GOD IN THREE PERSONS

GOD IN THREE PERSONS

                Today we will discuss point number 2 in our church’s fourteen point declaration of faith. Now, in doing this I am not setting up one church or denomination over another. In fact, this declaration is one that, with the exception of some thoughts and beliefs concerning the Holy Spirit, is common to all fundamental Christian organizations. If you attend a Bible believing church, then you will hold these same truths in common.

                Some people argue against the trinity in one way or another, splitting hairs and saying that it should be called the ”Godhead” rather than the “Trinity” and for the life of me I can’t figure out what the difference is.  God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and Trinity means 3. So let’s quit all those foolish quarrels and hair splitting divisions and concentrate on God Himself as our Creator, and Savior and constant companion.

                In eons past, God called His Son into the throne room and began to share a plan with Him. God is Spirit and He dwells in a Spiritual kingdom, which, in their dimension is just as real as we are in our dimension. He said to the Son, I want to create a new dimension. I want to make a physical dimension and I want to create a new creature, someone like Us who can rule over the physical creation. We will make them into tri-part beings that are capable of housing us. We will make them to be living temples in which we can take part in the governing and maintenance of the physical creation.

                “Now here are the details. This man, whom we will make in our image, will be made up of spirit. Like us he will be a spirit being, but he will also be a physical being and so we need to build in him an interface between his spirit and his physical body. In this way mankind will be unique in all of creation. We will give him a soul that is capable of interacting with both his spirit and his body. In this way he will be able to operate in the physical dimension    and at the same time have fellowship with Us in Our dimension.

                Thus having worked out the details for the kind of being that would be fitted to rule over His physical creation, the Son stepped out into the empty void and with the infinite power of His voice He spoke all that the Father had commanded and the Holy Spirit answered every command by bringing into existence everything that was commanded. He spread out the heavens like a tent to dwell in. Isa. 40:22. He set this tiny little blue planet in a perfect orbit around a perfect sun in a perfectly balanced part of the galaxy, in the perfect part of the universe and then, having created a wonderful home for the new man creature, he then did something that must have caused the angels to wonder.

                Taking great care, God the Son Himself stoops down and kneeling on the ground that He has just created, takes some of the soil and forms the new physical creature with His own hands. Can you not picture the angels leaning over the earth and watching with fascination beginning to ask, “What is He doing? We’ve never seen Him do anything like this before.”

                But like a master Craftsman, He forms the being that will rule His physical universe and then He breathed into his nostrils His own Spirit and man became a living and sentient being. He is designed as a three part being with a physical body, and a mind or soul that rules over his body on one side and yet houses the very presence of God on the other side. We are first of all spirit beings. We were designed as temples for the Holy Spirit to dwell in. So it should be no surprise to us that God wants us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. God is Spirit.  (John 6:63, John 6:53-56, John 4:23, 24)

                In our long journey away from God, He sent His own Son, the One that created us, into the world to bend down once again and to breathe His own Spirit into us. But first He had to reconcile us to God by shedding His own blood on our behalf. The Holy Spirit of God could no longer dwell in us. In the fall, the most significant thing that happened was that the very Spirit of God had to flee from us, or His infinite holiness would have destroyed us instantaneously.

                Probably the most complicated thing in all of creation is that which God had to do in order to recreate a new interface in us that was once again capable of housing the very presence of God without it destroying us. The blood of Jesus covering our sins is a very real thing and without that blood we would be instantly destroyed if God should enter into us. In human terms we often call this the anger , or the wrath of God, but in reality, as I have stated before, He is a ten thousand volt God, trying to hook up with a 120 volt being and without the covering and cleansing blood of Jesus we would fry in a heart- beat.

                I experienced this once when we tried to hook up an RV to electrical power. The man doing it was old and nearly blind and instead of making a 120 volt line for us, he made it 220. When we plugged it in, every lightbulb in the trailer immediately popped and then smoke came out and we quickly unplugged it, but the damage was done and the circuits were fried. It may have seemed like the fuse box was angry at us, but it had nothing to do with anger. It had to do with a power miss-match.

               

                So God sent His Son into the world in the form and likeness of our flesh, but He didn’t sin like we did. This made Him a sinless man, just as Adam was before the fall. So He became the Mediator between our 120 volts systems and God’s 10,000 volt power. He stood in our place as the 10,000 volts of God literally destroyed Him as a human, but since He was also God, He rose from the dead and in forging this new relationship between God and man, (through the veil as we see by its ripping in two) Jesus defeated Satan in all of his attempts at destroying us and in creating a new spirit in us, He made it possible for the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts once again.

