18 - The Triune God, Part 2

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy. I am your host, your teacher, instructor, whatever you want to say.

I am Andrew Rappaport. This is a ministry of striving for eternity. You can get details about Striving for Eternity and other ministries and other things that they have at their website, strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to the School of World Religions. We are in a class specifically on an introduction to the major Western religions.

We're in part two of that and we're giving a response. This is lesson number eight. Lesson number eight is about God.

What is the proper view biblically of God, who

God is, and how does that answer as a defense for the many different world religions that have differing views of who

God is. This is part two, which means, yeah, right, you should have watched part one.

I know some of you jump in in the middle. I got you. If you have a syllabus, I encourage you to grab it.

You can get a syllabus, I can speak, at the website, store .strivingforeternity

.org. You can order one there, get a syllabus, follow along so that you can fill in the blanks, write your own notes in, have it as a handy reference because this lesson specifically, you're going to run into people where you're going to say,

I wish I had the syllabus. I wish I had these notes that I can go back to and just open to this lesson. If you have the syllabus, put a little post -it on this lesson because this is the one you're going to go back to.

Why? This is the lesson that atheists struggle with, Mormons struggle with,

Jehovah's Witnesses struggle with, Muslims struggle with, Jews struggle with, everybody seems to struggle with this except for the only group out of Christianity, Biblical Christianity that doesn't seem to struggle with this is

Roman Catholicism. One of the areas they have right. But the reality is that,

I understand, we are going to talk today, we spoke last week about the nature and attributes of God, this week it's on the

Trinity or the Triunity. The Trinity, and look, I understand the argument, oh the word

Trinity, Triunity, Triune, Trinitarian, they're not found in Scripture, they're not found in the

Bible and therefore these terms are not describing anything that's Biblical. The word

Bible is not in the Bible. Just saying. So if you're going to make that argument as someone did last week online,

I just said, well then you can't use a Bible to make your argument because the word Bible doesn't appear in the Bible. And by the way, if you're going to go only with words that are in the

Bible, then, well, things like omniscience, do we believe

God is all -knowing, omniscient, that's not in the Bible. Omnipotent, God all -powerful, that's not in the

Bible. Omnipresent, God is everywhere present, that's not in the

Bible. Transcendent, that's not in the Bible. There are many, many theological terms that we create for the explicit purpose of trying to define something that we see in several passages to help us with an understanding.

It doesn't mean the word itself has to appear and if the word itself doesn't appear then it's not true.

That's just not the way we do interpretation. The reality is, if you're going to argue with that, then the sun must actually revolve around the earth because the

Bible refers to sunrises and sunsets and the sun doesn't rise and doesn't set.

It's a way of speaking to explain things so that we can understand.

So let's just get this out of the way for all the naysayers that, well, they probably watch the first four seconds and they go, oh, nope,

I've watched enough, I already know that I'm right and he's wrong and I'm not going to listen to any of his arguments.

Yeah. So for those who comment online and challenge us and email us and tell us how wrong we are but you haven't watched the class, well, you're making an argument for ignorance, okay?

Just saying. But we're going to go through today why we say that the

Bible teaches in a triune God. The terms trinity, triunity, trinitarian, as I said, are not found in Scripture, but they're terms that we use to describe the teaching that God is one in essence, yet He exists in three personalities, okay?

This is the one thing you're always going to see with groups. Jehovah's Witnesses do this, Muslims do this, Jewish people do this.

They misdefine, they create a straw man. You believe in three gods. No, that's not the thing.

We believe in one being, one God, in three separate distinct persons.

God and person are not synonymous, okay? Now, if you're going to argue, well, we can't comprehend this, then you're saying you think you're as good as God.

What do I mean by that? If you can completely comprehend God, then God is nothing more than the summation of what you can reason.

God is greater than our ability to reason. He's greater than us. Being greater than us, we're not going to fully understand

Him, so I'm perfectly fine with having a God that I cannot fully comprehend because God created everything out of nothing and I can't conceive that.

