When Christ came and dwelled among us, He was the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1, 14). This idea of recognizing the presence of God in relationship to His Word is absolutely necessary for us. God and His Word are one. It is only when you really look at Immanuel, “God with us,” that you realize God was the very fabric of Christ’s being. So much time during the early days of the Church was spent trying to figure out exactly who Yeshua (Jesus) was. They got into Christology: “What is Jesus? What is the relationship between Him and the Father?” I think you can get too lost in trying to figure it out. Our human mind is always trying to separate things into logical pieces. But when you have true oneness, it is beyond what we are yet able to relate to because we have never seen anything visually that allows us to understand this concept.

Instead, we need to understand oneness from a God sense. Yeshua takes a lot of time in the Gospel of John to explain, “The Father and I are one. I am in the Father and the Father is in Me and I am in you” (see John 10:30, 14:11, 17:21). When you finish reading all that, you could feel confused like someone put you in a blender. The disciples were also trying to figure this out when Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (John 14:8).[1] Philip is saying, “If we could figure this one part out, it would be enough; we’d have the whole thing and know what’s going on.” Yeshua responded, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father,” and the disciples were probably thinking, “Well, that’s not the answer we wanted. We’re trying to separate You from the Father to see who You are and who the Father is, so we know what the differences are.”  But Yeshua did not do that. He said, “Listen. The Father is in Me and I am in the Father, and you in Me and Us in you.”  Oops. We thought it was difficult to figure out Christology just between the Father and the Son. All of sudden Yeshua comes along and adds us into the whole mix and says, “If you were having trouble trying to figure out the Father and Me being one, now put yourselves into that same oneness and try to explain it.” But the truth is, that is the door Christ opened. I love the way John the Beloved explains it simply: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

Judaism has a real problem with Christianity and says that we are idol worshippers because we worship more than one God. The very foundation of Judaism in the Shema prayer is that God is One. There is one God. But when you look at Christianity, it looks like we have at least three gods. All I can say is, “No. If we grasp oneness, we are monotheists.” Our God is One. We are not dividing Him up. We are not making a distinction and a difference between them. Yeshua was the Word made flesh. And what was planted in us is this living and abiding Word of God. The Word is not just powerful; the Word is God. Father, move Your presence and manifestation into the hearts of Your people so that the Word of God may once again be made flesh and dwell among us.

¹ All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).