Deeper Waters

Hello everyone. Tonight, we’re going to resume our study of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re in the Pauline epistles now and we’ve got the first four behind us. Right now, we’re in Ephesians 4. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at the first six verses with an emphasis on the last verse.

¹As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. ²Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. ³Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. ⁴There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— ⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Paul is making a plea for unity in the church, something that I think we all agree is definitely needed. However, why are we to have unity? Unity is to be for the right reasons. The Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim to have unity, but then it’d be easy to have unity if you simply considered all people who disagreed with you to be non-Mormons or non-Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Christians are allowed some leeway in their freedom to believe. You must believe some things to be a Christian, but you don’t have to believe everything correctly. You don’t have to have the correct eschatology or soteriology or view on charismata or the age of the Earth. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek to have the correct views, but they are non-essentials. As long as you don’t deny essentials, you are fine.

And one of those essentials, of course, is the Trinity which we’re studying now. I recently had someone say to me, “Well some Christians study the Bible and they don’t believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.” There is no such thing. If they deny the Trinity, then I have no basis to call them Christian. Let it be known I’m not saying that they have to affirm the doctrine however. A small child saved does not have to quote the church creeds to be Christian, but I believe within that child’s salvation is an implicit knowledge of the Trinity that he has yet to study.

This unity also comes because there is one Lord. There is Jesus Christ. He is the Lord. Paul saying one Lord could very well be referring back to the Shema. To include Christ in the Shema as he did in 1 Cor. 8:6 would be to show that for Paul, Christ is within the divine identity. He is fully God.

Notice that this doesn’t detract from the deity of the Father either. Paul could say that Jesus is the one Lord and the Father is the one God. Both are terms of deity. The Lordship of Christ and the Father being God are both connected. Paul is using different terminology to distinguish the two, but he is not taking away from the deity of either.

Why the unity then? Because of the Trinity. The one Father and the one Son and the one Spirit are in a unity. Since the Trinity is in unity, then the church which is to represent YHWH on Earth also ought to be in unity.

Are we?

Hello everyone. Today we are going to take a break from our Trinity study to honor those who died 8 years ago right here on American soil. I never will forget that day. I was in Bible College in the chapel when we were getting ready to start a sermon and one of the other professors came in and said that one of the World Trade Center Towers had been hit by an airplane. Now you hear that at that time and you think “My! What a terrible accident! How could that happen?” We had the sermon then and after that, we were told that the other tower had been hit by a plane.

We all knew then it was no accident.

I remember us sitting in the lobby and just watching the news. We were waiting for the inevitable. Those towers were going to fall. We knew they were. When it happened, we were surprised and yet not surprised. We knew it was coming, but the stark reality that it had come finally came on us. We know now about people who jumped out of the 80th story rather than be burned alive in the inferno rising up.

You wonder about those people. Maybe a young man who had married in the past year left behind a lady who was already a widow in her 20’s. Maybe a pregnant mother and her unborn child died that day. Maybe a mother’s only son died that day and now she has no one to care for her in her old age. Maybe a young engaged woman died before she could celebrate marriage to an eager man.

Everyone who died was someone’s son or someone’s daughter. No one was an unknown. They were all known to someone even if not to the world. There are several gaping holes in peoples’ hearts still left behind. Many of us had checked immediately to see if those we knew in the area were okay. I was on Instant Messenger soon after the events talking to people I knew in the area and asking if they were okay.

May we never forget what happened that day. We cannot take the joy of living in this country for granted. This is one reason I keep an eye on what goes on politically in this country. I want this country to be a shining beacon. I believe this country started off great, with a foundation in trust in Almighty God. If we move from that foundation, which we are doing, I do not believe that our country can last, and I do not like the way I see my country going. I hope more people will rise up who will remember that day.

After all, while we remember the many who went to work and never came home, we also remember those who died but weren’t expected to die there that day. We remember the countless heroes. No doubt, some were in the towers. Some were willing to die so that others could get to safety. Several however were emergency officials who rushed into a blazing inferno of death only so they could save any who were trapped inside. They went in and many of them knew that they would never go home and see their loved ones again, but they went anyway.

We should honor such people. We should look at ourselves and see if we would be willing to pay the ultimate price or not. That’s what our founders did. They faced the greatest army in the world at the time and won because they believed in their God-given rights. Today, we face the enemy of Islamic terrorism. Today, we can stand up.

We Christians need to do this in the marketplace of ideas. Every Christian needs to know the basics of their faith. They need to know how to defend it. They need to know what difference it makes. They need to know how to articulate it. However, let us not forget the final agreement, they need to know how to live it.

