Deeper Waters

Hello everyone. We’ve been going through a study of the doctrine of the Trinity in Scripture. We’re in the Pauline epistles right now and tonight, we’re going to be in the book of 2 Corinthians. We’ll be in chapter 8 and looking at verses 8-9.

⁸I am not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. ⁹For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.

First off, this passage should be very revealing to the prosperity preachers who think that Jesus was rich when he walked this Earth. I am no friend to such people. Christ never promised us riches on this Earth. If anything, he promised us suffering.

The problem with prosperity teaching is also that it expects too much too soon. I do believe in prosperity teaching in the sense that God wants his children to prosper. My problem is that the teachers of the prosperity gospel want it on their terms instead of on God’s terms. A lot of that prosperity won’t come until after the resurrection. We have much of it now however in the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

A great theme in the teaching of Paul however is that Christ is to be our example in everything including the way that we live morally. Paul bases this on the uniqueness of what Christ did and how for our sakes he became poor though he was rich. To what is it that Paul is referring here?

This will show up more when we get to the Philippians 2 passage that is known as the kenotic passage, but notice here that Paul is also not introducing teaching. In fact, all that he says at this point is based on prior teaching. Paul does not have to convince his readers that the Son existed in this state prior to the incarnation. It is assumed that Paul knows that they know that Christ came from a position of glory.

What was this position of glory? At the minimum, we would definitely have to say at least pre-existence. However, this is relevant for our purposes for if Jesus is fully God, then he must have certainly had pre-existence. (In fact, pre-existence of everything) It is difficult to even say God has existence when in reality his nature is existence.

Paul’s contrast to the Corinthians then in giving is that they ought to be like Christ. The incarnation was the supreme model for all living for Christians. We must walk as Jesus walked as John will say later on. The supreme willingness of Christ to go for those less fortunate than himself and to give of himself for their own good is to be the model of Christianity in giving, not the give-to-get idea that the prosperity teachers pilfer off.

What does this tell us? It tells us that we also ought to be generous with our money and give what we ought. A lot of churches today are struggling because many Christians aren’t giving of what they have to support the ministry of Christ. We are to be in the business of esteeming others as better than ourselves. It’s what Jesus did and he is the example.

Hello everyone. We’re going to be continuing tonight our study of the doctrine of the Trinity in the book of 2 Corinthians. The Pauline epistles are always fascinating places to go for doctrine and we haven’t been disappointed! Note also that the majority concensus by far will grant you that Paul wrote this book, its predecessor, Romans, Philippians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. We’re in good territory. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at 2 Cor. 5:6-10.

⁶Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. ⁷We live by faith, not by sight. ⁸We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. ⁹So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. ¹⁰For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

Paul is here speaking about the hope of the resurrection. Christians will go through trials and persecutions. However, we are not to be discouraged about what we’re going through. We are to instead look forward with hope for no matter what goes on, we are under the sovereign reign of Christ.

This brings up the issue of the judgment seat, which is called the Bema in Greek. Paul would have been familiar with such a scene being before Gallio earlier. This was in the 18th chapter of Acts and Gallio ruled around 52 A.D.

The Bema was not a simple little thing. It was a huge seat. Paul would have been small in comparison to what was going on and he would have been looked down on from where Gallio was sitting. It was no doubt an image that stuck in the mind of Paul and something that he brought over here when he wanted to talk about appearing before the judgment seat of Christ.

Wait! What was that? The judgment seat of Christ? Paul didn’t mention the judgment seat of YHWH? Isn’t YHWH the one who is the judge of all the Earth? (Genesis 18:25) Why is it that Paul is speaking about Christ instead of YHWH?

Keep in mind that this would be within 25 years most likely of the resurrection event and already, in a text that is accepted by the scholars as genuinely Pauline, Christ is being referred to in terms of judgment that are akin to what we would normally think of as YHWH’s position.

