The Only True God

On the night before his death, Jesus went with his disciples from the upper room toward the Garden of Gethsemane. They crossed the Kidron Valley. They walked under a full Passover moon. At some point during that walk, according to John's account, Jesus paused, raised his eyes toward heaven, and prayed.

The prayer that follows fills John 17. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in any of the Gospels. It is addressed to the Father. It is prayed in the hearing of the disciples. And it opens with a single sentence that names the one true God and names Jesus's relationship to him.

"This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:3)

The verse is so familiar that most readers pass over it without feeling its weight. But sit with what it says. The Father is named the only true God. Jesus is named separately, as the one the Father sent. Eternal life is defined as knowing both.

If you have been trained to read this verse through the Nicene framework, you have probably been taught one of two readings. Either the verse refers only to the Father's role as representative of the Godhead, so the Trinity is not being denied. Or the verse is a kind of pedagogical humility in which Jesus subordinates himself for teaching purposes even though he knows he is also fully God. Both readings are after-the-fact harmonizations. Neither is what the Greek actually says.

This page walks through what the Greek actually says.

The Greek text

Here is the verse in the original.

αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ αἰώνιος ζωὴ ἵνα γινώσκωσιν σὲ τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν θεὸν καὶ ὃν ἀπέστειλας Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν.

Transliterated: hautē de estin hē aiōnios zōē hina ginōskōsin se ton monon alēthinon theon kai hon apesteilas Iēsoun Christon.

Word by word:

• hautē de estin: "This is"
• hē aiōnios zōē: "the eternal life"
• hina ginōskōsin: "that they might know"
• se: "you" (direct object of "know")
• ton monon alēthinon theon: "the only true God" (appositional to "you")
• kai: "and"
• hon apesteilas Iēsoun Christon: "whom you sent, Jesus Christ"

Notice the grammar. The phrase "the only true God" ( ton monon alēthinon theon ) is in apposition to "you" ( se ), which refers to the Father whom Jesus is addressing. There is no ambiguity. The Father is the one being called "the only true God." Jesus is named separately in the next clause, introduced by kai ("and") and identified as the one the Father sent.

The adjective monon means "only," "alone," or "sole." It is the same word used in Luke 5:21 where the scribes object that no one can forgive sins "except God alone" (ei mē monos ho theos). The adjective alēthinon means "true" in the sense of "genuine," "real," "actual," as opposed to false or counterfeit. Taken together, ton monon alēthinon theon is an exclusive and superlative claim: the one God who is actually God, as distinguished from all who are not.

Monon and alēthinon together form as strong a monotheistic confession as Greek can produce.

The Camp Method on John 17:3

Here is the verse across the five translation camps.

Notice that across all five camps, the translation is essentially the same. Evangelical, Catholic, Mainline, Jewish (though Jewish translations do not include the New Testament, parallel translation traditions from Messianic Jewish scholars render similarly), and Biblical Unitarian all print the verse in the same way. "You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

This is significant. On many disputed passages, the Camp Method exposes translator bias. On John 17:3, no camp can obscure what the verse says. The Greek is unambiguous. The Father alone is the only true God, and Jesus is the one the Father sent.

What the camps differ on is how to interpret the verse once it has been translated. Evangelical commentators typically argue that "only true God" here excludes false gods and idols but does not exclude the Son and Spirit from the one true God. Biblical Unitarian commentators note that this harmonizing move is not suggested by the text itself and depends on a prior Trinitarian commitment. The translation is stable; the interpretation is where the tradition does its work. And the grammatical-historical method constrains the interpretation. When the Father is called "the only true God" and Jesus is named separately as the one the Father sent, the plain meaning is the meaning the first-century audience would have heard.

The context in John 17

John 17 is not a random collection of prayer fragments. It is a carefully structured high-priestly prayer with three clear movements.

Verses 1 through 5: Jesus prays for himself. He asks the Father to glorify him, so that he may glorify the Father. He grounds the request in the work the Father gave him to accomplish. He refers to the glory he had with the Father "before the world existed" (verse 5), a phrase that invites careful attention later on this page.

