August 1, 2025 • 57 mins
Three in One and all are One; and yet distinct and separate. I need another cup of coffee and to sit down to think about this some more. And yet I know that no amount of brain stimulation on my part will ever help me understand fully who God is. Thankfully, His Holy Spirit teaches me in my limited understanding to know what I can.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today, the full lesson fromJeremy Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's a hint of what's to come.
And all this is saying is that,while God, you can't totally
know Him in every aspect of Hisbeing you'd have to be
omniscient to know that but youcan know Him in part, and that
part can be truly known.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
The Trinity is the great, inexhaustible,
inexplainable, unknowable andyet knowable entity that exists
outside of time and space.
How in the world are wesupposed to wrap our minds
around this concept of God?
Three distinct people and yetone, perfectly the same, and yet
(00:52):
acting in different ways?
It's a mystery that we try andsolve, that we try and
understand, but we're alwayslimited in our ability to do so
because we are a part creationand therefore we are limited by
creation to what we canunderstand.
Every analogy that we come upwith has flaws, and yet God, in
(01:17):
his infinite wisdom, haspatiently and carefully tried to
explain His nature to us.
We will never know it fully,but we can know it.
This is the beauty of what Godhas done for us and how he has
explained Himself in the Bible,bit by bit, aspect by aspect,
(01:42):
building upon little block oflittle knowledge to help us grow
in our understanding of him.
It's truly a beautiful thing.
Same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
So it's very important for their security to
be successful and Hamas to notbe victorious in this, which was
just basically a bloody assaulton civilians, and I mean they
sent over 2,500 terrorists in inone night.
That's very concerning toIsrael because it means that
they're vulnerable and now theywant to get those people back,
(02:17):
but it's super complicated, sowe'll just have to kind of wait
and see what will take place.
Okay, but that's where thingsare.
Let's go to the doctrine of theTrinity, and we want to talk
about the proper approach to thedoctrine of the Trinity.
In other words, there's a wayto approach knowing God and
(02:37):
there's ways not to approachknowing God.
We have to approach God andknowing him on his own terms and
his terms.
Are the creator-creaturedistinction right?
When we say that, we mean thatGod is distinct from his
creation, he's not a part ofcreation.
There's not just one level ofreality or existence.
(03:00):
There's two levels of realityor existence God, who's infinite
, and the creation, which isfinite.
And so when we're approachingGod, we have to approach him
with this distinction in mindthat he's not subject to the
creation, he's not subject tocreated categories, he's not
subject to your reason and whatwe'll try to show, then.
(03:23):
Is that human reason, logic,time, all of these mathematics,
the concept of number, all thesethings are derivative from who
God is.
In other words, thosecategories that we are so
commonly function in, those arederived from him.
But we can't take him and puthim in the constraints of those
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categories.
Those are created categories.
So we say two things about God,in the proper approach, that
fall under creator creaturedistinction.
That's, first of all, that Godis incomprehensible.
He's incomprehensible.
Now this means, of course, thathe cannot exhaustively or
comprehensively be known.
Now, this means, of course,that he cannot exhaustively or
(04:05):
comprehensively be known.
So let's go to Romans 11, 33,the end of Paul's section on
Israel in the book of Romans,where he deals with God's
dispensational dealings withIsrael and with Gentiles.
(04:27):
Romans 11.33 describes theincomprehensibility of God, this
concept that we cannot exhaustHim, we cannot totally
understand or know Him.
Oh, the depth of the riches,both of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are Hisjudgments and unfathomable his
ways.
In other words, you cannotfathom the manners or ways in
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which God does things Verse 34,for who has known the mind of
the Lord or who became hiscounselor?
In other words.
This is the concept that if youneed a counselor, it's because
you need to learn somethingright, you need to learn
something from the counselor.
That's why you're going to thecounselor, because you don't
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understand or know somethingthat you need to know.
But who has been the counselorof the Lord?
In other words, what has heever learned?
What does he need to learn?
He doesn't need to learnanything.
God doesn't learn things.
What does he need to learn?
He doesn't need to learnanything.
God doesn't learn things.
God knows all things.
So nobody can inform him ofsomething, nobody can give him a
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new piece of information.
He already has all theinformation past, present and
future, as well as things thatare outside of time, related to
his own nature and essence.
So this is just a basic conceptthat you cannot figure God out.
That's what my seminarypresident used to say.
He said he'd just stand upthere and he'd say you ain't
going to figure God out, andwhat he meant was that God is
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incomprehensible.
I've given you some otherpassages here that describe that
same concept.
But just because we said that,a lot of people stop at that
point and say, well, there's nouse trying to figure out who God
is because we can't understandhim.
But that's not what it's saying.
It's not saying you can'tunderstand him.
It's saying you can'tunderstand him exhaustively, you
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can't understand himcomprehensively.
So God is knowable and thereforehe can be known truly, but he
can be known truly only in part.
Well, in what sense, then, canhe be known?
Or in what part?
In the parts that he hasrevealed?
Things that he has revealed canbe known.
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Just like nobody can knowsomething about you unless you
reveal it to someone else, theyhave to tell you in some way,
otherwise we don't know.
I don't know what you'rethinking right now.
You don't know what I'mthinking, but I was thinking
about a rocket fired over fromHamas.
(06:59):
You didn't know.
I was thinking that you thoughtI was thinking about what I was
saying.
No, I'm thinking aboutsomething else.
You didn't know.
I was thinking that you thoughtI was thinking about what I was
saying.
No, I'm thinking aboutsomething else.
See, nobody knows unless youreveal, and see Deuteronomy 29,
29.
The secret things belong to theLord, our God, but the things
that he's revealed are for usand our children.
In other words, there he'stalking about the Mosaic law and
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he's saying this has beenrevealed and through the Mosaic
law you would learn who God was,because God was the lawmaker.
So you learn about someone,let's say a lawmaker, by the
laws that they make.
You learn about a watchmaker bythe watch that the watchmaker
makes.
In other words, you can learnabout someone through the craft
that they make.
You can learn about an artistthrough the art that they
produce.
And Romans 1, which is one ofthe craft that they make, you
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can learn about an artistthrough the art that they
produce.
And Romans 1, which is one ofthe passages that are here
listen to Romans 1, 18 to 23,says that all men know God by
means of the creation.
In other words, they look atwhat has been made and God is
clearly seen through what hasbeen made, so that no man is
with excuse.
That's Romans 1, 18, 19, and 20describe these ideas.
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In other words, god crafted theuniverse, we would say, and
then we, as humans, who are partof the universe crafted in his
image, we look at the universearound us and we look at
ourselves the complicated natureof our bodies, the physics, the
biology, the chemistry, right,and of course, it's extremely
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complicated.
The cell is no longer a blackbox.
We know a lot about the cell,though I doubt we know
everything there is to knowabout the human, the cell, the
cellular structure andeukaryotes and prokaryotes and
all that stuff.
Okay, very interesting, all thelittle things inside there
endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, dna, I mean it goes on and on
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right, but it's supercomplicated and it's saying that
when people look at this, evenjust looking outside and looking
at a flower, looking at thismountain lion that's supposedly
going to destroy Halloween thisyear in Spokane, the sightings
of this mountain lion, whatever,you see a mountain lion, what?
This is an amazing creature andit's revealing something about
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the one who crafted thatcreature and it's telling us
this is whoever made.
That is infinitely brilliant.
So we can know things aboutsomeone through what they've
made.
We can also know things aboutsomeone if they simply give us
propositional speech, likeRevelation and the Bible, and so
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God can be known.
1 Corinthians 2.16.
Let's look at that one.
1 Corinthians 2.16.
Corinthians 2 16.
Let's look at that one.
First, corinthians 2 16.
And all this is saying is thatwhile god, you can't, you can't
totally know him in every aspectof his being.
You'd have to be omniscient toknow that.
But you can know him in part,and that part can be truly known
(09:59):
.
Notice first corinthians 2 16,who has known the mind of the
Lord, that he will instruct him,but we have the mind of Christ.
In other words, now that we'rebelievers, we have access to
knowledge of God through hisrevelation in Christ.
(10:19):
That's what this is saying.
So he is knowable, but he'sonly knowable in part.
And what that means for youwhen it comes to Trinity is this
you can understand some thingsabout God in Trinity, but
there's nothing down here increation that is an exact
(10:40):
correspondence to him andtherefore you cannot know him
comprehensively.
You can never say I figured Godout, I've got it all down pat.
So let's go through thesepropositions, because at some
points you're going to thinkwell, that conflicts with this
or how does that work with this?
I don't know of anything thatmirrors that or is a perfect
analogy with that.
(11:00):
And I would say, yes, that'swhat you're supposed to
understand, that there is noperfect analogy.
And so let's look at some ofthese points.
First of all, god is one.
This is the first of fivepropositions.
The next will be God is three.
After that we'll say that God'sthreeness refers to eternal
distinctions, not just roles increation in time.
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And then subordination withinthe Trinity, like Father, son
and Spirit.
And then subordination withinthe Trinity, like Father, son
and Spirit, and thesubordination that occurs in
that relationship.
These are not a reference totheir subordination of essence.
And then, of course, we'll talka little bit more about one
last point.
Okay, but first of all, god isone.
What this means is that God'spersons are mutually exhaustive
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of one another.
Let's explain that further.
This means he can't be dividedinto parts.
It's typical for people to say,well, god is like an egg.
You've got one egg and it's gotthree parts Shell, yolk and
albumen or whatever.
Or one light particle, or is ita wave, whatever?
Break light apart into threeparts and say, well, that's like
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God.
Or a pie you take a pie.
This is the easiest one.
Here comes Thanksgiving in amonth Hopefully we'll have some
pies and you cut the pie inthree parts.
You get a piece, I get a pieceand my wife gets a piece.
Whew, that's a big piece.
Okay, that's not God, god, god.
God is not like a pie.
And you split it.
You know you have father, sonand spirit and together they're
all God.
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Because what would that mean?
That would mean the father isnot God, the son is not God, the
spirit is not God.
In fact, the father is lessthan God and the son is less
than God and the spirit is lessthan God, because each one of
them are only one third.
See, okay, that is not what Godis like.
So if that's your idea of God,that's what we call an idol.
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Did you catch that?
Why?
Because this concept of God asa pie is a created concept.
It's created, it's functioningin the categories that God made,
and you can't take God as thecreator and subject him to our
categories.
So what this is saying is thatGod's persons are mutually
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exhaustive of one another.
In other words, if you werethinking of the pie and you got
Father, son and Spirit as threepieces of the pie, what this
words?
