What does it mean that the LORD is one (Deuteronomy 6:4)?

"Hear, O Israel ! The LORD our God is one LORD." Much has been made of this verse by orthodox Jews, who reverence it greatly. They call it the "Shema" after the first word "Hear." It is often used by Jews and Unitarians to deny the three persons of the Godhead. The Hebrew word "echod" (one), however, excludes forever such a denial, for it means a compound unity. The Hebrew has another word which expresses exactly what Jews and Unitarians, who reject the three persons in the Godhead, believe. It is the word "yochid"; this has the meaning of a single one.

"Jehovah, our Elohim is one Jehovah," thus the name of God is used in this verse. The verse states that to Him alone the name of Jehovah (the Self-existing One) rightfully belongs, He is the one who is absolutely God. It is the testimony against the polytheism (many and different gods) of the Gentiles, which surrounded Israel on all sides. And therefore, because He is the one God, and none beside Him, He must be loved with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the might. The heart with all its affections and energies must belong to Him. To believe on Him and to know Him must ever result in giving Him the heart. Spirit, soul and body must be devoted to Him. This is the first and the great commandment (Matthew 22:38; Mark 12:29-30). And we know this Jehovah as our Redeemer, who came and died in our stead. The New Testament fully reveals the claims He has on those, for whose redemption He paid the price with His own blood. "We love Him, because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19). "And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also" (verse 21). "This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments" (1 John 5:3). "For ye are bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:20).

Israel were God's creatures and Jehovah's people, for He was their God. His rights as Creator were, therefore, to be acknowledged, as well as His claims as Jehovah. As Jehovah, the self-existing one, as the word means, He is the true, the living God. Plurality of gods there cannot be, though there are plurality of persons in the Godhead. One self-existing Being who is at the same time Almighty there is, but two there could not be. As the Almighty, He had made Himself known to their fathers, when sojourners amongst the nations of the land (Gen. 17:1; 35:11; 48:3). As Jehovah, He revealed Himself to Israel (Ex. 6:3), though Abraham knew He was Jehovah (Gen. 22:14), and the patriarchs spoke of Him as Jehovah; but God revealed Himself to the pilgrims and strangers as the Almighty One, whereas to Israel when the controversy about idolatry was to be decided, and they were called to maintain the unity of God, against the polytheistic notions of the heathen around them, the Lord made known to them that He, Jehovah, was their God (Ps. 33:12), and committed to Israel the responsibility of maintaining the truth of the unity of God (Deut. 6:4). Consequently, idolatry was a denial of this fundamental truth. For those who practised it, whatever they thought, did not worship the one living and true God. The heathen had many gods; Israel were to own, worship, and serve only the true God, and to be a witness for Him, and conservators of this truth amidst the darkness and degradation of the rest of the nations on earth.

"Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgements, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee; thou, and thy son, and thy son's son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers has promised thee, in the land that flows with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord."

We have here presented to us that great cardinal truth which the nation of Israel was specially responsible to hold fast and confess, namely, the unity of the Godhead. This truth lay at the very foundation of the Jewish economy. It was the grand centre round which the people were to rally. So long as they maintained this, they were a happy, prosperous, fruitful people; but when it was let go, all was gone. It was their great national bulwark, and that which was to mark them off from all the nations of the east. They were called to confess this glorious truth in the face of an idolatrous world, with "its gods many, and lords many." It was Israel's high privilege and holy responsibility to bear a steady witness to the truth contained in that one weighty sentence, "The Lord our God is one Lord," in marked opposition to the false gods innumerable of the heathen around. Their father Abraham had been called out from the very midst of heathen idolatry, to be a witness to the one true and living God, to trust Him; to walk with Him; to lean on Him; and to obey Him.

To begin, then, with the number 1. What does it stand for? When it is said, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord," or when it says, "And the Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Lord, and His name one," we have the simple, primary thought of unity, the exclusion of difference.