Verses 6 through 19: Jesus prays for his disciples. He describes what he has done for them: revealed the Father's name to them, given them the Father's words, kept them in the Father's name. He asks the Father to protect them, to sanctify them in the truth, to prepare them for the world that will hate them.

Verses 20 through 26: Jesus prays for all who will believe through the disciples' word. He asks that they all be one, as the Father and Son are one. He asks that they see the glory the Father has given him. He asks that the love with which the Father loved him be in them, and that he may be in them.

The opening verse 3 is the thesis of the whole prayer. Eternal life is knowing the Father and the one the Father sent. Every subsequent movement unfolds from this opening. The disciples are those who have come to know the Father through Jesus. The mission is to extend this knowledge to others. The glory that is shared is the glory of having made the Father known.

Read the prayer through and notice how many times Jesus distinguishes himself from the Father. Verse 1: "Father... glorify your Son." Verse 4: "I have glorified you on earth." Verse 5: "glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you." Verse 7: "everything that you have given me is from you." Verse 8: "the words that you gave me I have given to them." Verse 11: "Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me." Verse 21: "that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you."

The Father and the Son are distinguished throughout. They are named separately. They are ascribed different roles. The Father sends; the Son is sent. The Father gives; the Son receives and distributes. The Father is addressed; the Son prays. This is the pattern of the whole prayer. It is also the pattern of the whole Fourth Gospel.

The Shema background

The first-century Jewish audience who heard John 17 read aloud would have recognized its framework immediately. Verse 3 is Shema-shaped language.

The Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4, confesses: "Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one." The Hebrew formulation names one God, Yahweh, and confesses his oneness. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, used throughout the first-century Jewish world) renders this using the terms kurios (Lord) and theos (God). The first-century Jewish monotheistic confession is: Yahweh, kurios, our theos, is heis (one).

Now look at Jesus's language in John 17:3. He addresses the Father and names him ton monon alēthinon theon. "The only true theos." The word is the same word the Septuagint uses for Yahweh in the Shema. Jesus is identifying the Father with the theos of the Shema. This is not abstract theological speculation. This is a first-century Jewish teacher, in his last prayer before death, confessing the Shema to his Father.

A first-century Jewish listener would have heard this as a Shema-echoing confession. The Father is the theos of the Shema. The Father is the one true God of Israel. And Jesus, praying to him, identifies himself as the one this God has sent.

"Whom you have sent"

The second half of the verse introduces Jesus with a specific phrase: "whom you have sent" (hon apesteilas). This is not decorative language. It is a technical theological term in the Fourth Gospel, and it maps directly onto a Jewish concept with which the first-century audience would have been deeply familiar.

The concept is called the Shaliach principle. In rabbinic teaching, a shaliach (Hebrew for "sent one," or in Greek, apostolos) is an authorized agent who represents the sender with full authority. The Mishnah, compiled around 200 CE but preserving oral traditions from the first century, states in Berakhot 5:5: "A man's agent is like himself." The agent speaks for the sender, acts for the sender, and is treated as if he were the sender. But the agent is not the sender. The agent remains distinct from the one who sent him.

The Fourth Gospel uses sending-language about Jesus constantly. John 3:17: God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him. John 4:34: "My food is to do the will of him who sent me." John 5:30: "I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me." John 6:38: "I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me." John 7:16: "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me." John 8:42: "I have not come of my own accord, but he sent me."

Jesus identifies himself as the one sent. The Father is the one who sends. The Shaliach principle is the grammatical background. The sent one carries the full authority of the sender and is treated as if he were the sender, but the sent one is not the sender.

When John 17:3 says Jesus is the one the Father sent, this is not a way of saying Jesus is the Father in disguise or a second mode of the one God. It is a way of saying Jesus is the Father's authorized representative, the one through whom the Father is acting decisively in history. The Father is the only true God. Jesus is the only true God's fully authorized agent. Both claims are made simultaneously by the Shaliach framework, and both are exactly what John 17:3 says.

The objection about John 17:5

The most common objection to this reading of John 17:3 points to John 17:5, two verses later. "And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed."

