Tag: trinity

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godhead Meditations

Knowing the Triune God in Relationship

When God wanted to be clearly known, He describes Himself in a relationship. These four passages stand out.

  • Hebrews 1:1-2 Though God spoke in many ways…in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son
  • Matt 11:27 No one knows the Father except the Son…
  • John 5:20 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand
  • John 17:24 Father…you loved Me before the foundation of the world

God is, within Himself, in an eternal relationship of Loving Father to Given Son with the Living they they  of Life between them. Careful: don’t start making lessons of God from your relationship with your dad. That’s taking your situation and creating a picture of God: The Bible called this making an idol!

Rather, know that God in all of His fullness and creativity, decided to speak like how we speak to babies who don’t understand. Sometimes you say “goo-goo-gaga” and sometimes you draw a stick drawing. God created the human relationship of Father to children so that it reflected something, not perfectly, of the greater eternal relationship in the Godhead.  One where Jesus is considered “only begotten of the Father” ( John 1:14) yet uncreated (John 1:1-3).

Now , consider these three passages:

  • John 20:17 I (the Son Jesus)  go to my Father and your Father, my God, and your God.
  • Romans 8:14-17 We cry Abba Father through the Holy Spirit
  • 1 John 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God

Be happy! Consider that in this relationship with the triune God, we know “Our Father” by the Spirit and the Son calls us brothers as Our Father calls us His children!

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godhead Meditations

Knowing that The Triune God Needs Nothing

If we understand that God, in all three persons, is also perfect in all his attributes, then we would also understand that he doesn’t need anything. God describes Himself this way:

  • Acts 17:24-25 He doesn’t need temples. He doesn’t need to be served by human hands. He doesn’t need anything. He is the one who gives life to everything.

This means that God, in all three persons, is in Himself and of Himself. He has no moment of needing anything or anyone outside of Himself. God didn’t need companions or relationships or complexity to ponder since He has all of that in Himself in all three persons. In fact, what this tells us is that when God decided to create or give life or give gifts, He did it only because He wanted to.

  • Rev 4:11 You are worthy, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power because you created all things and because of your will they were created
  • Col 1:16 For in Christ, all things were created: all things have been created through Him and for Him
  • Job 26:13 By His breath, or by His Spirit, God adorned the heavens

Be thankful and joyful! We don’t have a weak God who needed toys to keep him busy but rather an all-powerful God who decided, out of His grace and giving, to create others to enjoy Him forever!

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godhead Meditations study

Knowing That God, In All Three Persons, Is Love and Holy and…  

There is a mistake of saying that God is mainly Love or mainly Holy. This mistake tames God in our merely human eyes because we can easily understand people like that—who are mainly loving. What God shows in Scripture is that God, in all three persons, is the glorious definition and perfection of all his attributes.

  • The Father loved the world and gave his Son to satisfy God’s holy punishment of sin (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; Rom 8:3)
  • The Son only does the things He sees the Father doing so he loved us and gave Himself for us as the one who rightly can condemn sin (John 5:19-20; Eph 5:2; John 5:22; Rom 8:34)
  • The Holy Spirit, as knowing the mind of God by being God, and taking the place of the Son on Earth, creates fruit in the lives of God’s people by creating love, holiness, purity, and godliness (John 14:16; 1 Cor 2:11; Gal. 5:22; 1 Peter 1:16; 1Thes 4:7)

This tells us that God, in all three persons, is: love, holy, truth, light, life, (and so on) all at the same time! There is no person in the Trinity that is love while another is holy, and another is judge. There is no attribute that is more indicative of who God is in His essence, than any other. God is love through His holiness and He is holy through his love and both through His truth and all through His life and life through all. That is a confusing sentence but also starts to reflect the bigness of God.

God is not loving or holy or truthful because there is some concept of love, or holiness, or truthfulness out there in space. God is the definition and example of all His attributes. We can only love or tell the truth or do right or be kind because God, in His essence, known in all three persons, is the meaning of those things! Christian, shudder! Stand back in awe! Shut your mouths in utter wonder! This is the basis of the constant Biblical refrain: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!

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godhead Meditations

Knowing That God Is Right in His Self-Revelation As Triune

There is a saying that goes like this: he or she who doesn’t learn their heresy is doomed to repeat it. A heresy is a damnable belief that is outside of the boundaries of Christian teaching. It’s not a difference of opinion on the form of baptism. Did you know that the major false religious and Christian heresies make their deepest mistakes on the nature of God?

  • The Mormons, rightly believing that there are three divine persons, deny that He is One God—they think each person is an individual God! (Deut 6:4).
  • The Jehovah Witnesses, believing that the Father is God, deny that Christ is God thinking he is merely the chief angel of God. (John 10:30; Acts 20:28; 2 Peter 1:1)
  • The Jews and the Muslims, rightly believing that there is only one God, deny that God is Three co-equal co-eternal divine persons in one eternal essence. (John 6:27; John 1:1; Acts 5:3-4).
  • Oneness Pentecostals, rightly believing that there is one God, deny that God is three persons instead saying that the One God has three different roles. God is not merely acting in three different ways, or has three different jobs. The Father is a real person who is not the Son; and the Son is not the Spirit; and the Spirit is not the Father ((John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7)

Embrace the truth of this teaching and worship God as he really is. No need to make up different language or come up with different illustrations—let God be true and all men liars! (Rom 3:4)

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godhead Meditations

Knowing that God is Three in One

When God reveals his oneness and plurality in Scripture, he ultimately says five facts. Feel free to look up these passages and meditate on them:

  1. There is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4)
  2. The Father is God (John 6:27; Rom 1:7)
  3. The Son is God (John 1:1, 14)
  4. The Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4)
  5. The Father is not the Son, and the son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7)

For two thousand years, the church has used this definition: God is a trinity.  God is one in his essence (or being) AND three co-equal and co-eternal persons. This is hard to understand because God is unique! None of us know what it is to be three persons in one essence. Each of us is one person (one mind: one WHO) in one human being (one WHAT). God is special. He is three persons (three eternal minds; three WHOs that existed forever) in one God (one WHAT).

This is massively helpful when we consider that the one God, in all three persons, was involved in our creation and our salvation and our eternal preservation.