October 12, 2023 Show with David Reece on “The Trinity & the Incarnation (& Common Heresies Associated with Each of Them)

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of Founding Father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of October 2023.

And it's so good to know that our Sovereign Lord answers prayer, even those things in the grand scheme of things that are infinitely less important than major things in our lives and in the world. We almost did not have the capability of broadcasting Iron Sharpens Iron Radio live today due to technical difficulties, but the wizard I have as an engineer, Eric Nielsen, appears to, with the Lord's help, have been able to resolve the issues.

But today, I'm very excited to have a returning guest. He's not only a returning guest, but he is a primary sponsor and advertiser on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. His name is David Reese, and he is the pastor of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, and he's also the founder of Armored Republic.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Reese.

Chris, it's an honor to be here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be able to talk with you today about the doctrine of the Trinity and the go through and talk about the different heresies that historically have popped up.

Hopefully, that's a blessing to your audience.

Yes, and I'm sure it will be. And before we go into that theme, let our listeners know something about Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, especially for the sake of those who have not heard you on this program before.

Thank you, Chris. So, yeah, Puritan Reformed Church, we hold to the Westminster Confession of Faith. We are a strict subscriptionist church. We sing psalms, and we exclusively sing psalms, a cappella.

And so if you want to be encouraged by the congregational singing of the Word of God and you're in Phoenix, Arizona on the Lord's Day, we have morning worship at 10 a .m. and we have evening worship at 4 p .m.

And we are, you know, we continuously have a teaching in both services out of the Word of God, expositing the scriptures. Occasionally, we'll have a systematic topic where we're trying to pull together scriptures from multiple places.

But typically, what we're doing is we're going through the Word of God, going through a book from beginning to end, trying to deal with every verse and to deal with the ways in which it interacts with the rest of scripture.

And why don't you share with our listeners your website so that they can have all the information they need to know about Puritan Reformed Church.

Thank you, and that's PuritanPHX .com. PHX is a shorthand for Phoenix, so PuritanPHX .com.

Now tell us, tell our listeners about this fascinating company that you founded, Armored Republic.

So, Armored Republic, I actually had the honor of joining in. And so, although I'm the owner, I was not initially the founder, but I have been able to be there now for eight years. And so, I've been honored to become a part of the company and then ultimately to become the majority owner.

And in that company, what we do is we manufacture body armor and other tools of liberty. And in the process of being able to come in and enter management, it was a delight to be able to come in and to seek to build out a Christian culture and to have it become an explicitly Christian company, kind of working through that.

And so, the company, we manufacture body armor in Phoenix, Arizona. We have a factory in Phoenix. We also manufacture textile goods, pouches, plate carriers, the things that you use. So, you look at tactical vests in movies and stuff like that.

It's that kind of gear. And we also manufacture things like helmets. So, I've been involved in a number of other efforts to try to expand that out. My goal is to build out Christian businesses and to be able to disciple in that context.

And in particular, I find that if your company is explicitly Christian in terms of how you express who you are, mission statement, it's made known on your website and things like that. And then as you're recruiting, you make that known.

The opportunity to be clear with the word of God in the business context is such a delight. And in particular, the Ten Commandments and the Book of Proverbs become very useful. You can put things throughout your documents for the company, but also in management.

The Book of Proverbs is just chock full of tools for management. And obviously, when you talk about the law, it creates all sorts of opportunities for you to be able to let your employees show you places where you are failing in the law and also for your employees to have opportunities where they see their own failings and it opens up the opportunity for the gospel.

And so, I think so often Christians are afraid to talk about the law because of the fact that we are imperfect ourselves. And I think when we acknowledge that we are failures and seek to repent whenever that's brought up, that becomes a valuable tool.

So, my employees know lots of reasons why I'm an imperfect human being and at the same time have been able to have lots of great conversations with that. So, I would encourage people to do that. And one last thing that's very important to make people to know about, if they reach out to me on Twitter at RealDavidReese, I am in the process of closing out a purchase of another business to make it into a Christian business.

