You are here: Home / Archives for Trinity

“Pneumatology” – God the Spirit

July 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Holy Spirit was active in both the Old Testament and the New Testament as well as today. From the very beginning we are able to see the presence of the Holy Spirit. In Genesis 1:2 the “Spirit of God” was moving over the face of the waters.” In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit was active in multiple ways; one was regeneration. In Ezekiel 36 God talks about putting his spirit within the people of Israel. So even though this act was future, the Israelites were able to experience regeneration. The Holy Spirit also indwelt certain people throughout the Old Testament (Num. 27:18; 1 Sam. 16:12-13; Judg. 6:34; Judg. 14:6). The primary action of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was to be the motivation behind prophecy. The Old Testament prophets were inspired by the Holy Spirit to prophesy the “word of the Lord.” 

The Holy Spirit has many different ministries. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives us life in regeneration. Until we are born of the Spirit, we are still flesh. The Holy Spirit also aids in conviction. He acts as a divine prosecutor. The Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment (Enns). Illumination is another ministry of the Holy Spirit. Without this illumination, we would be unable to understand anything about God. Illumination helps us to rightly understand the Word of God when we study it. John 14:16 tells us that God will give us a “Helper” who will indwell us forever. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is for all believers. The Holy Spirit also seals us to preserve us until glorification occurs. The primary significance of our sealing by the Holy Spirit is security (Eph. 1:13-14; 4:30) (Barackman). The sealing occurs at salvation. John 14:26 helps us to see another act of the Holy Spirit is teaching. He teaches us by revealing certain information to us when we need to know it. The Holy Spirit also fills us. This involves being influenced and guided by the Holy Spirit. We must do our part and rid our lives of sin so that the Holy Spirit can effectively and fruitfully lead us. 

On Wednesday night we will be focusing on a few different ways in which the Holy Spirit works. 

The first way in which the Holy Spirit works is that He empowers. He does this in two ways. First, he gives life. The Holy Spirit has a role in giving and sustaining the lives of creatures and humans. He also gives believers new life at their regeneration (John 3:6-7; 6:63). Second, He gives power for service. We see in the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit empowered Samson (Judges 13:25) and David (1 Sam. 16:13) as well as many others. In the New Testament we see the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus (Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22), and we see the disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit. 

Second, the Holy Spirit purifies. First, the Holy Spirit does an initial cleansing work in our lives, helping us make a decisive break with the patterns of sin that were in our lives before (Grudem). Second, the Holy Spirit works in our lives to produce the “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23). 

Third, the Holy Spirit reveals. The Holy Spirit guides and directs God’s people. He helps to reveal the will of God in our lives. Scripture talks about our “being led” by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18) and walking according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16) (Grudem). The Holy Spirit also helps to assure us that we are children of God (1 Jn. 3:24, 4:17; Rom. 8:16). He teaches and illumines. God has given us the Bible and He has provided the Holy Spirit to help (illumine) us understand what it means.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

“Christology” – God the Son

July 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man contained in one person, and he will be so forever. Jesus was born of a virgin, Mary and He was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:20). Because of this “immaculate conception”, it allowed Christ to be fully man and fully God. Also, Christ was able to be born without a sinful nature because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and because He did not have an earthly biological father (Luke 1:35). Jesus lived a perfect life without sin (1 Pet. 2:22). Jesus resisted temptation so that he would be worthy to be the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.

 “The atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation” (Grudem). Because a penalty was required for our sins, Jesus lived a perfect life in order to be able to take that penalty for us. Christ was the substitutionary atonement for sinners. Jesus endured a brutal death on the cross. He humbled himself and accepted this willingly (Phil. 2:6-8). The cross is the means by which God provided salvation. The cross is now a symbol of God’s intense love for mankind.

 After Jesus’ death, he remained in the grave for three days. On the third day, he rose from the dead. When Jesus rose from the dead, he conquered death. He did not simply come back to life in human terms; 1 Corinthians 15:20 and 23 tells us that he was the “first fruits” of a new kind of life (Grudem). When he raised from the dead, he received his resurrection body that someday we will have also. The resurrection of Christ makes our regeneration possible (1 Peter 1:3). Romans 4:25 tells us that Christ was raised for our justification. When Christ was raised, God approved of Christ’s work and through him we are justified.

