Deuteronomy 6:4, the famous Jewish shema, states, The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Paul seems to be building on and reformulating this confession, by stating that there is one God, the Father…and one Lord, Jesus Christ.
In Paul’s confession
we find four concise descriptions of God the Father’s and Christ’s work of creation and redemption. All things have been created by (“from”) God the Father, through Jesus Christ (compare John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16). There is also a special way in which believers exist through Christ. After all, it is through Christ that they have been redeemed (one could say recreated
) to exist for God. This is a recurring teaching in Paul’s letters (see Romans 6:1–23; Ephesians 2:1–10; Ephesians 4:22–24; Colossians 3:10).
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.