Oh, wow.

And so, right now, I'm looking for some accredited investors to help to close that out. We have $6 million out of the $6 .3 million necessary to close the deal. So, we are so close with the last like 4 there of that last bit of money raised to conclude the purchase.

Praise God. And the website for Armored Republic is?

ArmoredRepublic .com. It's ArmoredRepublic .com. The American spelling. So, no U. Just a note. Armored Republic.

Great.

And we look forward to beginning to air the Armored Republic commercials as soon as the folks at Armored Republic provide us with that commercial. As I said at the outset, Pastor David Reese is an advertiser and sponsor on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

You've already heard his ads every single day for Puritan Reformed Church, but we're excited to also begin to air the Armored Republic ads, and you will hear them, God willing, in the very near future.

Well, I think it would be wise for us right now, or wise for you, I should say, to give the most succinct summarized definition of the biblically orthodox doctrine of the Trinity in its purest form, including the elements that must be in a biblically faithful definition of the Trinity.

That's a great place to start. Thank you for that, Chris. So, I think for the doctrine of the Trinity, what we want to communicate is that there is one God first. And when we talk about the idea of one God, we're talking about there is one essence, there is one being or definition of God.

And the Westminster Shorter Catechism does an excellent job of summarizing that. In question four, it says, what is God? God is a spirit who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

And that is such a wonderful, delightful definition for us to understand the biblical God. Now, the other thing is, besides God being one in essence, we also have the fact that he is three in person. And so, when we talk about a person, what we're talking about is an individual spirit or an individual mind.

And so, what we have is three minds that share this definition. So, the shortest way to say this is one in essence, three in person.

And they are co-eternal and co-equal, and they share the same level of authority and.

Power, correct?

Absolutely. And that's true in the essence of each of the persons. They share the one essence, that one definition that we gave from the Shorter Catechism in terms of question four. And so, when we talk about the unity of the Trinity in terms of the essence that's shared, what we're saying is it's true that the Father is a spirit that's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.

It's true that the Son is a spirit that's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. And it's true that the Holy Spirit is a spirit that is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable. So, infinite in power, infinite in wisdom, infinite in terms of the omnipresence of each one.

So, each person of the Trinity knows all things, has all power, and is everywhere present.

The Incarnation and the Hypostatic Union

Now, when you said the Son is spirit, since the Incarnation in Bethlehem, has not Jesus Christ continued to be the God-man, fully God and fully man, although obviously in a glorified body now?

Absolutely. So, when we move from the doctrine of the Trinity to now the doctrine of the Incarnation, when we look at the history of the Church, the fight over the doctrine of the Trinity came first because it's logically prior, right?

You have to have the doctrine of the Trinity down to understand the Incarnation. And so, you end up with the Council of Nicaea capturing accurately what the Scriptures say. And then later, a century later, you have a council like Chalcedon accurately capturing the view of the doctrine of the Incarnation.

And so, when we think about the Incarnation, we have the Eternal Son, right? We have God, the Son, who is unchanging, eternal, without beginning in His divinity. But there is a moment in time at which He took on a human nature.

And so, that is the Incarnation, and that is unchanging in the sense that it never ends. So, the Incarnation has a beginning. God, the Son, does not have a beginning. There is a point in time in which the Incarnation began, and that goes on forever.

And so, Chalcedon, you have this very short way of summarizing the Incarnation becomes, we talk about God, the Son, having a human nature that He takes to Himself. And so, we say He is two natures or essences, and He is one person.

And that unity is not a unity of essence, because you can't take humanity and divinity and have them be mixed or have them be the same thing. There's a distinction of the two natures, and what we have is what we call the hypostatic union, where there's a human mind and divine mind, and there's a union so that this is one person.

And so, we should talk about that and how that works in more detail. But the idea of two natures and one person, that is the core, short version of how we would talk about the Incarnation. And so, as we think about that, there's a lot more to be said about both, but that would be the summary version for the Incarnation.

