Grafted-In Ministries
Shema! – The Creed of Yeshua
J. Dan Gill
Christians today often recite creeds which were devised by post-biblical Gentile Christians centuries after Messiah. They do that, while at the same time having never learned the Shema, the biblical creed which Elohim himself gave to Moses. It is that creed which Yeshua affirms. When he is approached by a Jewish man who asks him which is the most important of all of the commandments, Yeshua responds that it is:
Hear, O Israel! Yehovah is our Elohim, Yehovah is one. — Yeshua (Mark 12:29)
Christians today seldom reflect on those amazing words which were spoken by the founder of our faith. That is unacceptable. It is tragic that a great many Christians are unaware that Yeshua even spoke those words, words which he himself pronounced to be of paramount importance. Has not our attention been drawn away from the essential teaching of Yeshua about Elohim and diverted to creeds developed centuries after the Bible?[1]
Why has the creed of Yeshua been so tragically neglected by post-biblical Christians? Isn’t it because his creed does not teach the later dogma that Elohim is multiple persons? Isn’t it because his creed does not assert that he himself is also Elohim in addition to his Father? Furthermore, isn’t the creed of Yeshua neglected — perhaps avoided — because it declares that only one individual is Elohim, thus completely disallowing that two or three persons are the one Elohim? When will we as followers of Yeshua stand up boldly for Yeshua and his teaching about Elohim? When will we join with the man who asked the question, “which is most important of all?” and respond as he did to the words of Yeshua? —
Well said, teacher! You have truly said that there is one Elohim and there is no other but him (Mark 12:32).
When will we as followers of Yeshua come to love and celebrate Yeshua’s creed and affirm that only one individual is Elohim? When will our children learn the words of Yeshua about Elohim? When will our pastors finally abandon a stubborn affirmation of post-biblical ideas that they themselves admit have never made sense? When will a pastor run to Yeshua, and against all others, unceasingly speak his words about Elohim? Again, it is Yeshua who said that his Father is “the only true Elohim” ( John 17:1–3).
And notice again, as was the case in Deuteronomy 6, that the pronouns in Mark 12 allow for no other possibility than that the one who alone is Elohim is a “him,” not a “them.” Yeshua’ declaration in v. 29 (“Yehovah is one”) has a singular verb of being. Even a first year student of New Testament Greek can affirm that more literally the phrase is, “Yehovah ‘he is’ one.”[2] In that light, the man speaking with Yeshua goes on to say:
And to love him with all the heart, with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33).
And how does Yeshua respond to the man’s affirmation?
When Yeshua saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of Elohim” (Mark 12:34).
Yeshua recognized that the man had “answered wisely.” On the other hand, what would Yeshua say to us today who come ignoring the words he spoke, while at the same time we sternly affirm and defend the words of Gentile Christian orthodoxy that multiple persons are the one Elohim? Might not Yeshua say to us that we are not speaking wisely, but foolishly? Will we incur the wrath of Yeshua by loving and clinging to the creeds of the Gentile church fathers, while minimizing or disregarding his own words? Can we not at least honor and respect him in this matter as much as the good man did in Mark’s account above? Might not that man who inquired about “which commandment is most important” and then rightly affirmed to Yeshua that there is no other Elohim but Yehovah stand against us in the day of judgment?
Church creeds and statements of faith which propose multiple persons as one Elohim simply must give way to the creed of Yeshua: only one individual is Elohim — the Father. Likewise, our various post-biblical statements of faith must give way to Yehovah’s own words: “I am Elohim, and there is no one like me” (Isa. 46:9). Why not let go of our post-biblical Gentile Christian traditions about a multiple person Elohim? Why not revise our statements of faith? Let us boldly rewrite them so that they rest upon and quote the actual words of Yeshua in Mark 12:29 and John 17:3. Let our statements of faith quote the words of Yehovah himself in Isaiah 46:9.
As a follower of Yeshua, deciding about this matter is not difficult for me. It is the creed of Elohim given by Yeshua which is to be relied on unconditionally. Words found in the Bible itself are of necessity always preferable to those of later theologians and church councils. In the case of those later decisions and writings, inspiration may be doubted. Utmost confidence should be placed in the Bible, and followers of Yeshua should all agree that in Scripture true inspiration is certain. We must put an end to interpreting the Bible through the lens of later theologians and councils. Rather, we must reverse that approach and test later doctrinal developments by the Bible itself. When we do, those later innovations all collapse.
Gill, J. Dan (2016). The Creed of Yeshua. In, The One: In Defense of Elohim (pp. 252-255). Nashville, TN: 21 st Century Reformation Publishing.
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[1] Among the creeds, the Nicene (325 CE), Nicene-Constantinopolitan (381 CE) and Chalcedonian (451 CE) are particularly problematic. They represent the fruits of endless confusion and terrible infighting among post-biblical Gentile Christians as they sought to establish the non-scriptural notion of a multi-person Elohim. In that, they struggled to make Yeshua an “Elohim-person.” They also determined to see Elohim’s own spirit as a separate individual — another Elohim-person in addition to the Father. On the other hand, the Apostles’ Creed which is likely based on some early rules of faith is truer to the Scriptures. That creed knows nothing about any one being Elohim other than the Father. It rightly affirms Yeshua to be the “Messiah-person. While the Apostles’ Creed is truer to the Scriptures than the others, it is nonetheless widely agreed to have not been authored by the apostles of Yeshua and dates later in its present form.
[2] Properly parsed, the verb esti is 3rd person singular, present, indicative.