It is very important for our salvation that our God is a trinity. The word "trinity" is not used in the Bible, but that God is three in one is everywhere in its pages. The Father creates us, the Son redeems us, and the Spirit sanctifies us. All three of these things are necessary for the Christian life.
Matthew 3:16-17. When Jesus is baptized by John in the river Jordan, he comes up immediately from the water, and the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him. He has been "christened" for his office as redeemer. A voice out of the heavens--the Father--says that Jesus is his beloved son, in whom he is well pleased. The Father is the mastermind behind the plan of salvation, and he is pleased with the human vessel to carry the plan out. Jesus is the redeemer of the world, the Word of God made flesh, who dies for the sins of believers. The Holy Spirit applies redemption to the believers and carries out the cleansing of our sins, making them white as snow, like a dove.
Matthew 28:18-20. The Father has given the Son all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus, the Son, takes that authority and passes it down to all believers, giving us the power to preach the gospel to all nations, making disciples. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit begins the regeneration process. Believers are preached to and become sanctified. The act of discipling is conceived by the Father, enabled by the Son, and impossible to accomplish without the Spirit.
John 14:16. Jesus tells his disciples that he, the Son, will ask the Father, and he will give his disciples the Spirit of truth to help us. Once again, the Father is the mastermind, Christ is the agent of change, and the Holy Spirit is the substance of enlightenment. In this case, he will lead his children in all truth, teaching all things, opening the scriptures to understanding, and testifying about Jesus to the world (John 15:26).
John 16:5-11. The Spirit also keeps in our minds the trinity. Not only does he convict the world of sin, but he alerts the world to the righteous solution for sin, because Jesus is with the Father, interceding for us. The Spirit also promises a day of judgment and that there is only a short time left, time enough for us to receive faith in God. Faith is not just believing in God, but a thorough understanding of the gospel, and that understanding involves knowing the trinity. The gospel doesn't make sense unless the roles the trinity plays make sense.
Salvation involves the complete trinity. If you don't have the Spirit, you don't have the Son. If you don't have the Son, you don't have the Father. Not believing in one means you don't believe in any of them. Not being aware of the work of one means the other two are not working in your life, either. How do you know if God is active in your life? The Holy Spirit bears fruit in the believer's life. If you can see the fruit of faith, then you know the Holy Spirit is sanctifying you, and you know that the Son is interceding for you, and you know that the Father has elected you. If you practice the deeds of the flesh, then you are outside the trinity. The deeds of the flesh, according to Galatians 5, are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing. The fruits of the Spirit are love (as Christ loved us), joy (even in persecution), peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Examine yourselves. These fruits are not difficult to discern. Is the trinity at work in your life? Has the Father created a new person? Has the Son spilled his blood on your behalf? Is the Holy Spirit sanctifying you? Are you bearing the fruit?
Friday, May 25, 2018
Friday, May 18, 2018
Denying Eternity
As Christ says in his prayer in John 17, Eternal Life is knowing God. Solomon states in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God has set eternity in mankind's heart. Essentially, God has put the knowledge of himself in all creatures, so that we might grope for him and discover him in this life. However, all men and women, to various degrees, bury him in the conscience, piling over top of God idol after idol as a substitute. As we read in Romans 1, we suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because even with all the evidence in creation, we do not seek God. We tend to seek only our own pleasures and self worth. Some merely don't seek him, while others actively hate him. Either way, not honoring God or giving thanks to him for life, we devolve into futile speculations about the nature of things. We are fools and worship the creature, because men and animals are manageable. God himself is so vastly superior and awe-inspiring that it would crush us to nothing to acknowledge his glory. Such are all of us, but some travel far down the path of unrighteousness, whereas God has snatched others out of such futile thinking, as if brands from a fire. He has saved some.
The unsaved continue down the path far, burying God beneath so much idolatry and self-conceit, that they do not even believe that a God exists. Psalm 14:1 reads, "the fool has said in his heart, 'there is no God.' " Although the ungodly one does not fear God, he makes an idol of his own sin, and he elevates himself as God. God allows the unrighteous to pursue this course, and as a result, they never linger around the cusp of belief. They sprint toward deeper and deeper depravities until they cannot return to possible redemption, it seems. Jesus himself tells his disciples that this is the reason he speaks in parables. Those who are on the cusp of belief will understand the parables, being nudged in the right direction by the Holy Spirit. Those who have cast themselves away from God's grace cannot hear the meaning of the parables, and they sound like nonsense and foolishness to them.
All of this is best summarized in the words of Psalm 36:
Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart;
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
For it flatters him in his own eyes
Concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.
The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit;
He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
He plans wickedness upon his bed;
He sets himself on a path that is not good;
He does not despise evil.
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
Your judgments are like a great deep.
O Lord, You preserve man and beast.
How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!
And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house;
And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
In Your light we see light.
O continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You,
And Your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Let not the foot of pride come upon me,
And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away.
There the doers of iniquity have fallen;
They have been thrust down and cannot rise.