Let’s also keep this in mind. We mourn the loss of 3,000 innocents who died that day, and we should. Let’s not forget that a bloodbath takes place here in America however every day, as women enter abortion clinics and more than 3,000 are murdered every day. How much longer will the silent holocaust go on? Only as long as we let it. We Christians have the truth. We have the majority. We just do not seem to have the action or the motivation. Innocent babies are dying every day. What more motivation do we need?

Today, and tomorrow, and for the rest of our lives, let us follow in the tradition of the heroes of 9/11, where we will be heroes for those who are dying. Of course, I am not advocating non-Christian means, but we must do something. We cannot stray far from God and think that we will survive.

Hello everyone! Welcome back! We’re continuing our Bible Study with the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re in the Pauline epistles and right now, we’re in the book of Ephesians. Btw, for our intents and purposes, we are treating this book as a Pauline letter even though that is still debated between scholars. Tonight, we’re going to be in Ephesians 3:14-19.

¹⁴For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Something great about Ephesians is all the praise that takes place in it. We really need to learn the act of praise. Too often when I go to pray, I don’t find praise to be what’s common. We can praise God through music in church services, but how often do we praise him with the words of our mouth minus music or just praise him with our minds?

First, Paul talks about the Father from whom the whole family in Heaven and Earth takes its name. Our identity comes from God. Some translations render this as fatherhood. What it is is that we can often say “I am a father and I have a son and I suppose the Trinity is like that.” We should not think like that. The reality is that the Father has a Son and fathers on Earth having sons are kind of like that. He is the archetype. We are merely poor attempts at copying.

It is also the prayer of Paul that we would be strengthened through the Spirit. There we have the third person of the Trinity. What’s the end result? The end result is that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

Notice that if this is the case, then both of these persons are being granted omnipresence. How else can it be that Christ and the Holy Spirit would dwell in our hearts unless they were seen to not be limited by time or space. If that is the case, they are deity. Again, keep in mind we have a Trinitarian text here.

Notice also the love that is emphasized in the next passage. It is the love of Christ. What view must Paul have of Christ if he is going to say the love of Christ instead of the love of God? The terminology he uses implies a boundless love. It is a love that cannot be measured.

What is the goal? To be filled with the measure of the fullness of God. What fullness? The preceding verses tell you. You don’t get the nature of God. Instead, you get the love of God. May you ever abound in his love.

To be in the love of God is to be Trinitarian.

Hello everyone. We’re back to our regularly scheduled Trinitarian Bible Study. Yes. We are correctly in the book of Ephesians. I appreciate the lack of a hard time on that one. Tonight, we’re going to be in the second chapter. Again, rather than just give one verse, I wish to give the context of the passage under study. We’ll be looking at verses 14-18, but our main emphasis will be on verse 18.

¹⁴For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Paul is describing the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, which was still a problem in that day. Christ was the one who came and broke apart the barrier that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles, which is a theme that we will see throughout this epistle. In him, the two are united.

What Christ did on the cross was to take the Law and meet all of its requirements. In so doing, he set up himself as the new man uniting the children of Abraham by faith and those that were of Jewish descent. Now all are united. Of course, I don’t mean that all who are of Jewish descent are saved in saying that.

The cross was the instrument that God used to put to death the hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles. There is no longer any favored position between the two. Now naturally, there was still some hostility going on as Paul was writing this letter. However, there is no longer to be any basis. Jews are not to look down on Gentiles or vice-versa.

Christ came and preached the message of peace. What was that message? It was not just that Gentiles and Jews can have peace with each other. It was that Gentiles and Jews can both have peace with God and both of them have peace with God on the same terms.

The end result? We have access to the Father by the Spirit. What a beautiful Trinitarian text we have here! We can reach the Father through the Son, by the Spirit. This is a consistent pattern that we find throughout the New Testament. When something happens it is the Father as the agent through the Son by the Holy Spirit. It is how God has come down to reach us. In the same way, it is how we are to reach back up to him.

Once again, we are reminded of how important the Trinity is in Christian doctrine. The Trinity is essential to our salvation in the way of God reaching down to us. It is also essential when it comes to how we reach back up to him.

Let us continue to rejoice in the triune God.

Okay. I’ve got the egg on my face. I goofed. In my haste to get to the Kenotic passage, I accidentally skipped over Ephesians, which I realized this morning. Well we’re going to backtrack today and go back to that book. There’s a lot of stuff to cover in it and my urgency to get to the kenotic passage will have to wait. *Grumble Grumble.* Oh well. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? (Silly question however. You can laugh at everyone else which is tres amusing.)

