The Holy Trinity

Suffering:

Learning from the book of Job (first wisdom literature book)

True wisdom does not offer simplistic formulas about human life but rather recognizes life’s complexity, ambiguity, and irrationality.

Suffering is completely irrational and evades the intelligence of human beings. It doesn’t make sense.

The error in Job’s friends, is that they treated Job’s sufferings as if it were a subject of academic discussion, searching for a formula, and full explanation as to why, instead of emphasizing with him in his distress.

The friends wrongly concluded that joy and sorrow during this lifetime reflect one’s godliness or lack of it.

We are called upon to trust him and to rest in the truth that he will make all things right in the end. We fear the Lord by obeying him even when we do not understand what is happening. From a biblical perspective, the evil unleashed by Satan and humanity in the world will be conquered by one who overcomes evil not through warfare but through suffering. He conquers the power and mystery of evil by letting it do its worst to him and then triumphing over it. What sustains through suffering is a relationship with a loving, just, and mysterious God. This God has taken on flesh and evil has done its best to destroy him, but he has conquered demons and death.

In Conclusion

True wisdom recognizes that life is complex and defies simplistic answers as to why there is suffering in the world. These simplistic answers that neglect complexity pretend to be wisdom but are fundamentally foolish. Even though life has mysteries that baffle us, we are still called upon to fear the Lord and do his will.

Because what makes life worth living is not the absence of suffering but the presence of a relationship with God.

Suffering is not the last word for those who belong to God. God will make all wrongs right.

May we continue to pray for those who suffer and always act… Overcoming evil with good!

Covenant is God’s Initiative to reveal Himself

God Revealed= (Yay Increase!)

Increased knowledge of God

Increased Christ-likeness

Increased participation in the mission of God

We’ve been talking about: Who is God? What are His attributes?

Why is this important?

Only when we know who God is can we properly pray to him, worship him, proclaim him, imitate him, and serve him!

God is Triune (the Trinity)

[Title]

The Holy Trinity

God transcends one-dimensional conceptions of human identity

God is not one person with 3 different masks like I am with multiple functions - husband, parent, pastor

God cannot be explained, He can only be described.

As Augustine said: “There is no subject where error is more dangerous, research more laborious, and discovery more fruitful than the oneness of the Trinity [unitas trinitatis] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

In fact, the Trinity is arguably the most distinctive doctrine of Christianity as it distinguishes Christianity from other monotheistic faiths like Islam and Judaism.

A good definition of the Trinity is given in first article of the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican Church: “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Here the unity of the persons of the Godhead is explicitly given in the threefold description of one “substance, power, and eternity.”

That means that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comprise the same essence, there is no inferiority of being among them, and one person did not exist before the others.

We may define the doctrine of the Trinity as follows:

God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.

Regarding the Trinity

The word means tri-unity or three-in-oneness

The word trinity is not in the bible

How did we get here?

The early church arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity out of their reflection on Scripture, thinking about God’s nature in relation to God’s actions, striving to find language to distinguish and correlate the three persons, and attempting to give verbal expression to their experience of God.

The Trinitarian doctrine partly demystifies the mystery of God’s tripartite being and gives us a way of describing the God who has revealed himself as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in both his essence and in his operations.

Understanding the Mystery - In one sense the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery that we will never be able to understand fully. However, we can understand something of its truth by summarizing the teaching of Scripture in three statements:

1. God is three persons

2. Each person is fully God

3. There is one God

1. God Is Three Persons.

Jesus is distinct from the Father:

John 1:1–2 tells us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The fact that the “Word” (who is seen to be Christ in vv. 9–18) is “with” God shows distinction from God the Father.

Jesus’ inclusion in the identity of God means that God must be conceived in relational terms, uniting God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God thus transcends one-dimensional conceptions of human identity.

The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and Son. He is not just a force or a power: First are the several verses mentioned earlier where

The Holy Spirit is put in a coordinate relationship with the Father and the Son (Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 12:4–6; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4–6; 1 Peter 1:2): since the Father and Son are both persons, the coordinate expression strongly intimates that the Holy Spirit is a person also.

One does not baptize in the name of a divine person, a holy creature, and an impersonal force.

