5 Things You Lose When You Stop Believing Jesus is Almighty God.

 In 2019, after six years of studying how to defend the doctrine of the Trinity from the Bible, I realized I no longer believed that "one God eternally existent in three persons" was a biblically accurate way of describing the relationship between God, the Son of God, and the Spirit of God. 

Included in this change of perspective, was coming to affirm that the Logos of God, who would later be incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, was literally the beginning of the creation of God (Rev. 3:14).

In other words, Jesus was brought into existence by the eternal Almighty God (cf. Prov. 8:22), God the Father, and so was not himself the eternal Almighty God.

Just as plucking a solitary strand of a spider's web sends reverberations through every part of the web, this doctrinal change sent shock waves out towards other aspects of my Christian belief and walk. 

Some things were gained. 

Other things were lost.

In this post, I want to mention five things I lost when I stopped believing Jesus was Almighty God.

1.) I lost excuses to not imitate Jesus.

Once I understood Jesus was fully and truly human, and not part of a triune Godhead, gone were the days of "but I'm not Jesus" to avoid obedience to his example.

On the contrary, like never before, Jesus became an inspiration for what a man or woman filled with the Spirit of God can do when they are fully devoted to realizing the will of God in their lives.

2.) I lost distance from God my Heavenly Father.

In the name of Jesus, I pray to God.

I worship and reverence Jesus to the ultimate glory of God.

Through the mediation of Jesus, I am reconciled to God.

By the perfect example of Jesus, I see God.

In letting go of the Trinity, I grew closer to God because everything Jesus did was to bring us closer to our Heavenly Father, his God and ours (John 17:26, 20:17).

3.) I lost barriers to Muslim and Jewish evangelism.

Historically, the Trinity has been a central point of division between Christianity and the other Abrahamic religions. 

Armed now with the simple truth that Jesus is a human only and that the Father alone is Almighty God, I feel better equipped to approach my Jewish and Muslim friends without that needless stumbling block.

We echo the words of Peter: “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus" (Act 3:13).

4.) I lost the weight of centuries of unbiblical tradition.

Over hundreds of years, many councils and synods were required to explain how Jesus could be Almighty God and a man. 

These councils robbed the Father of His unique attributes, purged Jesus of his human person, stripped the obedience of Jesus of its significance, and led to the fierce persecution of many unitarian Christians. 

To recognize Jesus as the Son of the Almighty God and not the Almighty God is to trade this dishonorable legacy for the truth of the Scriptures.

5.) I lost the empathy gap between myself and my Savior.

Jesus was truly just like you and I.

He hungered like us.

He thirsted like us.

Like us, he didn't always understand God's plan.

He was tempted like us, with the ability to sin, though he never did.

It was not a show. 

He was not concealing his omniscience and omnipotence underneath somewhere.

Jesus knows what it's like to be one of us because he was and is one of us, a source of great comfort in times of trial and temptation.

-------------

So did I lose some things when I stopped believing Jesus to be the Almighty God?

Yes.

But, in this case, loss feels a whole lot like gain.