This is something we should keep in mind also as we often reduce Christ to making him our buddy and someone we can hang out with so casually. Yet here, Paul treats him as his judge. You don’t treat your judge lightly. You treat them with respect and awe. Yes. We are to love Christ, but we do not love him the same way that we love anyone else. He is different. He is Lord and God and we are to bow before him.

We shall continue our study tomorrow.

Hello everyone. We’re back here at Deeper Waters ready to dive into the ocean of Scripture and continue our study of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re in the New Testament now and we’ve reached the book of 2 Corinthians. We’re going to be reading verse 1-6 of the fourth chapter tonight, with a special emphasis on verse 4:

¹Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. ²Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. ³And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Paul is here speaking about his ministry and how he is straight-forward in what he is doing. He has no need of deceit as he does his evangelism. This is contrast to the false apostles that he is dealing with in this letter who are quite deceptive and seeking to directly cause division in the church.

He has been about the work of truth and if someone doesn’t understand the work, it is not because Paul is hiding what he’s teaching, but because of the hardness of their hearts. Part of this is attributed to the devil who is blinding the hearts of unbelievers and putting a veil over them to hide the true light, a possible reference to John 1:4?

Paul calls Jesus here the image of God. It could be Paul is having in mind the apocryphal work of the Wisdom of Solomon which says of Wisdom in 7:26:

26: For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.

How long does one have an image with them? As long as someone is there, they have an image. The image of God is just as eternal as he is. Christ is that image in that he alone perfectly shows the nature of God, but yet, we are made in that image, which I think is important in understanding what it means for Christ to become human.

Wisdom is seen as the goodness of God and earlier in 1 Cor. 1:24, we saw Jesus was the power of God and the wisdom of God both. It is a constant thread that seems to play throughout the gospel in that Jesus is constantly seen as being the attribtues of God. He is the Truth, Wisdom, power, etc.

Can we understand the Trinity entirely? No. We should seek to study it as much as we can and learn as we can about the doctrine, but we also have to realize that some aspects will be beyond our understanding. Yet this shouldn’t surprise us. Who would want a God that was entirely understandable by finite minds?

Let us live with the dictum of Augustine. Credo Ut Intelligum. I believe that I may understand. For now, we see in the Scriptures that Christ is the image of God and that we are made in that image and one day, we will conform to the moral character of that image. We will never be that image as we will never have ontological equality, but we will reflect him as far as we can as finite humans. Isn’t that good news?

Hello everyone. We’re continuing our Bible Study and going through the book of 2 Corinthians. Our goal has been for all of us to end up having a deeper knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ve gone all the way up to this point and we will continue until we finish the book of Revelation as well as some final pointers afterwards. Tonight, we’re going  to be in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians. We will read verses 12-18, with an emphasis on verses 17-18:

¹²Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold. ¹³We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away. ¹⁴But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. ¹⁵Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. ¹⁶But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Paul is in this passage contrasting the old covenant with the new covenant. The Old Testament system was Moses and the New Testament system is Christ. Christ is the one who takes away the veil, which could also be a reference in the Pauline writings to the destruction of the veil of the temple at the crucifixion of Christ. When that veil was removed, the way to God was opened for all in the new covenant. It is not Moses who is our mediator, but it is Christ.

In the Old Testament system, the Law was the way God interacted with his people. In the New Testament system, it is the Spirit. In the new revelation then, when God interacts with us, he does so through his Spirit. In this way, the Lord is the Spirit.

Now we have to be careful in this case. After all, are we going to say that this is a one-to-one identification? Isn’t “Lord” the way that Paul usually speaks of Christ and is he here saying that Jesus is the Holy Spirit, which would be modalism?

As we have said with Paul referring to Christ as God, it is not his usual one, but that does not mean he must do so exclusively. Throughout this passage, the Lord has referred to the Father. Paul has simply used Christ to refer to Jesus.