God is outside of time. I can't conceive that. God is omniscient. He knows all things. I can't conceive that.

God is Trinity. I can't conceive that. My conception of it, my ability to reason of it does not make it true.

Reality is, this is who God, as we talked about in the previous lesson, lesson seven, we talked about the authority and now maybe you see why this is so important.

God has revealed Himself to us and all we can understand is what God has revealed to us and try to understand to the best of our ability what

He revealed about Himself. He has not revealed everything and He can't reveal everything because you and I can't understand it.

We're not God. So the Trinity refers to the doctrine of the three persons, that's your first blank, three persons in one

God. That's your second blank, God. Three persons in one God.

Notice I put those fill in the blanks so you see the difference. Persons, God. Person and God are not equal.

God is one being but not one person. So it's not three equals one, okay?

It's three persons, one God. One being. Some falsely define this doctrine as three persons and one person, three gods and one

God. Once they do it, they've built a straw man argument. They've built an argument so that they can defeat it. What they're doing is immediately revealing that they can't deal with what the proper definition is.

The proper definition is three distinct individual people in one being,

God. And both of those false definitions are incorrect. These false definitions are used by false teachers to make an easy to refute doctrine.

That's the definition of a straw man, right? You give a new definition and then attack the definition.

And this is why I keep repeating the definition because I really want it to sink in for you. The Trinity is three individual, separate and distinct persons in one completely and totally unified

Godhead, all right? So I really want you to see that.

Now did the early church believe this, all right? Now I've already said that this concept is incomprehensible to man.

The attributes of God are fully true of each person of the

Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity further proven in the doctrines of the deity of Christ that we're going to look at next class and the deity of the

Holy Spirit, okay? But the question is, did the early church believe in a doctrine of the

Trinity? Well, let me give you a verse of the Bible that says that. This is

John 5, 7 and it says, "...for there are three that testify..."

I'm not going to go into the whole passage, but here's the thing, okay? "...for there are three that bear witness in heaven, the

Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one." That's what John 5, 7, 1

John, sorry, 1 John 5, 7 says. Now many people are going to rightly explain that 1

John 5, 7 is, though it seems to be the clearest description of the

Trinity, it should be noted it's not in the earliest manuscripts. It is something that we see not in the oldest manuscripts, but in manuscripts that are a little bit newer.

So, the issue is that this verse is not in the earliest manuscripts, okay?

I'm fine with that because I don't need this one verse to prove the Trinity. However, you know what that does show?

Very early on, in early manuscripts, the Trinity was something that was understood and actually in 1

John 5, 7, it was written in. So, what I gave you, the earliest manuscripts, if you put that up, well actually we don't need to, it's just in the earliest manuscripts it doesn't include this whole verse, okay?

And so people, it's not going to be a great position to make an argument that this is proof of the

Trinity in Scripture because I would say this verse isn't fully in the Scripture, okay?

It's not in the earliest manuscripts, the original canon. However, what this does show is this does show that very early on, this was something that was understood in the early church when they were making copies.

Because though maybe the earliest manuscripts don't have it, very early manuscripts do, okay?

So we don't see it in all of the early manuscripts, but very early on, this verse was there.

So though I would say this probably wasn't in the original writing of John, when he wrote what we call 1

John, it was accepted by the early church to a point where no one saw it as a problem to put probably what was in the footnotes that worked its way in.

And people saw to put that the three that bear witness in heaven is the

Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. These three are one. No one thought to have a problem with that, okay?

No one saw any theological issue with that in manuscripts. Why? Because the early church understood this.

Just saying. So is it in the Bible? Well, let's take a look. Let us start with the

Old Testament. Look at some hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

The argument usually is that the Trinity is not in the Old Testament at all, it's only in the New. Well, there are things in the

Old Testament that we see hints of it. Now, the Old Testament emphasis was clearly on the uniqueness and the unity of one

God. The foundational understanding of God was necessary in order to refute the primary religious deviations of the time, which is polytheism.

