By
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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Broadcast
Notes
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LINK to CFRA broadcast of
Sunday, September 6th, 2015)
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Today's Program is sponsored by the generous support
of Sandy Davidson. Thank you, Sandy!
"The Holy Trinity"
TWO
KEY IDEAS ARE CENTRAL TO THE TRINITY AND THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN UNDER ATTACK:
1.
THERE IS ONLY ONE
GOD (MONOTHEISM)—A BELIEF HELD BY
CHRISTIANS,
JEWS, AND ISLAMS ALIKE:
·
DEUT. 6:4 “HEAR, O ISRAEL:
THE LORD OUR GOD, THE LORD IS ONE.”
·
EXODUS 20:3
“YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.”
·
JAMES 2:19
“YOU BELIEVE THAT THERE IS ONE
GOD. GOOD! EVEN THE DEMONS BELIEVE THAT—AND SHUDDER.”
ALTHOUGH THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD (MONOTHEISM), GOD IS DESCRIBED IN A PLURAL
SENSE:
·
GENESIS
1:1 “IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED”: THE HEBREW NOUN ‘ELOHIM’ [THE WORD FOR GOD]
IS PLURAL BUT THE VERB IS SINGULAR
2. Jesus is divine (Jesus is God)
2
POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO THE CONCEPT OF THE TRINITY:
1.
THE WORD “TRINITY” DOES NOT APPEAR IN BIBLE
·
Our Bible never argues God. It assumes and reveals Him. How could it argue for God’s existence when
it is God Himself speaking through it?
The same applies to the concept of the Trinity. It is assumed, not argued. It is self-revealed.
·
There are other concepts in the Bible that have
been given a name that doesn’t appear in the Bible: for instance, the omnipotence
(“all-powerfulness”) of God is clear from Scriptures (e.g. Job 38 and 39)
2. TRINITARIAN ARITHMETIC: 1+1+1 = 3; THAT IS, THE THREE-IN-ONENESS OF
GOD DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO THE HUMAN INTELLECT—JUST BECAUSE IT IS
INCOMPREHENSIBLE DOES NOT MAKE IT UNBELIEVABLE!
·
there are many things we humans find difficult to
understand: take for example light,
which has particle, wave, and quantum properties—difficult to understand, but
true
·
St. Augustine (who wrote fifteen volumes on the
Trinity) said “If you can understand it, it’s not God!”
THE TRINITY EXPLAINED
·
the Trinity is not a theological definition: it is the very nature of God
·
the word “Trinity” is derived from the Latin word
“trinitas”, which means “threeness”
·
defined in simplest terms: “The union of three divine figures, the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in one Godhead.” (Webster Dictionary)
·
J. I. PACKER:
“They are not three roles played by one person (that is modalism), nor
are they three gods in a cluster (that is tritheism); the one God (“he”) is
also, and equally, “they,” and “they” are always together and always
cooperating, with the Father initiating, the Son complying, and the Spirit
executing the will of both, which is his will also.”
COLOSSIANS 1:15-20
1. CHRIST
SABOTAGED
2. CHRIST SUPREME
3. CHRIST
SUFFICIENT
1. CHRIST SABOTAGED
● Paul did not write in a vacuum—he was writing
to stamp out the lies that were circulating in this early church
● some Colossians held the
docetic belief that Jesus was NOT fully human
1
JOHN 4:2 “2By
this you know the Spirit of God: (A)every
spirit that (B)confesses
that (C)Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is from God;”
● some Colossians denied
the full deity of Jesus Christ
in Colossians 2:9 Paul affirms that the very
essence of deity was present in totality in Jesus’ human body…Col. 2:9 “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity
lives in bodily form”
● a central tenet of Christianity
is that Jesus was both FULLY
HUMAN and FULLY DIVINE
● C. S. LEWIS, Screwtape
Letters: “The ‘historical Jesus’ is always to be encouraged…In the last
generation [1940s], we [Satan and his demons] promoted the construction of such
a ‘historical Jesus’ on liberal and humanitarian lines; we are now putting
forward a new ‘historical Jesus’ on Marxian…lines…The advantages of these
construction, which we intend to change every thirty years or so, are
manifold. In the first place, they all
tend to direct men’s devotion to something which does not exist, for each
‘historical Jesus’ is unhistorical…In the second place, all such constructions
distract men’s minds from who He is, and what He did…We must make Him solely a
teacher.”