If you were thinking of the pieand you got Father, son and
Spirit as three pieces of thepie, what this is saying is that
each piece of the pie ismutually exhaustive of every
other piece of pie.
But we're like well, thatdoesn't make sense to me.
I don't see how that can be.
There are three separate piecesof pie, but not in the model of
the Trinity.
That's not the way it works.
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So what people do, and thereason people tend to think this
way and draw analogies with godand say god's like an egg or
god's like a pie or whatever, isbecause that's the way things
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are down here in creation andthat's the only way they know
how to think, and so they tendto borrow this idea from
creation and then project itonto the creator.
This is where all idolatrystarts.
That won't ever work.
As Stanley Toussaint used tosay, that dog won't hunt, so
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that's trying to capture God andbring him into created
categories.
And let's go to Isaiah 40, verse18.
Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 18.
See why you can't do this.
The Bible explicitly says youcan't do this.
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Isaiah 40, verse 18.
To whom, then, will you likenGod, or what likeness will you
compare with Him?
Isn't that what you're doingwhen you say, well, god is like
an egg, god is like a pie, godis like the three parts of music
melody, harmony and rhythm.
That's what you're doing.
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You're saying God is like thisthing, but the Bible says, well,
who are you going to comparehim with?
To what, then, will you likenhim?
And then the very next verse istalk about what subject?
Idols, because once you beginto compare him with something
else, that is the beginning ofidolatry.
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That's how it gets started.
So it's actually.
Everything is exactly theopposite.
We don't have these categoriesdown here and then we project
the categories on God and puthim in our categories.
The reason we have categoriesis because of who he is.
They're derived from him.
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In other words, why do we havea concept called time?
Is that a category?
I mean, for us it's a category,because some of you are saying
I got to be out of here at 12noon, so you have a concept of
time.
Why do we have, is that aconcept, that we then take and
we say well, god must be in time, he's limited by time.
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You know this is.
There's a whole theology calledprocess theology that is built
on this idea that God is subjectto time.
Process theology, so processtheology.
So this is endemic to people'sthinking to bring God into our
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categories.
Here's the reason we have time,though time is a finite
derivative of eternality.
God is eternal, he's notsubject to time, he doesn't
experience the passage ofmoments, so to speak, as we do.
But time exists because it is afinite replica of eternity.
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It's eternity shrunk down insize, so to speak.
Now we also have concept ofspace in geometry.
Right, geometry is basicallythe study of spaces.
Why do we have that?
I mean, is that just somethingthat exists?
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Bernd Poitras wrote a veryinteresting article in around
1978.
He was a mathematician, also atheologian, and he wrote a paper
about mathematics and whetherGod was silent about it.
In other words, is math mathwhether or not God exists?
Can you have math whether ornot God exists?
And he has a proof that showsthat math is not neutral, is a
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proof that shows that math isnot neutral, that math itself is
derivative of the nature of Godand you can't just go about
doing your geometry, doing yourcalculus, doing your physics,
doing all your little formulasfor friction and whatnot.
You cannot do those withoutassuming God is actually there.
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It's a formal proof and it'sbeen very difficult for people
to answer.
As a result of that, jamesNicol wrote a book that's about
almost half the thickness of ourBible called Mathematics is
God's Silent by James Nicol,very interesting textbook to
show that the categories andthings that we enjoy, like space
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, time, math and concept ofnumber time, all these things
the only reason we have thesecategories to function in is
because of the nature of God,and these things are derivative
of his nature by means ofcreation.
So fascinating stuff.
But the point here to noticeespecially is that God's persons
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the Father, son and Spirit, aremutually exhaustive of one
another.
And you say, but that doesn'tfit my category.
Right, I get that, but he'sinfinite, we're finite, and the
categories we have we can'tshove him into.
It won't work.
Second point under this conceptthat God is one, god's
attributes not just the person's, but now I'm talking about his
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attributes are mutuallyexhaustive of one another as
well.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that God is entirelylove and his love penetrates
entirely his justice and hisjustice penetrates entirely his
omnipotence.
And so what I'm saying here isthat when we think of the
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attributes of God, we're notsupposed to think of it again
like a pie where God is partlove part, just part, sovereign
part, righteous part, omniscientpart, omnipresent, part,
omnipotent, and if we get allthese parts together, the end
conclusion will be God.
That again is not what God islike, because the attributes are
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mutually exhaustive of oneanother.
You know, the liberal loves toset up the idea that in the Old
Testament God was just righteous, big meanie, and in the New
Testament he's a God of love.
And the liberal would like tosay that the God of the Old
Testament is a contradiction tothe God of the New Testament.
That is a simple fallacy ofparting God's attributes out, as
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we're describing here, and notseeing them as mutually
exhaustive of one another.
God's justice is loving.
His love is sovereign.
His love is omniscient love.
His love is omnipotent.
Love.
His omnipotence is expressed injustice.
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These are mutually exhaustiveof one another, aren't they?
So that's why you can saysomething like this If someone
said to you what is God like andyou answered God is love, your
answer would be 100% correct,just as if you answered God is
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righteous.
That answer is 100% correctbecause God is entirely
righteous, and the Bible saysthese things right.
God is love, god is righteous,he is sovereign.
So here's the thing now, if wethink about what we experience
down here, if we as humansexperience love, why do we
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experience love?
Why is that a human quality orcharacteristic that we
experience?
Because, first, he is love.
That's why why do we experiencejustice, or have a concept of
justice down here amongstourselves, concept of justice
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down here amongst ourselves.
Because, first of all, he isjust right.
How do we get a concept ofpower and control, that we have
control or power over a certainsegment or sphere in our job, in
our marriage, whatever.
Where does that even come from?
It comes from the fact that Godis sovereign, and so down here
we have finite derivatives thatwe experience.
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Why?
Well, because first he wasthese things, he is these things
.
So that's the first conceptthat God is one and his persons
are mutually exhaustive of oneanother, as well as his
attributes.
He's not pieces put togetherlike a puzzle.
Second point is that God isthree and you say now, wait a
minute, you just said God is one, yeah, but he is one and he's
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in three.
He's also three and he'sabsolutely one and he's
absolutely three.
And you say but I don'tunderstand Well that there's
nothing in creation that we havethat corresponds to this.
So you don't understand Wellthat there's nothing in creation
that we have that correspondsto this.
So you don't have any finiteexperience of it.
So it's not a category we have,right, that doesn't mean it
doesn't exist.
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So let's talk about this oneFirst of all, god is three.
He's not two or four or eight,some actually posited.
Years ago I got part of a groupcalled Christianity Not
Christianity but Christianityand it posited the idea that if
God were four persons in one,what would the universe be like?
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Would it be the same as it isnow or would it be different?
After years and years ofdiscussion in a discussion board
in the late 90s they basicallyconcluded that the world would
be a different place than it isnow.
It wouldn't be the same.
But it was just an interestingthought experiment with the
Bible.
But the point here is that Godis three, okay, and he has what
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we call an aggregative nature.
What do we mean by aggregative?
Clustered?
Okay, can tell there aredistinctions in this cluster of
who God is right.
You can tell there'sdistinctions of person.
Why?
Well, it's very easy.
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You read the Bible and it'stalking about the Father and
then it talks about the son.
So you know there'sdistinctions inside his
aggregate nature.
Otherwise the Bible couldn'tsay father and son, it would
just be God, right, therewouldn't be any distinctions of
person.
But the Bible very obviouslyspeaks in terms of distinctions
of person, so as well asattributes.
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So, for example, we look atJohn 14.1.
Look at this and I'm going toshow you some interesting verses
today, very, very interestingdescriptions of God and what
he's like.
That I'm sure you've read, butmaybe we don't always think
about.
John 14 1, the end of thatverse.
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Do not let your heart betroubled.
Believe in god, believe also inme.
Okay, same action, believe, buttwo different objects.
I mean, you can see thedifference between god and me.
You know the sun, you can seethat.
Okay, but there's an aggregatethere because there's the same
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action toward each one.
Believe, believe in each one.
Uh, same chapter.
Look at verse 26.
Notice the distinctions in thiscluster.
But the, the Helper, the HolySpirit, there's one whom the
Father there's two will send inmy name.
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There's three, okay, but do yousee they're all working
together in something?
The Father will send the Spiritand He'll do that in my name.
So there's an aggregate,there's a cluster involved, but
there's distinctions in thecluster.
You see, okay, there's moreverses here 15, 26, 16, 7
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through 11.
You can do the same thing withthe attributes, just the fact
that in some passages itemphasizes God's righteousness,
in others it emphasizes Hisomniscience.
The distinction of theattributes.
Yet, a lot of times, as youread passages that are very
involved with the attributes.
They're all clustered togetherin the passages Like read Isaiah
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40s, anywhere in the 40s, a lotof attributes of God, distinct
attributes, but they'reclustered together, all together
, and that's showing theaggregative nature of God being
three in one.
Okay, so there's a threeness toGod.
Now, that's the second pointI've kind of talked about.
Yet all three persons andattributes are viewed as a unit
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or cluster.
Okay, we're in John 14, solet's look at 9 through 11 for a
little bit more detail aboutthis.
Jesus said to Philip have I beenso long with you and yet you
have not come to know me, philip, this is weird.
He who has seen me has seen whothe Father.
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Do you see how they're mutuallyexhaustive of one another, so
that if you saw one, you saw theother?
You said but I thought theywere distinct.
Well, they are in this verse,but they're also clustered and
mutually exhaustive of oneanother.
Strange, that's what I'm saying.
These, these expressions are odd.
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We would never say if you'veseen me, you've seen somebody
else.
You can't say that in creationbecause we are only one, there's
no other.
He goes on, he says how can yousay show us the Father.
Do you not believe that I am inthe Father and the Father is in
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me?
Okay, well, we don't haveanything that lines up with this
in our experience.
Exactly, it goes further thewords that I say to you.
I do not speak on my owninitiative, but the Father,
abiding in me, does his work.
Believe me that I am in theFather and the Father is in me.
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Otherwise, believe just simplybecause of the works themselves.
So this is a totally uniquedescription in verses 9 through
11, of someone that doesn't haveany application to anyone in
this created world.
We just don't have this type ofnature that God has, and I'm
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trying to point up in this pointthe incomprehensibility, right
and the impressiveness of who heis.
Because what it's saying is theSon fully penetrates the Father
and the Father totallypenetrates the Son.
And you know it would be truefor the Spirit too.
That's not discussed here, butit's true for the Spirit too.
The Father's the Father, andthe Father totally penetrates
the Son.
