The Trinity 10 - The Trinity In The Nt Series

The Trinity 10 - The Trinity in the NT

1/13/13

In the introduction to his book “A Call to Spiritual Reformation” D.A. Carson writes that following; “The one thing we most urgently need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better. When it comes to knowing God, we are a culture of the spiritually stunted. So much of our religion is packaged to address our felt needs–and these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of our own happiness and fulfillment. God simply becomes the Great Being who, potentially at least, meets our needs and fulfills our aspirations. We think rather little of what he is like, what he expects of us, what he seeks in us. We are not captured by His holiness and His love; His thoughts and words capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too few of our priorities. In the biblical view of things, a deeper knowledge of God brings with it massive improvement in the other areas mentioned: purity, integrity, evangelistic effectiveness, better study of Scripture, improved private and corporate worship, and much more. But if we seek these things without passionately desiring a deeper knowledge of God, we are selfishly running after God's blessings without running after Him.”

I find that statement to be very true. I do believe that a major problem in the western church today is that we lack a deep knowledge of God. A knowledge by which we strive to understand who and what God is.

The Christianity of our culture is indeed man-centered. Flip on the TV and listen to the vast majority of preachers, the majority of what they feed people is about the pursuit of our own needs, our own happiness. We think little of what God wants, for that might involve sacrifice which might interfere with that pursuit of happiness.

I believe that Carson hits the nail squarely on the head when he says, “In the biblical view of things, a deeper knowledge of God brings with it massive improvement in the other areas mentioned: purity, integrity, evangelistic effectiveness, better study of the Scriptures, improved private and corporate worship, and much more.”

I know that is true not only because the Bible tells me it is, but because I have personally experienced that in my own life, my own walk with God.

That is also one of the reasons I began this series of sermons on the Trinity. Because through a better understanding of the triune nature of God, we get a deeper knowledge of God, and that will indeed bring us closer to God thus bring about as Carson states, a “massive improvement in the other areas” of our spiritual walk.

Last week we spent some time looking at some passages in the OT that are what I called shadows of the Trinity. As was stated, the triune nature of God is not revealed in the OT, but we see shadows of it, shadows that become clearer under the light that is Jesus Christ.

This week as we continue into our study of the Trinity, we will be talking a look a several Trinitarian passages that we find in the NT. Passage that I believe, when looked at honestly, show the Trinity.

Before we look at those verses I want to make two observations that are worth noting.

The first observation worth noting is that while it is true that the Trinity is not revealed in the OT, it is equality true that the Trinity is not revealed in the NT either. The Trinity is in fact revealed between the testaments.

Please do not get confused by what I am saying here. I am not saying that the NT does not contain the doctrine of the Trinity, what I am saying is that many folks simply do not realize that that Trinity is revealed before the NT is written. Thus as White puts it, “The NT… is written by Trinitarians for Trinitarians.”

When one looks at the lives of men such as Peter and John, these men experienced the Trinity in very personal way. These men had heard the Father’s voice from heaven, they had walked and talked with the Son, they had been filled with Holy Spirit.

When we look at the NT and what is written we do not have authors placing two new gods along side with the Father. Their theology is not one where we have Yahweh, the God of the OT, then these two other gods, that that are the Son and the Holy Spirit, that are to be worshiped with Yahweh. It is quite clear, as we will see in the coming weeks that the authors of the NT saw Yahweh as the Father, as the Son, as the Holy Spirit. They presented one God as Father, Son, Holy Spirit.