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as echad in the same way as man and woman are referred to as echad this heavily implies that the oneness of marriage reflects the oneness of God. The individuals do not become a homogeneous consciousness or a physical singularity of any sort. We are dealing on a spiritual level of oneness, which is reflective of God's nature. The "oneness" we observe in marriage and the other examples are shadows of the reality of the oneness within God. Now the true nature of God's oneness we can only describe by how it appears to us from what Jesus said and did. The best words we have to describe the members of the trinity seem to be as "persons."
Who Is God? By Ray C. Stedman God consists of three persons: Father, Son and Spirit. We cannot experience him in any other way. But though we usually list him as Father, Son and Spirit, the actual experience of God is different. We first meet the Son, by means of the Spirit, and then the Father. The Father is the source. The Father is unseen, unknown, except as he continually embodies himself (makes himself visible) in the Son. The Son is who we see and hear and know. He is ceaselessly embodying the Father, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. He is perpetually revealing the Father, hitherto invisible. The Father is logically first, but not chronologically. For the Son exists as long as the Father exists, and is coexistent with the Father. The Father acts through and in the Son. He makes himself visible only in the Son. It is in the Son that the Father becomes a part of human life, and so is born and lives and dies in human life. The Spirit, in turn, comes from the Son . He does not embody the Son. On the contrary, God, in issuing from the Son into the Spirit becomes invisible again. The Spirit proceeds silently, endlessly, invisibly from the Son. But the Son is not the source of the Spirit which proceeds from IOM AMERICA RESOURCES | P.O. Box 71, Sterling, KS 67579 | www.iomamerica.org | sphinney@iomamerica.org Contributors: Ray Stedman, Richard Young, Stephen Phinney, Daniel Wallace, Thomas Kempis