I understand exactly what you are saying. That no matter how many scriptures declare God is one, you are right so the bible has to be wrong.
There is but one God. That there are real distinctions in the Godhead does not make three Gods. The
Persons of the Godhead do not divide up the
singular essence of God, making three Gods. In other words, God is one
simple (having no constituent parts)
essence, with three
subsistences—
Persons—that do not divide the essence of the one absolute God.
In Philippians 2:6 the Apostle defines what a
Person of the Godhead is:
a form of God. These forms of God are three. This word
form is not to be used in the sense that Unitarians, Modalistic Monarchians, Oneness Pentecostals, or Sabellians would use them, as if God were acting, masquerading, and manifesting in three different manners. Understanding the Godhead is not helped by the plethora of terms that have been used to describe the personal distinctions within the Godhead. In the Greek we will encounter,
hypostasis (Hebrews 1:3),
hypokeimenon , or
prosopon (Luke 12:56). In the Latin, we find
substantia and
persona used. Lastly, in the English,
hypostasis, subsistence, distinction, person, relation, and
mode. So when we speak of these Biblical matters, we need to set aside our contemporary notions of what all these terms mean to us today and let the past saints speak and give meaning to these terms as they have been understood in Biblical contexts throughout history.
The
first person is the whole divine
ousia (essence) subsisting (
hyparchon) in the paternal form (
morphe)—
God the Father. The
second person is the whole divine essence subsisting in filial form (John 5:26)—
God the Son. The
third person is the whole divine essence subsisting in the spirated form (John 15:16)—
God the Holy Spirit.
These three
Persons are different, having real distinctions made clear from Scripture. This is why we must not claim the actions of one Person of the Godhead can be equally assigned to another Person of the Godhead. For example, we know from Scripture that God the Father sends God the Son. We cannot say that God the Son sends God the Son. We read in Scripture that God the Father loves God the Son. We cannot say that God the Son loves God the Son. Rather Scripture teaches us that each of the persons of the Trinity are objective to one another: Phil. 2:5–11; Heb. 2:9; Gen. 16:7; John 14:26; Isa. 9:6; Gen. 1:26; 11:7; John 17:5; Luke 3:22; John 14:6; Heb. 1:8; Matt. 11:27; Zech. 13:7; John 14:10–11; John 3:35.
God’s essence—eternal, incorporeal, without parts—is common to the three
Persons. The essence of God is not communicated from one to another as in some sort of football-like handoff. Rather, each of the divine
Persons possesses the entire, numerically one essence and possess the essence as one undivided nature—“
as all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ”, like so in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father. A fullness of being implies a variety of existence.
One God who eternally exists in three different persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all of whom are fully God, all of whom are equal (Romans 16:26; Revelations 1:17; Matthew 28:20; Acts 17:28-29; John 14-16).
AMR