That's your blank there. Polytheism, poly meaning many, theism meaning God, so many gods. The time that Judaism was around,

Judaism was one of the only religions that believed in a monotheism, mono being one, theism

God, one God. Judaism was the one that taught that there was one God, where all the other religions that were around taught that there were many gods.

So, the Old Testament focused on the culture that it was surrounded by, focusing on the unity, the uniqueness of the one

God. Notice, one God doesn't break our definition at all, does it?

No, because we say God is one, there's one God. All right, however, even though the

Old Testament emphasizes the unity of the one God, we still find hints of the

Trinity. How? Well, we see the use of Elohim, that's your blank there,

Elohim, E -L -O -H -I -M, Elohim. Elohim, we see this in Genesis 1 .1,

in the beginning, God, that's Elohim, created the heavens and the earth. Elohim, the importance of Elohim is

Elohim is a plural pronoun. It's used with singular verbs.

In the beginning, gods created. That's really how it would be, it's a plural.

And that seems strange because it emphasizes the one God, but yet it's a plural pronoun used with singular verbs.

It was a way of employing to describe this true God that seems to teach, or at least allows for a teaching of multiple persons within the

Godhead. We see here that the name teaches a unity, but allows for the

Trinity. All right, now some liberals, Jewish people will say that the use of Elohim is just a literary purpose, literary style, a royal we.

Maybe some of the Jewish people say Elohim includes the angels when he created, that they were with him.

So that's the way some argue. However, throughout scripture, the words and letters are purposeful and in the original, they were without error.

Therefore, if the use of a plural word with a singular verb, it's not used for literary style, it's used for emphasis.

And so that would be emphasizing a plurality within the

Godhead. A second thing is the use of plural pronouns. That's your next blank, plural pronouns.

We see this, for example, let's turn to Genesis 1. We were there. So Genesis 1, 26, it says, then

God said, let us, just stop right there. Notice, God uses a plural pronoun to refer to himself.

Okay. He says, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the seas, birds of the airs, you know, and so on.

But do you notice that it's the us and the our? You see that? He uses plural pronouns to refer to himself.

All right. We also have this in, if you look in Genesis 3 .22. Then the

Lord said, behold, man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

Okay. So what do you see with the us? Is that arguing angels?

Well, the angels, what we think know only good or evil, not good and evil.

So I would say that that's not really a case they could refer to them. This again, you see the plural pronouns.

The last one that we'll look up in Isaiah six, verse eight. And I heard the voice of the

Lord saying, whom shall I send? Who will go for us?

You see, again, this implies or allows for the support of a plurality within the

Godhead. Remember I said last week, I'll say it again. The Trinity is a solution, not a problem.

Problem we're going to get to in a little bit. The solution is the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is a solution to a problem.

It is trying to find how do we resolve something that we're going to see in just a few moments. I'm going to give it,

I'll give it to you real quick. Now, the problem is Jesus is referred to as God. How could

Jesus be God and the father be God and the Holy spirit be God? Because that's what we end up seeing. Each of them have attributes that are only attributes of deity.

So they have attributes that only God can have. They have, they're each referred to as God in the language of their time.

And then thirdly, we see that when we look at the, uh, each one of these members, they can't all be the same person because we see each of them being distinct from one another in such a way that Jesus, while on earth can talk to the father.

The Holy spirit can come down at Jesus's baptism and be visibly seen.

Even though Jesus is standing there and the voice of the father could be heard. That's one of those times where you see all three members of the

Trinity at one place yet distinct from each other. And that's the issue. That's a problem.

That's the problem they were trying to solve. How could Jesus be God? Because that they clearly understood.

We're going to look at that next lesson. Lesson nine. We look at Jesus. We're going to look at his deity. We're going to go through that in detail and look at the problem of his, what's called the hypostatic union.