Knowing God Without Comprehending Him Fully

Now, obviously, we don't want to give our listeners the wrong impression that they have a liberty and freedom to develop unique and novel ideas of exactly what the Trinity is and delve into heresy and spread that heresy to others.

But at the same time, shouldn't we encourage our Christian listeners, who, after hearing what you said, may be terrified that they perhaps are not regenerate, they are not going to go to heaven, because they just can't comprehend what you're saying?

Isn't there a difference between not being able to fully comprehend a very serious and vital doctrine like the Trinity, and while not being able to comprehend it, there are just basic facts that we need to believe about it that have been revealed to us in the Scriptures?

So, yeah, I want to say two things there. So, first of all, I want to say that a person, when they are regenerated, is not going to understand everything that the Bible communicates all at once. And in fact, we are going to continue to learn about God forever, even after we die in the glorified state, and even after the resurrection in our glorified bodies, we will continue to learn forever.

And so, God is incomprehensible in the sense that he is infinite. And so, anything he reveals, we can understand it if the Holy Spirit illuminates our minds, but there is an infinite amount to learn, and so we will never have a comprehensive knowledge of God.

We will always be learning. So, whatever he reveals, we can understand it and believe it, the Holy Spirit empowers us to, but we will never learn it all. And so, we need to realize there is a process for us, we're going to be gradually growing in this, and so studying the Incarnation, studying the Trinity, meditating upon it, pieces of it will become more and more clear to us.

And things that look contradictory at the beginning, as you study them, and as you compare Scripture with Scripture, you find there is no contradiction. There are beautiful displays of God's glory in these doctrines.

And so, I want to encourage people to not become discouraged, not believe it's impossible to understand. If God reveals a thing, it's so that we might be edified.

The Bible, the Trinity, and Roman Catholic Claims

Amen. And I think I should get this out of the way as well, before I allow you to continue to elaborate on this glorious doctrine and also its counterfeits. But how do you respond to Roman Catholic apologists, or just your average Roman Catholic who you're having a conversation with, who says that no one would ever come to the conclusion that God is triune, that there is a Trinity without the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church teaching us this, that the Bible is insufficient to teach us this, and then you also have cults, you have Jehovah's Witnesses, you have Mormons, and you have other cults that are Unitarian or other forms of anti-Trinitarian heretics who will say the same thing.

They'll say that you are just believing and teaching something that is a heresy of Rome, because the Bible itself never teaches this. How do you respond to these folks?

So first of all, I think that there has been excellent work done by the faithful pastors in the history of the Church. Plainly, we can find these doctrines in the Scriptures. You can find plainly asserted that the Father is God, that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God.

But you also can plainly find the assertion of the idea of them being individual persons. For example, you have the Son praying to the Father, you have the sending of the Spirit by the Father and by the Son, the Eastern Orthodox would be upset about that second part.

And so there's the plainness in which there's interactions to show the distinction of persons, and the plainness in which you can find the attributes of God, the actions of God, the worship of God attributed to all three.

And so the idea that it's not biblical is silly. Anybody that reads the Bible looking for this is going to find it all over the place. It's sort of like the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. As soon as you understand it, as you read your Bible, you start to find it all over the place.

And the same is true with the doctrine of the Trinity. Even beginning, in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1, you have, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so God, when you see God, that label, typically you're thinking about either the group or you're thinking about the Father.

And then you have the idea of the Word being represented there and the Spirit hovering over the water. So from the very first chapter of the Bible, you have these pointers to the Trinity. And then you find things like the baptism formula, with being baptized in the name of each of the individual members of the Trinity.

And you find the particular passages where you have things like Jesus being worshiped, being called by Thomas, his Lord and his God. And so these views are, this is not in the Bible, is nonsense. And the position of Rome that you cannot possibly get there, apart from the magisterial authority of the church.

Well, I'll tell you what, Athanasius had a pretty rough time trying to deal with the fact that throughout the world, overwhelmingly, church officers started to reject this doctrine in favor of Arianism, which is one of the heresies we need to talk about.