So, we’re going to finish Philippians later and cover Ephesians for now and we’re going to be in the first chapter and looking at verse 3:

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

This isn’t the only place this shows up in the text. Look at verse 17:

¹⁷I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

So what is going on in these passages? Is Paul denying the deity of the Son by saying that the Father is the God of Jesus?

This is again the error of unipersonalism that we have seen many times before. The assumption is that God is one person and in this passage, God is spoken of as the Father and since Jesus is not included in that, then obviously, Jesus is not God. It follows logically indeed if you accept unipersonalism. The question remains, “Why should we?”

What we have going on in these passages right now is rather a revelation about relation. The opening passage of Ephesians after the customary greeting and verse 3 is really one long sentence. The Greek experts I have spoken to have consistently spoken of what a run-on sentence it is. The grammar really doesn’t fit, but Paul is just so overwhelmed with praise that it seems he just can’t contain himself.

This chapter is about how God has revealed himself in Christ to bring about the salvation of mankind. Notice also that the Holy Spirit is not absent in the whole chapter. He is there and plays a part in salvation as the down-payment for us that seals us until the day of redemption. The Holy Spirit is the proof that God will keep the promises that he made to us in Christ.

What we sorely miss in the area of the Trinity so often is the wonderful relationship between the persons. We don’t realize how they interplay together so well. What is going on with the Father and the Son and the Spirit?

I recently had someone on the forum I debate on speaking about the core concept of God among Christians being “Maker of Everything.” I agree that God is the maker of all that is apart from him, but I don’t think this is the key concept. God is not just who he is in relation to creation, but who he is in relation to himself. I fear if we focus on just us, we miss that wonderful relationship in the Trinity we can learn so much from.

Again, my apology for the screw-up. We shall continue tomorrow however.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters. I hope many of you have been enjoying this look through the Bible as we study the Trinity. I had a friend describe it to me as a commentary on the Trinity. I’ll also state what I told him. I am being blessed just as much as I hope you are. This look through the Scriptures has been an eye-opening time for me. One thing you learn when you do any kind of teaching is that you learn more than you teach those you are teaching.

Tonight, we’ll be in the book of Philippians for the first time. We will definitely spend a lot of time looking at the Kenotic passage in the second chapter, which we will start tomorrow. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at verses 18b to 26 of chapter 1.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, ¹⁹for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. ²⁰I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. ²¹For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²²If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. ²⁵Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.

Paul is overflowing with his obsession with Jesus in this one. Go through and look how many times Christ is referred to. This is all he can talk about in this chapter as he seeks to glorify Christ. There is much we can get out of this chapter by looking at it.

Note that we have first the Spirit of Jesus Christ. This could be a reference to the Holy Spirit or just a way of referring to the person of Christ. If the former, we have some inter-relationships in the Trinity being revealed. If the latter, then we have an idea of the omnipresence of Jesus.

Note also the exaltation of Christ in this passage. Paul wants Christ to be exalted above all be it in life or in death. This is also one of the interesting passages that shows our continued existence after death. Paul equates death with being in the presence of Jesus in some way. Do we know exactly what this way is? No. But we must believe it for the Scriptures speak it.

What is the result of his ministry? Fruitful joy in Christ Jesus. Once again, for Paul, it is all about Jesus. Now is this explicitly Trinitarian? No. But let us consider what drives a Jew to speak this much about someone who would be just a man. I can think of no such thing. It makes perfect sense to believe that Paul saw Jesus as God.

I hope this has been helpful. Tomorrow, we shall start looking at the kenotic passage.

Hello everyone. We’re going to continue our study of the doctrine of the Trinity as it is revealed in Scripture. I’d like to point out something based on something I heard this morning. I heard a speaker talking about a doctrine and told us how it was more systematic than biblical. There won’t be any explicit statement of the doctrine. I was concerned with that statement as to say a doctrine is systematic is not to say it is biblical. Very few doctrines are based on explicit statements. Your soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology, etc. will often be based on the whole of Scripture. So it is with the Trinity. Now our task would be a lot easier if there was one chapter and verse, but there is not. We look at the Bible as a whole.

Tonight, that look at the whole will wrap up the book of Galatians. I’d like to read Galatians 6:11-18.

¹¹See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!¹²Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. ¹⁴May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. ¹⁵Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. ¹⁶Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God.

¹⁷Finally, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

¹⁸The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.

These are the words that Paul is to have written with his own hand, as he often used a scribe for his writing. I find it extremely relevant that he refers to Jesus as the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a phrase that has not been used since the opening of the gospel.