However, in saying such, Paul is ascribing a high role to the Spirit. The Spirit can be seen as God making himself manifest to us. Now how this works out will be something for charismatics and non-charismatics to work out amongst themselves. God’s presence has often been seen in the Spirit, such as in the Shekinah glory in the temple.  Now, that presence has come to be with us in the Spirit. This doesn’t mean that the Father or the Son are the Spirit in a one-to-one way, but that since the Spirit bears the full nature of God, we can say that God is with us by the Holy Spirit.

We shall continue our study tomorrow.

Hello everyone. Tonight, we’re starting the book of 2 Corinthians in our study of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ve been going through the Pauline epistles after all which is a fascinating part of Scripture to go through. We’re going to be looking at a passage that isn’t overtly Trinitarian, but is interesting for all three persons of the Trinity are mentioned. We’re looking at 2 Corinthians 1:18-22:

¹⁸But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” ¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas^[b] and Timothy, was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” ²⁰For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. ²¹Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, ²²set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Paul is talking about his change of plans in this passage and how they have been in a flux lately. However, he decides to use this opportunity to move into ministry. (Quite a move. I recall someone telling me I could start a philosophical conversation if they brought up dental floss, which when they did, well….) Paul is always on the eye for a chance to evangelize.

Paul tells the Corinthians however that God is always faithful and his plans never change for they are all fulfilled in Christ and Christ does not change. This should tell us about the nature of Christ in the mind of Paul, something that we will examine more when we get to a relevant passage in the book of Hebrews.

It’s also important that Christ is seen as the fulfillment of the promises of Israel. Are we to think that God put everything on a mere man? That all that he does relies on what one person did who was just a man? Especially due to all the glory that this one gets who would be just a man.

This Amen to what has been done is spoken to the glory of God. The acceptance of Christ in the life of the Christian is that which brings glory to God. It is because of God that we can rely on Christ and it is through God that we stand firmly secure.

Of course, Paul does bring in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the one through whom we are sealed. It is a Trinitarian relationship going on. We are to stand firm in Christ. Once we do that, God puts his authority behind that pledge. It is because of the vindication of Christ in the resurrection that the pledge is fulfilled.  Once that is done, we are sealed in the Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity work when we come to the covenant and acknowledge our need for salvation.

This is another example of a Trinitarian passage. They show up in Paul often. We’re not hitting all of them, but I figured we should do this one tonight. We shall continue going through this book more tomorrow.

Hello everyone. We’re continuing our study through the Bible on the Trinity and tonight, we’re going to finish up the book of 1 Corinthians and note how Paul finishes up this book. In the last few verses, Paul refers to Christ several times in quite strong language. Rather than just merely type about it, let’s go to the text and then comment on it. Our text will be 1 Cor. 16:22-24.

²²If anyone does not love the Lord—a curse be on him. Come, O Lord!

²³The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.

²⁴My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Let’s begin with the first one. For Paul, all who are Christians are to love the Lord. If not, they will be anathema, which we will see is a play on words. When Paul speaks of a curse in Galatians, he is referring to the curse of death. Could he be saying the same thing here? Could he be stating that if one is not in the Lord then they are cut off from life itself? (And I mean it in a qualitative sense. I do not hold to the idea of annihiliation.)

The next verse speaks of the coming of the Lord with the word “maranatha.” Hence, we have “anathema maranatha.” Whereas some were to be cursed for not being in right relation to Jesus, others were blessed and were in fact looking forward to the coming of the Lord. The terminology used here is not to be ignored as the language itself speaks of deity, but could there be something more?

Yes! Now I’m not going to go into eschatology here as I don’t even go into my own eschatological stance, but the biblical writers of old were always looking for the day of YHWH. This was the day when YHWH would come and defeat his enemies. It was an act of deity in judging a nation that had gone against him.

Paul is using similar terminology here and is instead saying that he is looking forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus. The coming of Jesus in the New Testament is to be compared to the coming of YHWH in the Old Testament. When we go through the Old Testament and see passages where the coming of YHWH is taught, we need to consider that in the time of the New Testament, that early Christians used such terminology to speak of the coming of Jesus.