The doctrine of Arianism is the idea that Christ is created, that he's the first creature, perhaps an angel, or some sort of semi-god or whatever you want to call it, but typically the word angel is used.

And so the Arians dominated the world, and Athanasius had to go with repeatedly being kicked out of the empire and going into exile. One of those times, he literally was in the middle of preaching, in the middle of his church, when he's being taken out by Roman soldiers to have to be exiled, because of the fact that he's holding to the doctrine of the Trinity.

And on the way out, he asks his congregation to sing Psalm 137 as he's being taken out, which is, you know, how can I sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land? So Athanasius was against the world, against the Catholic, the universal church at the time.

There was overwhelmingly this rejection of the true doctrine, and God gloriously in that darkness used his servant, Athanasius, to cause the doctrine of the Trinity and the clarity of the scriptures to overcome that darkness.

So I think the idea that we needed the magisterium of the church to get to this doctrine suggests not a serious reading of the Bible or of history.

Amen. And that is why Athanasius has forever had attached to his name the nickname Athanasius Contramundum, Athanasius against the world. And he is a figure from history that should give everyone pause when they hear the Roman Catholic lie that we need them to understand the Bible correctly.

If Athanasius thought that way, he would have become an Arian himself.

Yeah, that's a great point, Chris, absolutely.

And was this in history the first known, I'm speaking of Arianism right now, was this the first known recorded attack on the biblical doctrine of the Trinity in history?

You know, that's an interesting question, because obviously what you can find in the scriptures themselves is you find simply a denial of Jesus' office of being the Christ, and obviously you find the assertion of, for example, the Sanhedrin saying that it's blasphemy when they persecuted Christ and convicted him of blasphemy.

The idea that he was calling himself the Son of God, that he was calling himself to be equal with the Father in his essence, they attacked that. So there seems to be a denial there. And so I think a denial of Christ's divinity would perhaps be the first.

And then you could find Arianism and what we would call docetism, those two would be some of the very early on ones. And so whereas Arianism is the assertion that Christ is created and has no divine nature, the docetic view would be sort of an assertion that Christ does not have a human nature, but only the appearance of a humanity.

And so those two things, the denial of either his divinity or the denial of him being truly human, those seem to be sort of the extremes. And it's interesting when you see heresies in their original form, they tend to be more extreme, sort of like we think about the doctrine of grace, right?

You have the idea that there's the Augustinian view of justification by grace alone, through faith alone and Christ alone. And you have grace being the point of contention and whether salvation is all of grace.

And you have the Pelagians saying, no, you can merit your own salvation. And so those are kind of extremes. I mean, very few people would just say, yeah, you can merit it on your own. They're all going to, typically now, I mean, Rome is semi-Pelagian.

They're going to say, well, you need grace and then you need to add on the merit of the saints or whatever. Or, you know, Arminian is going to come in and try to talk about the idea that, yes, it's all of grace.

But at the same time, grace isn't the effectual cause. So you've got these sort of the more modern it gets, the closer it gets in terms of its forms of words. So this Josephism denying the human nature of Christ and Arianism denying his divinity, those seem to be rather extreme heresies that are early on.

And so they become more plain. And so it's easier to detect those than some of the heresies that would come up later.

Yeah, isn't it interesting that the scriptures teach that those who deny that Christ came in the flesh are the ones who are called Antichrist?

Yeah, that's a great point. So it seems there that would be evidence that there's an earlier sort of assault there. So you have this denial that Jesus is God, and then you also have this denial that he came in the flesh.

And so those two being captured in the scriptures, those seem to be the earliest. And then we sort of have those get manifest in more and more complex ways as things go on.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. You may remain anonymous if your question is personal and private.

Let's say, for instance, you're a member of a womanist Pentecostal congregation. And you are beginning to see the truth of the Trinity. And you're becoming at odds with your own church leaders. Well, we would understand that you wouldn't want to necessarily right now at this point in your journey identify yourself publicly.

