Simply Trinity (part 21)

Our great God, we come before you this morning thankful for all that you have done, will do, and are doing through the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his perfect life, his substitutionary death, his glorious resurrection, his wonderful ascension.

Father, we pray that as we look to your word and look to what men have taught throughout the ages, that you would strengthen us, that you would convict us, even of the areas in which we've come short, that you would help us, that you would lead us, that you would strengthen us in our faith, in our ability to understand that or to explain that faith.

We pray for these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, is there anybody who does not have a copy of quiz number 8? Quiz number 8. I see those hands, thankfully. My arm is not so short that I can't handle these hands.

Oh, that would be great. Thank you, Carol. All right, so we left off at number 22 last week. That's where we finished, which, you know, just by way of review, was true or false, number 22. Scripture always stresses equality when the imminent trinity is in view, which means what?

When we talk about the imminent trinity, what does that mean? I realize it's early. Many of you have not had sufficient caffeine this morning. Who God is in his essence, in his person. When we say imminent, I-M-M-A-N-E-N-T, E kind of sounds like imminent close, but it's not that at all.

So, don't confuse that. And so we talked a bit about subordination. We've been talking about subordination because that's what this whole chapter is about. Who wants to explain eternal functional subordination?

You know, in 20 seconds or less, seeing no hands. Eternal functional subordination is this. It says, it's a theory that says that the Son, Jesus, second person of the trinity, was eternally subordinate to the Father, meaning that for EFS, eternal functional subordination, they would say that he's the same in essence, but that he functions separately, that he subordinates himself voluntarily, eternally, even in his deity.

And what's the problem with that? Or are there any problems with that? Coffee ministry is lacking. Yes, there are problems with that. Let's see. How about this, in terms of a question. If the Son is eternally functionally subordinate, what does that suggest about the trinity itself?

Why would he have to subordinate himself to the Father? Because the Father is greater than the Son. What's that? There's two different wills. He disagrees, but he's going to subordinate himself below the Father.

But this idea of the Father being greater than the Son, is that true? Is it ever true? No? Okay, well, not in the imminent trinity, but in the economic trinity, which is how the trinity plays itself out in time.

So, the Son says that the Father is greater. But he says that, what? In his humanity. So, the important thing, and here's what I'm trying to stress. When we're talking about eternal functional subordination, we're talking about taking Jesus, our understanding of Jesus as the Son of God, as the incarnate Word, as fully and truly human, and then importing what is true about him as a man, and taking that all the way back into eternity.

And what's the problem with that? The problem with it, I'll answer my own question, because I like hearing myself speak, is that he wasn't always incarnate. He wasn't always a human being. He was, in fact, eternally, the second person in the trinity, eternally the equal of the Father.

He was eternally generated, which is to say, he's of the same substance and essence as the Father. So, fully and totally equal. Okay, now that we've had a little bit of review. Number 23. And, of course, the quiz gets easier as we go.

We just had a true-false, so naturally there's this one. What are the three ways, Augustine notes, the Bible describes the father-son relationship? And, of course, all of you, having done your devotions this morning in Augustine, are totally prepared to answer this question.

Or, maybe not. But, it's on page 240 of the book, if you've been reading the book. Here's what Barrett says. Now we meet Augustine's rules, which avoid conflation, conflation meaning the merging together of truths about God, and preserve proper distinctions between who God is and what God does.

Always the exegetes, Augustine pays keen attention to the nuances within the biblical text and pinpoints three different ways scripture describes the son in relation to the father. First, the form of God.

Some say the son is one with the father and is in the very form of God. These texts describe the father and the son's unity and equality of substance. He notes John 10 .30, where Jesus says, I and the father are one, right?

And then Philippians 2 .6, where Paul writes that though Jesus existed in the form of God, he didn't view equality, or he didn't feel the need to hang on to that, to grasp it. Excuse me. Okay, so first, the form of God.

Second, form of a servant. Other texts say the father is greater than the son. John 14 .28, John 5 .27. These texts do not mean that the son is an inferior deity, meaning a lesser God. The son is lesser only in the sense that he has taken the form of a servant.

In other words, when does Jesus become less than the father? When he takes on humanity, when he becomes incarnate, when he takes to himself a created form. According to his manhood, his humanity, he humbles himself and obeys the father for the purpose of fulfilling his mission of salvation.

So he's not essentially or ontologically inferior to the father. He's inferior to the father when he becomes like us. So he's in the form of God, form of a servant, and then finally sent from the father.