And you know it would be truefor the Spirit too.
That's not discussed here, butit's true for the Spirit too.
The Father's in the Spirit andthe Spirit's in the Father, but
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yet they are distinct.
This is not just different masks.
You know the idea that God hasthree masks and he puts on this
mask and he's the Father, andthen he takes it off and puts
the Son mask on.
He takes it up with the spiritmask on.
No, they're distinct.
You can see that, but there'sthis mutual exhaustion of each
and the other.
So this is unlike anything weknow.
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Now let's go to the thirdproposition.
You say this is hard.
It's God.
What do you expect?
You're going to figure it out.
No, this isn't a high-levelmath which you could figure out.
It's God.
What do you expect?
You know you're going to figureit out.
No, this isn't a high-levelmath which you could figure out.
This is beyond that.
God's threeness refers toeternal distinctions, not just
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roles in time.
I should have said in timethere.
That would have helped.
What I'm trying to point outhere is there's two different
ways of thinking about Godwhat's called the economic
trinity and the ontologicaltrinity.
Okay, so what that basicallymeans is this there's two ways
of thinking about God.
One you can think about Godwith respect to the creation, in
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other words, how he relates tocreation things in time.
Another way to think about Godis to think about his
relationship within himselfwithout respect to creation,
without any creation.
Even there let's just saybefore creation, for lack of a
better term.
Those are the two ways you canthink about God.
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The Bible is insistent that wethink about both.
The one where he is relating totime and creation is called the
economical trinity.
So that's looking at God'srelationship to creation from
the standpoint of the roles ofeach member of the trinity, like
(30:52):
the role of the Father, therole of the Son and the role of
the roles of each member of theTrinity, like the role of the
Father, the role of the Son andthe role of the Spirit.
For example, let's go toEphesians 1.
We have this idea that God, theFather, plans salvation.
We have another idea, that theSon is the one who executes
salvation by dying on the crossright, and then we have the
(31:15):
Spirit who applies salvation tothose who believe.
And this is exactly the wayEphesians, chapter 1, verses 3
through 14 break it up.
So look at verse 3, and youwill see that the subject is the
(31:36):
God and Father of our LordJesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Fatherof our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, but come to verse 7.
I know it's suffering to skipall this, but just trust me.
In verse 7, in him we haveredemption.
That's talking of the Son,which he just talked about at
(31:57):
the end of verse 6, the beloved.
And then, if you come to verse13, I know we skipped a lot In
verse 13, it begins to talkabout the Holy Spirit right at
the end of verse 13.
But the whole in him, christ.
You also, after listening tothe message of truth, the gospel
(32:18):
of your salvation, having alsobelieved that you were sealed in
him, in Christ, with the HolySpirit of promise, the one who's
given as a pledge of ourinheritance.
So here's what happens Verses 3,4, 5, 6,.
Those all deal with god, thefather.
Okay, and notice at the end ofverse six, or in verse six, when
(32:40):
it finishes, the father, andyou want to underline these
words.
It says to the praise of theglory of his grace, to the
praise of the glory.
Okay, you want to under I knowyou don't want to underline your
bible because you say I don'tdo that you want to underline
this prayer when you come to thenext chapter, uh, verse and
verse seven.
Again, it starts with the sunand that takes you all the way
(33:02):
through verse 12 and I want youto look at the very end of verse
12.
What does it say to the praiseof his glory?
That's a literature marker.
Right, we now see it twice.
Now let's come to the end ofverse 14, the section on the
spirit.
What does it say at the veryend of verse 14, to the praise
of his glory?
Okay, in other words, those areliterary markers.
(33:25):
It's marking off the threesections the first section,
father.
Second section, son.
Third section, spirit.
Okay, but this whole section isabout god's plan of salvation,
the son's execution of the planand the spirit's application of
the plan to us.
So you can read.
We'll just read the father'sportion, verse three, four, five
(33:45):
and six.
Blessed be the god and father ofour lord jesus christ, the
father who has blessed us withevery spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in christ, justas he chose us in him before the
(34:05):
foundation of the world, whatwe would call the plan of
salvation which he freelybestowed on us in the beloved.
So that's basically outliningwhat we would call the plan of
salvation.
We'd say the Father is themember of the Trinity who
planned the salvation.
Now then you'd come to verseseven, and it's about the
beloved Christ, the Son, and itsays in him we have redemption.
(34:28):
Through his blood, theforgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of hisgrace which he lavished on us in
all wisdom and insight.
He has made known to us themystery of his will.
And it goes on and on.
And the point is who is the onewho shed his blood for us?
Was that the Father or was thatthe Spirit?
No, that was the Son, and sothis is all about the one who
(34:49):
executed the plan that theFather had.
And then, of course, verses 13and 14 the spirit.
And the spirit is the one whoapplies salvation to us when we
believe.
He seals us in christ and hebecomes a pledge or down payment
of our ultimate inheritancewith the view to our
resurrection.
(35:10):
So do you see that there's,there's a, there are roles there
.
There, it wouldn't make senseif it said the Father who shed
His blood for us.
You'd say, no, the Fatherdoesn't do that.
The Son does that.
(35:30):
You're recognizing the roles.
This is the economical trinity,it's the way that the Father
and Spirit relate to certainaspects of creation and play
certain roles, so to speak.
Now, this would indicate thatthe Father is uniquely
constituted to do some things,the Son is uniquely constituted
(35:50):
to do other things and theSpirit others.
It's not that the Father couldhave been the one who came and
died for our sins, or the Spiritcould have come.
It can't be that way, becausethat's not who God is in some
sense In that way, becausethat's not who God is in some
sense, in some way that's notwho God is.
Now let's talk about that's theTrinity with respect to creation
(36:11):
and time, and there are rolesthere that can be distinguished.
But let's talk about Histhreeness as it refers to
eternity.
They call this the ontologicalTrinity.
That's a physics word, butanyway, not a physics word, a
philosophy word.
Ontological trinity okay, whatit looks at is God's
relationship within himself.
Who cares about creation?
(36:34):
Okay, this is not talking aboutcreation at all, forget us,
it's just him.
There was a time when there wasjust God, right?
Well, not really, because therewas no time.
See, did you catch thelimitations in human language?
God doesn't exist in time.
So I can't really say there'stime before creation.
It's just a limitation, but youknow what I mean.
(36:56):
It's sufficient.
We can communicate.
For example, god the Son did notbecome the Son at the
incarnation, because theincarnation is something that
took place in time.
So the question is well, whendid the Son become the Son and
when did the Father become theFather?
Because doesn't a father becomea father at the birth of a son?
Okay, but there's no birth ofhis sonship.
(37:20):
He is eternally the son,eternal sonship.
So this is talking about god inhis being, who cares about
creation, just who is god?
And god is father and he's sonand he's spirit from all
eternity.
Okay, that didn't change at theincarnation.
When jesus took to himself ahumanity in the virgin mary.
(37:43):
Okay, there was no essentialchange in god.
When that happened was there,because god forever was father
and son.
He was forever father and sonand always will be father and
son.
So this is a ontologicaltrinity issue and it's really
based on this concept that Ihave here at the end of the
quote, where it says god neverchanges and he is a saiety.
(38:07):
Okay, a saiety.
This is the idea ofself-existence.
He just exists.
People say, well, where'd godcome from?
Because what are they thinking?
Everything comes from somewhere, therefore, where does god come
from?
That is, what are they thinking?
Everything comes from somewhere, therefore, where does God come
from?
That is, do what you take acreated category of coming into
(38:29):
existence.
Typically, we think of birth,and then we say we project that
on God and we say, well, god hadto come from somewhere, because
everything comes from somewhere.
Excuse me, excuse me,everything comes from somewhere.
How do you know that?
(38:49):
Well, because my experiencesays something everything comes
from somewhere.
Well, the whole point is thatGod didn't come from anywhere.
He is self-existing, he doesn'tneed anything outside of
himself.
He's self-sustaining and he hasself-existence.
This is the concept of aseity.
(39:11):
So, no, all things don't have abeginning and all things don't
come from somewhere.
Some things just are, in thiscase, a self-sufficient,
all-sufficient being.
So that's the ontological ideaabout God.
God exists in himself, and ishe loving within himself, within
the Trinity?
(39:31):
Yeah.
Is he sovereign within himself?
Yes, is he just within himselfsuch that he never sins?
Is he righteous within himselfsuch that he never?
Yes, he's able in some way toexercise all of his attributes
within himself, whether or notthere's a creation.
What this means, then, is thatGod didn't need us, but it does
(39:51):
mean that, well, we do need him.
We very much need him Now.
I think this is a point.
I wanted to take you over toActs 17 real quick.
Well, let's just do it now,acts 17, because I actually
(40:13):
missed this, but this is a goodpoint to inject it.
Acts, chapter 17, when Paul'sat Athens and he's talking to
the intellectually elite, thephilosophers of the age, those
who lived after Socrates andAristotle and Plato, and they'd
gone through the forms and blah,blah, blah and all this stuff,
(40:34):
all this development of somekind of way of thinking, and
Paul is there in that city wherethey thrive.
Right and notice what he saysin verse 27 and 28.
It, right, and notice what hesays in verse 27 and 28.
Okay, that they, that's people,all men, would seek god.
If perhaps they might grope forgod and find him, though he's
not far from each one of us.
(40:55):
Now, this is, then, talkingabout the economical trinity,
right, his relationship tocreation says explanation.
Says explanation.
Verse 28, in him we live andmove and exist, as even some of
your own poets have said, and hequotes a couple guys here, for
we also are his children.
(41:16):
How is it that people are alwayscoming into contact with God?
In him we live and move andhave our being.
How is it?
And even that pagan poetsreflected on reality and wrote
poems that portrayed that idea.
Because here's the thing Everytime we experience love down
(41:39):
here, right, or a concept ofjustice, where does it come from
?
Well, god is love.
God is just.
That is why we have theseconcepts and that is why people
are always in contact with God,every time they move, every time
(42:03):
they move, every time theyspeak, every time they breathe,
every time they think they arehaving an experience with God.
I didn't write this okay, Icouldn't have written this, but
Paul wrote this underinspiration of the Spirit.
He understood that everybodywas always in contact with God.
(42:26):
He says it's not far from eachone of us, see, but in Him we
live and move and have our being, because God set the world up
this way and he is totallyinescapable.
People say I don't know ifGod's there, I don't believe in
God.
Well, do you believe in love?
(42:48):
Do you believe in justice?
Do you believe in righteousness?
Do you believe in space?
Do you believe in time?
