Question 1: Who is the True God?

Answer: The True God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; specifically, the Apostle John identifies Jesus Christ as the True God who has come in the flesh to give us understanding.

Scripture: "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." (1 John 5:20, ESV)

Question 2: What is "Eternal Life"?

Answer: Eternal life is not merely living forever but is the experiential and saving knowledge of the only True God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

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

Question 3: How do we come to know the True God?

Answer: We cannot know God by our own wisdom or effort; we know Him only because the Son of God has come and given us spiritual understanding.

Scripture: "All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matthew 11:27, ESV)

Question 4: What does it mean to be "in Him who is true"?

Answer: It means that believers are united to Jesus Christ by faith, abiding in Him as a branch abides in a vine, so that His life becomes our life.

Scripture: "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." (John 17:23, ESV)

Question 5: What is an idol?

Answer: An idol is anything—whether a physical image or a desire of the heart—that we love, trust, or obey more than the True God.

* It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. (Tim Keller)

Scripture: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." (1 John 5:21, ESV)

Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5, CSB)

Question 6: Why must we keep ourselves from idols?

Answer: Because idols are falsehoods that offer no life; to turn to an idol is to abandon the Fountain of Living Waters for broken cisterns that can hold no water.

Scripture: "For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:13, ESV)

Additional Scripture Verses

But Yahweh is the true God;

He is the living God and the everlasting King.

Jeremiah 10:10a

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God,

and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

John 17:3

“For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:5

6 “Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of hosts:

‘I am the first, and I am the last,

And there is no God besides Me. Isaiah 44:6

I am Yahweh; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.

Isaiah 42:8