 Jesus was on earth for forty days after his resurrection. After those forty days, he ascended into heaven. It is important to understand that heaven is an actual, physical, and tangible place. It is not some mystical dimension. Jesus ascended to heaven and is sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Jesus said that he would prepare a place for us and that he would return to take us there.

 Christ as Prophet

As prophet, Christ reveals God to us and speaks God’s words to us. In Deuteronomy 18:15-18, Moses predicts that God will raise up another prophet after himself from Israel and he will prophesy on behalf of the Father. Jesus is indeed this prophet as various other Scriptures attest (John 6:14; Acts 3:22-24).

 However, although Christ is indeed the prophet whom Moses predicted, he is also much greater than any of the Old Testament prophets. He is greater in two ways.

 First, Jesus is the one about whom the prophecies in the Old Testament were made. We see in Luke 24:27, Jesus walking with two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

 Second, Jesus was not merely a messenger of revelation from God, but was himself the source of revelation from God. Jesus spoke authoritatively the words of God. He didn’t need to say, “Thus says the Lord.” He spoke divinely, “But I say unto you” (Matt 5:22)(Grudem).

 Christ as Priest

In the Old Testament priests were appointed by God to offer sacrifices. They also offered prayers and praise to God on behalf of the people (Grudem). This was their role in the sanctification of the people. In the New Testament Jesus becomes our great High Priest. He functions as our High Priest in a few ways.

 First, Jesus offered a perfect sacrifice for sin. Jesus did not offer a bull or a lamb (Heb. 10:4). Instead Jesus offered himself (Heb. 9:26). Jesus was the final sacrifice. No more sacrifices were required after this one. Jesus was both the priest who offered the sacrifice and the sacrifice itself.

Second, Jesus continually brings us near to God. The Old Testament priests were in the business of coming into the presence of God to pray for their people. As our High Priest, Jesus continuously leads us into the presence of God so that we no longer have a need of a temple, or a special priesthood to stand between us and God (Heb. 6:19-20).  Jesus has opened for us the way of access to God so that we can continually “draw near” into God’s very presence without fear but with “confidence” and in “full assurance of faith” (Heb. 10:19-22).

 Third, Jesus continually prays for us. Hebrews 7:25 says, “He is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

 Christ as King

Jesus refused any attempt by people to try to make him an earthly king with military and political power (John 6:15). Jesus made it clear that his kingship was not of this world, much to the disappointment of Israel (John 18:36). Christ’s kingship will be fully recognized at his second coming when he will reign over all the earth and he will be acknowledged as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16) and every knee shall bow to him (Phil. 2:10).

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

“Paterology” – God the Father

June 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It is very important for us to spend time focusing on the person of God the Father. He is one of the three persons of the Trinity and one that often gets neglected when studying the 3 persons individually.

 We will be discussing the blessings of our relationship with the Father as well as the demands of our relationship with the Father. I will not be spending a lot of time on these however, and would encourage you to use the Scriptures provided to dig into these a little deeper. There are a lot of them, so just select a few to look at in depth.

 The blessings of our relationship with the Father

The concept and reality of God’s being our heavenly Father is an indescribable blessing to us who are His children (Matt. 5:16, 45; 6:1, 6, 8-9, 18, 32; 7:11): He cares for us (Matt. 6:25-33; 10:29-31), keeps us (John 17:11), gives us good things (Matt 7:11; James 1:17), fellowships with us (1 John 1:3-7), desires our spiritual maturity (Matt 5:48), disciplines and trains us (Heb. 12:5-11), prunes us (John 15:1-3), makes us His heirs (Rom. 8:16-17), loves us (John 16:27), invites our prayers (John 16:23), speaks to us by His Word (Heb. 1:1-2), sees us (Matt. 6:6), knows us (Matt. 6:32; 2 Cor. 11:31), forgives us (Matt. 6:14), indwells us (John 14:23), sanctifies us (John 17:17; Jude 1), comforts us (2 Cor. 1:3-4), blesses us (Eph. 1:3; Matt. 6:31-34), judges us (1 Peter 1:17), commands us (2 John 4), and gives us a place in His house (John 14:2). How blessed it is to be His children!