Do you believe in the conceptof number?
Because, if you do, where arethese things coming from, unless
there's an adequatejustification for it in an
infinite, personal God whocreated those concepts so we
(43:09):
could enjoy them.
You're coming into contact whenyou go to the grocery store and
you check out with some milk.
You're totally coming incontact with God because that
milk came from a cow that Godcreated, that some human milked.
That God created the human andgave him the ability to figure
out how to do this.
In a bucket that someone madeout of the elements that God
(43:32):
created, right at a checkout,where there's another person who
will gladly accept your creditcard, on an electronic system
that is built on the protons andelectrons and the neutrons in
our universe.
You, you cannot escape allthese things and in fact, you
are always touching and incontact with god.
(43:53):
And this is the whole point.
This is the whole point thatpaul is trying to get across in
romans 1, act 17.
Everywhere he goes, he's tryingto say this to people.
So why is he doing that?
Because he wants people to getright with God and they're
hiding.
They're hiding, they don't wantto admit all these things when
they walk in the grocery store.
(44:13):
No, but it's true, okay, andhe's just trying to get them to
fess up, come clean, right, getright with God through Christ,
who paid the penalty for you.
This is the logical next step,right?
So I wanted to get that in, aswe see that this is very
practical.
Okay, now let's go to thisconcept.
(44:33):
Now, subordination within theTrinity does not refer to
essence Very important for thefeminist movement and debate in
our modern day, okay.
So again, I'm trying to make ita little practical.
We read statements like thiswell, john 3.16,.
Right For God so loved theworld that he gave his only
begotten son.
(44:53):
Right, the only begotten.
Okay, this is referring to asubordinate role that the Son
took on relative to the Father.
God so loved the world that hegave His only begotten Son, but
it's not a subordination ofessence.
In other words, the Son is notless than the Father.
(45:13):
In essence, the Son is equallypowerful with the Father, he's
equally powerful with the Spiritand vice versa.
But Jesus is the only begotten.
So go to the origin of thisGenesis 22,.
The story of Abraham and hisson, isaac, which is famous the
world over.
Right, genesis 22.
(45:37):
You know, sometimes we wonderlike well, what does it mean?
The only begotten and theJehovah's Witnesses came along
and said well, that means thatJesus was created or made.
And I showed you several weeksago some of the early creeds,
like the Apostles' Creed about180.
And then I showed you how.
In Nicaea in 325, what is that?
(45:59):
150 years later or so after theApostles' Creed, they added and
the Apostles' Creed got longer.
And then by the time you get toChalcedon in 451, it's even
longer.
And you're like, why do theykeep expanding and explaining
further about Christ?
Well, the reason was because ofheresies, right, and there were
heresies.
Then Arians came in.
They said well, jesus Christ isbegotten, that means that he's
(46:21):
created.
And so they had to say begotten, not made.
They had to add that not made,because people were interpreting
begotten as being made.
So what's the origin orbackground for all this though?
Genesis 22, the story of Abrahamand Isaac, verse 1,.
(46:44):
Now it came about after thesethings that God tested Abraham
and said to him Abraham, and hesaid here I am, that's the right
answer.
He said take now your son, youronly son.
Now, why did he say that twice?
Take your son Now, wait aminute.
Doesn't he have another son,doesn't he have?
another son I.
He says here take now your son,your only son.
But he has other sons, so howcan you say only son?
(47:06):
This is the concept of begottenand this is the source of it
when it's applied to jesus injohn 3, 16, this is where it all
is traced back to.
In other words, there's aparallel between the birth of
jesus and the birth of this onlyson here.
Okay, take your son, your onlyson, now, wait, wait a minute.
I've got two or three, I've gotthese others, I've got Ishmael.
What are you talking about?
No, he knew exactly what he'stalking about.
(47:27):
So, take now your son, youronly son, the only begotten one.
See the one whom you love,isaac.
Go to the land of Moriah, offerhim there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains.
I'll show you Verse 12.
Verse 12.
And he said as he's got themall up on the altar, about to
slay him, he says.
(47:47):
He said do not stretch out yourhand against the lad and do
nothing to him, for now I knowthat you fear God, since you
have not withheld your son, youronly son, from me.
That's the background for John3.16 and understanding what it
means when it says that God gavehis only begotten son, as
(48:08):
Abraham was giving his onlybegotten son.
So what does it mean?
Does it mean they were born?
Does it mean they experienced aphysical birth?
No, everybody in this worldexperienced a physical birth,
except Adam and Eve, who wascreated out of him.
Everybody else has had aphysical birth, so it can't mean
(48:28):
that.
So there goes Jehovah's Witness.
That's gone.
He's not created and made.
It doesn't have anything to dowith being physically born into
this world.
What does that have to do withUniqueness?
Okay, what does that have to dowith Uniqueness?
A unique supernatural cominginto the world of one who is an
(48:50):
heir of something and plays avital link in the plan of God.
It's the word of uniqueness.
You may have heard me say itSometimes.
I don't say only begotten, whenI quote John 3, 16.
I'll say I'm sure people thinkyou said it wrong he said, for
God so loved the world that hegave his own his unique son I
will sometimes say it this waythat whosoever believes in him.
What do I mean by the unique one?
(49:10):
I mean one who had asupernatural coming into the
world and who is the heir of theworld.
That's what I mean, becauseIsaac is the background for this
.
And Isaac came into the worldsupernaturally, didn't he?
How old was Sarah?
You can laugh too.
God has a good sense of humor.
You're supposed to be laughingright now.
90?
(49:31):
Ha ha.
She even laughed, didn't she?
That wasn't, she wasn't, butanyway, the point is this is
somewhat humorous.
He was how old?
100.
It says his body was dead.
Hers was long dead and she'dbeen barren before that.
There's no way she was barren,couldn't have children in her
(49:52):
barren years, and then she wasnow 90 years old.
So I mean, it's a no-brainer.
It can't happen, right?
Supernatural birth of who?
An heir?
Isaac was the heir of thecovenant promise that god made
with abraham and ishmael wasn't.
So it means someone who hasthis uniqueness.
So when jesus christ comes intothe world, he comes in like
(50:14):
isaac supernatural birth, cominginto this world, and he's what
he's heir.
And both of these guys haveplayed vital links in the plan
of God.
So that's what we do withbegotten.
But notice, there's thissubordination.
It wasn't the Spirit who is,you know, the unique one.
(50:35):
It's not the Father who's theunique one, it's the Son.
He came in in this subordinaterole.
I mean, do you want to becrucified.
He came into the world to becrucified for our sins.
So this is a specificsubordination role.
But see, it doesn't mean thathe's less than God, he is God.
(50:59):
You say, well, it's hard, yeah,I know it's hard, yeah, I know
it's hard, it's god, okay.
But we have this concept of abegottenness.
We also have another concept,and that's the spirit proceeding
.
The spirit proceeds from thefather and the son.
Like john 14 3, I will send thehelper from the father, whom he
(51:19):
will send in my name, okay.
So all three involved, okay,but the helper from the Father,
whom he will send in my name.
So all three involved.
But the Spirit is the one thatproceeds from the Father and Son
.
He's taking on a subordinaterole, but again, it's
subordination of role, not ofessence.
So that means the Spirit isequally God in every sense of
(51:41):
the term.
Now, so what is the idea, then,of procession?
Well, it refers to being sentto do a specific job.
So this is showing job rolesand, I would say, job security
in the Trinity.
In the Trinity, since theSpirit is sent in this role of
(52:05):
procession by the father throughthe son or the name of the son,
what is the spirit'srelationship to the son.
He always points to the son, healways points to the son.
He never points to himself.
He doesn't put himself ondisplay.
He puts christ on displaybecause that's his.
It's a subordinate role of notdrawing attention to himself but
drawing attention to the Son.
Drawing attention to the Son,not to himself.
(52:29):
So the Spirit is like abehind-the-scenes player.
If you've ever watched atheatrical, you know, or even
just a movie, you know there'sthe set, you've got to have the
set, but it's really in thebackground.
Right are front and center andthat's what you're really paying
attention to.
But if you didn't have anybackground, you'd be like what
(52:50):
kind of movie is this kind ofplay is this?
So the spirit is like the, theprops and everything in the
background, okay, but the focusis always on christ right now.
This truth is very important forfeminism.
Why do I say that?
Because the evangelicalfeminist movement is trying to
say that if there'ssubordination, like, let's say,
(53:10):
of female to male or withinroles in the church, that that
means there's inferiority ofessence, and that's not what the
Bible says.
The Bible says that certainmembers of the Trinity
subordinated themselves and thatdid not make those members of
(53:31):
the Trinity inferior to God, theFather.
So, like a good one, is 1Corinthians 11, verse 3.
It says the head of every manis Christ and the head of christ
is god.
Well, does that mean thatchrist is less than god because
christ is subordinate to god?
Well, no, obviously not.
It's a role.
Okay, everybody has to play arole.
(53:53):
If you go into the military, Ihope there's role, like I hope
you have the general and youhave other people who play roles
, right, they're subordinates,right?
Does that make all thosesoldiers who are under the
general less or inferior inessence or personhood than the
general?
No, everybody knows that it'snot.
You have a boss, maybe, ormaybe you are the boss.
(54:14):
If you are an employee, you aresubordinate to your boss.
Does that make you less of aperson than your boss?
No, absolutely not.
But you play a certain role inthe company and your boss plays
a different role.
But there's no difference inthe essence between you and your
(54:35):
boss.
You're equally persons.
You're equally human.
It's the same thing with womenand men.
Men are designed for specificpurposes and roles.
Women are designed fordifferent purposes and roles.
Can a man have a baby?
No, that's an absolute.
Okay, it can't happen.
(54:57):
Are men made to do other thingsand have different types of
interests, like I?
Like the one about, you know,running heavy machinery, like
cranes and the big dump trucksand all that I mean like if you
look in that field, it's thereare some women in the field, but
(55:17):
it's dominated by men, likeover 99%.
If you go to the hospitals,there's some male nurses, but
this is still a field whereyou've got nurturing, caring,
going on.
It's predominantly dominated bywhich side of the human race
Female.
Does that have anything to dowith the way they're made, like
design, their makeup?
(55:38):
Well, yeah, of course it does.
Um, because god has invested ineach one different constitution
, different roles, differentbody type, different hormones
and all sorts of things thatwill relate to these areas that
they would have an interest inand they would, you know, be
proficient at.
I mean I, I, probably you, somedoctors.
(56:00):
Doctors tend to tend to be men,but they're both sides right,
male and female, but a lot ofmen they men doctors.