Paul closes with the love being in Christ Jesus. It is noteworthy that also in the Old Testament that believers were all joined together under the covenant of YHWH. In the New Testament, Paul doesn’t hesitate to apply the same sort of idea to Jesus. There is no mention of God here, which does not mean that Paul is disrespecting him, but rather showing the high view that Paul has of Jesus in that the love of Jesus is the love of God and being in right relation with Jesus is being in right relation with YHWH. In fact, Jesus is the last word that Paul writes in this epistle. Paul wanted to end on the best note and he did. He has spoken of a curse on those who deny the Lord, the looking for the coming of the Lord, the fellowship of believers in the Lord, and then the name of the Lord is his last word. Could Paul have been telling what the belief was about Jesus in the early church perchance?

Tomorrow, we shall begin the book of 2 Corinthians.

Hello everyone. I hope everyone has had a good Saturday night and if you’re reading this at another time, I hope things have gone well for you whatever day it was. We had a good visit with a Jehovah’s Witness today on the question of what happens when we die. Quite good. Do pray for him as I think the light is beginning to dawn and pray for us that we will have the right words of wisdom to say.

Tonight, we’re going to continue our Trinity study by going to 1 Cor. 15. This is going to be again looking at one of the supposed anti-Trinitarian passages. (No passage is anti-Trinitarian after all.) We’re going to go from verse 20-28, but we want to emphasize 28. I wish for all of you to see the surrounding context.

²⁰But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. ²²For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. ²³But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. ²⁴Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ²⁵For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. ²⁸When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Then Son himself will be made subject? Leon Morris’s commentary on 1 Corinthians says that this presents a difficulty, for it seems that one person of the Trinity is inferior to another. I have a great respect for Morris as a commentator and NT scholar, but I just think he’s wrong here. Perchance he means an apparent difficulty rather than an actual one. If so, then we have no problem.

First, we’ve noted several times that submission of person does not mean inferiority of nature. We’ve already had the Son submit in the act of the incarnation. Since that has happened, why should any other submission be a problem?

However, I note that there is a problem for the Arian from the text itself. Then the Son will be made subject. Then. What does that say about the Son now? Paul is speaking of this as something unsual in fact. If the thought was that the Son was always lower than the Father by nature, then we shouldn’t have any surprise at all at this passage. There would even be no need to mention it. It would be understood. Paul makes it a point.

What is his point? His point is that this is the kingdom of Christ we’re talking about and Christ is going to present that to the Father. Some theologians have said the creation was a gift from the Father to the Son. If that’s the case, we could say that this is the Son giving the new creation to the Father. It would be like the parable of the talents where one who had the gift came back with more. That’s speculation of course, but it’s something to think about.

And what would be the point of this? That God would be all in all. In other words, that the Father would be supreme. Mankind and the rest of creation fell away. This is going to be their restoration. This is going to be their glory. The Son will himself submit, but he will not lose his nature. This passage says nothing about the nature of the Son, only that he submits. We’ve already seen that that is not a problem.

We shall continue our study tomorrow.

I hope everyone enjoyed our discussion of the visit to the Kingdom Hall. I thank Fred for his comments and I thank JB for putting a link up to the article from his own blog and from his great comments on it. I think it would benefit Christians who do know their Scriptures and want to minister to Jehovah’s Witnesses to go to a Kingdom Hall meeting and see what goes on. (And if you could record one, it’d be great for curing insomnia.)

We’ve been going through the New Testament to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. Our quest has brought us now to 1 Cor. 13, which is known as the love chapter. I won’t quote it as it is a lengthy one. I wish to simply address the concept it speaks about. For those interested, I think the Holman translation does an excellent job of putting it in poetic language. This is shown in a Bible that uses that translation, such as the Apologetics Study Bible.