He has two natures, fully God, fully man. They understood that to an, to whatever level they could and whatever level we can not completely, but they wrestled with how can we make sense of this and the doctrine of the

Trinity is a solution to that problem in defining God's nature to the best of our ability.

So we can understand him in ways that, that we have to use some new language.

And so we coined the term Trinity. All right. So, um, let's also look at the word one, the use of the word one.

All right. So with the use of the word one, many who, and that's your blank there.

One, many who oppose the doctrine of Trinity claim that it contradicts the clear teaching of the

Bible that God is one. Okay. Deuteronomy chapter six, as I said last week, this is one of the most known passages to Jewish people called the

Shema. Hear O Israel, the

Lord, our God, the Lord is one, echad, one, single.

Now that word echad is used to refer to a group of grapes being one set of grapes, one grape vine, and it can refer to something that has multiple things.

Multiple grapes are on the one vine, but it's still called one. How could that be?

Well, because it's referring to the completeness of it. Now, this is a word to mean single.

But when we speak of a single thing, we don't have a problem with this. Remember, we believe in one

God, one God, not one person, one

God. And so this does not refer, if you look in your notes there, the word one translated from the word echad does not refer to oneness in the sense of single always, okay, it does, but it has a sense of unity.

Those are your blanks there, single and unity. It's the idea that you can have one set of grapes, the one complete thing of grapes, and we call it one grape.

Okay. We call it one vine and yet it has multiple vines on it with several sets of grapes.

We don't have a problem with that. Okay. The Hebrew word echad is used as one in single when counting or when there's a subject after the word.

In the case when it's used to refer to God as the subject, it's a single being.

We have no problem with that. Okay. It's, there's not a contradiction here. Why? Because we don't believe in three gods.

We believe in one unified, a single being that we call God. All right.

We think of the angel of the Lord. Some would say that's a theophany in the Old Testament. If you go through and look at that, we're not going to have time to look at that, but that's another thing that you can look at the usage of the theophanies in the

Old Testament. The reason that becomes important, and we may look at this next class on Christ, on the deity of Jesus Christ, but what you end up seeing is that you do see that there's quotations referring to Jesus in the

New Testament when He says things that were said of God in the Old Testament.

And so it's speaking of Jesus in the New. So that becomes an issue.

But you look at the angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord has, or the spirit of God, both of them, many people think that angel of the

Lord is Jesus in the Old Testament in His pre -incarnation. Pre -incarnation means before, incarnate means when

God became a man. And so He becomes, He comes into manhood. And so pre -incarnate is before that time.

That's basically what that means. All right. So let's look at some of the teachings in the

New Testament, the teachings of the Trinity in the New Testament.

Now, what we have here is that while the Old Testament emphasizes the unity of God at a time, at a time it allowed for the teaching of a

Trinity, even though the God is one being, we still saw that there is the allowance in the

Old Testament for plurality within the Godhead. So the New Testament clarifies this.

OK. You now have Judaism, you have Christianity that's going to start teaching on one

God. They're going to start emphasizing to try to explain really the emphasis becomes in some we're going to look at next week, the deity of Christ.

We look at the doctrine of Jesus Christ. That's where this got really clarified because they were trying to rationalize and understand the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ.

Actually, they accepted the deity was His humanity they had a problem with. Now, some people have argued that I teach that you must believe in the

Trinity or in a Trinitarian God to become a believer. That is not true.

I clearly would not believe that because I did not understand or even hear the word

Trinity till after about six years after I was a Christian.

OK, so at least, well, maybe at least four years. All right. So the reality is

I believe Jesus was God. I could not comprehend how he could be God walking on earth and still controlling the universe.

But he's God. He can do whatever he wants. Right. I didn't understand his nature well enough to understand the

Trinity, but I had to believe that Jesus is God. We'll look at that next lesson. If you if you doubt that, please pay attention to the next two classes.

OK, we're going to go over his humanity and his deity. All right. So where were we?

OK, so with the New Testament, we're going to see some clarity on this.

