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.
What is of interest is that they do this without revealing any kind of view that they are breaking some new theological ground. They freely apply OT passage about God, to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. What is clear is that they understood this, and that they wanted other to understand it as well, and they further make the assumption that others did in fact understand what they were saying.
This is what White means when he states that “The NT… is written by Trinitarians for Trinitarians.”
Some folks make the argument that if the Trinity where true why do not the NT writers make statements like, the Trinity is this… or the Trinity like this… The problem is these folks will not acknowledge that the NT is written by Trinitarians for Trinitarians and thus we find the teaching of the Trinity in the NT, in the precise form one would expect if the writers believed it to be true.
To quote Dr. White again, “When people who share a common belief and heritage communicate with one another, they do not reiterate all the foundational truths that they already share each time they speak.”
We can perhaps illustrate this, this way. Most of you know quite a bit about me. I am a husband and father, my wife’s names is Darleen, I have three daughters, one is married. I have two grand daughters, and so forth. If I were to write you a letter I would not explain to you all those things you all ready know about me over again. If I were to say for instance in the course of the letter that I love Darleen. I would not write to you explaining that Darleen was my wife, that she is the mother to my three children, grandmother to my 2 grandchildren, for we share that as common knowledge. You would expect me to say things that fit in with the knowledge you already have of who Darleen is.
That same is true with the NT and the Trinity. I am not saying that they used the term Trinity, but I am saying it would have been common knowledge to both parties that Jesus was God, that the Holy Spirit was God.
Benjamin Warfield put is this way, “…why it is that the doctrine of the Trinity lies in the New Testament rather in the form of allusions than in express teaching, why it is rather everywhere presupposed, coming only here and there into incidental expression, than formally inculcated. It is because the revelation, having been made in the actual occurrences of redemption, was already the common property of all Christian hearts.”
So then, the first observation worth noting is that the Trinity is in fact revealed between the testaments.
This brings to the second observation I want us to make that is of equal importance, and this: the Trinity is primary revealed in the acts of God, namely through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The greatest and most indisputable proof of the Trinity is seen in the Life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. These events, these acts of God, occurring in between the OT and the NT. As Warfield puts in, “The revelation (of the Trinity) itself is embodied in Christ and the Holy Spirit.”
As Christians what we must understand is that the trinity is revealed in the redemptive plan of God as seen first in Jesus Christ coming to give His live as ransom for God’s people. We see the Trinity in that God Himself takes on flesh, He enters into creation to save His people. Yet while the Son takes on flesh, it is the Father that remains in heaven. Both are understood to be Yahweh, yet distinct persons.
The Trinity is also see in the redemptive plan of God in that we have outpouring of the Holy Spirit to bring about regeneration, or being born again. The Spirit bring spiritual life to the believer. And once more, as we will see when we look at the Scriptures that speak about the Holy Spirit, it is clear that the authors of the NT saw the Holy Spirit as Yahweh, just as they say Jesus and the Father as Yahweh. Yet once again they understand Him as being a distinct person.
What I am saying is that we have complete revelation of the nature of God with the coming of the Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is why the Trinity is not clear in the OT, because God’s time had not yet come to send forth His Son for the redemption of God’s people, and to sent the Holy Spirit for their sanctification. But when God’s time does indeed come, we see the revelation of the Trinity quite clearly.
I point you to the words of Col. 2:2-3; “that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
I just point out to that phrase that the knowledge of God’s mystery is found in Christ. I believe part of the mystery that is revealed in Christ is indeed the triune nature of God. For we are also told that it is in Christ that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are found. Christ reveals them to us.
This points to what is said in Heb. 1:1-3, a passage that we will look more closely at in the future, but I just want to read it to you in light of what I just said, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by his Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,”
So we see these two very important observations, that the Trinity is in fact revealed between the testaments and that the Trinity is primarily revealed in the acts of God, namely through the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Let us now move to looking at some passages in the NT that demonstrate to us that the NT does indeed teach the Trinity.
The first passage I want us to look at is Matthew 28:18-19. Please turn with me there. I believe this is a very important Trinitarian passage. The main reason is that these are words spoken to us by the Lord Jesus Christ. We know this passage as the great commission.