The objection is that Jesus here claims pre-existence, and if Jesus existed before the world, he must be God. Therefore the Father is not "the only true God" in any absolute sense; the Son must be included within the Godhead.

This objection deserves a careful response, because the verse does say something significant.

First, notice what John 17:5 does not say. It does not say Jesus was the one true God before the world existed. It says he had glory with the Father before the world existed. The glory Jesus refers to is a shared glory, held in relationship, not the identity of the one true God.

Second, notice the broader biblical pattern. In Jewish and Second Temple literature, several realities are described as existing "before the world" or "in the beginning" in ways that are not literal individual pre-existence. The Torah, the throne of God, the name of the Messiah, the kingdom of Israel, all appear in this kind of language. The Targum tradition treats the Messiah as "prepared" in the divine plan from the beginning without treating him as a personal preexisting divine being. This is the idea of ideal pre-existence: the plan is eternal in the mind of God, but the person appears in history.

Third, notice how John's Prologue uses the same language. John 1:1 says "In the beginning was the Word." Not "In the beginning was the Son." The Word (Logos) is the Father's creative and revelatory utterance, present with God in the beginning. The Word becomes flesh in verse 14. The Son is the one who appears in history as the incarnation of the Word. Reading John 17:5 through John 1:1 through 14, the "glory before the world" Jesus refers to is the glory of being the one through whom the Father planned to act from the beginning, a glory now being manifested in his earthly life. A full treatment of this follows on the Prologue page.

Neither the careful reading of John 17:5 nor the broader Johannine framework forces a reading in which Jesus is a second divine being sharing the identity of the one true God. What John 17:3 says, John 17:5 does not contradict. The Father is the only true God. Jesus is the one the Father sent. And Jesus was, from the beginning, the one through whom the Father would act.

Why John 17:3 is the anchor

Of all the verses a Biblical Unitarian could appeal to, why does this one carry special weight?

Several reasons converge.

It is Jesus's own confession. Many verses about the Father's supremacy are Paul's, or the writer of Hebrews, or the Apocalypse. This one is Jesus's. He is not a bystander being quoted; he is the one praying. He tells us in his own words who the only true God is.

It is prayed at the climax of his ministry. This is the night before his death. The teaching is complete. The hour is here. If there is a moment Jesus would want to articulate his theology with precision, this is it. He has no reason to simplify, no reason to defer, no reason to speak diplomatically. He speaks to his Father and names him.

It is addressed to the Father, not to the disciples. This is not public teaching. It is personal prayer, overheard by the disciples. Jesus is not trying to communicate a simplified message for a first-century audience that cannot yet bear the Trinitarian doctrine. He is speaking to the one he calls his God. And he names that one "the only true God."

It is the definition of eternal life. Jesus does not treat this confession as secondary information. He defines eternal life by it. To know the Father as the only true God, and Jesus as the one the Father sent, is to have eternal life. Any theology that cannot hold these two clauses together as Jesus states them is a theology that is straining against the definition of eternal life itself.

For all these reasons, John 17:3 is the anchor. Not because it is a trump card, not because it closes conversation, but because it puts on the table, in Jesus's own mouth, in his final prayer, the confession that the rest of the New Testament unfolds.

The invitation this page makes

If you have read this far and you have been reading as a Trinitarian, the invitation is this. Set aside, just for a moment, the later creedal framework you inherited. Read John 17 through from verse 1 to verse 26, slowly, out loud if you can, without the grid of Nicaea pressing in. Notice what Jesus calls his Father. Notice what Jesus calls himself. Notice how many times the two are distinguished. Notice what Jesus says eternal life is.

You may finish reading and conclude that the Trinitarian framework remains best. That is a conclusion many readers reach. But make the decision after reading the prayer on its own terms, not before.

If you have read this far and you come from any tradition that teaches multiple divine beings, the invitation is similar. Let Jesus's own confession, in his own words, to his own Father, sit in front of you. Ask yourself what ton monon alēthinon theon means. The Greek is not ambiguous. The adjective monon does not mean "one among several." It means "alone."

The Father is the only true God. Jesus is the one the Father sent. This is eternal life.