What all does this entail? It entals first off that he is deity. He is the Lord and this has been seen to be the understanding of Paul thus far in the epistles. To call Jesus Lord was to include him in the divine identity and give him ontological equality with YHWH.

Now we do realize that it is a heresy to deny the deity of Christ, but we often forget that it is just as much heresy to deny his humanity. If you have a Jesus who is not God, he cannot save. If you have a Jesus who is not human, he cannot save as he cannot be our representative that grants us that salvation. Jesus had to be made like us in order to bring about our salvation. The name of Jesus was common in the time of Jesus and this reminds us that Jesus is fully human.

The final term is Christ. We are to be reminded that Jesus is the Christ, the messiah. All of these would have been relevant in the Galatians debate. Jesus as Lord would have meant that he is the source of salvation. Jesus as human would have meant that he was the one who bore the curse for us. Jesus as Messiah would have meant that he was the fulfillment of the promise of salvation to Israel.

For Paul, all three are needed. We need a Jesus who is Lord, human, and messiah. Should we settle for anything less?

Hello everyone. We’re going to return again to our Trinitarian study tonight as we continue through the book of Galatians. This book is largely about the message of salvation and who exactly is included in the new covenant. However, Christology is still a large part of that. A Christ who is less than divine can not give a divine salvation. Our passage tonight will be Galatians 4:1-7, with an emphasis on verses 4-5. Let’s go to the text:

¹What I am saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. ²He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. ³So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. ⁴But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, ⁵to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. ⁶Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” ⁷So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

Salvation wasn’t an accident according to Paul. There was no plan B for God. This was the plan from the beginning. Salvation would be by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul has been demonstrating that point by saying that not even the Law overcame this.

Not only was Christ the plan from the beginning, when he came was also part of the plan. The world was in a state of looking for salvation. There was a universal language of Greek and there was a travel system of roads set up for people to get from place to place easily. The world was in the perfect position to receive a savior.

Note that the Son was sent. The Son pre-existed, which is a high Christology for a letter that is early and is definitely Pauline. Pauline doctrine of the Son has no place in it for an adoptionistic theory. The Son was there in the bosom of the Father.

While we know the Son was sent, we also know he went willingly, and there’s no reason we should think that these two contradict each other. We can picture the Son offering himself to go and save fallen humanity and then the Father preparing the way so that the Son could fulfill his mission.

What did happen? The plan worked. Salvation came at the fulness of time when it was meant to be. What about those who came before and what about those who never heard? Those are separate blog posts, but I will say at this point that the judge of all the Earth will do right and we who believe the Scriptures and in the God who is revealed in them can simply say that we trust him in that regards.

Yes. The salvation of man was no accident and the Son had always been willing. What are we doing for such a great savior?

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters where we dive into the ocean of truth. Tonight, we’re going to be continuing our study into the doctrine of the Trinity. We will be looking at a passage tonight that’s not about the Trinity, but brings up a point that I’ve brought up numerous times, and that’s the point that Christ became a curse for us on the cross. Our main verse will be Galatians 3:13, but we will look at verses 10-14 to get the surrounding context.

¹⁰All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” ¹¹Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.” ¹²The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, “The man who does these things will live by them.” ¹³Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” ¹⁴He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Paul is talking about how righteousness comes about through the Spirit and faith in Christ and not through works of the law. His point is that in the law, everyone who is hung on a tree is said to be under God’s curse, and this is what happened to Christ. Christ became that curse for us.

I’d like you to picture being a Jew in the first century and going to talk to another Jew about this new movement you’ve joined called Christianity. He starts asking you questions about this person called Jesus and what his life story was and then you get up to the passion week.

You: And so Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final conflict between him and the Sanhedrin.

Friend: And he overcame them?

You: Actually, no. They crucified him.

Friend: Oh. Nice talking to you.

You: Wait! Don’t you want to hear anything more?

Friend: He was crucified. That’s all I need to know.

This is why Paul said in 1 Cor. 1 that this is a stumbling block for Jews and Gentiles both. How could a king be crucified? How could the Messiah hang on a cross? How could God come and have that happen to him? That’s not the way a true leader and messiah acts.

We need to really grasp this. Once the crucifixion point came in the story, most people would be turned off. Yet that is when we need to see the miracle of the resurrection. That was when God took all the claims that Christ made and vindicated them.

The resurrection explains it all. Either all that Christ said was false and he was the most wicked man who ever lived and the crucifixion was the most righteous act of all, or what he said was true and he was the greatest man who ever lived and putting him to death was the most wicked act of all.

Yes. He took on the curse for us. He didn’t leave it. That is what makes Christianity unique and that is why we must take the claims of Christ seriously.

Are you?