2. CHRIST SUPREME
A. IN CREATION (VERSES 15-17)
1:15 “He is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
Re. image
of invisible God
* Hebrews
1:3 “The Son is the radiance of God’s
glory and the exact representation of His being.”
* John
14:7 “If you really knew me, you would
know my Father as well. From now on, you
do know him and have seen him.”
* George Buttrick, former chaplain at Harvard
University, recalls that students would come into his office, plop down on a
chair and declar, ‘I don’t believe in God.”
Buttrick would give this disarming reply: ‘Sit down and tell me what kind of God you
don’t believe in. I probably don’t
believe in that God either.”
Re. firstborn of all creation:
* “first-born” is a term of preeminence and
dignity
* for
example, in Psalm 89:27 it is used of David.
God says, “I will make him the first-born, the highest of the kings of
the earth.”
* some
religious cults take this statement to mean that Jesus is part of creation
* Jesus is
not part of the creation; He is OVER all creation…He is the Creator—this
further reveals His divinity
* JOHN
3:16 “For God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.”
* C.S. Lewis
explains in Mere Christianity: “When
you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets
little beavers…But when you make, you make something of a different kind from
yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver
builds a dam…What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man.”
1:15-16 “For
in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have
been created through him and for him.”
* This
reminds of of Romans 11:36 “For from him
and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever!”
1:17 “He Himself
is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
* the
Divinity of Christ is further revealed:
Christ is before all things—HE IS ETERNAL!
* Revelation
21: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
Beginning and the End.”
* Christ is
preeminent over all creation because he made it and he holds it all together.
B. IN THE CHURCH, THE NEW CREATION (VERSE 18)
1:18 “He is
the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the
dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”
NIV: “in everything he might have the supremacy.”
3. CHRIST
SUFFICIENT
A.
IN HIS PERSON:
GOD WITH US (VERSE 19)
1:19 “For in Him all the fullness
of God was pleased to dwell”
B.
IN HIS WORK:
GOD FOR US (VERSE 20)
1:20 “and through him God was
pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by
making peace through the blood of his cross”
* C. S. LEWIS, MERE
CHRISTIANITY: “A man who was merely a man and
said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level
with a man who says he is a poached egg—or he would be the devil of hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or
else a madman or something worse. You
can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and
God. But let us not come with any
patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us.”
CONCLUSION: AT THE
CORE OF EVERY HUMAN BEING IS A LONGING FOR A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE TRIUNE GOD
- Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him.”
- God’s image does not refer to anything physical but rather to something spiritual because God is not material (so not physical resemblance)
- ONE SCHOLAR: It means we are made for relationship with God: we are made in the image of God so that we can relate to god personally through worship and prayer and loving relationships
- ANOTHER SCHOLAR: God created man in His own TRINITARIAN IMAGE:
1.
we have a physical essence, which parallels
Jesus, God the Son
2. we have a spiritual essence, which parallels
the Holy spirit
3. and we have a yearning
to be in union with our Heavenly Daddy
- SINCE WE WERE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF THE TRIUNE GOD, IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT THE TRINITY meets our most fundamental psychological needs as human beings.
- NICKY GUMBEL: It is the triune god who meets our most fundamental psychological needs as human beings. Psychologists argue that we all need three things:
1. we need a
point of reference: we need to know who
we are, where we have come from and where we are going [GOD THE FATHER]
2. we need a role
model [JESUS CHRIST]
3. we need a
facilitator to help us to get there [HOLY SPIRIT]
·
As ST. AUGUSTINE wrote in his classic work
entitled, Confessions: “You have made us
for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Prayer:
Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that you are the one true God. We thank You, Father, that you’ve sent us
your Son, Jesus Christ, who died for us and made peace for us and reconciled us
to Yourself.
And we thank You that You didn’t leave us as orphans, that You left us
and sealed us with the Holy Spirit, to empower us, to walk, indeed, run the
race before us.
My prayer, Lord, is that you will equip the listeners to understand the
depth and width of your love and to be able to explain the Holy Trinity to
anyone who asks. I ask this in your Trinitarian name; the name above names, the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
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