ONE
The Three In One
Ephesians 4:4-6
This morning as we enter into a new season as a church, we’re beginning a new mini-series as we journey through Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church. The Mini-series is called ONE and is based on ONE long sentence (like only the apostle Paul can write) that has been organized in THREE verses of Scripture. These words of Paul (even though scholars don’t believe they were an early creed) come across as creed-like. For us, they sum up in some ways our distinct beliefs in a very non-descript way. Last week we began chapter 4 talking about unity, talking about the character that it takes to be ONE, well today we’re going to speak of what we must all agree on, the very things that cause us to have unity, to be ONE.
You could go to any Evangelical theologian and pastor and ask what would have to be a given in a statement of faith and more than likely they would tell you that high up on that list would have to be the doctrine of the Trinity. But we so sparingly preach it, probably because more and more we’re getting away from preaching doctrine, but also because we do not follow a rigid liturgy. So today I want to speak to you about maybe the most mysterious and in some ways the most difficult doctrine for us to understand, but it is also one that I believe is clearly presented in Scripture, and it is of great importance to us.
This morning I’m going to ask you to stand with me, and we’ll read this statement together (all of us outloud). I’ll be reading from the NASB, and you can follow along from your own Bible or from the screen behind me.
READ: EPHESIANS 4:4-6 (You can be seated)
I’d like to post a warning on today’s sermon . . . in the end you may not get it, if you don’t, or if you have a question or if you want a clarification, email me this week.
EH: Pastor, I have a question. Last weekend I went to the park and there was a church group having a picnic and they had a big sign that said “Holy Trinity Church”. Well, Pastor, I’ve driven around town and I have seen churches named St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Joseph, St. Thomas, but I never heard of this St. Trinity. Who is this St. Trinity?
CW: Trinity is not a saint, Ed. Trinity is one of the ways that all Christians have come to understand God as revealed by Jesus Christ when he came to earth to live among us. The Trinity is God, One God – Three Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
EH: That sure sounds like three gods to me.
CW: No, Ed, one God, three persons – It’s a mystery!
EH: Well, come to think of it, this is a very big universe and there are lots of people for God to watch. So probably the Father works the day shift, the Son the night shift and the Holy Spirit the graveyard shift?
CW: No, Ed. No shifts. God’s working all of the time.
EH: O.K. so if God’s working all the time, its still a very big world, so maybe God divides it up in thirds – a third for the Father, a third for the Son and a third for the Holy Spirit.
CW: No, Ed, no thirds, no divisions, God is undivided.
EH: Well, let me ask it to you this way. I think God must be a baseball fan – after all the first words of the bible say “In the Big Inning”.
CW: No, Ed, it’s “In the beginning” not “In the big inning”.
EH: Any way, you know how I like baseball. So let’s say that God’s team was playing a baseball game and God’s team was up to bat. The Father hits a single – Who’s on first?
CW: God
EH: The Father
CW: That’s right, Ed.
EH: Then the Son comes up and hits a single. The Father goes to second base and the Son goes to first base. Who’s on first?
CW: God
EH: I thought God was on second base.
CW: That’s right.
EH: O.K. – then the Holy Spirit comes up and lays down a perfect bunt. The Father goes to third base, the Son goes to second base and the Holy Spirit beats out the throw – Safe at first. Who’s on first?
CW: God
EH: I thought God was on second and third.
CW: That’s right Ed. God’s on second and third. God is on first too. God is on all the bases.
EH: I don’t get it! (Illustration from Lou Schifano www.sermoncentral.com)
Well, Ed, my hope is that our sermon this morning will help you to get it, even though we may never thoroughly, understand it. Our passage this morning lays out the bare bones of what we believe about the Trinity, and so does my conversation with Ed. Unfortunately, illustrations always seem to break down in some way. It’s like trying to put God in a jar and put Him out on display. It’s hard to fit God into a jar. This sermon even in itself fails in comparison with the vastness of its subject. But a passage like Ephesians 4:4-6, lays it out more simply. In Verse 4 Paul writes that there is ONE SPIRIT. In verse 5 he writes that there is ONE LORD (this is a title that Paul uses clearly for Jesus in Ephesians 1). And in verse 6 he writes that there is ONE GOD AND FATHER of all who is over all, through all and in all. The first thing that we need to understand about the doctrine of the Trinity is very clearly presented in our passage this morning…
1. There is one God. There is and there always will be just ONE GOD. One of the earliest, if not the first creedal statements known to mankind was what has become known as the shema which is the Hebrew word that is translated as ‘hear’. “The shema is found in Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might! Even today, religious Jews pray the shema. The question we as Christians have to ask ourselves is, is the shema outdated? Is it wrong? The shema is not outdated, it’s not wrong, Paul is very clear to state that there is ONE GOD! There have historically been different approaches to realm of deity in our world . . .
