… ²⁷ to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.

This is what it is all about, “the glory of the only wise God, through Jesus Christ.” The ultimate purpose of our humanity, the consummate fulfillment of our image-bearing creatureliness. The definitive reason for Jesus Christ’s coming. How absolutely ironic—no, tragic—that His name has been reduced by a fallen world to a common swear word.

The name Jesus, the person of Christ, is eternally linked to the only God of the universe. What a powerful testament to the deity of Christ Himself. He is God, the second person of the Trinity. If not, then the connection Paul makes, as well as other writers of the NT, would be nothing short of blasphemy, for God tolerates no other gods, no other rivals. No one could possibly be mentioned in the same breath as God who comes even close to a comparison.

“I am the Lord, that is My name;I will not give My glory to another,Nor My praise to graven images. (Is 42:8)

“I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me … (Is 45:5)

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:9–11)

He (Jesus) is the radiance of His (God’s) glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power … (Heb 1:3a)

For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him … (Col 1:19)

For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form… (Col 2:9)

Some assail the teaching of the divinity of Christ as being contradictory. But God, with the same wisdom with which He created the world, has shown to us what He is truly like, through the manifestation of deity in the person of Jesus Christ. We may never fully understand this, but we properly defer in faith to the wisdom of God over against the foolish ignorance of unbelief.

I join my voice the the apostle’s and say,“To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be glory forever. Amen.”