Even then, all is not lost. God can take the most vile of sinners and breathe life into him. The reason is, in actuality, only Christ is saved, because he is sinless. He is the one with whom the covenant between God and Man was made, and so his righteousness saves him. We, however, can be saved by faith alone. Just an ounce of faith--a mustard seed--can move mountains and can also move a man from the brink of everlasting destruction into Christ, our salvation, our ark. Faith is all one needs, and with this faith, the Holy Spirit cleanses us to prepare us for everlasting life. Our sins are removed, crucified with Christ on the cross, and his righteousness is reckoned to us. Christ is saved, and we are saved with him, as long as we are in him by faith.
The unsaved continue down the path far, burying God beneath so much idolatry and self-conceit, that they do not even believe that a God exists. Psalm 14:1 reads, "the fool has said in his heart, 'there is no God.' " Although the ungodly one does not fear God, he makes an idol of his own sin, and he elevates himself as God. God allows the unrighteous to pursue this course, and as a result, they never linger around the cusp of belief. They sprint toward deeper and deeper depravities until they cannot return to possible redemption, it seems. Jesus himself tells his disciples that this is the reason he speaks in parables. Those who are on the cusp of belief will understand the parables, being nudged in the right direction by the Holy Spirit. Those who have cast themselves away from God's grace cannot hear the meaning of the parables, and they sound like nonsense and foolishness to them.
All of this is best summarized in the words of Psalm 36:
Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart;
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
For it flatters him in his own eyes
Concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it.
The words of his mouth are wickedness and deceit;
He has ceased to be wise and to do good.
He plans wickedness upon his bed;
He sets himself on a path that is not good;
He does not despise evil.
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
Your judgments are like a great deep.
O Lord, You preserve man and beast.
How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!
And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings.
They drink their fill of the abundance of Your house;
And You give them to drink of the river of Your delights.
For with You is the fountain of life;
In Your light we see light.
O continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You,
And Your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Let not the foot of pride come upon me,
And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away.
There the doers of iniquity have fallen;
They have been thrust down and cannot rise.
Even then, all is not lost. God can take the most vile of sinners and breathe life into him. The reason is, in actuality, only Christ is saved, because he is sinless. He is the one with whom the covenant between God and Man was made, and so his righteousness saves him. We, however, can be saved by faith alone. Just an ounce of faith--a mustard seed--can move mountains and can also move a man from the brink of everlasting destruction into Christ, our salvation, our ark. Faith is all one needs, and with this faith, the Holy Spirit cleanses us to prepare us for everlasting life. Our sins are removed, crucified with Christ on the cross, and his righteousness is reckoned to us. Christ is saved, and we are saved with him, as long as we are in him by faith.
Saturday, May 5, 2018
Man Before God
One of the greatest goals in life, if not the greatest goal in life, for anyone is to know oneself. We try to attain this knowledge of self, but we live in a world that has rejected God, so our only object of comparison is the world itself, including other people. When we compare ourselves to people, we think ourselves pretty good, and so we end up with a warped view of ourselves. The Bible gives us a different object of comparison--God himself. When we compare ourselves to him, different things happen to us.
Calvin asserted two truths in chapter one of his Institutes, and they were, "without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God," and, "without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self." This may sound like circular reasoning, but one can enter such a circle through an experience of God. Such an experience need not be a mystical vision or miraculous offering. One only needs to understand oneself in relation to the God of the Bible. One must rightly think of himself as unworthy of everlasting life because of the knowledge that God is perfectly holy, and unholy things cannot be in his presence. This sounds simple enough, but the world's image of God and mankind are so corrupt that it seems nigh impossible today to get an accurate vision of ourselves and God. For this we must turn to the pages of scripture.
Two examples from the Old Testament: in Isaiah 6, the prophet has a vision of God, sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple. Even the angels that flew about him covered their faces and their feet, because he was so holy. Isaiah's reaction is to fall on his face and scream, "woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5) Our reaction to God's holiness is an acute realization of our uncleanness.
The second is from 1 Kings 19. Elijah is fleeing into the wilderness, and at mount Horeb the Lord approaches him. First there is a hurricane that rends the mountains, but scripture tells us that God was not in the wind. Next comes an earthquake, and God is not in the earthquake. Finally, there is a fire, but the Lord is not there, either. Finally, a gentle breeze comes to Elijah. We have heard this passage before, and usually the point is that the Lord comes to us gently at times, not in violence. That's a nice message, but look at what Elijah does when he experiences the breeze: he wraps his mantle about his face to protect himself from the holiness of God. Yes, God may be in gentle things and not violent things, but the point is that we are not worthy to face his holiness, no matter where it is found. The holiness of God draws out our wretchedness.
Here is an example from the New Testament: Jesus tells Peter to let down his nets in the water after a night of catching nothing. Peter obeys reluctantly and catches an enormous amount of fish. When faced with this sudden holiness of Christ, Peter falls down at Jesus' feet and says, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" Is it not clear that when faced with the truth of God--that he is perfectly holy--we end up with an accurate view of ourselves--that we are perfectly wretched?
