord's occurs, out of which there are about 1381 times in the New Testament. You are not going to come to grips with the Trinity doctrine going about it by an individual check of each occurrence of such words.

The best way would be to get a working definition of the Trinity, then to read whole sections with that in mind. The Christian Greek Scriptures show the appearing of the Son of God on the earth, as the virgin Mary's child, Jesus, so that would be the best place to start. Jesus mainly referred to his Father in heaven, clearly showing that distinction when he was on earth. And the Father spoke from heaven three times calling Jesus his Son. Those bits are clear, so start there, in the gospel accounts, is my encouragement.

Here's a working definition of the Trinity doctrine: The Father and the Son share the one divine nature, with absolute unity of the Spirit in that nature. You may like to ask other questions about that, to help come to grips with what is the deepest doctrine there can possibly be. Or, perhaps it would be easier for you to start with what the Bible, and Jesus, say about the Son of God, in the Christian Greek Scriptures, then come back to the Trinity doctrine after you've done that.

More post

Search Posts

Related post