Still other texts say the father gave the son life in himself. John 5 .26. And the son does only what he sees the father doing. John 5 .19. These texts do not refer to the son being equal or less, but instead reveal the son is from the father.

Then this is a quote from Augustine. This then is the rule which governs many scriptural texts intended to show not that one person is less than the other, but only that one is from the other. So Jesus, according to Augustine, there are three ways that the Bible describes the father-son relationship between the father and Jesus.

Form of God. So he has the same form as the father. Form of a servant. He takes on also the form of human. And then sent from the father. So he's of the father. Those are the three ways. Thoughts, questions, concerns.

Number 24. True or false. EFS. Eternal Functional Subordination. Smashes the double consubstantiality of Jesus. What do I mean by that? I mean compresses that. What's double consubstantiality? Think of your diagram that I handed out.

Lo, those many months ago. What is double consubstantiality? It's a little rectangle attached to the bottom of a triangle. John Zook, ladies and gentlemen. He's been drinking coffee since 3 o 'clock this morning.

Okay. You're so close. You're so close. But let's just make it simpler. Double consubstantiality. Let's break it down. Substance. Jesus is... So if we say consubstance. Consubstantial. Jesus is of the same substance as the Father with regard to his divinity or deity.

And he's of the same substance as... Who's the other person that he's married with regard to his humanity. Okay. Double consubstantiality. And there is no mixing between the two like Corey was just saying.

He's truly God. And he's truly human. Of both substances. Okay. With that. Barrett says, EFSers, those who support eternal functional subordination, like Grudem and Ware, confuse these rules, mixing and meshing all three.

They look at all three of Augustine's definitions. They look at sent language in the Gospels, or language that says the son is dependent on his father in some way, and conclude that authority, subordination, reaches back into eternity, which is exactly what I was saying earlier.

Even into the imminent trinity. That is a category mistake. In other words, when I say smashing, I mean they take what is true of Jesus in his humanity, import that back into eternity, and then smash it so that it's true about the trinity too.

And it's not true about the trinity. So they've essentially created a trinity of their own imagination. Number 25. True or false. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 24 to 28, the imminent trinity is in view.

Any guesses off the top of your head? It is false. Let's read 1 Corinthians 15, 24 to 28. When we say the imminent trinity, again, what is that? What's that? Who he is. So from all eternity, who God is.

Okay, now would somebody read 1 Corinthians 15, verses 24 to 28, please. 1 Corinthians 15, 24 to 28. Yeah, go ahead, Mark. What's the context of 1 Corinthians 15? Resurrection. So, would that have to do with eternity or with creation?

Creation. Right? So when it says here in 1 Corinthians 15, 24, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, this is talking about Jesus delivering, and this is the man Christ Jesus, the raised man, the one who was dead and now lives, right?

Then it says, he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet, under Jesus' feet. But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.

In other words, the Father is accepted. The Father is left out of that. He doesn't put himself in subjection to the Son. And so, therefore, EFSers say, well, look, the Father is supreme. He's above the Son.

In fact, it goes on to say in verse 28, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection. In other words, the Son will be subjected to God the Father. So, therefore, there is a proof text that the Father is greater than the Son.

And your response is what? Okay, you've taken the economic trinity, in other words, how the trinity functions in time after creation, after the incarnation even, and you've conflated that. You've made it into the imminent trinity, the eternal trinity.

You've taken something that is true of Jesus, the man, and said, well, it must be then true of Jesus, the eternal God. So, again, this is a category error. Barrett says, is it a coincidence that the silver bullet proof text in the EFS argument is the same proof text that Arians used to argue against orthodoxy?

And the answer is no, it's not a coincidence. Then he says, what is Paul saying in this text? In the form of God, the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Paul affirms this much throughout his letters.

However, in 1 Corinthians 15, his attention is not on the Son in the form of God, but in the form of a servant, Augustine's rule number two. The context is not the imminent trinity, but the economic trinity, the redemptive mission of the incarnate Son.

The entire chapter is about the resurrection of Christ, something EFSers rarely mention. Paul goes to great lengths to outline Christ's death, burial, and resurrection to substantiate the believer's own resurrection from the dead one day.

Moreover, Paul compares and contrasts Christ to Adam. For as by a man, Adam came death, by a man, Christ, has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Paul has a habit of contrasting Adam and Christ. He also does so in Romans 5. Here is the contrast. Adam failed, but the second Adam succeeded. But don't overlook the context. Paul's focus is on history, specifically redemptive history.

