Now, it would be important to realize that I did not say, "men are not sinners".
That would have been foolish and completely inconsistent with the
thrust of the passage. I am simply saying that the poetic passage is
not a point by point listing of the utter depravity of man but rather a
descriptive illustration of how all of mankind, both Jew and Greek, are sinners (Rom. 3:9).
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People are often pictorial in their thinking. We may not
be very good with amorphous concepts which consist only of words, but
when we attach the words to an image the words make sense. For
instance, the idea of a “singularity in space and time whose escape
velocity exceeds the speed of light” makes more sense when described as
a “black hole”. The mind went from a mathematical construction right to
an image of a swirling mass of darkness with maybe a little spaceship
being pulled into the vortex.
God often employs illustrations to get us to understand what he’s
talking about…be it inanimate objects (the tabernacle) or living
advertisements (Pharoah). One particular illustration in the New
Testament has an incredible double-edge. The word-picture paints a
mural of love for husbands to learn from and at the same time forms
part of the greater canvas of Christ’s love for the Church.
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How does one go about explaining something that is so different from us? To try to explain such a thing is to traverse the road of potential major error, this is why we approach the subject at hand with reliance on the Lord for guidance and patience in our weaknesses.
The trinity is a broad subject that would definitely cover more than a single post, book or even library. When one tries to study God in all his greatness and otherness, one sometimes falters at trying to express his attributes and repeatedly one may find him or herself relying on church councils or confessions or doctrinal statements. Those statements are extremely helpful in that godly men studied the word and came up with a concise thought on what they had gleaned.
Error drove the forming of such councils and confessions because they had to respond to what others were saying. So it is the case that the driving force behind some of these confessions would be to prove how another thought was wrong. It is a valid way to progress in the things of Christ?but sometimes we must be careful in relying solely on those councils, catechisms and confessions. Whereas those men sat together and inquired of the Lord in the matter and found themselves fully convinced not one of them had the Lord Himself speaking in their ears or face to face. In other words, these men were interpreting the Word of God just as much as we are?so a study in the trinity must be reliant on the Word of God and not of Men for who knows the inner workings of God but the very Spirit of God?
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