Now, the first thing is that we see three persons are recognized as one God. We see three persons recognized as God.

And this is where we start seeing the problem that the Trinity is the solution for. The problem is we see three separate persons recognized as God.

So let's go through some of these passages and look at them. First, we see the father is recognized by God.

This really isn't challenged too often, but the father is recognized by by God in John 16, 27,

John 16, 27. If you open there and look at that, you do have your Bibles, right? OK, good.

John 16, 27. For the father himself loves you because you loved me and have believed that I came from God.

So see, the father who sent Jesus is referred to as God. We don't have a problem with that.

The father is referred to as God. OK, now, I think the problem that many people have is they think that only the father is referred to as God, but that's not true.

We know the son is referred as God. Take a look at one of the clearest ones. John 1, 1. In the beginning was the word, the word was

God, was with God and the word was God. Now, how could the word be with God and be

God? Now, the word we know from verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us is

Jesus. So Jesus was with God and was God. Huh?

To our minds, people try to rationalize that the Jehovah Witnesses will say, well, he's a little God, a small g

God. No, he then you you that's where they really try to get around this and they end up teaching polytheism.

You have multiple gods now. You have a big God, the almighty God and the mighty God. That's how they explain it.

He's either God or he's not. OK, but that's not the only verse. We got a lot of them. Actually, we have 48 percent of the

Gospels referred Jesus as God directly or indirectly. But I'm just going to stick to some of the more explicit ones because we don't have time for everything.

Got a book coming out on it, though, soon, hopefully. John 8 58. Jesus said to them, truly, truly,

I say to you before Abraham was I am that I am is the name for God.

How do we know that that's a name of deity? Well, because it says that they picked up stones to stone him two chapters later.

It's going to say again when he says the father and I are one. They pick up stones again to stone him for what?

For blasphemy. And he says, for what good works do you stone me? They say not for any good works, but you being a man claim to be

God. The Jewish people of the time understood the meaning of I am. They understood the meaning of the father and I are one.

They knew he was claiming that he was God. They say it explicitly.

That's why they want to stone him. OK, and in John 8, John says,

Jesus says, if you do not believe I am, you can't be saved. And that's the thing.

That's verse 24 of chapter eight. If you don't believe he's God, you're dead in your sins. That's why this is such an important thing.

John 20. Let's go. John 20, 26 to 29. Eight days later, his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them.

Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. Peace be with you and said, peace be with you.

And he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands. Put put out your hand and place it on my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe. And Thomas answered, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said to him, have you believed because you've seen me?

Blessed are those who have seen and have still who have not seen and have yet believed.

He says, my Lord, my master and my God. Now, some will try to say, oh, he was just saying my

God in blasphemy. Yeah. No, that's not the case. He's not being blasphemous.

All right. He's not. He's saying, my God. How do we know that Jesus understands that?

Look at what he says. Jesus ends up saying to him, Thomas, because you've seen me, you believe.

So you now believe now that you see you now believe, believe what? My God, you believe that he's

God. He's basically saying now you believe I've resurrected myself from the dead.

Who can resurrect themselves from the dead yet? God just saying. Well, look at that.

Lastly, the Holy Spirit is recognized as God. Let's go to Acts five, three and four, acts five, three and four.

But Peter said, Enos, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for a part of yourself from the land?

OK, who did he lie to? He lied to the Holy Spirit. All right.

Now, look, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?

Why is it that you can contrive this deed in your heart?

You have not lied to men, but to God. Who do you lie to again? The Holy Spirit.

Who's the Holy Spirit? God. So you have three people that are recognized as God.

That's the problem. We have three different people recognized as God. Now we end up with another problem.

The the three personalities are each in conjunction. That's your blank there.

Conjunction with each other. They're each in conjunction. Each person are seen in conjunction with each other.

All right. So do we have passages that show this? Well, Matthew 28, 19. Matthew 28, 19 says,

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the

Son and the Holy Spirit. Notice all three. All three are seen in conjunction with one another.

