How To Better Understand The Holy Trinity

uh Brothers I think that the doctrine of the Trinity is something that in Evangelical circles we tend to take for granted um we're always taught that all Christians believe in the Trinity Orthodox Catholic Protestant there's no um Divergence there and so we we tend not so much then to perhaps School our younger uh leaders coming up in it and we U perhaps ourselves don't dwell as much on it we uh were much more concerned to be sure that our our doctrine of Christ and of the atonement and of Salvation is right so when uh as has happened in I think in the in the last couple of decades people have come along and SP said we need to re-engineer our understanding of the Trinity um is that something that we um is that all right if we saying well that's actually not very it's not as important as the cross it's not as important as the as the doctrine of salvation or is it is it that if we get our doctrine of the Trinity wrong all the other doctrines go wrong too and of course the way I'm asking the question is obviously we believe that it does affect everything else so we need to begin to talk about how how it affects everything else I think in the first place it's worth reminding ourselves that the word Trinity has come to stand as a one-word summary for a whole lot of truths that contribute to the big Doctrine Calvin has a wonderful place in the institutes where he says in effect that if somebody wants to dispute the word Trinity he doesn't really care one way or the other it's it's all of the pieces that go into it that really catch him but he he said on the other hand um to use the word Trinity is a really good one summary one word summary of of a great deal of understanding of of who God really is and uh and and that's the way we should think of it rather than as a fourth Century later creation by people who were disputing things at the time of nikea and chalon then I would want to say that it's pretty easy Once the doctrine of the Trinity is well understood to show that there's scarcely a doctrine that is not affected by misunderstanding uh the doctrine of the Trinity uh consider for example atonement um on the one hand you want to say that it is only Christ who dies as a substitute for us in our place the father does not die um that's patripassianism which was rightly condemned in the early church on the other hand it is wrong to say that the father stands over against us only in wroth and the son comes along only in love and assuages his father's wroth since after all the father sent his son into the world and the son comes in obedience to the father's plan the father stands over against us in both wroth and in love and and and in The Matrix of this spectacular plan grounded in eternity past the son comes and bears our sins in perfect obedience to the father and and and and and yet bearing at the same time his wroth and suddenly the the relations of the godhead stand at the very heart there is a sense in which what drives Jesus to the Cross logically prior emotionally prior to his concern for me The Sinner is his concern to do the father's will and and that's why he goes to the Cross so there's so many doctrines that are tied up finally to the um relationships among the persons of the godhead yeah in in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the word became flesh and we beheld his glory glory as of the only begotten from the father full of grace and truth and from that fullness we have all received Grace upon Grace if if you break that line Grace goes away and and most people don't want Grace to go away I'm I'm feeding on Grace upon Grace because the sun revealed the glory of of the father and he revealed the glory of the father as the word who is one with the father and so I think the way John develops his whole gospel especially those first 18 verses says you you throw this away you throw the the deity of the son away you throw Grace away you throw glor Glory away or another way to say it is we exist to worship God as he really is not as we want him to be and if you don't know as he really is you won't worship him so Owen's communion with God is just unparalleled and it's worshiping the son worshiping the father and worshiping the spirit as they are revealed in unique ways in the Bible now John you and I have actually gotten a lot out of edwards's uh approach to oh for example Edwards is uh the end for which God created the world uh or the idea that God in himself enjoys his own Glory uh and that it's our job to glorify God by enjoying him that all seems to be to me tied up you if you don't have a Triune God that makes no sense at all right it's it's totally tied up I mean without going all the way with Edwards you can just say God is love has its ultimate meaning in the trinitarian communitarian dimension of the father's delighting in the son and not be Edward Edwardian the the love between the father and the son standing forth with such completeness that it embodies and becomes he the holy spirit so that the holy spirit is the love of the father for the Son and the sons for the father and the son is the perfect representation or knowledge or logos of the father so what the Trinity is is God knowing himself perfectly and thus standing forth as a separate being and God loving himself perfectly and thus standing forth so we have father the originator the son known from eternity the Spirit uh felt and enjoyed from eternity and