Polytheism – There are multiple gods, all to be worshipped.
Henotheism – “Belief in one God without rejecting the existence of other gods; basically, the belief that there are different gods for different peoples or nations.” Erickson’s Dictionary of Christian Theology
Monotheism – Belief in one God.
When we read our Bibles . . . from Genesis on, we see that Israel began almost from a Henotheistic viewpoint. There were many gods in the world, there was the god of that nation and this nation, or that tribe and this tribe, and there was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel. Even the Ten Commandments seem to be kind of Henotheistic. The very first commandment found in Exodus 20:3 is, “You shall have no other gods before me.” But as God’s revelation (HIS WORD) progresses historically, instead of working from a henotheistic viewpoint, Israel and eventually those who began to follow Jesus, worked from a Monotheistic viewpoint. There is but one true God! Meaning, there is but one . . . whatever other gods are in our world are false . . . or are incomplete understandings of the true God.
Maybe I need to write a book or maybe someone else already has but today there is a hybrid view of God in North America . . . it’s a pluralistic view a mixture of polytheism, henotheism, and monotheism. A choose your own religion kind of view of God. I can worship Krishna and I can worship Jesus or you know I have my God, my religion that works, but that religion works for that person, and in the end, aren’t they all the same. When we talk about Allah, aren’t we talking about Yahweh, and when we’re talking about the Father, aren’t we talking about Krishna and when we say Jesus is the way, isn’t Buddha they way too!
Friends, we need to be able to converse about the world religions and people of other faiths in respectful ways, however, in the end the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments teach us clearly that there is but one God. And the shema, the Lord our God, the Lord is one! And Paul’s statement here in Ephesians are very clear about the exclusiveness of God. They are not like the foam #1 hands that say, our God is #1, like our God is in first place, our God is better than your God. They are the most exclusive of statements . . . there really is only one God.
Ephesians 4:6 reminds us that we truly are monotheists (not tri-theists, polytheists, and not henotheists. We believe in one God but we also believe . . .
2. God is three persons. To be clear, the Scripture teaches us that God is one but also three persons of distinction. “one Spirit…one Lord… One God and Father.”
In the 3rd and 4th Century AD and around the time of the Council of Nicea, that gave way to the Nicene Creed there was a huge debate about the oneness and the three-ness of God. Theological camps began to form . . . there was a camp that was so concerned that the church protect its monotheistic view of God that they taught that Jesus wasn’t God eternal, but that he was adopted by God. This is traditionally known as . . .
Adoptionist View – “Jesus was just adopted by God, He’s not distinctly, God.” God is not a cosmic lint brush that adds on distinctions as they come up. The Holy Spirit is the power source of God in the world.
For instance, they would approach 2 passages of Scripture the first being John 1:14, that reads, “And the Word (Jesus) became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And Matthew 3:13-17, the baptism of Jesus, and explained from this passage that Jesus was adopted at his baptism. So Jesus is not distinctly God because he was begotten, and that Jesus was just a fleshly man until his baptism, and did not take on God-ness until his baptism. Unfortunately, there is a problem with this thinking. For one, John tells us in chapter one of his gospel that Jesus the Word is eternal and was present at creation, and that there is also another understanding of the Hebrew word translated as begotten, it can also mean unique or the only one of his kind. How I have come to understand John 1:14 when it speaks of the Father begetting the Son is not adoption, but instead a reference to what theologians like AH Strong have said is a matter of distinct personality, office, and operation. Meaning the Father has a distinct role, and so does the Son, and so does the Holy Spirit. One of the most Trinitarian passages of Scriptures is in fact Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus! For you have Jesus being baptized, the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus in the form of a dove and what many believe to be the voice of the Father speaking audibly from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” You have three distinct persons functioning in this passage. Some also in trying to explain the complexities of three persons and yet defend the oneness of God have sought to express the trinity as being three modes or manifestations of one God. God is 1/3 Father, 1/3 Son, 1/3 Holy Spirit, or the Father works the day shift, the Son the night shift, and the Spirit gets stuck with graveyard shifts.
