The Triune Nature of God
On the topic of Christian theology, it is important to answer the very first and most important question, who is God? Further, can we even really know God? We begin here, but the topic itself is so vast that to answer this question would require multiple posts. To be honest, God is so vast that I suppose if I wrote on nothing else for the rest of my life I would still only scratch the surface. Think of this initial post then as an introduction rather than an exhaustive study. That being said, God is knowable, He has revealed Himself through His Word and through the person of Jesus Christ. In this way we can affirm that God is fully and completely knowable.
First and foremost, God is One in essence, yet exists eternally as three Person: namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The traditional term for this existence is called the Trinity, the Biblical term is Godhead (Col. 2:9, Acts 17:29). Perhaps the clearest scripture to deal with this thought is 1 John 5:7 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are One.”[i]
Since we know that God is immutable (that is unchangeable) we can determine that God has always existed as three persons. This revelation is clear from the beginning, in Genesis God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...” (Gen. 1:26a, emphasis mine). At the same time, we know that there is only one God, as related to us by the prophet Isaiah “before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.” (Isaiah 43:10b)
Throughout the ages this view has been challenged, most notably by the early heretic Arius who declared that the Word was not co-eternal with God, but instead was a created being.[ii] This interpretation denies the very words of the passage in question “in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and in Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1-3) This dangerous deception reappears throughout the centuries, as well as “Modalism” (the idea that God existed in three different modes as one person, sometimes appearing as the Son, or the Father, or the Holy Spirit).[iii] This ideology denies the idea that God exists as three eternal persons, thus stripping the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of their identities. In scripture we see that the Father sent His Son and sends the Holy Spirit. We see a submission from Jesus to His Father, so that Jesus is the Son of God in terms of relationship, but at the same time eternally existent with Him. We see this clearly on the event of the Baptism of Jesus, when Jesus came up from the water the Holy Spirit was seen descending on Him as a dove, and we hear the voice of God say, “this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”
There are several groups that attack the Biblical idea of the Godhead in multiple ways, even if they might use the phrase Godhead. For some, they made Jesus a created being, and while they might see Him as first in creation, He is never the less a created. This is the error that many, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses fall into, where they claim that Jesus is the first among the created beings, but isn’t Himself God. This is an important distinction, when Thomas declared “My Lord, and My God!” he was worshipping Jesus as the creator and he did so without correction.
Multiple times Jesus was worshipped as God, and never once did Jesus correct anyone as to the properness of that worship. If He were being worshipped falsely we can be assured that Jesus would be quick to correct the offender, and this would have been recorded for us, for worshipping the creation over the creator is a serious offense in the eyes of God.
The Oneness Pentecostals have revived Modalism in recent years, whereby they teach that Jesus was just one mode in which God manifested Himself to us. The trouble with this ideology is that it denies the individual and on-going work of the three. While all three share the same attributes, they don’t all fulfill the function and duty. For example, only the Son was nailed to the cross, and it is the Holy Spirit who convicts the world of sin. Further, neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit has a body but are both Spirit, while Jesus exists in bodily form. To deny this aspect of the mysterious Godhead robs us of a deepness in understanding the relationship of the Godhead, and our relationship to Him.
Thirdly the Mormon view asserts that Jesus is the literal flesh and blood son of a flesh and blood heavenly father. According to Mormon doctrine it is the Father who is our object of true worship, while Jesus became God by living a perfect life just as his father did before him. There are so many errors in this view that to untangle the wholeness of it would require a separate blog. But for the moment it is obvious to say that this view resembles a kind of Hinduism whereby there are multiple gods. This is polytheism, and while the Mormon Church denies this by saying that they only worship the God of this world, they can not deny that they believe there are multiple gods (even enumerable gods) who are likewise receiving worship and praise on other planets.
The Godhead (or Trinity) is a concept that has revealed itself throughout scripture. While we may struggle to wrap our minds fully around this truth meditation on it brings a peace of mind, and even a certain amount of clarity over time. Louis Berkhof reminds us that “the whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.”[iv] In this Doctrine is the understanding of the real Christ. If Jesus is any less than God manifested in the flesh than we undermine the fullness of what happened of the cross. For is Jesus, as the Lord of lords and King of kings, stepped down from His throne and took the wrath of God for us as God than it is an awesome display of His mercy and grace toward us. At the same time, if Jesus is the same person as the Father than there would have been no way for Jesus to cry out on the cross “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” The reality is that Jesus did suffer on the cross, but it wasn’t the pain of the crucifixion that caused Him to cry out, it was the righteous wrath of God being poured out.
That’s the reality of the importance of this doctrine. Without the Godhead all that Jesus had done is laid bare and mute. Jesus, as our judge, laid down His life to pay for our sin debt that we owed Him, and His suffering was at the hand of His Father who did judge the Son according to the sins of all those who would believe on Him.
Comments
Post a Comment