They are always criticized forhaving poor bedside manners.
Why?
Because they're guys.
They're just there to fix theproblem.
They don't care about the restof it.
Okay, they don't want to knowyour personal stuff.
I fixed your brain.
Leave me alone.
I got to go see the nextpatient, you know.
(56:22):
I mean, that's just because oftheir makeup.
They're not trying to be rude,that's just who they are.
But women, I'm sure, as theirbedside manager is probably a
lot better than guys, probablylovely, so.
But this is my point is thatjust because there's
subordination of roles, such asin marriage or certain things
(56:42):
that are described in the Bible,that doesn't mean that women
are any less persons than men.
They're 100% equal as humansand can do a lot of things way
better than us as men, totallybecause they're proficient in
those things.
They're designed for thosethings, and those things are
their glory, right, and the men?
These things are their glory.
Don't try to make everybody fitthe same mold, right.
(57:04):
Let them be who God made themto be and everything will work
better.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(57:28):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today, the full lesson fromJeremy Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's a hint of what's to come.
And all this is saying is that,while God, you can't totally
know Him in every aspect of Hisbeing you'd have to be
omniscient to know that but youcan know Him in part, and that
part can be truly known.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
The Trinity is the great, inexhaustible,
inexplainable, unknowable andyet knowable entity that exists
outside of time and space.
How in the world are wesupposed to wrap our minds
around this concept of God?
Three distinct people and yetone, perfectly the same, and yet
(00:52):
acting in different ways?
It's a mystery that we try andsolve, that we try and
understand, but we're alwayslimited in our ability to do so
because we are a part creationand therefore we are limited by
creation to what we canunderstand.
Every analogy that we come upwith has flaws, and yet God, in
(01:17):
his infinite wisdom, haspatiently and carefully tried to
explain His nature to us.
We will never know it fully,but we can know it.
This is the beauty of what Godhas done for us and how he has
explained Himself in the Bible,bit by bit, aspect by aspect,
(01:42):
building upon little block oflittle knowledge to help us grow
in our understanding of him.
It's truly a beautiful thing.
Same thing.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
So it's very important for their security to
be successful and Hamas to notbe victorious in this, which was
just basically a bloody assaulton civilians, and I mean they
sent over 2,500 terrorists in inone night.
That's very concerning toIsrael because it means that
they're vulnerable and now theywant to get those people back,
(02:17):
but it's super complicated, sowe'll just have to kind of wait
and see what will take place.
Okay, but that's where thingsare.
Let's go to the doctrine of theTrinity, and we want to talk
about the proper approach to thedoctrine of the Trinity.
In other words, there's a wayto approach knowing God and
(02:37):
there's ways not to approachknowing God.
We have to approach God andknowing him on his own terms and
his terms.
Are the creator-creaturedistinction right?
When we say that, we mean thatGod is distinct from his
creation, he's not a part ofcreation.
There's not just one level ofreality or existence.
(03:00):
There's two levels of realityor existence God, who's infinite
, and the creation, which isfinite.
And so when we're approachingGod, we have to approach him
with this distinction in mindthat he's not subject to the
creation, he's not subject tocreated categories, he's not
subject to your reason and whatwe'll try to show, then.
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Is that human reason, logic,time, all of these mathematics,
the concept of number, all thesethings are derivative from who
God is.
In other words, thosecategories that we are so
commonly function in, those arederived from him.
But we can't take him and puthim in the constraints of those
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categories.
Those are created categories.
So we say two things about God,in the proper approach, that
fall under creator creaturedistinction.
That's, first of all, that Godis incomprehensible.
He's incomprehensible.
Now this means, of course, thathe cannot exhaustively or
comprehensively be known.
Now, this means, of course,that he cannot exhaustively or
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comprehensively be known.
So let's go to Romans 11, 33,the end of Paul's section on
Israel in the book of Romans,where he deals with God's
dispensational dealings withIsrael and with Gentiles.
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Romans 11.33 describes theincomprehensibility of God, this
concept that we cannot exhaustHim, we cannot totally
understand or know Him.
Oh, the depth of the riches,both of the wisdom and the
knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are Hisjudgments and unfathomable his
ways.
In other words, you cannotfathom the manners or ways in
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which God does things Verse 34,for who has known the mind of
the Lord or who became hiscounselor?
In other words.
This is the concept that if youneed a counselor, it's because
you need to learn somethingright, you need to learn
something from the counselor.
That's why you're going to thecounselor, because you don't
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understand or know somethingthat you need to know.
But who has been the counselorof the Lord?
In other words, what has heever learned?
What does he need to learn?
He doesn't need to learnanything.
God doesn't learn things.
What does he need to learn?
He doesn't need to learnanything.
God doesn't learn things.
God knows all things.
So nobody can inform him ofsomething, nobody can give him a
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new piece of information.
He already has all theinformation past, present and
future, as well as things thatare outside of time, related to
his own nature and essence.
So this is just a basic conceptthat you cannot figure God out.
That's what my seminarypresident used to say.
He said he'd just stand upthere and he'd say you ain't
going to figure God out, andwhat he meant was that God is
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incomprehensible.
I've given you some otherpassages here that describe that
same concept.
But just because we said that,a lot of people stop at that
point and say, well, there's nouse trying to figure out who God
is because we can't understandhim.
But that's not what it's saying.
It's not saying you can'tunderstand him.
It's saying you can'tunderstand him exhaustively, you
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can't understand himcomprehensively.
So God is knowable and thereforehe can be known truly, but he
can be known truly only in part.
Well, in what sense, then, canhe be known?
Or in what part?
In the parts that he hasrevealed?
Things that he has revealed canbe known.
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Just like nobody can knowsomething about you unless you
reveal it to someone else, theyhave to tell you in some way,
otherwise we don't know.
I don't know what you'rethinking right now.
You don't know what I'mthinking, but I was thinking
about a rocket fired over fromHamas.
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You didn't know.
I was thinking that you thoughtI was thinking about what I was
saying.
No, I'm thinking aboutsomething else.
You didn't know.
I was thinking that you thoughtI was thinking about what I was
saying.
No, I'm thinking aboutsomething else.
See, nobody knows unless youreveal, and see Deuteronomy 29,
29.
The secret things belong to theLord, our God, but the things
that he's revealed are for usand our children.
In other words, there he'stalking about the Mosaic law and
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he's saying this has beenrevealed and through the Mosaic
law you would learn who God was,because God was the lawmaker.
So you learn about someone,let's say a lawmaker, by the
laws that they make.
You learn about a watchmaker bythe watch that the watchmaker
makes.
In other words, you can learnabout someone through the craft
that they make.
You can learn about an artistthrough the art that they
produce.
And Romans 1, which is one ofthe craft that they make, you
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can learn about an artistthrough the art that they
produce.
And Romans 1, which is one ofthe passages that are here
listen to Romans 1, 18 to 23,says that all men know God by
means of the creation.
In other words, they look atwhat has been made and God is
clearly seen through what hasbeen made, so that no man is
with excuse.
That's Romans 1, 18, 19, and 20describe these ideas.
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In other words, god crafted theuniverse, we would say, and
then we, as humans, who are partof the universe crafted in his
image, we look at the universearound us and we look at
ourselves the complicated natureof our bodies, the physics, the
biology, the chemistry, right,and of course, it's extremely
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complicated.
The cell is no longer a blackbox.
We know a lot about the cell,though I doubt we know
everything there is to knowabout the human, the cell, the
cellular structure andeukaryotes and prokaryotes and
all that stuff.
Okay, very interesting, all thelittle things inside there
endoplasmic reticulum, ribosomes, dna, I mean it goes on and on
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right, but it's supercomplicated and it's saying that
when people look at this, evenjust looking outside and looking
at a flower, looking at thismountain lion that's supposedly
going to destroy Halloween thisyear in Spokane, the sightings
of this mountain lion, whatever,you see a mountain lion, what?
This is an amazing creature andit's revealing something about
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the one who crafted thatcreature and it's telling us
this is whoever made.
That is infinitely brilliant.
So we can know things aboutsomeone through what they've
made.
We can also know things aboutsomeone if they simply give us
propositional speech, likeRevelation and the Bible, and so
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God can be known.
1 Corinthians 2.16.
Let's look at that one.
1 Corinthians 2.16.
Corinthians 2 16.
Let's look at that one.
First, corinthians 2 16.
And all this is saying is thatwhile god, you can't, you can't
totally know him in every aspectof his being.
You'd have to be omniscient toknow that.
But you can know him in part,and that part can be truly known
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.
Notice first corinthians 2 16,who has known the mind of the
Lord, that he will instruct him,but we have the mind of Christ.
In other words, now that we'rebelievers, we have access to
knowledge of God through hisrevelation in Christ.
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That's what this is saying.
So he is knowable, but he'sonly knowable in part.
And what that means for youwhen it comes to Trinity is this
you can understand some thingsabout God in Trinity, but
there's nothing down here increation that is an exact
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correspondence to him andtherefore you cannot know him
comprehensively.
You can never say I figured Godout, I've got it all down pat.
So let's go through thesepropositions, because at some
points you're going to thinkwell, that conflicts with this
or how does that work with this?
I don't know of anything thatmirrors that or is a perfect
analogy with that.
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And I would say, yes, that'swhat you're supposed to
understand, that there is noperfect analogy.
And so let's look at some ofthese points.
First of all, god is one.
This is the first of fivepropositions.
The next will be God is three.
After that we'll say that God'sthreeness refers to eternal
distinctions, not just roles increation in time.
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And then subordination withinthe Trinity, like Father, son
and Spirit.
And then subordination withinthe Trinity, like Father, son
and Spirit, and thesubordination that occurs in
that relationship.
These are not a reference totheir subordination of essence.
And then, of course, we'll talka little bit more about one
last point.
Okay, but first of all, god isone.
What this means is that God'spersons are mutually exhaustive
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of one another.
Let's explain that further.
This means he can't be dividedinto parts.
It's typical for people to say,well, god is like an egg.
You've got one egg and it's gotthree parts Shell, yolk and
albumen or whatever.
Or one light particle, or is ita wave, whatever?
Break light apart into threeparts and say, well, that's like
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God.
Or a pie you take a pie.
This is the easiest one.
Here comes Thanksgiving in amonth Hopefully we'll have some
pies and you cut the pie inthree parts.
You get a piece, I get a pieceand my wife gets a piece.
Whew, that's a big piece.
Okay, that's not God, god, god.
God is not like a pie.
And you split it.
You know you have father, sonand spirit and together they're
all God.
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Because what would that mean?
That would mean the father isnot God, the son is not God, the
spirit is not God.
In fact, the father is lessthan God and the son is less
than God and the spirit is lessthan God, because each one of
them are only one third.
See, okay, that is not what Godis like.
So if that's your idea of God,that's what we call an idol.
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Did you catch that?
Why?
Because this concept of God asa pie is a created concept.
It's created, it's functioningin the categories that God made,
and you can't take God as thecreator and subject him to our
categories.
So what this is saying is thatGod's persons are mutually
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exhaustive of one another.
In other words, if you werethinking of the pie and you got
Father, son and Spirit as threepieces of the pie, what this
words?
If you were thinking of the pieand you got Father, son and
Spirit as three pieces of thepie, what this is saying is that
each piece of the pie ismutually exhaustive of every
other piece of pie.
But we're like well, thatdoesn't make sense to me.
I don't see how that can be.
There are three separate piecesof pie, but not in the model of
the Trinity.
That's not the way it works.
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So what people do, and thereason people tend to think this
way and draw analogies with godand say god's like an egg or
god's like a pie or whatever, isbecause that's the way things
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are down here in creation andthat's the only way they know
how to think, and so they tendto borrow this idea from
creation and then project itonto the creator.
This is where all idolatrystarts.
That won't ever work.
As Stanley Toussaint used tosay, that dog won't hunt, so
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that's trying to capture God andbring him into created
categories.
And let's go to Isaiah 40, verse18.
Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 18.
See why you can't do this.
The Bible explicitly says youcan't do this.
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Isaiah 40, verse 18.
To whom, then, will you likenGod, or what likeness will you
compare with Him?
Isn't that what you're doingwhen you say, well, god is like
an egg, god is like a pie, godis like the three parts of music
melody, harmony and rhythm.
That's what you're doing.
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You're saying God is like thisthing, but the Bible says, well,
who are you going to comparehim with?
To what, then, will you likenhim?
And then the very next verse istalk about what subject?
Idols, because once you beginto compare him with something
else, that is the beginning ofidolatry.
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That's how it gets started.
So it's actually.
Everything is exactly theopposite.
We don't have these categoriesdown here and then we project
the categories on God and puthim in our categories.
The reason we have categoriesis because of who he is.
They're derived from him.
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In other words, why do we havea concept called time?
Is that a category?
I mean, for us it's a category,because some of you are saying
I got to be out of here at 12noon, so you have a concept of
time.
Why do we have, is that aconcept, that we then take and
we say well, god must be in time, he's limited by time.
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You know this is.
There's a whole theology calledprocess theology that is built
on this idea that God is subjectto time.
Process theology, so processtheology.
So this is endemic to people'sthinking to bring God into our
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categories.
Here's the reason we have time,though time is a finite
derivative of eternality.
God is eternal, he's notsubject to time, he doesn't
experience the passage ofmoments, so to speak, as we do.
But time exists because it is afinite replica of eternity.
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It's eternity shrunk down insize, so to speak.
Now we also have concept ofspace in geometry.
Right, geometry is basicallythe study of spaces.
Why do we have that?
I mean, is that just somethingthat exists?
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Bernd Poitras wrote a veryinteresting article in around
1978.
He was a mathematician, also atheologian, and he wrote a paper
about mathematics and whetherGod was silent about it.
In other words, is math mathwhether or not God exists?
Can you have math whether ornot God exists?
And he has a proof that showsthat math is not neutral, is a
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proof that shows that math isnot neutral, that math itself is
derivative of the nature of Godand you can't just go about
doing your geometry, doing yourcalculus, doing your physics,
doing all your little formulasfor friction and whatnot.
You cannot do those withoutassuming God is actually there.
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It's a formal proof and it'sbeen very difficult for people
to answer.
As a result of that, jamesNicol wrote a book that's about
almost half the thickness of ourBible called Mathematics is
God's Silent by James Nicol,very interesting textbook to
show that the categories andthings that we enjoy, like space
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, time, math and concept ofnumber time, all these things
the only reason we have thesecategories to function in is
because of the nature of God,and these things are derivative
of his nature by means ofcreation.
So fascinating stuff.
But the point here to noticeespecially is that God's persons
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the Father, son and Spirit, aremutually exhaustive of one
another.
And you say, but that doesn'tfit my category.
Right, I get that, but he'sinfinite, we're finite, and the
categories we have we can'tshove him into.
It won't work.
Second point under this conceptthat God is one, god's
attributes not just the person's, but now I'm talking about his
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attributes are mutuallyexhaustive of one another as
well.
What do I mean by this?
I mean that God is entirelylove and his love penetrates
entirely his justice and hisjustice penetrates entirely his
omnipotence.
And so what I'm saying here isthat when we think of the
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attributes of God, we're notsupposed to think of it again
like a pie where God is partlove part, just part, sovereign
part, righteous part, omniscientpart, omnipresent, part,
omnipotent, and if we get allthese parts together, the end
conclusion will be God.
That again is not what God islike, because the attributes are
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mutually exhaustive of oneanother.
You know, the liberal loves toset up the idea that in the Old
Testament God was just righteous, big meanie, and in the New
Testament he's a God of love.
And the liberal would like tosay that the God of the Old
Testament is a contradiction tothe God of the New Testament.
That is a simple fallacy ofparting God's attributes out, as
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we're describing here, and notseeing them as mutually
exhaustive of one another.
God's justice is loving.
His love is sovereign.
His love is omniscient love.
His love is omnipotent.
Love.
His omnipotence is expressed injustice.
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These are mutually exhaustiveof one another, aren't they?
So that's why you can saysomething like this If someone
said to you what is God like andyou answered God is love, your
answer would be 100% correct,just as if you answered God is
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righteous.
That answer is 100% correctbecause God is entirely
righteous, and the Bible saysthese things right.
God is love, god is righteous,he is sovereign.
So here's the thing now, if wethink about what we experience
down here, if we as humansexperience love, why do we
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experience love?
Why is that a human quality orcharacteristic that we
experience?
Because, first, he is love.
That's why why do we experiencejustice, or have a concept of
justice down here amongstourselves, concept of justice
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down here amongst ourselves.
Because, first of all, he isjust right.
How do we get a concept ofpower and control, that we have
control or power over a certainsegment or sphere in our job, in
our marriage, whatever.
Where does that even come from?
It comes from the fact that Godis sovereign, and so down here
we have finite derivatives thatwe experience.
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Why?
Well, because first he wasthese things, he is these things
.
So that's the first conceptthat God is one and his persons
are mutually exhaustive of oneanother, as well as his
attributes.
He's not pieces put togetherlike a puzzle.
Second point is that God isthree and you say now, wait a
minute, you just said God is one, yeah, but he is one and he's
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in three.
He's also three and he'sabsolutely one and he's
absolutely three.
And you say but I don'tunderstand Well that there's
nothing in creation that we havethat corresponds to this.
So you don't understand Wellthat there's nothing in creation
that we have that correspondsto this.
So you don't have any finiteexperience of it.
So it's not a category we have,right, that doesn't mean it
doesn't exist.
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So let's talk about this oneFirst of all, god is three.
He's not two or four or eight,some actually posited.
Years ago I got part of a groupcalled Christianity Not
Christianity but Christianityand it posited the idea that if
God were four persons in one,what would the universe be like?
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Would it be the same as it isnow or would it be different?
After years and years ofdiscussion in a discussion board
in the late 90s they basicallyconcluded that the world would
be a different place than it isnow.
It wouldn't be the same.
But it was just an interestingthought experiment with the
Bible.
But the point here is that Godis three, okay, and he has what
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we call an aggregative nature.
What do we mean by aggregative?
Clustered?
Okay, can tell there aredistinctions in this cluster of
who God is right.
You can tell there'sdistinctions of person.
Why?
Well, it's very easy.
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You read the Bible and it'stalking about the Father and
then it talks about the son.
So you know there'sdistinctions inside his
aggregate nature.
Otherwise the Bible couldn'tsay father and son, it would
just be God, right, therewouldn't be any distinctions of
person.
But the Bible very obviouslyspeaks in terms of distinctions
of person, so as well asattributes.
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So, for example, we look atJohn 14.1.
Look at this and I'm going toshow you some interesting verses
today, very, very interestingdescriptions of God and what
he's like.
That I'm sure you've read, butmaybe we don't always think
about.
John 14 1, the end of thatverse.
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Do not let your heart betroubled.
Believe in god, believe also inme.
Okay, same action, believe, buttwo different objects.
I mean, you can see thedifference between god and me.
You know the sun, you can seethat.
Okay, but there's an aggregatethere because there's the same
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action toward each one.
Believe, believe in each one.
Uh, same chapter.
Look at verse 26.
Notice the distinctions in thiscluster.
But the, the Helper, the HolySpirit, there's one whom the
Father there's two will send inmy name.
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There's three, okay, but do yousee they're all working
together in something?
The Father will send the Spiritand He'll do that in my name.
So there's an aggregate,there's a cluster involved, but
there's distinctions in thecluster.
You see, okay, there's moreverses here 15, 26, 16, 7
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through 11.
You can do the same thing withthe attributes, just the fact
that in some passages itemphasizes God's righteousness,
in others it emphasizes Hisomniscience.
The distinction of theattributes.
Yet, a lot of times, as youread passages that are very
involved with the attributes.
They're all clustered togetherin the passages Like read Isaiah
(26:23):
40s, anywhere in the 40s, a lotof attributes of God, distinct
attributes, but they'reclustered together, all together
, and that's showing theaggregative nature of God being
three in one.
Okay, so there's a threeness toGod.
Now, that's the second pointI've kind of talked about.
Yet all three persons andattributes are viewed as a unit
(26:45):
or cluster.
Okay, we're in John 14, solet's look at 9 through 11 for a
little bit more detail aboutthis.
Jesus said to Philip have I beenso long with you and yet you
have not come to know me, philip, this is weird.
He who has seen me has seen whothe Father.
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Do you see how they're mutuallyexhaustive of one another, so
that if you saw one, you saw theother?
You said but I thought theywere distinct.
Well, they are in this verse,but they're also clustered and
mutually exhaustive of oneanother.
Strange, that's what I'm saying.
These, these expressions are odd.
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We would never say if you'veseen me, you've seen somebody
else.
You can't say that in creationbecause we are only one, there's
no other.
He goes on, he says how can yousay show us the Father.
Do you not believe that I am inthe Father and the Father is in
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me?
Okay, well, we don't haveanything that lines up with this
in our experience.
