The other day, while at the store, a man approached me and asked if I believed in “God the mother.” I answered that I believed in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He told me that I also needed to believe in “God the mother” or I would suffer in Hell for all eternity for rejecting one of the persons of God and therefore rejecting all of Him. He appealed to a handful of verses that I thought I’d share here in case you ever run into this false teaching, so that you can give a defense against the twisting of Scripture.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
He first mentioned Genesis 1:26-27
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. — Genesis 1:26-27
The man claimed this was proof God is both Father and mother due to the use of the word “us” and the subsequent creation of male and female in God’s image. First, we know the word “us” is a reference to the Trinity because of Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14.
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, — Matthew 28:19
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. — 2 Corinthians 13:14
Both verses mention Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but “God the mother” is curiously absent. In fact, there is no mention of “God the mother” anywhere in scripture. The second point related to Genesis 1 was that both man and woman are made in God’s image. That means that the design of men and women is a reflection of God himself. Men are designed to be strong, brave, logical, and lead. Women were designed to be beautiful, nurturing, sympathetic, and patient. These are all reflections of God’s character. However, that does not mean we can refer to God as mother. God gets to define how we refer to him (see Exodus 3:14). Therefore, if God has only referred to Himself as God the Father and never “God the mother,” we do not get to redefine His name for Him.
Christ’s Bride
The gentleman then took me to Revelation 22:1:
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. — Revelation 22:17
He claimed that the Spirit is God the Father and the bride is “God the mother.” This defies every other scriptural mention of God’s bride in the Old and New Testaments. A basic principle of hermeneutics is that you always interpret unclear verses through clear ones. We must ask ourselves who the bride has always been throughout Scripture. In the Old Testament, God’s chosen people, Israel, were presented as His bride. That is why he would call them an adulterous people when they turned to worship false idols. In the New Testament, the bride is the Church.
For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. — Ephesians 5:23
Here, Paul demonstrates that marriage between a husband and wife is meant to be a physical representation of Christ and his marriage to the church. This is mentioned more explicitly in Revelation 19:7-8.
Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. — Revelation 19:7-8Returning to Revelation 22, the man pushed back against the idea that the bride is the Church by asking why “the Church would call itself, saying, ‘Come?’” This is a clear reference to evangelism. The Church calls to the world, “come,” and those who believe do come and join themselves to the Churc.
Lies of Omission
Finally, he took me to Galatians 4:26
But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. — Galatians 4:26
He claimed this is yet another reference to God as our mother, similar to the ones in Revelation. This Jerusalem is in heaven and will descend upon us, as Revelation tells us. According to the gentleman’s argument, when Paul refers to Jerusalem as “our mother,” this must be a clear assertion that “God is our mother” since only God is in Heaven. However, he conveniently left out the verses that led up to verse 26.
Tell me, you who want to be under law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise. This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar. Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. — Galatians 4:21-26
Paul is not describing God. He is describing the two covenants. The covenant of Mount Sinai, the mosaic covenant, and Jerusalem, the new covenant of Christ’s blood. Additionally, diathēkē, the Greek word translated as “covenant” in Galatians, is a feminine noun. Therefore, it makes logical sense to refer to the covenant as our mother instead of our father. To claim this verse is a reference to “God the mother” is hermeneutical malpractice at best and utter deception at worst. The fact that the man I interacted with conveniently left verses 21-25 out leads me to believe it was the latter more than the former.
Ironically, this man also asserted his denomination, The Church of God, was the only true church because they observed all the feasts and festivals the Israelites observed, along with the Sabbath on Saturday. This is the same error the Judaizers made when they claimed that salvation wasn’t possible apart from circumcision. This man, and those who believe the same as he, are chaining themselves back to the Law, the covenant of Mount Sinai in Galatians 4, when we now live in freedom under the new covenant of Jerusalem.
Defending the True Gospel
Finally, he told me I must repent and confess belief in “God the mother” because Christ would return in the next 5 to 10 years (this would be a third coming, as he believed Christ came back a second time already in 1948 at the reestablishing of Israel as a political nation). I told him that if in 10 years Christ had not returned, he should remember my conversation with him. He should wonder if perhaps he was wrong and there was more truth to what I, and ultimately Scripture, says than he thought.
I pray he does see his error.
This man and those like him err in many ways. They seek to assign names to God that he never assigns himself, demonstrate poor hermeneutical practices, and deliberately twist scripture to mean what they desire it to say. We must know how to give a defense against them and all who would teach anything contrary to the Gospel of grace. Why? Because of the warning Paul provides in Galatians 1:
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! — Galatians 1:8-9
May we never depart from this Gospel, and may we defend it from those who do depart from it, so that we may seek God’s glory and the Church’s purity. May we seek truth, not lies. May we seek blessings, not curses.