With the JWs that have been visting us, we were discussing the doctrine of God one day and they asked us what our favorite attribute of God is. Now that’s not a question that I really like to answer, but my roommate decided it’d be good to give some answer so he brought up love. They asked us then how we would define love. I began pondering it and realizing “This is my chance to give a definition that will lead to the Trinity.” However, I could not be overtly Trinitarian. How could I do so and yet capture the beauty of what I believe love is?

I ended up saying “Love is the singular reaching beyond itself into the relational.”

I know it went well because the Witnesses asked me to repeat that and then told me that they thought it was beautiful. I smiled realizing that they had also fallen into a little trap I had set for them and sometime in the future, this could be a reminder. (This is my technique with Witnesses. Get them to agree to something and then later point out “But you yourselves agreed to this.”)

Love was an illustration of the Trinity that goes all the way back to Augustine. In order to have love, you have to have one who is loving, a beloved, and the love between them. This would correspond to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In our world, we see this expressed in the family. (God presents himself to us as male, but Scripture says male and female are both in his image. Femininity is perfected in God just as much as masculinity is.)

What happens in the family with a lover, a beloved, and then the love between them that even results in new life, is what happens in the Trinity. The difference is that for the Trinity, this love is an eternal relationship whereas for us, it happens temporally. The Father has always loved the Son and the Son has always loved the Father and the Spirit has always proceeded from both of them. It is not even accurate to say always for that itself seems to imply temporality. This is the problem not of the concept but of our language being inadequate to fully describe the concept.

The question that can be asked of a monad concept of God is to ask who it was he was loving before he created. If there is no one, then the Father creates out of need for someone to love, which makes him needy which is enough problem, but also makes him temporal as he goes from not having someone to love to having someone to love and to not loving someone to loving someone and not receiving love to receiving love.

This Trinitarian concept also tells us how we are to love one another. We are to love seeking the good of the other above ourselves. Each person in the Trinity loves the other person for who that person is and loves them fully. It was an ancient Celtic tradition that the Trinity was in a dance of love for all eternity and we are created that we might join in the dance. Since we are to have that kind of love in the future, ought we not to practice that kind of love now? Should we not live love that is other-focused, which is Trinitarian, rather than a love simply to meet our own need, an Arian love?

Hello everyone. We’re going to continue again our study through the book of 1 Corinthians in understanding the doctrine of the Trinity. Tomorrow night, I have a little adventure planned and it is in relation to anti-Trinitarians so hopefully if that gets pulled off okay, I’ll be writing about that so expect something interesting. We’re in the 12th chapter of the book tonight and we’re going to be looking at verses 1-6.

¹Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. ²You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.³Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit.⁴There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. ⁵There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.

The first point to speak about is the affirmation that Jesus is Lord. This can be seen in contrast to saying “Jesus be cursed.” What could be in mind? Possibly the situation in the Galatian churches that Paul spoke of in Galatians 3. Either Jesus is cursed due to hanging on a tree, or he is the sovereign Lord due to his resurrection.

It is either one of the two. You cannot say by the Holy Spirit that Jesus is still in the tomb under the curse of God. You also cannot say that he is the sovereign Lord of the universe unless you happen to have the Holy Spirit. Of course, this is more than mere affirmation. This is a lifestyle. The demons believe there is one Lord, and they tremble.

Note how Trinitarian this whole passage is however. The Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit are equated. When we get to the next section, what do we see? We see the same Spirit, the same Lord, and the same God. Paul is thinking in a Trinitarian way.

Paul cannot separate these, but at the same time, he does see a distinction between them. Each person is working in his own way to bring about the process of sanctification. As we see throughout the whole of 1 Cor. 12, it is all centered on Christ as we are his body.

The emphasis then Paul places on Christ gives him the high ranking in his worldview. It all begins with the Spirit working and this is the Spirit of truth that causes us to say that Jesus is Lord. You can recognize someone who is of the church by the way they speak and then their actions matching up with what they speak.

In conclusion, Paul’s argument gives us more evidence of how he saw Christ and once again, we realize that we are confronted with a Trinitarian passage of Scripture. How many more have there been that we just haven’t taken the time to see?