Exhibiting the second Adam as the one who counters the curse by rising from the grave, Paul's focus is on Christ as the Adamic mediator and redeemer of God's people, victorious over death. Christ has fulfilled his mission from the Father.

In other words, again, this is about the man Christ Jesus, victorious in his mission, not about the eternal second person of the Trinity being subordinated to the Father. Questions, concerns, thoughts, heresies.

John? I think they would deny that. I think they want to portray themselves. The question is, are the EFSers, do they think the Arians, that is to say those who say, for the record, Arians are followers of Arius who said that Jesus was what?

Not eternal. That he's a created being. That he comes into being like, well, like today the Jehovah Witnesses would say that he was the Archangel Michael, a created being. The Mormons would say he's a created being just like us.

So, who becomes God later. So, they look at what the Arians did and they say, well, the Arians went too far because Jesus is not created. But, they say, there's a hint of Arianism that was correct, which is essentially this, that the Father and the Son are both eternal, but their relationship is such that Father, Son, in fact, there's a famous EFSer now who says that it's the nature of a son to be subordinate to his father.

So, that was the eternal nature of it, is Jesus was always subordinate to the Father. Now, the problem with that is, again, it's taking the text that we see in the New Testament, describing Jesus in his humanity and importing it back into eternity.

So, okay, yeah, Jonathan. And that's right. If we just look, again, going back to 1 Corinthians 15, if we just think about what Paul's describing, what he's ultimately describing is that the risen Jesus has ascended to heights that are indescribable, that only he could occupy, but he's still occupying them as the man Christ Jesus.

So, in that sense, he is less than the Father, but that's occurring to his being as a human, not in his eternal deity. So, yeah, that's right. It's no small thing that Paul's describing, but it's still the best that a human could achieve.

Yes. Okay, number 26. True or false, according to Philippians 2, Jesus' leaving heaven was an act of obedience. According to Philippians 2, Jesus' leaving heaven was an act of obedience. That is false.

Very good. Let's read Philippians 2, verses 5 to 8. Philippians 2, verses 5 to 8, familiar verses. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.

By taking 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 of death, even death on a cross. Now, if I wanted to foster, what's the word I'm looking for?

Oh, heresy, that's it. If I wanted to foster heresy, I'd ask somebody to explain this. What does it mean that Jesus emptied himself? I mean, one of my favorite heresies that we sing very often, how about this one?

He emptied himself of all but love. Is that true or false? But we sing it. How can it be false? Emptied himself. That's why you'll hear Pastor Mike, like, turn himself into a pretzel to sing other words.

I mean, it's pretty distracting if you think about it, and now you'll always think about it. It's pretty distracting when you're singing a song to go, well, that's not right. Why is it wrong to say that he emptied himself of all but love?

Because he's still full of God. What happens if Jesus empties himself of all but love? The universe flies apart. It's a bad day. I mean, if he's no longer omnipotent, you know, he goes, you know, that omnipotence thing, I've got to lay it aside.

He's like, hey, sorry, kids, didn't mean for everything to disintegrate. So that was just for free. Next time you sing emptied himself of all but love, you'll be like, what else can we sing there? Emptied himself, because he did do that.

So great, his love. I mean, there are a lot of things that we sing instead of that. But anyway. Barrett. Paul is very careful to first confess Christ as the eternal son. He was in the form of God eternally.

Nevertheless, in order to die on the cross, the eternal son of God took on the form of a servant. He takes to himself humanity, our confession says. How so? By being born in the likeness of men. What will this servanthood entail?

Humility and obedience. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. So getting back to the question. Leaving heaven was not an act of obedience. His obedience begins when?

In the incarnation. I mean, can God be obedient? No. He obeys his own laws. Well, no, they exist because he exists. Barrett says, don't miss this. Obedience was not something the son did prior to the incarnation.

In the form of God as the eternal son of God. You know, Corey mentioned his humiliation. We often think of the humiliation of Christ as what? I mean, if I open up Isaiah 53, right, and start reading that, we think, well, that's the humiliation of Jesus when he's beaten, when he's flogged, when he's interrogated, when he's tortured, when he's put on the cross.

That's the humiliation of Jesus. What's the truth? It begins at birth. What? Yes. And then if you think about this, well, how could that be? How could that be humiliating? Because the divine takes to himself a limited form, a body who needs to be fed, who needs to be changed, who needs all these other things.