 The demands of this relationship

Our being children of this heavenly Father imposes upon us certain duties like obeying Him (1 Peter 1:14-15), submitting to His pruning (John 15:2-3) and discipline (Heb. 12:7, 9), sharing our cares with Him (1 Peter 5:6-7), glorifying Him in all that we do (1 Cor. 10:31), walking in His fellowship (1 John 1:5-7), dealing with our sins (rev. 2:5; 1 John 1:9), serving Him (1 Thess. 1:9), worshiping Him (Eph. 1:3), imitating Him (Eph. 5:1; Matt 5:48), praying to Him (Matt 6:6,9), trusting Him (Matt. 6:25-34), and loving Him with our total being (Mark 12:30).

 Those two sections are from Practical Christian Theology by Floyd H. Barackman.

 The majority of our time on Wednesday will be spent discussing our interaction (as believers) with the Father. The areas that we will look at are: Prayer, submission, faith, obedience, imitation, glorifying Him, and worshiping Him.

 Prayer

We will be talking about what it means to be able to pray to the Father as his children. We will be talking about the attitude that we need to have in approaching God in prayer (Heb. 10:22). We will talk about the different things that we are able to pray to God for including: forgiveness, repentance, concerns, needs, and God’s will. We will also talk about having confidence in prayer.

 Submission

We will be discussing what is means to submit to the Father in His pruning and his nourishing us.  This pruning is the Father’s removing from us those things, like sins and self-reliance, that hinder our bearing spiritual fruit. He does this through His Word (John 15:1-3) and His corrective chastisement (Rev. 3:19).

 The Father also nourishes us in order for us to grow. He nourishes us through trials, through instruction in the Word, and His ministry through other believers.

 Faith

We will look at the importance putting our faith completely in our heavenly Father and trusting Him to provide for our every need. We will look at this through the idea of the “Futility of Worry.”

 Obedience

We will talk about how obedience is an expression of love for the Father (John 14:31). We will talk about how obedience to God is essential to following Him wholeheartedly.

 Imitation

We will talk about how being a follower of Christ means to imitate God and to do our best to be like Him.

 Glorifying Him

We will discuss how we are able to glorify God. We glorify God by allowing Him to produce in and through us His fruit (John 15:1-5, 8) and by our doing His will in His way in everything (Matt. 6:16).

 Worshiping Him

We will discuss the importance of our worship to God and the different ways in which we can worship Him. Our worship in the end consists of us giving back to God was has always been His.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

“Theology Proper” – God/Trinity

June 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I don’t know if the doctrine of the Trinity is normally contained within ‘Theology Proper’ but for our study, it will be.

 There is a TON of material to cover this week so I will do my best to keep it brief. However, there are some topics that I will discuss in this note that I will not discuss on Wednesday night. If you would like to discuss them in greater detail, you are more than welcome. I will tell you which topics I will not be addressing in detail.

 We will start off briefly by discussing the age-old question, “How do we know that God exists?” We’ve all heard it, and attempted to answer it in one-way or another. We have two ways of knowing that God exists: 1) We have an inner sense that God exists, we are His creatures, and He is our Creator. 2) Evidence for the existence of God is clearly seen in nature and in Scripture (Grudem).

 We need to look no further than Romans 1 to see that humanity has a sense of God within ourselves. Romans 1:18 says that man, in our unrighteousness, “suppress the truth.” Romans 1:19 says, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”

 Evidence for the existence of God is clearly found in Scripture and in nature. Romans 1:20 says, “For his invisible qualities, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” That passage seems pretty clear to me. Then if we look at Psalm 19:1-2 we see that, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

 When most people think about apologetics (defending the faith) and trying to prove God’s existence, they turn to some of the classic “proofs” for the existence of God. I will not explain them all, but I will link you to explanations of them. I will not be going over these, but feel free to look at them. They are: the Cosmological Argument, Teleological Argument, Ontological Argument, and the Moral Argument.

 According to the Westminster Catechism, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (Westminster Catechism Question #4).

 I will be spending the majority of our time on Wednesday discussing God’s character (attributes). However, there are so many, that I will not be able to go in depth on all of them. I will provide definitions for all of them so that you can take some time with your students to explore them deeper if you wish. I will bold the ones that I will be spending the most time on: independence, immutability, eternality, omnipresence, unity, spirituality, invisibility, omniscience, wisdom, truthfulness/faithfulness, goodness, love, mercy, grace, patience, holiness, peace, righteousness, jealousy, wrath, will, freedom, omnipotence (sovereignty), perfection, blessedness, beauty, and glory.

