Deeper Waters

We’re going through the New Testament with the goal of coming to a deeper understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ve reached the epistles and we’re going through the book of Romans. One difference in the epistles is that you get spelled out a lot more the doctrines that aren’t explained in the gospels. If you want to understand the atonement, for instance, the gospesl show you event while the epistles tend to be the works that explain the event. There is some speaking of the doctrine in the gospels, but most of it is found in the epistles. Tonight, we’re in Romans 3 and we’ll be reading verses 21-26.

²¹But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²²This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— ²⁶he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

The righteousness of God is what saves us. That is found in Christ Jesus. So what does it mean to us to have Jesus as savior. How can this be? There are a number of truths we must believe before we come to him as savior.

First, we must believe he can forgive us, as was seen in Mark 2, but he can only forgive us if we have sinned against him. The priests in the Old Testament pronounced forgiveness but only with sacrifices present. Jesus pronounced forgiveness regardless. The Pharisees understood that only God can forgive sins. When we tell Jesus was have sinned and ask his forgiveness, we are assuming that he can grant it, a belief of deity.

Second, we believe that he is capable of bearing our sin. In saying this, we realize that he is not a sinner himself and lived a pure life set apart from sin. We also realize that he is not a mere mortal who died for our sins as a man could not cover the cost for every man.

We realize that he is the holy one of God as well. By trusting him, we are affirming all his claims including his resurrection. We are affirming the righteousness of God in his life. This is what substittionary atonement is. It is his life for ours.

We can imagine how a Jew would have seen this passage. A verse like Isaiah 45:21 would have come to mind.

Declare what is to be, present it—
let them take counsel together.
Who foretold this long ago,
who declared it from the distant past?
Was it not I, the LORD ?
And there is no God apart from me,
a righteous God and a Savior;
there is none but me.

Ultimately, we are implicitly recognizing Christ as deity when we call him savior. There is none that can do it besides God, and Jesus is our savior. Consider it this way.

Jesus is the only savior.

The only savior is God.

Jesus is God.

Of course, we understand this in the Trinitarian sense in that Jesus is fully in the divine identity. We do not understand him as being the Father.

In conclusion then, when we speak of Jesus as our savior, implicitly, we are speaking of him as our God. Keep in mind as a point to consider that the cults regularly deny who Jesus is and then regularly also teach salvation by works ultimately. The two go hand in hand.

Hello readers. Tonight we begin going through the epistles. For many of us, the epistles are a favorite part of the New Testament because we thrive on teaching so much and that is what we get in the epistles. It’s been a part I’ve been looking forward to getting to for some time and we will be spending a long time here. After all, there are 21 books to go through. I’m also just going straight through the epistles, Pauline and non-Pauline. It doesn’t really matter to me. Tonight, we’re going to begin at the beginning, which is usually a good place to begin, with Romans 1:1-6.

¹Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures³regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, ⁴and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. ⁵Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.⁶And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

We’re going to begin at verse 3, but I wanted to get the earlier context in. This is one place in the New Testament where we see the two natures of Christ upheld, something that was stated clearly at the council of Chalcedon. Christ is one person with two natures and he will always have a human nature and a divine nature.

For the human nature, he gets his Davidic descent from that. I contend that he got it through birth via his mother and he got it through legal descent via Joseph. It is just as essential to our salvation that Christ be a man as it is that he be God. We are right when we strongly emphasize the deity of Christ and defend it. Let’s not make the extreme error however that we teach his deity to the exclusion of his humanity. He has to be 100% man and 100% God.

However, through the Holy Spirit, he was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection. The idea is not that the resurrection made him the Son of God. It is that he was proven to be the Son by his resurrection from the dead. The resurrection has always been central to the Christian faith as it vindicated all the claims of Christ, something that we often lose sight of.

Note also that this says through the Holy Spirit. Thus, in this one verse we have Jesus being declared to be the Son of God through the Holy Spirit by his resurrection. In one verse, we have all three persons of the Trinity together. Redemption was not an event that involved just the Son. It was a work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, each doing their own part.