Exactly, it goes further thewords that I say to you.
I do not speak on my owninitiative, but the Father,
abiding in me, does his work.
Believe me that I am in theFather and the Father is in me.
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Otherwise, believe just simplybecause of the works themselves.
So this is a totally uniquedescription in verses 9 through
11, of someone that doesn't haveany application to anyone in
this created world.
We just don't have this type ofnature that God has, and I'm
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trying to point up in this pointthe incomprehensibility, right
and the impressiveness of who heis.
Because what it's saying is theSon fully penetrates the Father
and the Father totallypenetrates the Son.
And you know it would be truefor the Spirit too.
That's not discussed here, butit's true for the Spirit too.
The Father's the Father, andthe Father totally penetrates
the Son.
And you know it would be truefor the Spirit too.
That's not discussed here, butit's true for the Spirit too.
The Father's in the Spirit andthe Spirit's in the Father, but
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yet they are distinct.
This is not just different masks.
You know the idea that God hasthree masks and he puts on this
mask and he's the Father, andthen he takes it off and puts
the Son mask on.
He takes it up with the spiritmask on.
No, they're distinct.
You can see that, but there'sthis mutual exhaustion of each
and the other.
So this is unlike anything weknow.
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Now let's go to the thirdproposition.
You say this is hard.
It's God.
What do you expect?
You're going to figure it out.
No, this isn't a high-levelmath which you could figure out.
It's God.
What do you expect?
You know you're going to figureit out.
No, this isn't a high-levelmath which you could figure out.
This is beyond that.
God's threeness refers toeternal distinctions, not just
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roles in time.
I should have said in timethere.
That would have helped.
What I'm trying to point outhere is there's two different
ways of thinking about Godwhat's called the economic
trinity and the ontologicaltrinity.
Okay, so what that basicallymeans is this there's two ways
of thinking about God.
One you can think about Godwith respect to the creation, in
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other words, how he relates tocreation things in time.
Another way to think about Godis to think about his
relationship within himselfwithout respect to creation,
without any creation.
Even there let's just saybefore creation, for lack of a
better term.
Those are the two ways you canthink about God.
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The Bible is insistent that wethink about both.
The one where he is relating totime and creation is called the
economical trinity.
So that's looking at God'srelationship to creation from
the standpoint of the roles ofeach member of the trinity, like
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the role of the Father, therole of the Son and the role of
the roles of each member of theTrinity, like the role of the
Father, the role of the Son andthe role of the Spirit.
For example, let's go toEphesians 1.
We have this idea that God, theFather, plans salvation.
We have another idea, that theSon is the one who executes
salvation by dying on the crossright, and then we have the
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Spirit who applies salvation tothose who believe.
And this is exactly the wayEphesians, chapter 1, verses 3
through 14 break it up.
So look at verse 3, and youwill see that the subject is the
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God and Father of our LordJesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Fatherof our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, but come to verse 7.
I know it's suffering to skipall this, but just trust me.
In verse 7, in him we haveredemption.
That's talking of the Son,which he just talked about at
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the end of verse 6, the beloved.
And then, if you come to verse13, I know we skipped a lot In
verse 13, it begins to talkabout the Holy Spirit right at
the end of verse 13.
But the whole in him, christ.
You also, after listening tothe message of truth, the gospel
(32:18):
of your salvation, having alsobelieved that you were sealed in
him, in Christ, with the HolySpirit of promise, the one who's
given as a pledge of ourinheritance.
So here's what happens Verses 3,4, 5, 6,.
Those all deal with god, thefather.
Okay, and notice at the end ofverse six, or in verse six, when
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it finishes, the father, andyou want to underline these
words.
It says to the praise of theglory of his grace, to the
praise of the glory.
Okay, you want to under I knowyou don't want to underline your
bible because you say I don'tdo that you want to underline
this prayer when you come to thenext chapter, uh, verse and
verse seven.
Again, it starts with the sunand that takes you all the way
(33:02):
through verse 12 and I want youto look at the very end of verse
12.
What does it say to the praiseof his glory?
That's a literature marker.
Right, we now see it twice.
Now let's come to the end ofverse 14, the section on the
spirit.
What does it say at the veryend of verse 14, to the praise
of his glory?
Okay, in other words, those areliterary markers.
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It's marking off the threesections the first section,
father.
Second section, son.
Third section, spirit.
Okay, but this whole section isabout god's plan of salvation,
the son's execution of the planand the spirit's application of
the plan to us.
So you can read.
We'll just read the father'sportion, verse three, four, five
(33:45):
and six.
Blessed be the god and father ofour lord jesus christ, the
father who has blessed us withevery spiritual blessing in the
heavenly places in christ, justas he chose us in him before the
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foundation of the world, whatwe would call the plan of
salvation which he freelybestowed on us in the beloved.
So that's basically outliningwhat we would call the plan of
salvation.
We'd say the Father is themember of the Trinity who
planned the salvation.
Now then you'd come to verseseven, and it's about the
beloved Christ, the Son, and itsays in him we have redemption.
(34:28):
Through his blood, theforgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of hisgrace which he lavished on us in
all wisdom and insight.
He has made known to us themystery of his will.
And it goes on and on.
And the point is who is the onewho shed his blood for us?
Was that the Father or was thatthe Spirit?
No, that was the Son, and sothis is all about the one who
(34:49):
executed the plan that theFather had.
And then, of course, verses 13and 14 the spirit.
And the spirit is the one whoapplies salvation to us when we
believe.
He seals us in christ and hebecomes a pledge or down payment
of our ultimate inheritancewith the view to our
resurrection.
(35:10):
So do you see that there's,there's a, there are roles there
.
There, it wouldn't make senseif it said the Father who shed
His blood for us.
You'd say, no, the Fatherdoesn't do that.
The Son does that.
(35:30):
You're recognizing the roles.
This is the economical trinity,it's the way that the Father
and Spirit relate to certainaspects of creation and play
certain roles, so to speak.
Now, this would indicate thatthe Father is uniquely
constituted to do some things,the Son is uniquely constituted
(35:50):
to do other things and theSpirit others.
It's not that the Father couldhave been the one who came and
died for our sins, or the Spiritcould have come.
It can't be that way, becausethat's not who God is in some
sense In that way, becausethat's not who God is in some
sense, in some way that's notwho God is.
Now let's talk about that's theTrinity with respect to creation
(36:11):
and time, and there are rolesthere that can be distinguished.
But let's talk about Histhreeness as it refers to
eternity.
They call this the ontologicalTrinity.
That's a physics word, butanyway, not a physics word, a
philosophy word.
Ontological trinity okay, whatit looks at is God's
relationship within himself.
Who cares about creation?
(36:34):
Okay, this is not talking aboutcreation at all, forget us,
it's just him.
There was a time when there wasjust God, right?
Well, not really, because therewas no time.
See, did you catch thelimitations in human language?
God doesn't exist in time.
So I can't really say there'stime before creation.
It's just a limitation, but youknow what I mean.
(36:56):
It's sufficient.
We can communicate.
For example, god the Son did notbecome the Son at the
incarnation, because theincarnation is something that
took place in time.
So the question is well, whendid the Son become the Son and
when did the Father become theFather?
Because doesn't a father becomea father at the birth of a son?
Okay, but there's no birth ofhis sonship.
(37:20):
He is eternally the son,eternal sonship.
So this is talking about god inhis being, who cares about
creation, just who is god?
And god is father and he's sonand he's spirit from all
eternity.
Okay, that didn't change at theincarnation.
When jesus took to himself ahumanity in the virgin mary.
(37:43):
Okay, there was no essentialchange in god.
When that happened was there,because god forever was father
and son.
He was forever father and sonand always will be father and
son.
So this is a ontologicaltrinity issue and it's really
based on this concept that Ihave here at the end of the
quote, where it says god neverchanges and he is a saiety.
(38:07):
Okay, a saiety.
This is the idea ofself-existence.
He just exists.
People say, well, where'd godcome from?
Because what are they thinking?
Everything comes from somewhere, therefore, where does god come
from?
That is, what are they thinking?
Everything comes from somewhere, therefore, where does God come
from?
That is, do what you take acreated category of coming into
(38:29):
existence.
Typically, we think of birth,and then we say we project that
on God and we say, well, god hadto come from somewhere, because
everything comes from somewhere.
Excuse me, excuse me,everything comes from somewhere.
How do you know that?
(38:49):
Well, because my experiencesays something everything comes
from somewhere.
Well, the whole point is thatGod didn't come from anywhere.
He is self-existing, he doesn'tneed anything outside of
himself.
He's self-sustaining and he hasself-existence.
This is the concept of aseity.
(39:11):
So, no, all things don't have abeginning and all things don't
come from somewhere.
Some things just are, in thiscase, a self-sufficient,
all-sufficient being.
So that's the ontological ideaabout God.
God exists in himself, and ishe loving within himself, within
the Trinity?
(39:31):
Yeah.
Is he sovereign within himself?
Yes, is he just within himselfsuch that he never sins?
Is he righteous within himselfsuch that he never?
Yes, he's able in some way toexercise all of his attributes
within himself, whether or notthere's a creation.
What this means, then, is thatGod didn't need us, but it does
(39:51):
mean that, well, we do need him.
We very much need him Now.
I think this is a point.
I wanted to take you over toActs 17 real quick.
Well, let's just do it now,acts 17, because I actually
(40:13):
missed this, but this is a goodpoint to inject it.
Acts, chapter 17, when Paul'sat Athens and he's talking to
the intellectually elite, thephilosophers of the age, those
who lived after Socrates andAristotle and Plato, and they'd
gone through the forms and blah,blah, blah and all this stuff,
(40:34):
all this development of somekind of way of thinking, and
Paul is there in that city wherethey thrive.
Right and notice what he saysin verse 27 and 28.
It, right, and notice what hesays in verse 27 and 28.
Okay, that they, that's people,all men, would seek god.
If perhaps they might grope forgod and find him, though he's
not far from each one of us.
(40:55):
Now, this is, then, talkingabout the economical trinity,
right, his relationship tocreation says explanation.
Says explanation.
Verse 28, in him we live andmove and exist, as even some of
your own poets have said, and hequotes a couple guys here, for
we also are his children.
(41:16):
How is it that people are alwayscoming into contact with God?
In him we live and move andhave our being.
How is it?
And even that pagan poetsreflected on reality and wrote
poems that portrayed that idea.
Because here's the thing Everytime we experience love down
(41:39):
here, right, or a concept ofjustice, where does it come from
?
Well, god is love.
God is just.