Modalistic View – “Father, Son and Spirit are not distinctly three persons in one essence but are three modes or manifestations of God.” God is never all three at once He is one or the other. Most of us, out of ignorance have a modalistic view of God. And if there is a sense of a trinity, it surely does not come on the scene until the New Testament era, post Jesus. But, if we look at even the Old Testament Scriptures, they betray the fact that not only is God one, but this one God is expressed in three distinct persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Genesis 1:26 . . . “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
Genesis 3:22 . . . “Behold, man has become like us, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 11:7 . . . “Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language.”
Isaiah 6:8 . . . “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
Isaiah 63:10 . . . God’s people “rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit.”
Hosea 1:7 . . . God is speaking and says of the house of Judah, “I will deliver them by the Lord their God.”
Isaiah 48:16 . . . “Come near to Me, listen to this: From the First I have not spoken in secret, from the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord God (YHWH) has sent Me, and His Spirit.”
Circumincession/Perichoresis – “Any action of the one, is also an action of the other two.” “Any essential characteristic that belongs to one of the three is shared by the others.” Augustine basically taught that circumincession was the interpenetration of being of the three persons of the Trinity in each other.
We would say essentially, that God is holy. The Father is holy, so is the Son, and obviously, the “Holy” Spirit is also holy. God is all knowing, the Father knows all, so does the Son, and so does the Holy Spirit. God is a righteous judge. We know the Father is a righteous judge . . . that’s the reputation that he has, but Jesus as well is a righteous judge, He is the one we are told will judge the living and the dead. The spirit as well is a righteous judge, he judges the sin in our hearts, and transforms us from the inside out. He convicts us of sin in our hearts. Augustine also taught a concept known as . . .
Appropriation – In the words of theologian and apologist, Alistair McGrath, “While all three persons of the Trinity are active in all the outward actions of the Trinity, it is appropriate to think of each of those actions as being the particular work of one of the persons. Thus it is appropriate to think of creation as the work of the Father, or redemption as the work of the Son, despite the fact that all three persons are present and active in both these works.”
What I would say to you this morning is that these are two ways in which we can understand the massiveness, the exhaustive nature of God. He is one but he is also three. Whatever is essential of God is essential of all three persons, this is what makes them one, it is what gives them an indivisible, un-separable, and unchangeable nature that is not to be confused. And yet, each person is distinct!
Ephesians 4:4-6 reminds us that we are Trinitarian. We believe in one God who eternally exists in three distinct but also equal persons, Spirit, Lord (Son) and Father.
3. Each person is fully God. From our passage I think the fact that the Father is God is indisputable, for Ephesians 4:6 reads, “One God and Father of all”, and I believe few disagree with the fact that the Spirit is God as well. There has been more debate as to whether the Spirit is a distinct person, but not that the Spirit is God. The true debate has always been about Jesus and this is why the doctrine of the Trinity is so significant to you and me and to our church and to everything that we believe. It is what separates us from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons. It is what uniquely separates us from most of the world’s religions. Many will say, Jesus was a good prophet and he spoke for God, but few will agree that he was God in the flesh.
JESUS – John claims that Jesus is distinctly God in John 1:1-4 . . . “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Jesus claims deity, its one of the reasons that people wanted Him dead . . . as if Jesus claims to forgive sins and his miracles are not claim enough, he makes his key claim to being a distinct personage of God as John records in John 14:16-23 . . . Jesus lets his disciples know that he will die and resurrect, and he lets them know that he will leave them, and he tells them that not only will the Father send them the Spirit, but he will too. It is here that Jesus teaches that the Spirit will mediate the presence of not just the Father, but also Himself.
If Jesus is not God, then we have a problem with everything else we believe. Can an adopted man be without sin? Do we have a pure spotless sacrifice for all our sins? Would the death of a mere man be sufficient for our forgiveness?
It affects all the other most essential elements of our statement of faith . . . The atonement, justification by faith alone. And what do we do here every week, if Jesus is not truly God should we be praying to him, or worshipping him. The Jehovah Witnesses do not, but his disciples and the first followers of the early church clearly did. If Jesus is merely a creature, a human being, our worship of Him is simply what we would call, idolatry! Our view of the very nature of God that he would long to have a personal relationship with us, because he has within himself a model for a loving, unified relationship is as well at stake.
A theologian named Herman Bavinck clearly wraps up our morning when he writes . . . “In the confession of the Trinity throbs the heart of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection may be traced to, a wrong view of this doctrine.”
God is one, He is three, The Father, the Son, And the Holy Spirit.