It is also through him that we have grace and the right to be apostles and call the Gentiles to faith. This is probably to be understood as the grace of apostleship. It is by the authority of Jesus that Paul is an apostle. All people are called to come to obedience and the people Paul is writing to are among those who have accepted the call.

Once again, we are reminded of how this is stated so matter-of-factly. Paul does not have to give an argument for this. It is understood. The identity of Christ would be seen as basic Christian doctrine and yet today, most Christians cannot defend basic doctrine against the cultists. It’d be surprising to me if most even knew the basic doctrine of who Jesus is.

This is how Paul has opened his letter. What else does he have about who Jesus is in the letter? We’ll see as we go on.

Hello everyone. We’re continuing through Acts again in our study of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. We’re going to wrap up that book tonight in chapter 28 by looking at the last few verses. We’re going to emphasize the Trinitarian points and then we’re going to end with a message about the spread of the gospel in the book of Acts. To be sure I am getting the whole context, I will quote verses 23-31:

²³They arranged to meet Paul on a certain day, and came in even larger numbers to the place where he was staying. From morning till evening he explained and declared to them the kingdom of God and tried to convince them about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. ²⁴Some were convinced by what he said, but others would not believe. ²⁵They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul had made this final statement: “The Holy Spirit spoke the truth to your forefathers when he said through Isaiah the prophet:
²⁶” ‘Go to this people and say,
“You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.”
²⁷For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

²⁸“Therefore I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen!”

³⁰For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. ³¹Boldly and without hindrance he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Note the 25th verse where we are told that the Holy Spirit spoke. This was the same passage referenced in John 12, which indicates that this was probably a favorite one amongst the early church in their evangelism and Paul used it here as the book closes with him preaching the gospel in Rome.

Our point that we wish to notice is that the Holy Spirit is the one who spoke. The Trinitarian dynamic is well under way as the Holy Spirit is seen as a person with authority. It’s also noteworthy that Paul is speaking to a Jewish audience who doesn’t seem to contradict any of his statements on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This is important to emphasize since in Trinitarian apologetics, we can be eager to defend the deity of Christ and sadly, the Holy Spirit is forgotten. His deity and personality are just as essential.

Notice when Paul quotes the first passage, he is very pointed and makes the pronouns into “you” as if to say “You are the ones spoken about in this passage.” This is a pesher kind of fulfillment of text where one event symbolizes another event. As the people were obstinate in Isaiah’s day, so they were in the day of Paul.

However, Luke does speak of the gospel going to the Gentiles and ends on a good note. The passage properly translated ends with the word for “unhindered.” Luke wants us to have one message as we close this book. The gospel was still going out and it wasn’t going to be stopped any time soon. In fact, about 1,950 years have gone since then and the gospel is STILL being spread and more than ever today.

Do we still have the obstinate people also? Yes. We do. Let us not have them stop the spread of the gospel however.

Tomorrow, we shall begin looking at Romans.

Hello everyone. We’re back to continue our study of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Scriptures. We’re in the book of Acts at the moment. We’ve been going through trying to find clues for the Trinity, although trying isn’t the best word as the Trinity is everywhere in the Bible. Today, we’re going to be in Acts 22:17-21.

 ¹⁷“It happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I fell into a trance,

 ¹⁸and I saw Him saying to me, ‘Make haste, and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about Me.’

 ¹⁹“And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves understand that in one synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You.

 ²⁰‘And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’

 ²¹“And He said to me, ‘Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.'”

The account here is Paul before the crowd in Jerusalem after he has been accused of bringing Gentiles into the part of the temple where they were not supposed to be. Paul is giving his defense of what he is doing and in doing such, he is recounting the events of what happened to him on the Damascus Road. I invite the reader to read the whole chapter so they can be entirely certain of the context.

Paul describes going back to Jerusalem and being in prayer and then seeing “Him.” Who is “Him?” There’s no reason to believe this is anyone besides Jesus himself, but notice how the conversation goes between Paul and Jesus as we look into this dialogue.

Jesus tells Paul to make haste and escape. The people in Jerusalem will not accept the testimony Paul has to make about Jesus. The interesting aspect of this one is that Paul’s testimony was going to be about Jesus. He had already become the focus of the Christian message.

Paul addresses Jesus and refers to him as Lord. We have no reason to believe Paul is speaking to the Father for earlier in this chapter, he has referred to Jesus as the Lord in the dialogue that happened when Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus. He not only addresses Jesus as Lord but speaks about imprisoning and beating those who believed in Jesus. The distinguishing mark early on was that the Christian was one who believed in Jesus.

Next, Paul speaks about the death of Stephen and tells the Lord that he was the Lord’s witness. Stephen was then a witness of Jesus. Keep in mind that all this is happening in prayer which would seem to indicate that Paul is praying to Jesus or at least speaking to Jesus in prayer. Stephen is identified as the witness of Jesus instead of the witness of YHWH, an interesting concept considering Isaiah 43;10 refers to being a witness of YHWH, a verse the JWs identify themselves with. (Yet one wonders if they could identify themselves as Jesus witnesses, which is what was to happen according to Acts 1:8.

What’s the point in all of this? There was a shift early in the history of the church and practically immediate where Jesus was put on the same level as YHWH. It has been said that this would be the earliest way Christians would see Jesus. He would be included in the divine identity. The material we see in Acts certainly lends itself to that belief.

We shall continue with this tomorrow.

Hello readers. We’re continuing our look through the New Testament as we hope to come to a deeper understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine of God that sets Christianity apart from all other religions. We’ve been going through the book of Acts. Tonight, our look will not focus on Jesus, which it usually is, but will rather focus on the person of the Holy Spirit, though we will mention Jesus also. We’re going to be in Acts 21 and looking at verses 10-14:

¹⁰After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. ¹¹Coming over to us, he took Paul’s belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’ ”

¹²When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. ¹³Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”¹⁴When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”

The focus here is on verse 11. Agabus was a prophet who was mentioned earlier and now he shows up again to make a prophecy. What is interesting is the source of the prophecy and the way the source is acting. The Holy Spirit says this. Agabus is getting a prophecy and saying that the words are what the Holy Spirit is saying.

In biblical understanding, God would always be the main source of prophecy and to attribute a prophecy to the Holy Spirit speaks of how the writer of the text viewed the Holy Spirit. As we have seen in Acts 5, the Holy Spirit was seen as deity. When we got to Acts 13, we saw even more signs of this and saw that personal actions were attributed to the Holy Spirit. As we look at this text, we do not find anything that goes against our earlier thesis, but rather we find more support for it which leads to questioning the JW idea of the Holy Spirit being a force.

This is further emphasized by the idea of the way the prophetic utterance is spoken as it parallels the way the Old Testament prophets spoke in saying what the Lord said. Agabus came and put the Holy Spirit on the same level.

Note also the word about Jesus in verse 13. Paul is ready to die for the name of the Lord Jesus. This points to a high Christology in Paul in that he is instead of speaking of the name of Jesus rather than the name of YHWH. If you’re a Trinitarian, this makes sense in that you have Jesus on the same level as the Father and can say due to ontological equality that you are ready to die for the name of Jesus. It doesn’t make sense for an Arian. It’s interesting how the name of Jesus is emphasized so much in the NT but not the name of YHWH. (Which also interestingly never occurs in the NT.)

We shall continue our study tomorrow.

We’re continuing our study of the doctrine of the Trinity tonight. We’re going to be in the book of Acts and studying a passage that is often controversial. My main source for this will be Murray J. Harris’s work “Jesus as God” which goes into much more detail than I can on the topic. One reason he goes into much more than I can is that Harris is highly skilled in the Greek and I am not. He knows the works of the scholars better than I and anyone wanting a more in-depth look is advised to go to Harri’s work. We’ll be looking at a verse he examines, Acts 20:28, but getting the whole context by reading Acts 20:25-31.

²⁵I have gone from place to place, preaching to you about God’s kingdom, but now I know that none of you will ever see me again. ²⁶I tell you today that I am no longer responsible for any of you! ²⁷I have told you everything God wants you to know. ²⁸Look after yourselves and everyone the Holy Spirit has placed in your care. Be like shepherds to God’s church. It is the flock that he bought with the blood of his own Son.  ²⁹I know that after I am gone, others will come like fierce wolves to attack you. ³⁰Some of your own people will tell lies to win over the Lord’s followers. ³¹Be on your guard! Remember how day and night for three years I kept warning you with tears in my eyes.

I had to search through a number of translations until I got to the CEV which agrees with the view I will be representing tonight. I do not believe this is a Trinitarian text, but having said that, I don’t believe it goes against the Trinity either.

I think one of the great dangers would be the idea of the blood of God. As Harris points out, we do not have references to God dying on the cross or God being resurrected. We could have a similar problem with the idea of God’s blood. After all, we as Trinitarians do not believe God died. We believe a person who had the full nature of God died on a cross. God never died, but Jesus died in his humanity in that he experienced the separation of his soul from his body.

This could get us into the area of patripassianism. The idea is that the Father suffered through the Son when the Son died. I am a defender of the impassibility of God in that I do not believe God is the receptor of emotions in that he responds to them in a temporal sense. I believe he is experiencing any emotion or activity in the eternal now. God is not responsive. He is ultimately proactive in that he acts knowing how we will respond to any actions. It’s a surefire recipe for a headache!

The idea of the blood of God would be problematic as it could lead to a bodily idea of God. For this reason and those within the text, Harris goes with the idea that the main thrust of the passage is that God has acted in purchasing the church through the blood of his Son. He doesn’t rule out that this could be a reference to Jesus as being God, but just sees it as unlikely.

Should a Trinitarian be bothered? Not in the least. We have hundreds of different passages we can use. As a Trinitarian however, I believe I must be honest and if I don’t see something taught in a passage of Scripture, I will not say it is there. This is something we should all learn. We should not accept something because it supports our view unless we believe it is a true argument. We should not reject something on the same grounds unless it’s based on a true argument.

We shall continue tomorrow.

We’re going through the New Testament trying to come to a deeper understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. We’re in the book of Acts right now. Acts does have less in it in the way of doctrine and more on the history of the church, but the doctrine is still in there as we are seeing. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at Acts 19:13-17.

¹³Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” ¹⁴Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. ¹⁵(One day) the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” ¹⁶Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

¹⁷When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor.

What we have going on here is that Paul is in the city of Ephesus doing ministry and there are some Jewish boys there who are wanting to get in on the action and see Paul using the name of Jesus to exorcise demons. They decide that they’ll do the same thing only to find that they have no authority to do such.

Note that demons are bowing to the name of Jesus recognizing him as the authority. This is all throughout the gospels as well as the demons constantly recognize Jesus as the holy one of God and believe when they see him that their judgment has come upon them.

This should also be a warning to us about those who seek power. There are many supposed miracle workers in the church today. (Many of them I’d actually say are outside the realm of orthodoxy.) Too many sincere Christians are taken in because they have not been trained. How many people might have been taken in by exorcists just because they saw signs?

Fortunately, the people of Ephesus saw the results and it actually made them respect the name of Jesus. It was seen as one to not take lightly. The demon did not deny knowing Jesus and he even stated that he recognized Paul. He thought his exorcists were not worth mentioning however and as much as we are against demonic activity, one can’t help but read this story and think about what it would have been like for these pseudo-exorcists to get pummeled by this one guy.

Let’s notice the main part at the end of this chapter however. The name of Jesus was held in high honor. This again is where I see the casualness of who Jesus is mentioned. There seems to be no need to explain who Jesus is or why his name is held in honor. It’s mentioned in a matter-of-fact way.

It is not YHWH. It is Jesus. The conclusion to be drawn? There was already a high Christology at the time of the writing of the book of Acts. (Which I date to around 62 A.D.) in which Jesus was seen as equal with YHWH in ontology.

We shall continue this tomorrow.

We’re going to be continuing our study tonight of the Trinity. We’ve been going through the New Testament trying to come to passages where we can get ideas about this doctrine. We’re going to another one tonight as well as getting some idea about what kind of debater Paul was. We’ll be in Acts 17 and reading verses 16-20.