Now, we just saw that they were all three mentioned as God. We see the distinction of all three of these people.

Yet here we see all three together. Where's another? Second Corinthians 13. Second Corinthians 13, four says,

For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by power of God. For we also are weak in him.

But dealing with you, we will live with him by the power of God.

So we're crucified in Christ and we see the power of God. Titus 3, 4 to 6, 4 to 7.

Actually, you can read that on your own. I'm just going to skip that for the sake of time. The other would be 1

Peter. When we put up the 1 Peter 1 real quick. 1 Peter 1, 2. According to the foreknowledge of God the

Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for the obedience to Jesus Christ.

Notice all three of them there. We'll just stop there because you see all three of them are there together.

We see that the three. The Father is one with the

Son. So we see that in essence, they're all three in essence. We're going to see this now.

Actually, I think that's so you see the Father is one with the Son. We saw that in John 1 once.

We won't turn there. You can go to John 10, 30. I alluded to this.

I and the Father are one. So the Father and the Son. You can go to John 14, 3 to 9.

You can go to John 14, 23. And you're going to see that Jesus and the

Father are seen as that. The Father is seen with the

Son. OK, we see the Spirit is one with the Son. Romans 8.

OK, 8 to 11. I don't want to put these up because we're running short on time.

OK, Romans 8, 8 to 11. John 16, 13 to 15.

OK, when you look at these, you end up seeing that the whole that the Son is one with the

Spirit. OK, the Son and the Spirit are seen as one. So when we see that again, this is just showing the point that we're seeing here is that let's put up the do we have the

John 8, Romans 8, Romans 8. Sorry. Let's just put we'll put one of them up.

Actually, let's do the John. Let's let's do John 16. Thanks.

John 16, 13 to 15 says this. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you.

So this is the spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth, for he does not speak on his own authority.

But whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that have come.

He will glorify me, not God, me. This is Jesus speaking. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and then declare it to you.

All that the Father has is mine. Therefore, I say to you, take it as mine. So what do you have here? You have a case where you see that the

Holy Spirit is referred to. The Holy Spirit and the Son are referred to together. The Spirit and the

Father are also together. OK, we see this. We already saw this in Acts 5, 3 and 4.

OK, the Holy Spirit being referred to as God. You can take also take a look at Acts 5 and you'll see

Annas, it says, why have you lied to the Holy Spirit? Sapphira, his wife, lied to God.

They're both seen in the same case. Romans 8, 8 to 11 is another case. You'll see the Spirit, the

Father and the Spirit. So in Romans 8, we'll put that one up now. All right.

So to those who are flesh cannot please God, you, however, are not of the flesh, but of the

Spirit. In fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you. So you see both are distinguished there.

So let's just stop there. I'm just trying to save for time. It shows the point. You can look at the verses and you should look at those verses in more detail.

All right. Number four in your syllabus is that they are distinct.

That's your blank. They're distinct from each other. The three are distinct from each other.

OK, this is, again, the problem. We saw that all three of them are referred to as God. We see that all three of them refer to are seen in the same context.

And what that does is it gets against the modalism that some teach, that God came in different modes. This is why this answers all these problems.

God didn't come in different modes. The problem you have there is how do you deal with the fact that they're all three seen at the same time?

If if Jesus is not God, yet he's referred to as God, we see that he's referred to as God and the others.

And we're going to get that more detail. But then we also get into the point here that we end up seeing that they're distinct from one another.

OK, we see that they're distinct from one another. And and we end up seeing this causes another problem again.

Why? Because if they're distinct from one another, then they're they're not the same person. OK, so there is unity.

There is unity in the Trinity, yet the plurality in the Godhead is distinct from each other. We give a bunch of verses on that distinction in essence.

That's your blank there. Distinction in essence does not mean sorry, distinction in existence.

Correction. I what I almost said was really wrong. Distinction in existence does not mean distinction in essence.

