What if the God most people believe in — even most Christians — isn't the God the Bible actually describes? Not in the big things like omnipotence or love, but in the specific, material details: what He looks like, where He exists, how He relates to the Son and the Spirit, what kind of Being He actually is. These aren't abstract philosophical puzzles. How you picture God shapes how you pray, how you trust, and whether you expect Him to show up in any concrete way in your life.

Last time we established that the Bible interprets itself in plain language — that we don't need to spiritualize or mystify what God says plainly. That principle becomes critical now, because the doctrines we're about to examine are among the most spiritualized and mystified in all of theology. Let's let Scripture speak for itself.

It seems like many think the best way to honor God is to turn Him into a big mystery. This is one of the greatest errors in the Christian Church today.

But here's the thing: there's simply no good excuse for this kind of ignorance about God. The Bible contains over 20,000 references about Him, spelling out in remarkable detail what He's like, what He can and cannot do, and what He has done and still plans to do. We'll magnify God best by believing and teaching everything the Bible actually says about Him. We can develop a comprehensive knowledge of God from these many references—if we'll just believe what they say and stop treating everything God says about Himself as somehow untrue.

Over the centuries, people have spiritualized and twisted so many statements about God in Scripture that they've essentially emptied the Bible's true revelation of Him. Think of it like taking a clear photograph and applying so many filters that you can't recognize the original image anymore. That old approach hasn't given us a true, sensible, simple knowledge of God, so why not try something different?

Why not believe what God says about Himself in the same straightforward way we understand similar language when it's used about other people? Why not trust that God means what He says? He should know more about Himself than any human being does!

Wouldn't it be easier to believe what He actually says about Himself than to believe things He never said? If God didn't mean what He said, why would He say such things in the first place? Why should it be some kind of unforgivable error to believe the Bible literally on this subject, just as we believe it literally on other topics? Taking God at His word simply makes better sense—it gives us a clearer, more "common sense" understanding of who He is.

We've all been taught that God cannot be understood, and nearly every theology book makes the subject of God vague and unreachable for ordinary people. Such books are quite good at explaining away what the Bible actually says about God! For once, let's set aside all that confusion and simply stand with what the Bible plainly states. That approach certainly can't make things any more mysterious than they already seem.

We can't go wrong if we simply believe what God reveals about Himself. Since we've already seen how to understand the Bible literally, let's be wise and follow this practice with every subject in Scripture—not just the ones we've chosen to take at face value.

Here's something that strikes me as odd: people can understand all about the Lord's Supper, baptism, or any other topic from just a handful of passages. But when it comes to God Himself, suddenly they claim they can't grasp anything about Him—even though there are thousands of passages on the subject! That attitude just doesn't make sense.

So let's study God from a different angle. Let's believe what the Bible says and see for ourselves that this subject has been greatly misunderstood.

1. GOD

This word simply means deity or divinity. It's a general term used both for false gods and for the true God. You can't determine how many persons are in the true deity just from the word itself—you need clear scriptures on the subject to settle that question.

2. GODHEAD

This term simply means "that which is divine." It's used of Jesus in Colossians 2:9, showing that He has all the qualities of divinity in His manifestation of God to humanity. It's also used of all three persons in the deity in Romans 1:20.

3. ONE

The Hebrew word for "one" in scriptures like "one Lord" Deuteronomy 6:4-6 and "one God" Malachi 2:10 is achad, meaning to unify, collect, or be united as one. It's frequently used to describe unity: "they shall be one flesh" Genesis 2:24; "the people is one" Genesis 11:6.

The Greek word for "one" in "one Lord" and "one God" in Mark 12:29, 32 is heis, which means to gather together in one John 11:52 and to be one in unity John 10:30John 17:11, 21-231 John 5:7-8. Our English word "one" can also mean "one in unity," as these passages show. Whether a particular passage means "one in unity" or "one in number" must be determined by Scripture, not by the word's meaning alone.