This is the humiliation of the son of God. Okay, 27, true or false? If EFS is consistently applied, it diminishes the love of God. If EFS, eternal functional subordination, is consistently applied, it diminishes the love of God.

It is true. Barrett says, EFS muddies this purely benevolent, altruistic, divine motive. Not only did the son live and die for us, but for himself under the EFS model. His obedience was not an obedience for our sake only, but for his own sake as well.

Remember, EFS teaches that subordination is what makes the son a son before the world was ever created or a sinner ever sinned. He cannot be a son otherwise. In eternity, within the imminent trinity, the son must be obedient or else.

Barrett continues, or else what? As EFSers say time after time, or else he is no longer son. That logic transfers into history as well. For EFS, the incarnation is but a continuation of an eternal subordination.

Yet notice what is lost. Obedience to the point of death then, cannot be all that altruistic in the end. The son has to obey anyway, otherwise the very meaning of his sonship is relinquished. EFSers won't admit this, but the son obeys and dies not only for us, but to ensure he continues and does not forfeit his sonship.

And then Barrett says, however, Jesus did not go to the cross for himself. He went to the cross for us and for us alone. So in other words, by saying that he went there because he's the eternal son, the son had to subordinate himself, so in order to continue to prove himself to be the worthy son, he had to go to the cross.

That says he didn't go to the cross for us alone, to redeem us, to bring about the forgiveness of sin, but also that his sonship might continue. We might be better served to talk about the humiliation of Jesus rather than his submission.

His submission. What's the difference between humiliation and submission? What's that? Humiliation is almost passive. Submission being an act of will. Barrett says this, he says, his incarnate obedience was a mere perpetuation of heaven.

That's what the EFSers say. His subjugation to suffering was mere continuation of eternity. Perhaps it's time we change our vocabulary. We evangelicals have a bad habit of using words like submission and subordination.

Not only do those words never appear in scripture with reference to the eternal son of God, but they imply a lesser son, an inferior son. It's much wiser if we use the language of the New Testament. Humiliation.

That biblical word conveys what we should be after in the son's self-humiliation, not frozen subordination. In the end, the stakes are high. If we follow EFS into the valley of its low Christology, we should not be surprised when our soteriology suffers too.

In other words, if our view of our salvation is impacted by our low Christology, our understanding that he is less than the Father. Number 29. True or false? 1 Corinthians 11 teaches us that husbands are greater than wives, and God is greater than Christ.

All of a sudden the ladies are full of all their coffee. 1 Corinthians 11 3 says this, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ. The head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

So there you have it. Jesus is greater than men. Husbands are greater than their wives, and the father is greater than the son. Barrow says, so when Paul says the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God, he has in view the incarnate suffering servant, who fulfilled his mission by means of his obedient life, death, and resurrection as the Messiah.

There is absolutely nothing in the immediate or wider context that says anything at all about the Son apart from creation and salvation within the imminent Trinity. To infuse and impose discussions of imminent Trinity on this text is a failure to treat the context with integrity.

Paul has in view the salvific lordship of the anointed one, the Messiah. So again, it's this conflation, it's this compression of eternity with his humanity. Barrow goes on to say, there is submission between the Father and the Son, but the text never indicates this submission is within the imminent Trinity, the eternal Trinity.

But always within the context of the economy, within since he became incarnate. For salvation is the very point of this submission, not hierarchy within the very being of God. Two thousand years of church history have gone by, yet until EFSers arrived on the scene, nobody ever thought to appeal to subordination in the imminent Trinity as the model for female submission.

I find that not just amazing, but telling. For they also labored to properly interpret the Bible, and it's all the more telling because for most of history, societies were patriarchal. Yet these patriarchal societies never thought to use the Trinity to establish female subordination.

What's he saying here? He's saying that this whole idea of there being a hierarchy within the Trinity was never used to say to women, well look, you need to submit to your husbands because, why? Because the son submits to the father.

And if he can do that, and they're equal, then you should be able to do that too. And he goes, for almost 2 ,000 years, nobody in the church taught that until this theory came along. Now all of a sudden it's like, aha, well here we go.

Ladies, submit to your husbands. And it's really not that bad because once we understand that Jesus submitted to the father, then we can see that women can submit to their husbands. Well, I'll just tell you in military terms, I'll tell you exactly how that would happen.