In other words, the their essence, their being is one God. They have the essence of deity, but they exist separate from one another.

That's what that means. So distinction in existence, the fact that they are a being, that they exist, that their persons does not mean they're distinct in essence.

They all have the nature of deity. So the father is distinct from the son. We see this in John 14, 28, especially if you cross reference

Philippians 2, 5 to 8. Philippians 2, if we look at Philippians 2, 5 to 8,

I'm just trying to look. Do we have time? OK, so Philippians. Oh, I didn't give you that.

OK, is it just not in the right order? OK. Oh, OK. Maybe not in the right order.

There you go. Thanks. All right. Have this mind among yourselves, which was also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, OK, he did not consider it robbery.

Sorry, I'm doing that from memory. Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point even to death on a cross. So he's separate.

You see him distinct here from God. OK, God, what we would refer to as the father,

Galatians 4, 4 would be another place that we could turn to.

And it says, but when the fullness of time has come, God sent forth his son.

See, God the father is sending forth the son. You see the distinction there.

We could go to John 14, verses 16 and 17. That's not it.

That's John 14. Thank you. John 14, 16 and 17. There we go.

That's better. And I will ask the father and he will give to you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth.

Notice how the spirit now is distinct from both the father and the son.

So you see, they have, they're all three distinct from one another. So these three persons of the

Godhead who are all considered to be divine are to be recognized as one.

That's your first blank. One in essence, essence is your second blank, equally existing in three personalities.

That's your last blank. And this is important to understand. So I'm going to say it again. These three persons of the

Godhead who are all to be considered divine are to be recognized as one in essence, equally existing in three personalities.

Now note, if you have your syllabus, you can see the big note there. Note, many who deny the Trinity do so because they cannot explain it from a human perspective.

Yet there are many things about God that are completely beyond our comprehension.

The fact that he can hear all the prayers of everyone everywhere at the same time that he knows everything there is to know past, present, future, real, impossible.

We can't comprehend that. No human can explain these things. We believe them because the

Bible teaches these truths, not because they make sense to us. All right. The Bible teaches the reality of the

Trinity of God or the triunity of God. Therefore, we believe it whether we can explain it or not.

Now there are some things we don't have time to get into this, but there are some things that we see the works of God that are works only of God.

They're stated that only God does this. And yet all three persons are involved creation for one. All three members of the

Trinity are involved in the creation. And that's something uniquely to God. We see the preservation, okay, the preserving work of God is all three persons are involved in that.

His providence, we see all three members involved in providence. The incarnation of Jesus Christ, we end up seeing all three members involved in that.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see all three members involved in that. This is why, so again,

I really want to emphasize this because this is important. We're going to deal with this again next lesson when we deal with the deity of Jesus Christ.

You must start with a proper definition of the Trinity. And this is where all these religions have a problem.

They almost always have a wrong definition of the Trinity. They define the

Trinity incorrectly and then attack that false definition. Okay. The Trinity is properly defined as three unique, separate, distinct, individual persons in one completely unified being known as God.

Okay. So you see, I'm using a lot of different words. I've defined the Trinity actually several different ways through this lesson on purpose.

And I hope you pick that up. I'm trying to emphasize different things. But the one thing you're hearing over and over is three persons, one

God. That's what you're seeing over and over. Three persons, one God.

The persons are separate, distinct, individual. The God is one, unified, complete, essence, being.

I'm using different language through those to emphasize it. You can emphasize it many different ways.

But the main thing is three individual people, one God. That's the point.

Now, this is where these people of other religions have problems because they're trying to rationalize this.

And ultimately what you're going to get is you're going to get them trying to argue for what they can comprehend, not what the

Bible says. And what they're going to do is read what they can comprehend into the Bible. How do you deal with the fact that all three members are referred to as God?

Well, you're going to do one of two things. You're going to do some gymnastics to ignore that fact. And then you're going to start giving new meanings to the

Bible. And you'll see that gymnastics that gets done. And they do that because the Bible has to make sense to them.