 I will BRIEFLY discuss them all and I will expound on some of them but not at length. While massive amounts of time could be dedicated to each one of God’s attributes, I need to leave plenty of time to talk about the Trinity!

 Having a correct view of the Trinity is essential having a solid doctrine. There have been many different views regarding the makeup and function of the Trinity. I will be going over a few of them on Wednesday night.

 I will be discussing such views as Dynamic Monarchianism (Adoptionism), Modalism (Sabellianism), Arianism, and Tritheism. These are all false and heretical views of the Trinity. If you want more info on these, let me know.

 Grudem defines the Trinity this way, “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.” This view is widely accepted today as the orthodox view of the Trinity.

 When we examine this doctrine, we need to break it down into three statements and look at them each individually: 1) God is three persons. 2) Each person is fully God. 3) There is one God.

 We see the distinctness of the persons of the Trinity in Isaiah 63:10 where God speaks of His Holy Spirit. God is saying that the Holy Spirit has it’s own unique qualities. Also in 2 Corinthians 13:14, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This shows the idea of the three persons explicitly. John 1:1 is another passage, which states the explicit nature of the three persons.

 God the Father is clearly God. This is apparent all throughout Scripture. From Genesis 1:1 where He created all the way through the rest of the Bible, the Father is seen as sovereign. John 1:1-14 defends the full deity of Christ. It is very important to understand that Christ is fully God. Also, John 20:28 is another proof of Christ’s deity. Thomas proclaims, “My Lord and my God!” when he sees Jesus’ hands and feet post-resurrection. Verses like Matthew 28:19, where the Holy spirit is mentioned at the same time as the Father and the Son, show that the Holy Spirit is equal to them.

 The Bible clearly states that there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 says, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” There is no dispute to this claim anywhere in Scripture.

 

 

Definitions

Independence – God does not need us or the rest of creation for anything, yet we and the rest of creation can glorify him and bring him joy.

 Immutability – God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.

 Eternality – God has no beginning, end, or succession of moments in his own being, and he sees all time equally vividly, yet God sees events in time and acts in time

 Omnipresence – God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places

 Unity – God is not divided into parts, yet we see different attributes of God emphasized at different times

 Spirituality – God’s spirituality means that God exists as a being that is not made of any matter, has no parts or dimensions, is unable to be perceived by our bodily senses, and is more excellent than any other kind of existence.

 Invisibility – God’s invisibility means that God’s total essence, all of his spiritual being, will never be able to be seen by us, yet God still shows himself to us through visible, created things

 Omniscience – God fully knows himself and all things actual and possible in one simple and eternal act

 Wisdom – God always chooses the best goals and the best means to those goals.

 Truthfulness/faithfulness – He is the true God, and that all his knowledge and words are both true and the final standard of truth

Goodness – God is the final standard of good, and all that God is and does is worthy of approval

Love – God eternally gives of himself to others

Mercy – God’s goodness toward those in misery and distress

Grace – God’s goodness toward those who deserve only punishment

Patience – God’s goodness in withholding of punishment toward those who sin over a period of time

Holiness – He is separated from sin and devoted to seeking his own honor

Peace – In God’s being and in his actions he is separate from all confusion and disorder, yet he is continually active in innumerable well-ordered, fully controlled, simultaneous actions

Righteousness – God always acts in accordance with what is right and is himself the final standard of what is right

Jealousy – God continually seeks to protect his own honor

Wrath – God intensely hates all sin

Will – The attribute of God whereby he approves and determines to being about every action necessary for the existence and activity of himself and all creation

Freedom – The attribute of God whereby he does whatever he pleases

Omnipotence (sovereignty) – God is able to do all his holy will; he is all-powerful

Perfection – God completely possesses all excellent qualities and lacks no part of any qualities that would be desirable for him

Blessedness – God delights fully in himself and in all that reflects his character

Beauty – That attribute of God whereby he is the sum of all desirable qualities

Glory – God’s glory is the created brightness that surrounds God’s revelation of himself

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,