Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Statement Of Faith

The Trinity Part 2

Intro: What do you know about the doctrine of the Trinity? Are you familiar with the term? Did you know that all conservative, evangelical Christians are to be Trinitarians? That means we believe in the Trinity or Tri-Unity of the Godhead. All of you here this morning, as best I can tell, are conservative evangelical Christians who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity and are Trinitarians or you would probably be in another church.

 BUT...do you have an understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity that you are comfortable with? Are you able to go to the Word of God to point it out to someone who may question it? I think it would be safe to say that most people who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity would have a difficult time explaining it using the Word of God.

EXP: The problem is the evidence for the Trinity is not found in one great text in the Bible. Like nuggets of gold you have to dig for it in pockets here and there in Scripture. But the mother lode of Trinity nuggets is found in the Book of Ephesians. Every chapter adds its contribution to the wealth of evidence supporting the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet, even here in this great cache of Trinitarian Scripture, the teaching varies in amount and completeness. The principal message of the book of Ephesians provides the reason for the concentration of evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity.

 Biblical scholar, Merril Tenny once said 'The textual divisions of Ephesians follow each other logically, leading the Christian from an understanding of the origin of his salvation in the thought and action of the Triune God to the practical application of the salvation in everyday life.

 The book of Ephesians reveals the unified work of the Trinity in the plan of salvation. Last week we looked at Ephesians 3:14-17a. This week I want to look briefly at Ephesians 1:3-14. This passage can be divided into three parts or themes.

The Selection of the Father (vs 4-6)
Read: vs 4-6
 

 God, the Father, chose or elected Believers to salvation from before the foundations of the world.  It is God the Father who has blessed Believers with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. It is God the Father who has predestined us to adoption as sons. Why, because of the kind intention of the Fathers will.

The Sacrifice of the Son (vs 7-12)
Read: vs 7-12

 It is God the Son who made the sacrifice for sin. In Him, Jesus Christ, God the Son, we have redemption and salvation through His blood. Which is a theological way of saying that we have the forgiveness of our sins. It is God the Son, whose sacrificial and substitutional death on Calvary, secured the salvation for those God the Father has selected.

The Seal of the Spirit (vs 13-14)

 God's grace shown in the blessing of Believers is not just based on the selection of the Father, and the sacrifice of the Son, but also on the seal of the Spirit.

Read: vs 13-14

 Speaking to the Gentile Believers Paul says 'In Him, you also..' These words are connected to verse 12 where Paul referring to the Jewish Believers says 'we who were the first to hope in Christ'.  Here Paul shows that the Jewish and Gentile Believers are one in Christ. Both Jews and Gentiles who are in Christ are united because they are sealed together by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to both Jew and Gentile alike as a promise or guarantee of their salvation  and adoption as sons of God. They are one with each other, yet distinct from each other.

Summary of Ephesians 1:3-14

 What we have excavated from Ephesians 1:3-14 is the revelation that the three persons of the Trinity are all at work in the salvation of the lost.We have also seen inferred from the biblical analogy of the Jewish and Gentile Believers being one in Christ yet different, that there is unity and diversity in the Trinity as well. It is interesting that in the Greek, verses 3-14 are one sentence which grammatically demonstrates  the unity in the combined work of the Triune God.

Trans: Well, lets move on to defining what the Trinity is and is not.

I. Definition
 Did you know that the Hindu religion believes in a trinity? It is made up of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu who are the supreme manifestations of the Hindu trinity.

 To the Hindu people, individually these three are worthy of worship but combined they believe that there is nothing these three gods can not accomplish. These three have different functions and yet they also have in mind the same goal. In Hindu mythology, Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu are different faces of one ultimate reality. They are three and yet they are one. They have different personalities and yet they are all god. They may be worshipped separately or together for in the end, the Hindus believe they are one.

 The ancient Celts also have a trinity of three goddess that displays an all female family. For them god is a virgin, a mother and an old wise woman. Each face of the goddess performs a different function and yet all are one.

 As you can see  having a belief in a trinitarian god is not an idea unique to the Christian faith. But upon close examination, all other trinities end up being either modalistic or tripartite.

 I know I used those terms last week, so lets look at them. Lets see what the Trinity is not.

    A. What the Trinity isn't.
 1. Tripartite/tri-theism
     This is the teaching that there are three gods who are sometimes and in some way related. This approach denies the biblical oneness of the Trinity and is heresy.

