Simply Trinity (part 28)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Our Father in Heaven, we, your children, gather here this morning to study about you, to learn more about our triune

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God, to learn and to have confirmed for us truths that have been wrestled with, bandied about, argued over for centuries.

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And, Father, you've refined the Church's thinking. Help refine our thinking, we pray today.

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Help us to better grasp your love for us and better grasp the work of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen. Well, so,

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I thought I might start, I think we left off right at the end, man, that is a bummer.

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Look, right at the end of chapter 9, I just start with a mystery scripture because I like to do this.

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And for all you parents, if you're not using this scripture, I don't know, you know, what you're doing. Let me go to Deuteronomy 29, 29, and I'll even give you the secret

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Steve translation here in a minute. Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the

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Lord our God. We know that part, right? And here's the Steve translation. I used to say the secret things belong to dad, you know, because that's the way

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I ran the household because I wasn't, you know, always open to discussion.

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But anyway, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.

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So when we read, or, you know, when we talk about things like this, some people go, why are we even doing this?

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Because these aren't secret things, and because the things revealed belong to us, why?

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So that we can study them so that we can know them, so that we can better love God and better keep his law.

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Okay, so number 22, and by the way, if you don't have a quiz from chapter 9,

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I have one or two left if you want to raise your hand, and then we'll get to chapter 10 in a minute.

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And if you've never seen the double consubstantiality, here's a quiz, here's a quiz, there's only one question left, so you won't need it for long.

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The double consubstantiality handout, I probably want to make more, and you're probably like, what's double consubstantiality?

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You'll find out. But we were even using this yesterday morning because it's so handy. I don't know how many of you are...

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We learn a different way, so let me back up for a second. Some of us learn better visually, right, by seeing things.

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Some of us learn better by doing, by being hands -on. Some of us learn better by hearing.

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And so, one of the things, because I'm very visual, and this double consubstantiality handout has just the simplest, in fact, if I had a whiteboard or a chalkboard,

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I would draw it up here because I'm not an artist, but I could do this. You know, just the triangle and the rectangle, and just keeping that in mind helps me so much as I struggle or as I study, as I wrestle with this whole concept of the

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Trinity, understanding what God in the triangle is doing, who he is, and then what

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Jesus Christ, the rectangle, is doing. And, you know, that sounds almost blasphemous, but it just helps me to have different categories, the divine and the human, and to not conflict with those two, not conflate them, not put them together.

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Okay, let's do number 23, and then we'll move on to chapter 10. Number 23, true or false, the

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Holy Spirit brings us into community with the triune God. The Holy Spirit brings us into community with the triune

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God. I have no hints, and I have no coffee.

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Sill, that is exactly what

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I mean, yes, fellowship. I mean, I don't mean moving into the neighborhood, you know, so welcome to the community.

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No, yes, fellowship, exactly. As Anselm once lamented, if the

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Spirit's spiration, quote, is not true, in other words, if he's not eternally spirated by the

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Father and the Son, is not true, the Christian faith is destroyed. So Barrett says, is

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Anselm extreme? It says, not in our estimation, for if the

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Spirit does not proceed, if he is not spirated from the Father and the Son's divine nature, then how can he give to us poor, needy, and helpless sinners all the benefits of salvation the

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Father has in store for us, all the riches of redemption the Son has purchased for us?

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In other words, if the Holy Spirit is not divine, if he's not a divine person, if he's just a force, then how could he possibly grant us everything that the

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Father has in mind for us and that the Son has won for us? As another theologian,

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Bovink, says, if he is a creature, if the Holy Spirit is a creature, he cannot, in fact, and in truth, communicate to us the

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Father and the Son with all their benefits. He cannot be the principle of the new life, either in the individual

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Christian or in the church as a whole. Barrett goes on to say, the consequence of this sad reality is too heavy to bear, too devastating for the

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Christian life. In that case, Bovink continues, there is no genuine communion between God and humans.

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There's no intimate relationship between the two of us. God remains above and outside of us and does not dwell in humanity as in his temple.

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He who gives us God himself must be truly God. In other words, in order to give us the gift of knowing

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God, he has to be God himself. Barrett says, if the

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Spirit does not spirate from the Father and the Son's divine essence from all eternity, if he is not breath, which is what it means, that he's breathed out, essentially, by the

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Father and the Son, if he's not a gift and if he's not love, then the Father and the

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Son have no spirit to give us, no spirit to indwell us, no spirit to sanctify us, and no spirit to bring us into communion with the one who is simply

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Trinity. And so we end chapter 9. Okay, now nobody has chapter 10.

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Are there any questions or comments about chapter 9? Nobody has chapter 10 because I held them, secrets.

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I feel like, you know, an award show where they have this envelope and they hang on to it and then they open it up and reveal it.

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Now chapter 10 can finally be revealed, all the secrets of chapter 10. Yes, I see that hand.

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Yes, that is what essentially, what drove a giant wedge between the

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Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Orthodox Church. I mean, there are other differences now, you know, 1 ,500, 1 ,700 years later, but what initially divided the two was the

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Western Church, which, by the way, wasn't Roman Catholic yet. The Western Church decided to add that,

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I'm going to, filioque clause into the creeds, which said that the

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Father and the Son sent the Spirit, and the Eastern Church disagreed with that.

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So yeah, it's a big issue. People are,

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I think there's a little bit of a move in some areas towards Eastern Orthodoxy.

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And I mean, I could wax eloquent about that, but let me just say this. I think one of the main reasons for it is mysticism.

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People like the kind of the more spiritual, less well -defined aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy.

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And some people also find great comfort in the fact that they have more icons, meaning more idols to worship.

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So I don't really understand that, personally. Okay, inseparable operations,

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I guess maybe we should take a moment to define that. Or, you know what, if we have definitions right here, and if you didn't get these spiffy sheets

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I probably should hand some out next week. Inseparable operations, let's see if he defines it, and he does.

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Since the persons of the Trinity are indivisible in essence, there's one essence, right, that they all share, all three persons of the

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Trinity. They are also indivisible in their external operations. Having the one simple will in common, they perform a singular act in external operations.

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So, well, that was easy. So now that that's clear, let's move on.

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What does that mean? That means this, that we believe in one

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God subsisting in how many persons? Three, that's why we're in Trinity, right, that's why we're studying the

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Trinity. Three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. They're all equal, they all have the same attributes, and what indivisible or inseparable operations posits is that because there's one essence of God, one substance of God, there is one divine will.

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Are you with me so far? The will of the Father is the same as the will of the

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Son, which is the same as the will of the Spirit. There were never any two -to -one votes, there were never any votes at all.

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I mean, imagine, I'm about to step into the world of Star Trek blasphemy here for a moment.

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How many of you are married in here? Okay, now, do you ever disagree with your spouse?

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My wife's not allowed to answer. Okay, imagine for just a moment that you could do that Spock mind -meld thing, right?

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Andrew's like, yes, I can imagine it. He does this whole mind -meld thing, and then his thoughts become the other person's thoughts, etc.

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Now, for a marriage, would that be good? Oh, there are probably moments where we think it would be, right?

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But ultimately, would it be good? No. Because you don't want to have exactly the same thoughts as your spouse, because guess what?

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Sometimes, this is hard for me to say, I'm wrong.

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A hush fell over the room. Sometimes, I'm in error.

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Sometimes, my wife has a better idea than I do. And if we only think the same things, she's like, yeah, just like every minute of the day.

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And if we only think the same things, then what? Then I'm never going to have the benefit of her different perspective on things.

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But, suppose for a moment that you're God. And I'm sure many of us have supposed that for a moment.

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Do you need another perspective? No. Because you know everything.

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You've designed everything. You've created everything. Everything is just as you want it. So, God the

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Father, in eternity past, begets the

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Son of the same essence as He is. And they, the two of them, spirate the

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Spirit. And you say, well, does this create a hierarchy in the

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Trinity? No. Does it create a time when the Father was not a Father? No, because this is all before time.

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This is in a mind -boggling timelessness that we can't fully comprehend.

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But here's the point. Because they have exactly the same will, because they are of exactly the same substance, they do exactly the same things.

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And so, that's what the doctrine of inseparable operations is. And now we're going to come into some controversial subjects.

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And there are going to be things you're going to say to yourself for a moment. Well, wait a minute. What about this, that, and the other thing?

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And a lot of those are going to be answered as we go through this quiz. And some of them will be answered because people have raised their hands and said,

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What about this? And some of the easiest answers are on this sheet.

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Double consubstantiality. The triangle and the rectangle. Because a lot of times what we will see when we think,

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Well, wait a minute. That can't be the Father, Son, and Spirit working together because, for example,

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Well, what about when Jesus suffered on the cross? Is the

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Father suffering? Is the Holy Spirit suffering? Wes is saying no, but how can that be?

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If they all do the same thing, how can that be? If the

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Father, Son, and Spirit all do the same thing because they're the same essence, same substance, and they have the same will, then how is it possible that the

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Father does not suffer on the cross, which is patripassianism, which is a heresy. Write that down.

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Actually, you don't have to write it down because I think it's on the sheet too. Charlie. Okay. So, thank you for using another term that we have to explain.

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What does impassable mean? It's impassable. Thank you. Thank you very much.

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We'll be in the lounge all week. Okay. It's different from impossible, first of all.

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Impassable means not perturbable.

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Okay. I like that. We, his creatures, cannot evoke out of God any particular response, right?

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He doesn't respond emotionally. Okay. Okay. Wes is on the track, but not quite there.

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Because, and we'll get to it in a moment, but just talking about impassability for a moment, the idea is that God doesn't emote, and he doesn't change, and he doesn't, you know, we can't evoke a response.

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No matter what the Bible says, and you say, well, what do you mean no matter what the Bible says? You know, does

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God get angry? Well, the Bible says he got angry with Israel quite a bit, right?

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His wrath was kindled. I just like that phrase. Why would the

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Bible say his wrath was kindled if he can't, if we can't evoke a response?

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Charlie. Okay. His decretive will and his legislative will, two more terms that we have to now define.

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That which he decrees and that which he has ordained from all eternity. But more importantly, I think what we have to understand is when the

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Bible says, for example, God repented. What does that mean? Could God change his mind?

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It's language of accommodation. In other words, you know, so that you creatures can understand, have some kind of picture of what's going on,

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I want you to, you know, I'm going to use language that accommodates your way of thinking.

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But we know that God does whatsoever he pleases, that if we look at Ephesians 1 and other places, we'd see that there is one decree of God where he, from the beginning, again in Isaiah, from the beginning he's laid out what will happen down the road.

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Right. He knows the end from the beginning. There are no surprises to God. Now, getting back to where I was going.

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Andrew. Okay. God's very plain about what he desires, which is what

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Charlie was saying, what he wants, what he commands. And when we violate his commandments, there are consequences.

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Okay. So how is it possible that the son, let's just answer that question, then we'll move on to the quiz.

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How is it possible that the son suffers on the cross and the father and spirit don't suffer on the cross?

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And here's how it's possible. Somebody sort of said it.

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Wes might have sort of said it, but let me be explicit. The son suffers in the cross in his humanity.

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As the divine second person of the Trinity, does he suffer? No, because he cannot.

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And you say, well, how's that possible? Because he is a divine person and a human person.

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And those two persons, those two natures, one person, two natures, I guess, this is probably more theologically accurate, one person, two natures, but those two natures don't mix.

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So on the cross, the human nature suffers, the divine nature does not, because it cannot.

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Okay. So back to inseparable operations, and we'll start the quiz. Number one, true or false?

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When one person in the Trinity acts, all three persons act. It's true.

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That's what inseparable operations, boiled down, is. Barrett says, the

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Trinity performs a single operation because the persons subsist from a single essence and will.

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In other words, they all have as their, I don't even want to say source, they're all of the same substance, they're all of the same essence.

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Therefore, they all have the same will. The external works of the Trinity are indivisible.

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And what that means is, how the Trinity, how the Triune God acts in time, in, excuse me, in his creation, those things are all done by the

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Father, Son, and Spirit. And I know, you know, the wheels are turning in your heads, and you're thinking, what about when the

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Bible says this? What about when the, okay, we'll deal with those. Listen to what he says.

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In fact, he's going to help us deal with it right now, Barrett. Yet a particular work may be appropriated by a person of the

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Trinity in a way that corresponds to that person's eternal relation of origin.

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Now let's define what appropriation means. Because when we see that, or when we hear that, we tend to think, oh, well then, you know, it's kind of like maybe a draft, right?

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The Holy Spirit says, well, I've got first draft pick, and I'm going to take impelling or sending

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Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted. That's not what appropriation means.

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Appropriation just means that the Scripture, the writer of Scripture, or the Holy Spirit working through that writer,

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I don't even want to say assigns, because that just sounds too formal.

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But he designates a person of the Trinity as taking a particular action.

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I speak for a living. Taking a particular action.

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So, the Scripture tells us the Holy Spirit sends Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted.

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Does the Holy Spirit, and that's Matthew chapter 4 verse 1, by the way, does the Holy Spirit do that by himself?

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No. And the reason we can say no is because of this doctrine of inseparable operations. Now, it does lead to some mind -boggling things, which, again, the wheels are probably turning if you've had enough coffee this morning, and if you haven't, drink more before you come to class.

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For example, let's go back to Matthew 4 .1, because we never really left it. If the

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Holy Spirit impels Jesus out to the wilderness to be tempted, and we have the doctrine of inseparable operations, then what does that tell us about this impelling, this forcing, this pushing, this prodding

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Jesus out into the wilderness? What's that?

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All three do that, which ultimately leads to a very curious situation, doesn't it?

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Jesus sends himself out into the wilderness by the doctrine of appropriation, or by this concept of appropriation.

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It's the Spirit who does it, but we should not think... Let's just back off a little bit from the mind -blowing concept of Jesus sending himself out into the wilderness.

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I mean, if you think about it, it does make some sense, right? The Father sends Jesus into the world.

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Well, does Jesus go, Okay, fine, I'll go. I mean, again, this is this language of accommodation so that we can grasp it, but let's say for a moment, let's just back off this doctrine of inseparable operations.

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Let's say that the Holy Spirit acts by himself. That's what the

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Bible says. Matthew 4, verse 1. The Holy Spirit impels, sends

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Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Matthew, does it on his own.

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So now, what kind of issues would that raise for us? Separate wills.

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If the Holy Spirit says, You know what? Things are going really well for Jesus right now, but I think it's time

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I shake things up a little bit. Well, he is in concert with the

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Trinity, but let me just clarify one thing, and then we'll kind of... I think this is going to go into areas

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I don't want to go into, but when you say that, you know, you used to think that the second person of the

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Trinity, how did you say it? Okay, completely contained, so that he no longer existed in the universe.

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Okay, that would be wrong. And as you rightly understood now, that would be incorrect.

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Why is that wrong? He's still upholding the universe, right?

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We know that from Colossians 1, right? So the divine can't stop being divine.

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He can't, you know, say, Well, I mean, you know, it kind of reminds me of... Sorry, movie illustrations.

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I'm full of movie illustrations. I had one great one about Kevin McCallister, but I just said it was just too crazy to even use.

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What is the movie? Is it Aladdin? Is that it? Is that the movie?

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No, no. Aladdin, the genie one with Robin Williams. And he goes, you know, all this immense power in a tiny little lamp, right?

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So the idea of the God of the universe focusing himself into, you know, just concentrating himself and limiting himself into the human body would be erroneous.

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In fact, you know, if we ultimately study this out, we would see that it's, yes, the son, in terms of appropriation, but there is a sense in which the spirit and the father are present in Jesus too, just as there is a sense in which all three persons of the

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Trinity are resident in us, Jonathan. Yes, yes. The kenosis, you know,

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Philippians 2, you know, he emptied himself. You hear all kinds of explanations about that.

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And probably most of them are heretical, which is another reason that we're having this class.

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We're here to stomp out heresies, one heresy at a time. Yeah, but the idea that Jesus laid aside his deity or that he laid aside his omnipotence or his omniscience or any of those things is wrong.

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I mean, there are all kinds of little fine points in this that I don't want to get into because we would spend weeks and weeks and weeks.

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What about, what about, what about? But essentially, if we just understand it this way, the divine cannot stop being divine.

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That can't happen, okay? What he did do was take on an additional nature, that of human.

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And in every way, he's human. He gets hungry, he has to, you know, just deal with everything the way that we do. But he didn't stop being divine.

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There was no moment where, you know, the Trinity sort of stopped being a trinity and Jesus just sort of, you know, was the two, the

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Father and the Spirit holding everything up while Jesus was just in that body. Okay, he took on human nature with its limitations, yes.

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But he's still, he's one person with two natures. He's got a human nature and a divine nature.

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So, you know, in the sense he took on all its limitations, we would see that in scripture, right? He gets hungry, he gets tired, etc.,

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you know, of the human, yes. I mean, in his divinity, he never got hungry, he never got tired, etc.,

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etc. I mean, there's an amazing concept, right? I mean, you want to get your mind blown. How about this? Jesus sleeps, but he never sleeps.

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In his humanity, he sleeps. In his divine nature, he can't sleep. He's got insomnia and, you know, and he's sleeping.

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Other thoughts, questions, concerns before we move on? Every head bowed, every eye closed.

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Okay. All right. So, appropriation just means that, again, language of accommodation.

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In fact, you know, I'm just going to take one small step back and just say this. When we look at scripture, what is scripture ultimately?

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I mean, we can describe it in a number of ways, but it's God kind of condescending to us, right?

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All of it is a condescension so that we can understand something of the incomprehensible.

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We'll never fully grasp who God is, but we can know a lot about him by what he's revealed to us.

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So, you know, all of scripture, all of language, you know, does God, you know, let's put it this way.

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Within the Trinity, do the Father, Son, and Spirit, you know, what language do they speak?

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There is no language. They don't need it. You know, language is an accommodation.

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It's just made to help us, the creatures. Okay, number two.

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True or false? Predestination is undertaken by the Father alone.

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That's false. Now, why would you say that?

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It's one thing to say false, John. It's another thing to back it up, right? Well, yeah, but...

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Okay, because I said alone, right? Because that's... or actually, you know, the writer of the quiz.

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Shh, it's a secret. We don't know who did it. Yes, I mean, that is correct.

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Barrett says this. He says, The sovereignty of God's grace in our salvation is Trinitarian from start to finish, of course.

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On further reflection, the Trinity is the reason grace is sovereign to begin with. So inseparable are

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Trinity and grace that Paul cannot describe our salvation without referring to all three persons of the

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Trinity. What passage do you think he's going to? Ephesians 1 is correct.

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He says, When I read Ephesians 1, or when I read it... See, it's always tricky when you see the word read, because is it read or read?

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I mean, English is a complicated language. When I read Ephesians 1 in the past, it was the sovereignty of God's saving plan that stuck out.

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But when I reread Paul's words, Father, Son, and Spirit popped out with prominent repetition.

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For example, Paul says it is God the Father who has blessed us in Christ and chose us in Him, in Christ, before the world was created.

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Verses 3 and 4 of chapter 1. We are elected by the Father and chosen in the

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Son. Next, Paul grounds our adoption in time and space in our eternal predestination.

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But he does not do so apart from the Trinity. God the Father predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ.

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Yet not only does the Father elect us in His Son for all eternity, He then sends His Son to die for the elect in history.

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That's why Paul says in the verses that follow that it is in Him, in Christ, that we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

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Far from ad hoc, in other words, acting independently, acting on their own, three different gods, as it were, the

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Trinity planned Christ's death from the beginning. What about the Spirit? Has the third person of the

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Trinity been left out? Then he says, not on Paul's watch. What the

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Father planned and the Son accomplished, the Spirit has applied. So from the

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Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, the question was about election.

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Where else could we see the doctrine of election and think, okay, well, maybe it's not just the

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Father, but somebody else chose us.

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What's that? John 17 is not bad.

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John 6, what does it say in John 6? I mean, you guys are on the right book. I'll give you that.

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Okay, all of the Father gives me, but I mean, it still sounds like the Father's electing. Right, He doesn't lose any, right?

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That's right. I mean, He's definitely... Yeah, Brian. Okay, I'm the way the

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Father... No one comes to the Father but by me. How about John 15, verse 16?

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Jesus speaking, and you could say, well, this only applies to the disciples.

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Okay. Jesus says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask in the

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Father in my name, He may give it to you. Did Jesus choose the disciples?

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Yes, and you could say, well, that was only in time. Was it? I mean, because now we're talking about Jesus in His humanity, did

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He choose them or was it in His divinity? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't just strain credulity to say, you know, this only applies to these men and, you know, it was just in time and it sort of breaks credulity.

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The idea is, of course He picked them because before the foundations of the world, these were the men that the triune

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God chose to be the apostles. You know, is it any mystery that Judas was the betrayer?

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No, He knew it all along. Well, how could He know that? Because He knew who the elect were. He knew who were chosen.

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He knew that He didn't choose Judas. He chose him to be one of the twelve, but He didn't choose to save him.

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So He always knew. Yes, yes.

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Right, yeah, there was no mystery. This wasn't, you know, an Agatha Christie train deal, you know, where they're like eliminating suspects one by one and then everybody's clueless, but, you know, the inspector,

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Jesus figures it out wrong. Yeah, Charlie. Yes, yes.

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He didn't just know it. He designed it. He didn't just design it.

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He commanded it. Yes, okay. All right. Okay. All right. Everybody wants to write a book today.

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All right. Okay, number three.

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True or false, there is a unity and a plurality to the Trinity.

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Yeah, so be careful. Anytime you see that word and, Zook gives me a kind of wobbly true.

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Yes, it is true. Yeah, yeah, remove the wobbles.

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What's that? One God, three persons. Yeah, I mean, you know, does

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God act, this is Barrett, does God act as one or as three? Yes.

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At first glance, it might seem as if the Father, Son and Spirit are, act as three separate independent persons.

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And again, you can, you can, as you read scripture, you can come to that sort of conclusion.

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The three persons are undivided in their external works because they are undivided in their internal nature.

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And that's the important part. Somebody sent me a very clever picture this morning. I like clever pictures.

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They say, you know, has there ever been a perfect representation of the Trinity? And so here's this picture.

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And it's of, you know, if I had a giant screen, I'd put it up there. I don't. And, you know, I can get away with this in Sunday school.

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But it's a giant hamburger and inside of it are three hamburgers. And I'm like, that's, that's a horrible illustration.

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But I did think it was funny. You know, it's nice to start your Sunday morning off with a little heresy. So, yeah, that would be wrong.

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They're not three separate independent persons. It's one

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God acting as three persons or not just acting as three persons, but actually existing as three persons.

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God is three persons, plurality, or you could say he's three subsistences of the one triune

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God. Divine nature. They all share the same divine nature and the same divine being.

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Okay. Number four, true or false, the wills of the

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Trinity are always in agreement. Okay, now

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I feel like I've just played that game. What is it? You know, the little, it's a

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Japanese game where, you know, it's a courtroom thing where they're just like guilty and, you know, objection.

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I can't remember. What is it? Phoenix Wright. Yeah, that's it. Attorney at law.

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Objection. Yeah, the wills, this is entrapment. The wills of the Trinity are always in agreement.

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False. If there are three wills, Father, Son, and Spirit all have a will, then what else is true about them?

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They could be in disagreement. Their essence is not one.

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That's the key right there. Their essence is not one. And he says, Barrett does, since God has one essence, he has one will.

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He must, if he has any hope of remaining undivided and unified in his own being, his one essence and will subsists in three persons.

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Those three persons remain undivided due to the one single essence. This is why we call our

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God simply Trinity, protecting both simplicity in substance, the one substance, and Trinity in subsistence, that they all subsist from the one divine essence.

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Okay. Thoughts, questions, concerns, heresies. It's not too early in the day for a heresy,

43:01

Andrew. Okay. Another classic illustration, right? In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says, not my will, but thy will be done, right?

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Your will. How are we to understand that? Jesus praying to the

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Father, saying, not my will, because my will is not the same as your will. Okay.

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Not my will, but your will, Brian. Okay. So, in his humanity, okay, the divine, the divine nature of Jesus is fully aware of what's coming.

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And he doesn't, he's not keeping any secrets from the human Jesus. He's hours away from being crucified.

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And not just being crucified, but of having to face the wrath of God, as Pastor Mike likes to say, you know, concentrated into three hours, right?

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All of the wrath of God for all of eternity, for every sin ever committed by every believer, concentrated, distilled, and then poured out upon the sun in three hours.

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As a man, Jesus is thinking about this and going, you know, if there's another way,

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I'd like to, can we talk about that? You know. But, not my will, but, you know, your will.

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Whatever your will is, and he already knows the will of God, but whatever that is, he knows, but he doesn't really know because he hasn't experienced it.

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I mean, you can know that going to the dentist is going to be a painful experience, but you don't really know until you're there.

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And sometimes you don't really know until later, right? That evening when you try to bite something and, you know, your eyes bulge out of your head.

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Yes, Brian. Yes. In other words, in his humanity, he's saying, if it's possible.

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If there's another way, I'll pass. You know. Yes. Well, yes, absolutely.

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If he were merely mortal, as Charlie said, he would have exploded. I think he would have had a heart attack. I mean, basically, if you read that passage where he's sweating, as it were, droplets of blood,

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I think I've read or heard, you know, the idea that this is just a tremendous amount of stress.

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Excuse me. And as Charlie said, you know, anxiety from the sense of, you know, trepidation, understanding what's coming.

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And a mere mortal would have had a heart attack and died. Yeah, Jonathan, we have to close, but go ahead.

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Last comment. I think that's great. I really do think it helps because just understanding that when he takes on that human nature, he gets everything that goes with it, including, you know, a desire for self -preservation, everything else.

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And nevertheless, he went through with it anyway. Of course, you know, I mean, it does put various things in focus, too.

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Just even thinking about Roddick's sermon last week, you know, on the calming of the seas and whatnot.

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It is saying, as a man, anybody would have been terrified or whatever.

46:47

Right. But as God, he's in control of that situation. But I think it's even it's a whole other level to think about facing the wrath of God basically by yourself.

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I mean, this is like, you know, the showdown of the OK Corral times a billion.

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I mean, this is just like it's terrifying. And only God could really could steal a man to do that.

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So anyway, we have to close in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we are indeed just thankful as we think about the

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Lord Jesus Christ, about all that he knew that was coming. And nevertheless, he did it not for himself, but for us that we might have our sins forgiven, that we might have the righteousness that we need to enter into heaven.

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Father, we thank you for sending him on such a glorious rescue mission. We thank you for empowering him to to withstand all that.

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Father, help us to even as we study scripture, to think about it more trinitarianly, to look at it and just think what an awesome