So we will grant your request to remain anonymous. And there are other similar circumstances that might compel you to remain anonymous with your question. But if it's a general question about the biblical and historical teaching of the Trinity and the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back with David Reese, so please do not go away.

Puritan Reformed is a Bible-believing, kingdom-building, devil-fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone. Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image-bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt Christ.

This is Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona. Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth. Puritan Reformed Church. Believe.

Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com.

I'm Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and an enthusiastic supporter of Chris Arnson's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program. The SecureComm Group provides the highest level of security, close-circuit television, access control, and communication systems for Manhattan's top residential buildings, as well as churches, commercial properties, municipalities, and more.

We custom-install exactly what you need to protect yourself, including digital recording, off-site viewing, and connectivity from most smart devices. From simple code-activated systems to the latest technology using facial recognition, the SecureComm Group has it.

We also provide the latest in intercom and IP telephone systems. In addition, we provide superior networking platforms. We'll create, maintain, and secure your local network. Whether it's a Wi-Fi or hardwire network, we'll implement the latest secured firewall, endpoint solutions, and cloud backup.

I would love to have the honor and privilege of helping protect the lives and property of Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners and their associates. For more details on how the SecureComm Group may be of service to you with the very latest in security innovations, call 718 -353 -3355.

That's 718 -353 -3355. Or visit securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. This is Brian McLaughlin of the SecureComm Group, joining Chris Arntzen's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron radio on the air.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers. One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arntzen is doing is Daniel P. Patafuco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission? To foster belief in the credibility of scripture as the written word of God. They go to various churches, schools, and institutions to publicly display a rare collection of biblical texts along with a fascinating presentation by Mr. Patafuco demonstrating the reliability of scripture.

To advance the cause of the gospel, they created a beautiful, perfect facsimile of the genealogy of Jesus Christ from the original engravings contained in a first edition 1611 King James Bible. This 17th century hand-engraved chart shows the family tree of Jesus Christ going back to Adam and Eve.

This book is complete with gorgeous full-size illustrations of Noah's Ark and the Tower of Babel, and an explanation of why the genealogy of Jesus is so important for his claims to the throne of the universe.

Originals of this work are in museums and nobody has ever made it accessible to the public in a large book form before. You can have your own copy of this 44-page genealogy book for a donation of $35 or more.

Visit historicalbiblesociety .org. That's historicalbiblesociety .org. Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. We here at Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio praise God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.

For the perfect custom-designed engagement ring or any one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry created exactly according to your imagination and specifications, Royal Diadem Jewelers has you covered. No matter where you live in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step-by-step through every stage of the process and even hold a high-tech internet virtual visit using state-of-the-art jewelry design technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs. They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you. From rough design to digital model to photorealistic image to wax prototype model to the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes, making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed and well beyond your expectations. Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today. Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner and manager, Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And don't forget, folks, royaldiadem .com is still offering Iron Sharpens Iron Radio this mind-blowing opportunity. They are giving us at Iron Sharpens Iron Radio 100 of the profits from any sale of jewelry to an Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener who simply mentions that they heard about royaldiadem .com on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And we thank once again my friend Jerry Johnson who was just on the program yesterday. Jerry is a globally known Christian documentarian and he purchased his wife's birthday present very recently, a diamond ring that had actually numerous diamonds on it, if I'm not mistaken, from royaldiadem .com.

And we were assured from Sterling Vandewerker, the owner of royaldiadem .com, that my check is in the mail for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, 100 of the profits from that sale because Jerry mentioned Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And so you can help us too and also not only help us but bless yourself and anyone you love for whom you are purchasing jewelry by going to royaldiadem .com and please do that as soon as possible if you have any intention to buy jewelry because we have no idea when they're going to pull the plug on this amazing offer where we get 100 of the profits.

So that's royaldiadem .com. Always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are now back with our guest today, David Reese, pastor of Puritan Reform Church of Phoenix, Arizona.