and now created in God's image we have these capacities to know him and we love him and the knowing and the loving are both with the very knowing of the father of the son uh Matthew 11 no one knows the father except the son anyone to whom the son reveals him and we love him with the very joy that this the the son has in the Father John 1511 that my joy may be in you so the the profundity of What flows from the community of the Trinity into the into the human nature as in God's image and then the returning of back to God a right knowing of him and a right loving of him if you pull if you pull the thread of the Trinity apart I think Edwards would say this the whole thing absolutely unravels the universe unravels right you know got I mean I one of the more powerful arguments I have in talking to um secular people about the Trinity I mean the a um the average secular person says Hey Islam Judaism I I okay maybe but the Trinity it just doesn't make any sense and Augustine's great point is you couldn't really say God is love except about a Trent God because if you have an impersonal God obviously then there's if you're you have an Eastern view of God is impersonal that's it's obviously that kind of God is not a god of love uh but even a unipersonal God wouldn't be loving until that God created some other beings because love you need another being to have love which means power came before love that is a unipersonal god using his power creates a a race of beings and now he has their love and he loves them so love comes in later Powers before love and Augustine says which of course figures that figures with paganism the whole idea that basically uh um what life's really about is power uh no if if God is tri-personal then he was love and Community from all eternity and of course as Edward says it's out of that love he decided to create a race of beings to share that love and that Glory so love comes first and it's the basis for power which has enormous implications for for what's actually important in human life so Augustine is saying if you really think love is the meaning of the universe and if you really think love is is at the heart of the universe you have to believe in a Triune God if you don't believe in a try in God love is peripheral comes along later I found that as an apologetic argument I'm saying look I'm not proving that God exists but if you think Love's important if you think it's more important relationships is more important than acre wealth and power this is the kind of God that is gives you a basis for believing that and actually gives you a basis for your intuitions so I've seen the Trinity good in uh also in apologetics how else is the Trinity important for us it's also important for the for the uh love in the church itself read John 17 that is it's the Eternal intrapersonal love of the Triune God that becomes the model and the empowering for Christians loving one another and um one of the things that has stood out more starkly in my reading of Islam in recent years has has been to to see how the contrast between the Quan and and the Bible on this front is very very sharp the Quan speaks regularly of God as merciful it is very rare to to read that God is love in that sort of context one of the most powerful books I've read defending Islam is by shabir AAL in recent years Islam as a poli religion where where again he gets Christianity more or less right um and then thinks of all the reasons why it's wrong but in the whole area of the Trinity he doesn't understand anything he really he really is completely up the creek without a padle he doesn't understand anything of what the Bible says it it's it's it it becomes a character that is destroyed and it's partly because at the end of the day his understanding of God is really devoid from any meaningful notion of love it's bound up with power with merciful with with being merciful all merciful but not not in and of himself being a god of love because that somehow destroys the Perfection of his Solitude and his and his strength is is his power and over against that to to to to read that the father has determined that all should honor the son even as they honor the father that the son came to do the father's will and that all should honor him and and and so on it it becomes so transparently a totally different picture of God that uh uh ought to make us respond with renewed gratitude and Faith let me go to John 17 and just give a really practical on the ground emotional relevance I have found that in my Christian Hedonism presentations people are deeply discouraged that what I'm saying namely that God is glorified most when we're satisfied in him and they're not very satisfied in him and they feel like I I don't I didn't grow up in home where I could even have a capacity to feel what you're saying I'm supposed to feel and and I'm supposed to glorify God by these feelings well I don't and I can't so you get to the end of John 17 and he prays father I pray that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them and I say to them do you hear what's being promised to you you won't be left to yourself when it comes to the energy to to love God the way you should the very love of the father for the son will be put in you and you will have an infinite assistance in enjoying God in the age to come now that's an impossible conception if there hadn't been a love of the father for the son as he was conceiving it before the world was