                As we can see from Jesus’ prayer in John 17 then we realize that the 3 Persons of the godhead, or Trinity if you will are all intimately involved in our salvation even as they were intimately involved in our creation, and just as God sent His Son to speak our world into existence and just as the Holy Spirit was there to carry out what the Son Spoke, so also on the day of Pentecost, Having worked out all of the details on the cross, mankind once again becomes a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We can now receive His power. Acts 1:8

                So, quite apart from our great theological arguments about nearly everything, we see that God was in Christ reconciling us to Himself so that by His own Spirit He may once again dwell in us and that is the bottom line and purpose of salvation.

                Today much of Christianity is weak and worldly simply because we have never really entered into the full plan of salvation. We give mental ascent, we invite Jesus into our hearts and then we go on living as if we are on our own. Far be it from us to interact with the Holy Spirit, or to allow Him to express Himself in any way as an integral part of our being. We want to keep Him out there on a theological shelf… a great Idea, but never plugged in in such a way that His power could operate through us.

                Many Christians live as people un-reconciled to God and because of it, they suffer the same depression, stress, doubt and fear that the rest of the unsaved world faces. We do not connect with the infinite God. Jesus and His cross become icons of a great idea, but we are like strangers outside looking in. We treat the Father as an angry Judge, just waiting to pour out His wrath on us and we forget that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. John 3:16

                “Therefore if any man is in Christ he is a new creature and old things passed away; behold new things have come. Now all these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, name that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor. 5:17-21

                In His eternal plans, God wants to make us into ten thousand volt people so that we can reign with Christ on the throne of the universe… to continue on with what Adam was assigned to do on earth before the fall. God did not give up on His eternal plans to make us the rulers of this physical creation. But He doesn’t intend for us to do it alone. He wants us to do it with Him on board. And this is why Romans 8 is so emphatic about our learning to live by the Spirit rather than by the flesh. We are training to reign with Christ.

                We are in training as spiritual/physical beings to fulfill God’s eternal plans. For Him, this sin problem is just a glitch in His plans… something so serious that he had to give His own life to solve the problem, but now that He has done this, we need to, as humans, set our sights higher. The cross was the means to an end, not the end itself. So we came to the altar to repent and to receive Christ, but after that His purpose is for us to learn how to live with Him on board… to overcome as He overcame… to follow His footsteps to the throne, for that is our destination.

                Why is it then that we get stuck in this ever-repeating cycle of failure and repentance, failure and repentance? Somehow many Christians have never even caught a glimpse of what the real plan of salvation is. So many people live defeated lives, struggling on in their own power… coming to church week by week, battered and broken by the world, in spite of the fact that He has already overcome the world.

                We avoid Bible prophecy because it makes us afraid. Instead of participating in God’s exciting plans for bringing Satan’s kingdom to an end, we hide in fear covering our ears, seeking to console ourselves with dead traditions that have now become our comfort zone.

                But God is calling us up to be seated with Him in heavenly places. Our purpose is to be filled up with all of the fullness of God. Eph. 3:19… to come into unity in the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Eph. 4:13…to be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Eph. 4:23… to put on our new self which, in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness and truth. Ephesians 4:24… and we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. Eph. 4:30

                When this life is over, we will depart and be with Christ. Phil. 1:21-23… so with this goal, this destiny in mind, should we not make these things our priority? Should we not bend every effort toward learning how to live by the Spirit? Should we not strive according to faith to be complete in Christ? Eph. 4:15

                We do not labor like the world does, but we labor according to His power which mightily works within us. Col. 1:29. We tend to get lost in the details because we forget that the substance belongs to Christ. Col. 2: 8-17.

                We eagerly look forward to Jesus’ coming when He returns with all of His saints. 1 Thess. 3:13, (for) When He returns He will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep. 1 Thess. 4:14 and then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the lord in the air.  1 Thess. 4:15-18

                God’s plans for us are glorious. He never changed His mind about our eternal purposes. It is we who fell away, but it was God in three persons that gave everything to restore us and reconcile us and to return us to our original purpose. We just need to receive Him and to learn to live by His Spirit rather than by our fallen flesh.

                And you thought a study on the Trinity would be boring. At Jesus’ baptism the Father said, "This is My Son "and the Holy Spirit came in the form of a Dove. All of heaven was and still is involved in every detail of our restoration. We just need to lift our sights for the Father sent the Son and the Son sent us His Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and rather than living in fear of these things, we should be exploring their meaning and learning to live in all that God has provided for us in His covenant of grace.