But it has to be their reasoning is what becomes God. Look, I don't think that I can comprehend this.

And there's no analogy that could. Why? Because God is beyond our ability to fully comprehend

Him. What has He revealed about Himself? Here's the problem. And here's what God revealed about Himself. God revealed in the

Bible that He is the Father. God has revealed in the Bible that He is the

Son. God has revealed in the Bible that He is the Holy Spirit. God has revealed in the

Bible that the Father is separate from the Son. God has revealed in the Bible that the Father is separate from the

Spirit. God has revealed in the Bible that the Son is separate from the Spirit. God has revealed in the

Bible that all three of them can be seen at the same time. Therefore modalism can't be true.

So what is the problem? The problem is we see three separate distinct people all referred to as God yet they're distinct from one another.

How could this be? What's the solution? How do we solve this problem? Well that's where we ended up having someone in history in the 300s that solved it.

And what he did was he started to formulate how can we have this problem? We have God referred to as the

Father. We have God referred to as the Son. We have God referred to as the Spirit. They're all referred to as God. They all have attributes of deity.

We're gonna see it next week with Christ. They all have attributes of deity. They all do the works of deity, things that only deity could do.

They all have this and yet they're separate from one another. We can't say God was the

Father in the Old Testament, the Son when he walked the earth, and now the Holy Spirit. That's not true because all three of them are seen at the same time and they're distinct from one another.

How do you solve that? The solution is to see that there's a difference between existence and essence.

There's a difference between personhood and deity. There's a difference between person and being.

And that's the issue. We have three separate people, one

Godhead. That's what it comes down to, okay? And I understand that there are some who struggle with this, but when you start reading something into the

Bible that's not there to fit your doctrine, then your doctrine is a problem, not the

Bible, okay? Do not ignore what the Bible says because you can't comprehend it, please.

Now, my challenge is, next lesson, we're gonna look at lesson 9. We're gonna look at Jesus Christ, the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ. We're gonna look at his deity, go into a lot more detail on this.

So if you still have questions, come next class and we're gonna examine that. If you have questions, you want to email us, email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

academyatstrivingforeternity .org. Email us. We will try to get an answer to you, but don't just give us your opinion.

Give us scripture. You want to argue, argue with the interpretation. Don't just say, well, this teaches that without giving you reasoning why a passage teaches it because, as you see,

I'm giving the reasoning why I think these passages show the distinction of each of the three people. Why, when it says you've lied to the

Holy Spirit and you've lied to God, that there's a synonymous in there. God and Holy Spirit are seen as one, right?

If you want to get our syllabus, you can go to store .strivingforeternity .org. You can also, while you're there, get the book,

What Do They Believe?, that goes into all the different world religions and you can see the different world religions and what they believe in their own teachings.

I go through their doctrines, their source material. You can also contact us at the website strivingforeternity .org

and you can go there and get a Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar.

Well, you can't get it. You host it. You can offer to host one and we'll be happy to come to your church and teach you in one weekend how to interpret the

Bible. Two last things. One way you could support us is on Amazon. You can go to amazonsmile .amazon

.com and you can register Striving for Eternity Ministries as your ministry and they will donate to us with all the things you buy.

Also, lastly, Ohio Fire is coming up soon. Ohio Fire. This is going to be

April 8th and 9th. Phil Johnson, Dr. Thomas White, myself will be speaking.

Ohiofire .org. You can register now for that. Registration is open. Again, next class we're going to go into more detail on this.

We're going to look into the deity of Jesus Christ. Why do we say that Jesus Christ is

God? We're going to look at that in more detail. It's going to be important for you to come. This is what separates

Christianity from all these other world religions. In this case, what you have is biblical Christianity and Catholicism against every other religion in the world.

Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, all of them have a messed up definition of the Trinity, of who God is. That's why it's important.

Now we're going to dig into who Jesus Christ is. That's going to be the next lesson.

I encourage you to come out. I also want to encourage you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.