One God, One Lord
1 Corinthians 8:4—6
One God, One Lord
Paul splits the confession and keeps “God” for the Father
Paul had one word for God --- the Father --- and gave the Son another: Lord.
--- The Standing Stone ---
Behind “LORD” in your Bible lies a hidden name --- in the Hebrew it is Yahuah Psalm 83:18**; Yahuah is the Father** Isaiah 63:16**; Yahuah is the only God, beside Him there is no other** Isaiah 45:5**; therefore Yahuah the Father is the only true God, leaving no room for a second or third person** 1 Corinthians 8:6**.**
Part One
Their Crown Jewel
Most of the verses in this book are loud. This one is quiet. It is the single place where the other side stops shouting and starts arguing with care --- the verse their best scholars build on. So we will read it just as carefully.
Here is their claim. They say Paul took the Shema --- “Yahuah our Elohim is one” --- and split its two words across two persons: “God” to the Father, “Lord” to Yahushua. Because the Greek Old Testament wrote the name Yahuah as “Lord,” they say Paul slipped Yahushua inside the Name itself. Add “by whom are all things,” and they call Yahushua the co-Creator. It is tidy. Let us test it.
1.1 --- The Step They Take Before They Start
Notice what they assume before the argument even begins: that “God” and “Lord” must be two persons of one being. Watch for that. Paul never says it. They carry it to the verse; they do not find it there.
Part Two
One God, the Father
Read the passage slowly and let it set its own terms.
1 Corinthians 8:4—6
…we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
Now look at what Paul actually did with this sentence. He had one line to settle the whole matter. Here is how he spent it: he called the Father “one God,” and he called Yahushua “one Lord.” Two different titles. He gave “God” to the Father --- and stopped.
Read the four words again and let them land: “one God, the Father.” Not one God in three. Not the Father and the Son together. One God --- the Father. If you wanted a single line that says the Father alone is the one God, you could not write a clearer one than the verse your opponent just handed you.
2.1 --- The Verse Right Above It
The split they celebrate runs straight into verse 5. Paul has just said there are “gods many, and lords many” --- the false gods and lords of the nations. Then verse 6 answers: “but to us… one God… and one Lord.” See the shape. Gods-and-lords in verse 5; God-and-Lord in verse 6. The very same pattern.
In verse 5, no one pretends the “gods” and the “lords” are one pagan being wearing two hats. They are simply many false objects of worship. And Paul’s answer is not to fuse “God” and “Lord” into a single being. His answer is to cut the many down to one: one true God (the Father), and one true Lord (the Messiah He appointed). The two stay distinct in both verses. Only the number changes --- from many to one.
So the other side must read the same grammar two different ways: separate beings in verse 5, but one being in two persons in verse 6. They switch the rule in the middle of the thought to rescue the doctrine. The text never switches. It holds the Father and the Lord apart from beginning to end.
Part Three
The Weight They Hang on One Word
Everything they have left now rests on a single word: Lord. They say “Lord” (the Greek kurios) was the Old Testament’s word for the name Yahuah --- so calling Yahushua “Lord” makes him Yahuah. Here is why that breaks.
κύριος
kurios
lord, master, owner --- and a plain, polite “sir”
The same Greek Bible that used “Lord” for the Name also used “Lord” for ordinary men --- masters, owners, husbands, even a stranger mistaken for a gardener --- hundreds of times. The word does double duty. By itself it proves nothing. Only the context tells you who is meant.
Their own favorite verse shows it plainly:
Psalm 110:1
The LORD (Yahuah) said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Look whose mouth that is. Yahuah --- the first “LORD” --- is speaking to “my Lord,” the second one, who is David’s Lord, the Messiah. Same word, two figures, one sentence. One is Yahuah; one is not. If “Lord” automatically meant Yahuah, that verse could never be written.
3.1 --- “Lord” Spoken to Mere Men
Watch how freely Scripture calls plain men “lord” --- the very same Greek word:
• Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him “lord” 1 Peter 3:6.
• Festus called Caesar --- a pagan emperor --- “my lord” Acts 25:26.
• Mary, thinking Yahushua was the gardener, called him “Sir” --- the same word John 20:15.
• “No man can serve two masters,” said Yahushua --- the word is “lords” Matthew 6:24.
• Servants are told to obey their “masters” --- again the same word Ephesians 6:5.
So “one Lord Yahushua” tells you he is the one Master, the one Sovereign --- not that he is the Name. And Scripture tells us exactly where that lordship came from.
3.2 --- A Lordship That Was Given
Acts 2:36
Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.
Made. The Father made him Lord --- and made him so after the resurrection. Paul says the same: God “highly exalted him, and gave him a name” Philippians 2:9, all of it “to the glory of God the Father.”
Hear the difference, because everything turns on it. You can hand a man a title of authority. You cannot hand him the eternal Name. Yahushua’s lordship is real, and it is supreme --- but it was given, and it points back to the Father who gave it.
Part Four
“By Whom Are All Things”
One piece remains. “One Lord Yahushua Messiah, by whom are all things.” They argue: creating all things is God’s work, so if all things are “by” Yahushua, he must be God. There are two answers, and either one alone is enough.
4.1 --- The Source and the Channel
Paul did not use one word for the Father and the Son. He used two. The Father is the one of whom are all things --- the source, the fountainhead. The Son is the one by whom, or through whom --- the means, the channel. The Father is where it begins; the Son is how it is carried out.
That is not two equals. A king may build a city through his appointed master-builder. All the work is done “through” the builder --- yet the builder is not the king. Yahuah has always worked through means: He created by His word, by His wisdom. The instrument is never a second God. So even read at its strongest, “through whom” sets the Son under the Father, not beside Him.
4.2 --- Which “All Things”?
But look closer, and this verse is likely not even speaking of the first creation. Watch the little phrase Paul attaches to both halves: “and we.” “Of whom are all things, and we in him… by whom are all things, and we by him.” If “all things” meant rocks and stars and seas, why add “and we” each time? Because Paul is not talking about the old world. He is talking about the new one.
Yahushua is the last Adam, the head of a new creation 1 Corinthians 15:45. In him “all things are become new” 2 Corinthians 5:17 --- and that is the very phrase, all things. He is “the firstborn from the dead” Colossians 1:18. We who trust him are “created in” him Ephesians 2:10. That is the “all things… and we” of this verse: the new creation, and us inside it, brought about through what the Messiah accomplished in his loyalty to the Father.
So “by whom are all things” is not the Son helping to make the first world. It is the Son --- the obedient second Adam --- through whom the Father is making a new one, and we are part of it. The “we by him” at the end says it outright: we are new creations by what he did.
Part Five
The Verdict
Strip it down and the verse is plain. Paul names the one God, and the name he gives is “the Father.” He gives the Son a different title, “Lord” --- the rank of the Master the Father appointed and exalted. And “all things” is the new creation, carried out through that Messiah, with us inside it.
There is no second person of God in this verse. There is the one God --- the Father --- and the one Lord He raised and crowned. The two are never confused, never merged, never traded for one another.
So hear the Shema the way Paul heard it as he wrote this line: “Hear, O Israel: Yahuah our Elohim is one Yahuah” Deuteronomy 6:4 --- and Paul tells you who that one is. He says it in four words you cannot bend: one God, the Father.
Paul had one sentence to name the one God. He said, “the Father” --- not the Son, and not three.