“And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
There are a few truths that need to pointed out here. There is much in this verse that we could talk about, but I want to be brief as we have several other passages I want us to look at. In looking at this passage I will begin by saying that I don’t see how you could get a much more forceful declaration of the trinity.
First Jesus declares that all authority on heaven and on earth is give to Him. Jesus is making a claim to almighty power. There can be only one who has almighty power and that is God Himself. To say that Jesus never claims to be God, is to ignore His statement here.
He then gives a call for His disciples to go out and multiply. Go out and seek to make fellow disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus then states that we are to be “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”
There is of course much we can say about baptism, there is of course a lot of debate regarding baptism, but one thing that we can all agree on is that baptism, in whatever form you think about, there is an idea of declaring some union with that which you are baptized into. In Christian baptism you declare a union with God. I don’t think anyone who has any understanding of baptism as mentioned in the NT would argue that point.
So look closely what Jesus is saying. “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Jesus does not say in the “names” of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He says name, singular. In other words you are to have this union with God, whose name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus does NOT say union with the Name of the Father, Name of the Son, Name of the Holy Spirit, NO, it is the NAME of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
To quote John MacArthur, “It is one name with three persons, the mystery of the trinity. The name means all that a person is and does, all that is bound up in that name, the name means all that God is as a trinity, all that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”
In other words when Jesus uses the word “name” He is speaking about the authority that is carried with that name. (Like “stop in the name of the law”)
It is of interest that He begins by saying that “all authority is given to Him”. But what He does not say is that I have this authority exclusively, in fact He goes on to indicate that this authority is shared with the Father and the Holy Spirit, through the use of the singular “name”. One authority, one God, three persons.
What we must also consider is that Jesus is certainly not teaching here that we as disciples of Christ are to make other disciples of Christ by them be baptized in the name of a divine person, a holy creature and an impersonal divine force. To say that is what Jesus has in mind, is to have a total disregard for the context of what our Lord Jesus is teaching in this passage.
As we look at these other passages I believe it will be helpful to ask ourselves if in fact they can be taken that way. That is, when we examine these passages that mention the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, does it make sense to see them as speaking about a divine person, a holy creature, and a impersonal force. I believe we will see that it does not.
Let us look at another passage that I would call Trinitarian. I see that we will not have time to get through these all, so we will have to just get through what we can, and look at the rest next week.
I am going to go through in the order they appear, not the order of significance.
Look with to Romans 15:15-16; “But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.”
Here Paul is bringing his epistle to the Romans to a close. He tells them that he has been give grace by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He also states that the ministry to the Gentiles is a “priestly service” of the gospel of God. The ministry is about leading the Gentiles to Christ that they may be acceptable to God through the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.
Here we have Paul giving mention to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all with the context of bringing salvation to the Gentiles. Notice that every thing Paul is presenting here is by the work of God. Paul has no problem at all connecting the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his work of evangelizing the gentiles. He has no issue connecting them all to the work of God. To me it is clear that he speaks in Trinitarian language, why? Because he is writing to the saints in Rome, who are Trinitarians.
What I think is telling in looking at this verse is that you can interchange, Christ Jesus, God, and Holy Spirit with each other and you are still left with what the Bible teaches elsewhere.
Let me give you and example, “…because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of “the Holy Spirit” to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of “Christ Jesus”, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by “God”?
Another example, “because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of “God” to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of “the Holy Spirit”, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by “Christ Jesus.”
Even when you exchange those three names, Christ Jesus, God, and Holy Spirit, you remain within Biblical truth. That ought to tell us something, and it does, it tells us, to quote James White, “Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
It tells us that God is Trinity, that God has a triune nature.
We must end there. There are many other passages that I want us to look at, but we will have to get to them next week.
I want to close where I started this morning, and that is with a call for us to grow in our knowledge of God, with the understand that as we do it will improve the overall outlook of our spiritual walk and I believe a better understanding of the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity will do that.
But our knowledge of God must begin with belief in the gospel. We must see that we are called to repent and believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that He was buried and that He rose again according to the Scripture, and as the eternal Son of God, sits at the right hand of the Father. That belief will only come through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. And I pray that His power would be upon you through God’s grace.
LET US PRAY