We are talking about the doctrine of the Trinity and also the heresies associated with it. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We do have a comment, not a question, by Cindy in Findlay, Ohio, and she says, Jehovah's Witnesses recorded in one of their publications that it is important to follow their teaching because if a person read the Bible without their instruction, they would come to the conclusion that there was a Trinity.

I never heard that, but that's pretty self-condemning that they would write that. Have you heard that as well?

That's hilarious. I had not run into that before, but I think that that would be true, that if a person were reading the Bible and they were understanding the text, that they would come to that conclusion.

And so unless they have a cult to help them to avoid understanding the Bible, they would come to that conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity is biblical.

Well, thank you, Cindy. And once again, if anybody else wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Why is this doctrine so vital? There are people who may even claim to be Trinitarian, but they say that we cannot possibly hold people accountable to believe and teach this.

In fact, there are professing Trinitarians who are ecumenical with Trinity deniers like the United Pentecostal Church International, which is a oneness Pentecostal cult. And there are other cults that teach a similar doctrine that are Unitarian in their understanding of the Godhead and also other aberrant ways of understanding God.

They just say this is just for scholars in their holes of academia or their libraries to sit around and talk about these things while they puff on a pipe and have a sifter of brandy in their hand and that we can't possibly use this as a rule of faith or as a litmus test for fellowship with other people.

How do you respond to that?

Well, first of all, I would say that in the history of the church, the church figured it out in its infancy. At the early stages of the church, this was an early controversy. And so when you look at the history of things, people tend to deal with the more basic things early on and the splitting happens about those more foundational things.

So you go from, OK, here's the doctrine of the Trinity to now who is Christ and how does his humanity work? And you go down the line. Doctrine gets worked through from the more basic to the less basic across history.

Additionally, if you look at, for example, the Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession or the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration, they all start with scripture, which is how do you know?

And then they go to the next most basic thing, which is what's real, what's the most basic reality? The most basic reality is God. And so you get to chapter two of the Westminster Confession and we're talking about the definition of God.

We're talking about the Trinity. And so who are the persons that are God? And so if we don't know who God is, if we don't know what God is and we don't know who he is, then we don't know what we worship.

And that is superstition. So if we're going to be Christians, we need to understand who Christ is. If we're going to worship the God of the Bible, we need to know who the God of the Bible is. And if we are unwilling to think about the very basic things about who God is, then we're not taking this seriously.

We're not taking the truth seriously at all. We don't care about the nature of reality. We don't care about the good life. And the good life is the life of glorifying God. If we're going to glorify God, we have to know him and then we have to show the knowledge of him.

Glorifying God involves knowing him and showing him. And so if we don't know him and then we try to talk about him, we're going to say meaningless words, false words, or we're going to tell the truth.

And so if we want to tell the truth, if we want to tell people about the God of the Bible, we need to understand this doctrine. And so I think it is vital. And I think when you look at things like, for example, the Westminster Assembly put together the Confession of Faith.

It's their chapter two. They also put together a larger catechism to help to teach people how to be mature. The Doctrine of the Trinity is there. But guess what? The Doctrine of the Trinity is even in the shorter catechism, early in the shorter catechism, to teach people who are learning the milk of the faith.

This is not something that eventually people get to someday. This is vital. This is essential. This is foundational. And so understanding who God is, is how we have the most basic elements of the knowledge of God.

But also we're told in John 17 3, this is eternal life to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent. And so this knowledge of who Jesus is and who the father is. There is listed there in John 17 3.

This is life. And so knowing God is how we have life and it's how we have it abundantly is by knowing him more. So I think this is vitally important. And I think that if we don't understand the Doctrine of the Trinity and we don't understand the Doctrine of the Incarnation, we're not going to understand at a deep level at all what was accomplished for us.

So as we know God better, we are more in awe of him. And that inspires us to love him more deeply so that the love of God proceeds out of a knowledge of God. So I would say that's why we need to care about the Doctrine of the Trinity, Chris.

Yes, amen. And if we claim to love God, we are going to want to know as much about him as we possibly can. I remember years ago, my friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, I thought gave a great analogy.