The point then for the Jew was the one true God. "Jehovah God that has brought thee out of the land of Egypt" — He was the only God. To what were they always inclined? Setting up other gods in the wilderness. Accordingly this is the solemn and central truth that is brought in here. "Hear, O Israel." They were about to go into the land to enjoy it; but "Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one. And thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children;" and they were to bind them for a sign; they were to make much of them at all points — outside the house and inside, and always. And this is enforced in the very words which our Saviour employed. "Thou shalt fear Jehovah thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name." It was to be a real fealty: it was not merely a dogma pure and simple, but to be known as a fact. It was revealed as the great operative truth, continually impressed on Israel — their one true God.

"Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." (Deut. 6:4.) This was the great central truth enforced by the Lawgiver on Israel. Round it circled all other. There could be one object of love alone, this one Jehovah, to whom every affection should flow (v. 5), and but one object of worship and service (v. 13) quoted by our Lord in answer to Satan. This great truth was in contrast to the idols of the heathen - gods formed out of the imagination of the heart, in reality demons, to whom every unholy desire and evil passion were consecrated, and who were worshipped according to the varied passions, lusts, or fears that moved the human heart.

"How, 0 Israel, The Lord our God is one" (v.4)! This is basic to every department of our lives as it was to Israel's. There is no division in the Godhead: therefore God is the absolute. He is absolute in truth, absolute in supremacy, absolute in authority. Since this is true, it is only right that Israel be told, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (v.5). In Luke 10:25-27 a lawyer who tested the Lord quoted this verse (Deut.6:5) and added from Leviticus 19:18, "and your neighbor as yourself." However, Deuteronomy 5 confines itself to loving God, for this must come first. What a law was this! Who could dare to say that the one absorbing object of his heart and soul is God? -- and that his entire strength is devoted to God's pleasure? This law is a perfectly righteous one, but man in the flesh is totally incapable of obeying it. The Lord Jesus is the only one who has done so.

Such is the text, and now we come to the exposition. Moses sums up in two brief sentences what the law implies in its first table. First, the unity and immutability of God: "Jehovah our God is one Jehovah" founded upon this, His claim to the undivided allegiance of man, — "Thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." If there be but one God, there is none beside to divide the heart with; and Jehovah claims in the most absolute way the whole of it. The words stand for the inner man, with all his affections, and in their full energy. And this is the reasonable claim of the Creator to the full answer of the heart to Him who created him, and in whose service alone all his faculties find their full occupation, rest, and satisfaction. All freedom apart from this is only slavery. All slavery here is only freedom as he knew well who could say, "To me, to live is Christ," and who in his epistle to the Romans signs himself His "bondsman," — "Paul, bondsman of Jesus Christ." (Rom. 1:1, Greek.) Yet none can insist more earnestly that "we have not received the spirit of bondage." (Rom. 8:15.) To live in love, and serve Him who is love, is indeed the opposite.

Moses, having laid down the grand foundation truth contained in the fourth verse, "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord," proceeds to press upon the congregation their sacred duty in respect to this blessed One. It was not merely that there was a God, but He was their God. He had deigned to link Himself with them, in covenant relationship. He had redeemed them, borne them on eagles' wings, and brought them to Himself, in order that they might be to Him a people, and that He might be their God.

I would remark at the outset, that there are two grand objects which God has had in view in separating Israel to himself as his peculiar people. One was, that there might be a testimony to the unity of God, and that he was the alone object of worship. "Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord." (Deut. 6:4.) "Therefore ye are my witnesses," saith the Lord, "that I am God." (Isaiah 43:12.) His other object was, that by the prosperity of this people, under his own immediate government, his character might be manifested; so manifested, that all men might understand, that "Happy is that people that is in such a case; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord." (Psalm 144:15.) I need hardly say that it is in the future reign of Christ that this purpose of God will be accomplished. Israel will then be a sample, a specimen, before all nations, of the happiness of a people under the immediate government of God.