So, do we wait for the unconverted to have a holy experience, so that they may be saved? Well, we can pray for such a miraculous event to occur, but the best way for such a conversion to happen--if it is to happen--is to take the unconverted to the Word of God. For an example of this, we look to Acts 17 and Paul's sermon in the midst of the Areopagus. His sermon is quite simple, but it brings out the two accurate views of God and mankind. He notes that the people of Athens are so religious that they even worship gods they don't know. He then proclaims that the god they don't know is the one who made everything, and the ones they do know are actually only false idols of wood and stone. He extols the holiness of God by describing his giving of breath and life to all people. He essentially hearkens back to creation in Genesis 1 and hits them with the awesome mind of God, who not only made everyone but determined their birth locations and times. "In Him we live and move and exist." He tells them that even their own pagan poets figured it out. Therefore, as Children of the one, true God, when we worship manmade gods, we are idolators, wretched sinners, and we need to repent. Why do we need to repent? Because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world through his Son, Jesus Christ, and he has proved that this will happen by raising said Son from the dead. Paul, in few words, has hit the unconverted with the most succinct exposition of God's holiness. Quick and to the point, within the limited amount of time a believer has--in this day and age, too--to get the truth of God across to the unconverted.
The holiness of God, when delivered accurately, not as genie-magic to help us in our day-to-day desires, but as the perfect goodness of a creator who will mete out perfect justice on all unrepentant sinners, is a way to get through the tough shell of worldly unbelief that permeates our culture today. Many will resist, as they did that day in the Areopagus, but many may have their shells crushed by the truth and begin to turn to their savior with repentance and faith.
Calvin asserted two truths in chapter one of his Institutes, and they were, "without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God," and, "without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self." This may sound like circular reasoning, but one can enter such a circle through an experience of God. Such an experience need not be a mystical vision or miraculous offering. One only needs to understand oneself in relation to the God of the Bible. One must rightly think of himself as unworthy of everlasting life because of the knowledge that God is perfectly holy, and unholy things cannot be in his presence. This sounds simple enough, but the world's image of God and mankind are so corrupt that it seems nigh impossible today to get an accurate vision of ourselves and God. For this we must turn to the pages of scripture.
Two examples from the Old Testament: in Isaiah 6, the prophet has a vision of God, sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of his robe filling the temple. Even the angels that flew about him covered their faces and their feet, because he was so holy. Isaiah's reaction is to fall on his face and scream, "woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." (Isaiah 6:5) Our reaction to God's holiness is an acute realization of our uncleanness.
The second is from 1 Kings 19. Elijah is fleeing into the wilderness, and at mount Horeb the Lord approaches him. First there is a hurricane that rends the mountains, but scripture tells us that God was not in the wind. Next comes an earthquake, and God is not in the earthquake. Finally, there is a fire, but the Lord is not there, either. Finally, a gentle breeze comes to Elijah. We have heard this passage before, and usually the point is that the Lord comes to us gently at times, not in violence. That's a nice message, but look at what Elijah does when he experiences the breeze: he wraps his mantle about his face to protect himself from the holiness of God. Yes, God may be in gentle things and not violent things, but the point is that we are not worthy to face his holiness, no matter where it is found. The holiness of God draws out our wretchedness.
Here is an example from the New Testament: Jesus tells Peter to let down his nets in the water after a night of catching nothing. Peter obeys reluctantly and catches an enormous amount of fish. When faced with this sudden holiness of Christ, Peter falls down at Jesus' feet and says, "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!" Is it not clear that when faced with the truth of God--that he is perfectly holy--we end up with an accurate view of ourselves--that we are perfectly wretched?
So, do we wait for the unconverted to have a holy experience, so that they may be saved? Well, we can pray for such a miraculous event to occur, but the best way for such a conversion to happen--if it is to happen--is to take the unconverted to the Word of God. For an example of this, we look to Acts 17 and Paul's sermon in the midst of the Areopagus. His sermon is quite simple, but it brings out the two accurate views of God and mankind. He notes that the people of Athens are so religious that they even worship gods they don't know. He then proclaims that the god they don't know is the one who made everything, and the ones they do know are actually only false idols of wood and stone. He extols the holiness of God by describing his giving of breath and life to all people. He essentially hearkens back to creation in Genesis 1 and hits them with the awesome mind of God, who not only made everyone but determined their birth locations and times. "In Him we live and move and exist." He tells them that even their own pagan poets figured it out. Therefore, as Children of the one, true God, when we worship manmade gods, we are idolators, wretched sinners, and we need to repent. Why do we need to repent? Because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world through his Son, Jesus Christ, and he has proved that this will happen by raising said Son from the dead. Paul, in few words, has hit the unconverted with the most succinct exposition of God's holiness. Quick and to the point, within the limited amount of time a believer has--in this day and age, too--to get the truth of God across to the unconverted.
The holiness of God, when delivered accurately, not as genie-magic to help us in our day-to-day desires, but as the perfect goodness of a creator who will mete out perfect justice on all unrepentant sinners, is a way to get through the tough shell of worldly unbelief that permeates our culture today. Many will resist, as they did that day in the Areopagus, but many may have their shells crushed by the truth and begin to turn to their savior with repentance and faith.
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