and so flowing out of the doctrine of the Trinity comes just incredibly practical encouragement for a person who grew up in a a a fatherless home with zero emotions except Ang feeling totally helpless in their ability to honor God by affections that rise to the level of what they should be let me ask a slightly different question I mean we we've talked about the positive um benefits of the doctrine of the Trinity but today there's a lot of publication on the doctrine of the Trinity that is speaking of the social Trinity and so on um and some of it is abusing the doctrine of the trinity in a variety ways have you come across that at the Pastoral level M yeah I think it's the perception the perception is that we we've not talked enough about the thess of the of the godhead and we've spent too much time talking about the Oneness and so the it's always very dangerous to say now let's let's hit the threeness and the social Trinity um because obviously God is is one and three and that the equally we can't we can't say he's more one than he's three or he's more three than he's one but yeah and the social Trinity is is a um usually it's put forth by the way way I think as a basis for talking about uh egalitarian relationships that there it's non-hierarchical uh at least in the ontological Trinity that they're all three equal and yet I I must say one of the ways in which I preach it is that is that servanthood does not demean you because if GE if for Jesus to serve the father and the and the Holy Spirit to never speak of himself but only only show us Christ if that doesn't demean those the deity of those persons then why in the world couldn't you decide it's my place to be subordinate it's my place to submit because Christ has done it so I've never understood how the the relationships between the I mean it's true that there's an ontological and economic Trinity I've always known that but the fact is that that um you know Jesus and the Holy Spirit do submit they to one another and and so I think it's a case for uh for servanthood it's to me it's not a great case for egalitarianism well and it's the argument against that that is often put is is that if all the subordination passages it is argued falsely in my view um uh have to do with the economic Trinity that is as God has manifested himself in SpaceTime so at this point Jesus is the god man he's somehow Limited in in some ways as a human being but the fact of the matter is that John John makes it clear that the father sends the son if he sends the son then you're talking about him sending him before he became a human being he he sends him back from eternity past this is the Father's own design from eternity past and there the relationship the dynamic is always one way the father sends the son obeys and and to talk about this as some theologians do as mutually reciprocal difference is hiding in fact a real distinction in the way the command goes I have come to do my father's well I always do those things that please him Jesus says and the father doesn't turn around and say oh yes that's very good and I always do those things that please him too I mean it it it just doesn't work that way from eternity past as was God's design but this does not in any sense diminish the sun uh or take away from his status as as as one with God so from eternity past the word was with God God's Own fellow the Word was God God's Own Self and we live with that and and shape our understanding of their Mutual uh relationships and Dynamics by the word of God itself I I I know our time is up but just I I feel jealous for the Holy Spirit right now that he get his due and so let me say one thing and let you close because you preached on uh the prayer of Paul Ephesians 3:14 which ends with that we may be filled with all the fullness of God and the text I have in mind that goes there is Romans 5 where the love of God is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which probably means that the holy spirit is the living embodiment and presence of God loving us it's not just an influence that that that kind of takes love and does it like that it is God loving us and then at the end of that prayer it comes to a climax with that we may be filled with all the fullness of God which wouldn't that be almost the same as be filled with the Holy Spirit yes I I for Paul that's that's almost an equivalent of saying that you may be as fully mature as you can be by God himself taking up residence within you which Pauline emphasis is the holy spirit taking up resonance within you and earlier on in the same prayer it's it's that God May strengthen you with all power by the spirit in your inner being so that God May dwell in your hearts through faith and then that you may be filled with all the measure of the fullness of God in other words the very Mark of Christian maturity is bound up with the the Triune God in in father son and spirit um working there jointly planned rescue from before the foundation of the world in the lives of actual individual Christians and in the life of the church

Channel: The Gospel Coalition

Views: 64,515

Keywords: spirit, Christianity, reformed, evangelical, coalition, Holy Spirit, teaching, preaching, Christian, reformation, God, pastors, the gospel coalition, bible, spiritual, Jesus, minister, pastor, gospel, churches, ministry, church, preacher, faith, Christ, biblical

Id: aTToBMda3VE

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 24 2014