They are not modes or masks of one person taking on three different forms

2. Each Person is fully God:

Jesus is God

Thomas’ confession - John 20:28-31

Hebrews 1 “exact duplicate” - meaning that God the Son exactly duplicates the being or nature of God the Father in every way: whatever attributes or power God the Father has, God the Son has them as well.

The Holy Spirit is God

In Acts 5:3–4, Peter asks Ananias, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit …? You have not lied to men but to God.” According to Peter’s words, to lie to the Holy Spirit is to lie to God.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” God’s temple is the place where God himself dwells, which Paul explains by the fact that “God’s Spirit” dwells in it, thus apparently equating God’s Spirit with God himself.

Problems and inefficiencies of analogies (tree / water / clover / human - farmer, mayor, elder) - Because in the Trinity, each of the persons is not just a separate part of God, each person is fully God. They all possess all of the attributes of God in equal measure. Conclusion is there is not analogy adequate to teach and describe the Trinity, all are misleading in significant ways.

Each person of the Trinity has all the attributes of God, and no one person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others.

3. There Is One God.

There are not three Gods to be worshiped. There is one God.

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 (NIV): “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” When Moses sings, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?”

1 Corinthians 8:6 “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”

Scripture is abundantly clear that there is one and only one God. The three different persons of the Trinity are one not only in purpose and in agreement on what they think, but they are one in essence, one in their essential nature. In other words, God is only one being. There are not three Gods. There is only one God.

So then what’s the difference?

The only difference between them is the way they relate to each other and to the creation.

We see it in creation: God spoke the creative words, the Son, the eternal Word of God carried out these creative decrees. The Holy Spirit was active in moving or hovering over the face of the waters- sustaining and manifesting God’s immediate presence in his creation.

We see it in redemption: God the Father planned redemption, sent the Son into the world. The Son obeyed the Father and accomplished redemption (which means, God the Father did not come and die for our sins, neither did the Holy Spirit).

Then after Jesus ascended back into heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son to apply redemption to us. Role of the Holy Spirit is to give us regeneration, new spiritual life, sanctify us, empower us for service. In general, the Holy Spirit brings to completion the work that has been planned by God the Father and begun by God the Son.

The salvation that the gospel promises portrays the Father as choosing, Christ as redeeming, and the Spirit as renewing—all in a unified work by distinct persons in a single Godhead.

The Trinity Relates to Each Other:

The Father is the author of salvation

The Son is the actor of salvation

The Spirit is the applier of salvation

How the Trinity Relates to Us:

We call God our Father

We call Christ our Brother

We call the Spirit our Comforter

What does this study reaveal?

Not only an exercise in ontology as an end in itself but...

The three persons of the Godhead are involved in one great mission: The revelation of God to humanity and the redemption of humanity for God

John 20:21-22 “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Covenant with God, relationship with the Trinity is taking on His Mission. The Trinity’s Mission is our Mission. Christ’s mission and is our mission. His life is the source and shape of our own.

The Spirit-enabled demonstration to the world that the Father sent the Son, offering the world forgiveness of sins and eternal life with faith in the Messiah.

The Holy Spirit enables me to be that husband, father, friend, pastor that is glorifying and a witness to Christ being sent and forgiving and filling.

I am closing where I began - full circle. That increasing in knowledge of God leads to increase in Christ-likeness, that leads to increase in participation in the mission of God.

He is not enabling me to build my own kingdom, he is not enabling me to worship and sacrifice at the altar of Josh Lotzenhiser, he will not enable a life that isn’t worth living. He is enabling me to live a life of bringing glory to God.

Romans 12:21 “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

See, I felt that overcoming evil this week… it hit close to home - uvalde and ukraine. See empathy puts us in their shoes. But we are not called to empathy alone, we are called to action.

Though redeemed and citizens of heaven, we believers still live in a world soaked in evil. We must battle constantly against the tendency to conform our behavior to this world (see 12:2). But more than the purely negative quality of resistance to evil is needed. God calls us to be active in using the grace of the gospel and the power of the Spirit to win victories over the evil of this world.

2 Corinthians 13:14 “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”