I'm the general, you're the captain. You give an order, I obey it. And when the report is written, all of a sudden it becomes my order, which you obeyed. Yeah, I think it would be almost unimaginable to think of a scenario in which obedience didn't imply authority.

I mean, I'm not excited about accepting that only because I don't want to wind up the subject of some article or something. I mean, that seems reasonable, right? Temporal functional subordination. So for temporarily, we'll accept that.

Yes, Daniel. Well, let me interrupt you for a minute because that is the important thing to remember, that when Jesus comes and takes to himself humanity, he is acting as the second Adam. In other words, the first Adam blew it, plunging all of us into sin.

The second Adam had to be obedient in order that we might be redeemed. He had to be perfectly obedient. So, Daniel, were you going to say anything else? Yeah. Even, you know, Matthew, you shall name him Jesus.

Why? Because he's going to save his people from their sins, right? I mean, this is why he came, to redeem us. Yeah, good. Number 30. I think we might be able to finish here today. 30. True or false. Human language can portray a complete view of the Trinity.

That's false. You know, I said weeks and weeks ago that language was an accommodation. Somebody asked questions about it. Well, let's think about this here for a minute. Barrett says this. He says, We read the Bible as if finite human speech is to be taken in the most literalistic way possible, forgetting that we are describing the indescribable, the infinite, incomprehensible God.

Our language is not univocal, as if there was a one-to-one direct correspondence between our words and the God we are describing. Can you imagine? We would read the Psalms and conclude God has a body with big ears, eyeballs, and wings like a bird.

And that's not God. God is spirit, those who worship him. All those anthropomorphisms are not meant to be taken literally, and if we understand language rightly, we'd understand that while sometimes language touches on the truths of God and makes us even marvel at God, it still is only superficial.

It still can only give us a bit of an understanding of him. Okay, last one. Number 31, true or false? The Jesus of eternal functional subordination should be worshipped. A hush fell over the pool room.

It's false. Again and again, EFS says the Son is a lesser authority, a lesser glory than the Father, for the Father alone deserves ultimate praise and worship, which raises a question. Does EFS manufacture a subordinate son who cannot be worshipped?

I mean, it's almost like we're almost getting Roman Catholic here, where we've got Dulia and Latria. Who deserves the ultimate praise? In the Gospel of Matthew, Barak continues, immediately after Jesus fed 5 ,000 people with just five loaves and two fish, he made his disciples get into a boat and sail ahead of him so that he could stay behind and pray.

But the boat was caught in a vicious, merciless storm. Can you imagine how terrified the disciples must have been? As the waves beat down on their boat, they must have thought they were about to die. But then when all seems lost, they look up and see a figure walking toward them on the water.

Matthew says the disciples were terrified. Nature had turned into a demon. First the waves, now a ghost. They started wailing, crying out in fear. Then Jesus spoke, Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.

Barak says, do you know what happened next? The unthinkable. Jesus got into the boat and the text says, I'm not making this up, that the disciples worshipped Jesus and confessed him to be the Son of God.

They worshipped him. But wait, shouldn't Jesus have stopped them and said, No, no, no. Ultimate praise and glory is not mine. I am a lesser authority than the Father. Worship him. Give your praise to him.

He must say that if EFS has its way, but he didn't. Instead, he stood there and received their worship in full. No restriction, no correction, no hesitation. When Arianism swept through the church in the fourth century, Athanasius knew the bottom line was worship.

If Arius was right, then on Sunday morning, churchgoers could not worship the Son, at least not like they worshipped the Father. Despite its nuances, EFS finds itself in a similar boat. Can they fall to the ground with the disciples in the boat and worship Jesus?

He is, after all, a lesser glory. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, Lord, even as we look at this, as we contemplate this, as we think about these men, very smart, intelligent men, Father, we would pray that you would help us to avoid error, to remain in the truth, to stand with centuries of faithful men who have proclaimed the truths of Scripture, that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all of the same substance, are all of equal glory.

Father, help us to continue to grapple with the Trinity, to seek to understand you rightly, and to avoid the errors of those who essentially would say that Jesus is a lesser God, that he is not eternally begotten of the same essence as the Father.

Father, preserve us from such errors. Help us. Father, we would pray for these men who have strayed into these errors, that you would turn them from these unorthodox views, and toward orthodoxy. Father, bless us as we continue to worship you today, our triune God, and help us by your Spirit to worship the Son as we worship the Father, and even as we worship the Spirit.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.