¹⁶While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.” ²¹(All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

The focus I want to get at here is verse 18. When the foreigners thought Jesus was speaking about foreign gods, it was because they heard reference to Jesus and the Resurrection. For us, we wonder how resurrection could be seen as a god, but to the Greeks, it most likely was seen as the name of a female goddess, which could be seen as a consort for Jesus. The point I wish to bring out mainly in reference to who Jesus is is that he was the focus of Paul’s teaching. It was about Jesus and who he was and that he rose from the dead. What makes a Jew go from talking about the work of YHWH to the work of Jesus? I wonder….

I’d like to use this chance to bring out some practical advice however from the mention of Paul in Athens. Paul was debating with the Stoics and the Epicureans. The Stoics could be compared to the pantheists of today and the Epicureans were the materialists. However, Paul was debating them and based on what we read, we have reason to believe Paul knew what he was talking about. After all, he got invited to speak before the Areopagus, which is something that doesn’t happen if you’re an idiot.

While Paul is speaking to the philosophers there, he doesn’t quote Scripture. Scripture is fine. I have no problem with it of course. However, pagans do not accept Scripture as an authority and when Paul spoke, he used their authorities. He was familiar with the writers that they used and he quoted them back at them.

Now some say Paul despaired of this technique. D.A. Carson sees this as simply an example of post hoc in his work “Exegetical Fallacies.” There is no connection between the two and Paul’s mission was not a failure. He did have a convert and there are references today to the work of Paul that he did at this place in Athens.

What’s the message we can learn? Be familiar with the ideas. If you’re going to speak to the philosophers, know their language. I find this ironic as I just got a call from my Dad while I was sitting here typing this telling me he was looking up philosophy in the encyclopedia and wanted to know about some names he came across.

If you want to go talk to the scientists, learn science. I don’t really do scientific apologetics often because science just isn’t my forte. I’m thankful for people who do that however. If you like science and you like apologetics, by all means go for it.

The bottom line is that Paul was an educated man and we need to get past this idea that Christianity is anti-intellectual. God does not want his followers to be dumb. He’s not calling for all of us to be leading scholars, but he is calling us to love him with our minds. Learning to think well should be the work of all Christians.

We’re going to get back to our Trinitarian study after spending yesterday at the movies. We’re going to be continuing through the book of Acts. We’re going to be moving ahead to chapter 16 and looking at verses 6-7 in the missionary journeys of Paul. Our question tonight will focus on the relationship of Jesus to the Holy Spirit. Let’s go to the text.

⁶Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. ⁷When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.

In this passage, Paul and his companions are wanting to do some evangelism in some areas, but along the way, they are stopped by the Holy Spirit somehow. How? We don’t know because the text doesn’t show us. At this point, some Mormons might want to show up and say that is the burning of the bosom. That would be up to them to show. I would be inclined to think it a prophetic utterance of some kind as such has been shown to happen in the Book of Acts. However, I am skeptical of the Mormon position because I do not believe it wise to base a doctrine and what could possibly be a method. It is built too much on silence.

However, when we get to verse 7, we find more evangelism being planned and we find this time that the Spirit of Jesus is preventing Paul and his companions from doing evangelism. What exactly is going on in these texts?

It’s interesting to note first off again the casualness with which these things are spoken of. There is no explanation in the text probably because it was seen to be understood by those who were familiar with such concepts reading the texts. We modern Westerners today can often have a problem with concepts of the ANE which shows us that we need to be more educated about their time as well as ours.

My thinking is that these are really referring to the same entity. The Holy Spirit is the one that is at work, but the Holy Spirit I believe takes on a role where he does submit to Christ, which seems fitting as he is said to be the silent person of the Trinity. What it means is that Jesus was addressing the work of the apostles through his Holy Spirit.

I wish to make it clear that we must avoid oneness thought. To say Jesus works through the agency of the Spirit is not to say that Jesus is the Spirit. What the Oneness person would have to show is that the person of the Son is actually the person of the Spirit and I do not believe that a likely interpretation of the text. If someone wishes to present that argument, they will have to give the reasons for that and also they would need to show the problems of Trinitarian thought as Trinitarians can easily interpret a verse like this without doing damage to the text. Can the Oneness do the same? I do not think so.

Hopefully this clears up any confusion some readers might have. Tomorrow we shall continue going through Acts.