ILL: Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, has said ' I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate personage from God the Father and the Holy Spirit was a distinct personage and a Spirit and these three constitute three distinct personages and three gods.'

     Mormons also hold that each member of the trinity is finite and did not and can not exist at the same time. This crosses over to modalism.

 2. Sabellianism/Modalism
      Around 200 AD a man named Sabellius was responsible for the modalistic definition of the Trinity. He believed the Trinity was really three different manifestations of the same god. It is called modalism because it views god as one who manifests himself in different modes of existence...
at times the father, at times the son, and at times the Holy Spirit. But never all together nor all at the same time.

ILL: There is a growing sect within Christianity called either 'Jesus-Only', 'Apostolics', 'United Pentacostals'.

     They hold that Jesus is God,  but they believe that the Father, Son and Holy spirit are different modes of the same person, who is Jesus. The trinity is nothing more than different titles for Jesus Christ. So, converts to this sect are only baptized in the name of Jesus

     This means Jesus sometimes acts as the Father when He gives laws and directions to us. Jesus sometimes acts as a Son when He serves us. Jesus acts as the  Holy Spirit when He indwells us and empowers the Believer. BUT, Jesus is still only one person. He simply plays different roles within the trinity.

     This too is heresy and is not acceptable to conservative evangelical Christianity...nor to the Bible.

 3. Arianism
      Arius, who lived around 300 AD taught that the Father was the only uncreated being. Jesus was the created son of the Father and is not divine. He believed that there was a time when God the Son did not exist. For Arius, the Holy Spirit was nothing more than the impersonal power or 'force' of God. Not a person, and not divine. Kind of like the Star Wars 'force'.

ILL: Jehovah Witnesses do not believe Jesus is God or that He is eternal. Nor do they believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, but instead an impersonal force or power residing in God. This is also the position of the Unitarian church. Early Unitarian leader, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake as a heretic for this belief.

     Is having a basic understanding of the different views of the nature of the Trinity important? You bet! The JW are out every weekend knocking on doors along with the Mormons and we have a Mormon church just a few blocks away. And the Unitarians are at Shore HS and in the schools where your kids go and they sound Christian but they are not.

     It is vitally important to know and understand that we do not worship three equal but separate gods. And  do not we worship one god who manifests himself three different ways.

Trans:  Well, what do we believe about the Trinity as conservative Evangelical Christians? How should we define it?

    B. What the Trinity is

Webster: The union of three divine persons, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, so that all the three are one God as to substance, but three Persons as to individuality.

B.B. Warfield: A conservative Biblical scholar once said 'There is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence.'

Unknown: One God existing in three eternal, simultaneous and distinct persons known as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

CBC: There is one God, the divine Tri-unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit; eternally coexisting and equal in essence and attributes, yet distinct in office and activity.

    What does our Statement of Faith mean? Here we go!

     The Bible teaches that there is only one true and holy God. Within God's nature, that which makes God, God, there are three separate and distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father is not God the Son. God the Son is not God the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit is not God the Father. They are different in office and activity as our Statement of Faith declares. Which means they all play different parts in the sovereign will and purpose of God.

    The three persons of the Trinity are co-equal in nature; they are one. In that which makes God, God, they are the same.
This means that the attributes of one person of the Trinity is the same for all three Persons of the Trinity. Although different in office and activity, we find all three Persons of the Trinity at times performing the same function because they each have an  identical nature.

     The three persons of the Trinity are also co-eternal, that is, they all three exist together in the Tri-unity of the Godhead and have existed from before the foundation of the world, from before time itself. There was never a time when any person of the Trinity did not exist.

Conclusion:
     Is your head spinning? I hope that I have been able to slow down the rate of spin a bit. Chew on what we have looked at this morning. This week, however, I want to challenge you to read the Book of  Ephesians...read it once every day. It should only take about 30-45 mins.  Mine the book for Trinity nuggets and treasure them as you would pure Gold. Next week we will look at the Scripture that supports our conservative evangelical definition of the Trinity.

 Until then,

 Ask God the Father, who selected you from the foundation of the word,

 That because of God the Son who sacrificed His life for your sin at Calvary,

 That you may receive from God the Holy Spirit, who sealed you for all eternity,

 The ability to see and believe the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity.