The question nobody asks
So many Christians have great difficulty reconciling "the God of the Old Testament" with Jesus in the Gospels. The character is completely different. The fruit is completely different. And yet we are told they are the same being – or at minimum, that Yhwh is Jesus' Father.
What if neither is true? What if the text itself tells you exactly who Yhwh is – a physical person, assigned one nation out of seventy, who set himself up as God and built a system of law, sacrifice, and death to maintain control? And what if Jesus came to expose that system and reveal His actual Father – someone Yhwh's followers have never known?
Three things the text actually says
Yhwh is a physical person
He walks, eats, wrestles, speaks face to face, has a form, comes down in smoke, and has to look to see what is happening. The text never describes an omniscient, omnipresent spirit. It describes a person.
Yhwh received Israel as his portion
Deuteronomy 32:7–9 – the Most High divided the nations among the sons of God. Yhwh's portion was Jacob. He is not the Most High. He is one of His sons, given one nation out of seventy.
Yhwh never mentions having a son
Jesus cannot stop talking about His Father. Yhwh – across the entire Old Testament – never once mentions having a son named Jesus, never discusses a plan of redemption through His son, never hints at the relationship Jesus describes.
Go deeper
Start here first
Questions to sit with
- Is Yhwh the same being as the Most High – or are they distinct persons according to the text?
- If Yhwh is a physical person who eats, walks, and wrestles – why do we describe him as an omnipresent spirit?
- If Jesus' Father is all-knowing and all-loving, why does the Old Testament describe a god who requires blood, tests loyalty through violence, and admits to creating evil?
- If Yhwh is the Father of Jesus, why does Yhwh never mention him?