That is why we have theseconcepts and that is why people
are always in contact with God,every time they move, every time
(42:03):
they move, every time theyspeak, every time they breathe,
every time they think they arehaving an experience with God.
I didn't write this okay, Icouldn't have written this, but
Paul wrote this underinspiration of the Spirit.
He understood that everybodywas always in contact with God.
(42:26):
He says it's not far from eachone of us, see, but in Him we
live and move and have our being, because God set the world up
this way and he is totallyinescapable.
People say I don't know ifGod's there, I don't believe in
God.
Well, do you believe in love?
(42:48):
Do you believe in justice?
Do you believe in righteousness?
Do you believe in space?
Do you believe in time?
Do you believe in the conceptof number?
Because, if you do, where arethese things coming from, unless
there's an adequatejustification for it in an
infinite, personal God whocreated those concepts so we
(43:09):
could enjoy them.
You're coming into contact whenyou go to the grocery store and
you check out with some milk.
You're totally coming incontact with God because that
milk came from a cow that Godcreated, that some human milked.
That God created the human andgave him the ability to figure
out how to do this.
In a bucket that someone madeout of the elements that God
(43:32):
created, right at a checkout,where there's another person who
will gladly accept your creditcard, on an electronic system
that is built on the protons andelectrons and the neutrons in
our universe.
You, you cannot escape allthese things and in fact, you
are always touching and incontact with god.
(43:53):
And this is the whole point.
This is the whole point thatpaul is trying to get across in
romans 1, act 17.
Everywhere he goes, he's tryingto say this to people.
So why is he doing that?
Because he wants people to getright with God and they're
hiding.
They're hiding, they don't wantto admit all these things when
they walk in the grocery store.
(44:13):
No, but it's true, okay, andhe's just trying to get them to
fess up, come clean, right, getright with God through Christ,
who paid the penalty for you.
This is the logical next step,right?
So I wanted to get that in, aswe see that this is very
practical.
Okay, now let's go to thisconcept.
(44:33):
Now, subordination within theTrinity does not refer to
essence Very important for thefeminist movement and debate in
our modern day, okay.
So again, I'm trying to make ita little practical.
We read statements like thiswell, john 3.16,.
Right For God so loved theworld that he gave his only
begotten son.
(44:53):
Right, the only begotten.
Okay, this is referring to asubordinate role that the Son
took on relative to the Father.
God so loved the world that hegave His only begotten Son, but
it's not a subordination ofessence.
In other words, the Son is notless than the Father.
(45:13):
In essence, the Son is equallypowerful with the Father, he's
equally powerful with the Spiritand vice versa.
But Jesus is the only begotten.
So go to the origin of thisGenesis 22,.
The story of Abraham and hisson, isaac, which is famous the
world over.
Right, genesis 22.
(45:37):
You know, sometimes we wonderlike well, what does it mean?
The only begotten and theJehovah's Witnesses came along
and said well, that means thatJesus was created or made.
And I showed you several weeksago some of the early creeds,
like the Apostles' Creed about180.
And then I showed you how.
In Nicaea in 325, what is that?
(45:59):
150 years later or so after theApostles' Creed, they added and
the Apostles' Creed got longer.
And then by the time you get toChalcedon in 451, it's even
longer.
And you're like, why do theykeep expanding and explaining
further about Christ?
Well, the reason was because ofheresies, right, and there were
heresies.
Then Arians came in.
They said well, jesus Christ isbegotten, that means that he's
(46:21):
created.
And so they had to say begotten, not made.
They had to add that not made,because people were interpreting
begotten as being made.
So what's the origin orbackground for all this though?
Genesis 22, the story of Abrahamand Isaac, verse 1,.
(46:44):
Now it came about after thesethings that God tested Abraham
and said to him Abraham, and hesaid here I am, that's the right
answer.
He said take now your son, youronly son.
Now, why did he say that twice?
Take your son Now, wait aminute.
Doesn't he have another son,doesn't he have?
another son I.
He says here take now your son,your only son.
But he has other sons, so howcan you say only son?
(47:06):
This is the concept of begottenand this is the source of it
when it's applied to jesus injohn 3, 16, this is where it all
is traced back to.
In other words, there's aparallel between the birth of
jesus and the birth of this onlyson here.
Okay, take your son, your onlyson, now, wait, wait a minute.
I've got two or three, I've gotthese others, I've got Ishmael.
What are you talking about?
No, he knew exactly what he'stalking about.
(47:27):
So, take now your son, youronly son, the only begotten one.
See the one whom you love,isaac.
Go to the land of Moriah, offerhim there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains.
I'll show you Verse 12.
Verse 12.
And he said as he's got themall up on the altar, about to
slay him, he says.
(47:47):
He said do not stretch out yourhand against the lad and do
nothing to him, for now I knowthat you fear God, since you
have not withheld your son, youronly son, from me.
That's the background for John3.16 and understanding what it
means when it says that God gavehis only begotten son, as
(48:08):
Abraham was giving his onlybegotten son.
So what does it mean?
Does it mean they were born?
Does it mean they experienced aphysical birth?
No, everybody in this worldexperienced a physical birth,
except Adam and Eve, who wascreated out of him.
Everybody else has had aphysical birth, so it can't mean
(48:28):
that.
So there goes Jehovah's Witness.
That's gone.
He's not created and made.
It doesn't have anything to dowith being physically born into
this world.
What does that have to do withUniqueness?
Okay, what does that have to dowith Uniqueness?
A unique supernatural cominginto the world of one who is an
(48:50):
heir of something and plays avital link in the plan of God.
It's the word of uniqueness.
You may have heard me say itSometimes.
I don't say only begotten, whenI quote John 3, 16.
I'll say I'm sure people thinkyou said it wrong he said, for
God so loved the world that hegave his own his unique son I
will sometimes say it this waythat whosoever believes in him.
What do I mean by the unique one?
(49:10):
I mean one who had asupernatural coming into the
world and who is the heir of theworld.
That's what I mean, becauseIsaac is the background for this
.
And Isaac came into the worldsupernaturally, didn't he?
How old was Sarah?
You can laugh too.
God has a good sense of humor.
You're supposed to be laughingright now.
90?
(49:31):
Ha ha.
She even laughed, didn't she?
That wasn't, she wasn't, butanyway, the point is this is
somewhat humorous.
He was how old?
100.
It says his body was dead.
Hers was long dead and she'dbeen barren before that.
There's no way she was barren,couldn't have children in her
(49:52):
barren years, and then she wasnow 90 years old.
So I mean, it's a no-brainer.
It can't happen, right?
Supernatural birth of who?
An heir?
Isaac was the heir of thecovenant promise that god made
with abraham and ishmael wasn't.
So it means someone who hasthis uniqueness.
So when jesus christ comes intothe world, he comes in like
(50:14):
isaac supernatural birth, cominginto this world, and he's what
he's heir.
And both of these guys haveplayed vital links in the plan
of God.
So that's what we do withbegotten.
But notice, there's thissubordination.
It wasn't the Spirit who is,you know, the unique one.
(50:35):
It's not the Father who's theunique one, it's the Son.
He came in in this subordinaterole.
I mean, do you want to becrucified.
He came into the world to becrucified for our sins.
So this is a specificsubordination role.
But see, it doesn't mean thathe's less than God, he is God.
(50:59):
You say, well, it's hard, yeah,I know it's hard, yeah, I know
it's hard, it's god, okay.
But we have this concept of abegottenness.
We also have another concept,and that's the spirit proceeding
.
The spirit proceeds from thefather and the son.
Like john 14 3, I will send thehelper from the father, whom he
(51:19):
will send in my name, okay.
So all three involved, okay,but the helper from the Father,
whom he will send in my name.
So all three involved.
But the Spirit is the one thatproceeds from the Father and Son
.
He's taking on a subordinaterole, but again, it's
subordination of role, not ofessence.
So that means the Spirit isequally God in every sense of
(51:41):
the term.
Now, so what is the idea, then,of procession?
Well, it refers to being sentto do a specific job.
So this is showing job rolesand, I would say, job security
in the Trinity.
In the Trinity, since theSpirit is sent in this role of
(52:05):
procession by the father throughthe son or the name of the son,
what is the spirit'srelationship to the son.
He always points to the son, healways points to the son.
He never points to himself.
He doesn't put himself ondisplay.
He puts christ on displaybecause that's his.
It's a subordinate role of notdrawing attention to himself but
drawing attention to the Son.
Drawing attention to the Son,not to himself.
(52:29):
So the Spirit is like abehind-the-scenes player.
If you've ever watched atheatrical, you know, or even
just a movie, you know there'sthe set, you've got to have the
set, but it's really in thebackground.
Right are front and center andthat's what you're really paying
attention to.
But if you didn't have anybackground, you'd be like what
(52:50):
kind of movie is this kind ofplay is this?
So the spirit is like the, theprops and everything in the
background, okay, but the focusis always on christ right now.
This truth is very important forfeminism.
Why do I say that?
Because the evangelicalfeminist movement is trying to
say that if there'ssubordination, like, let's say,
(53:10):
of female to male or withinroles in the church, that that
means there's inferiority ofessence, and that's not what the
Bible says.
The Bible says that certainmembers of the Trinity
subordinated themselves and thatdid not make those members of
(53:31):
the Trinity inferior to God, theFather.
So, like a good one, is 1Corinthians 11, verse 3.
It says the head of every manis Christ and the head of christ
is god.
Well, does that mean thatchrist is less than god because
christ is subordinate to god?
Well, no, obviously not.
It's a role.
Okay, everybody has to play arole.
(53:53):
If you go into the military, Ihope there's role, like I hope
you have the general and youhave other people who play roles
, right, they're subordinates,right?
Does that make all thosesoldiers who are under the
general less or inferior inessence or personhood than the
general?
No, everybody knows that it'snot.
You have a boss, maybe, ormaybe you are the boss.
(54:14):
If you are an employee, you aresubordinate to your boss.
Does that make you less of aperson than your boss?
No, absolutely not.
But you play a certain role inthe company and your boss plays
a different role.
But there's no difference inthe essence between you and your
(54:35):
boss.
You're equally persons.
You're equally human.
It's the same thing with womenand men.
Men are designed for specificpurposes and roles.
Women are designed fordifferent purposes and roles.
Can a man have a baby?
No, that's an absolute.
Okay, it can't happen.
(54:57):
Are men made to do other thingsand have different types of
interests, like I?
Like the one about, you know,running heavy machinery, like
cranes and the big dump trucksand all that I mean like if you
look in that field, it's thereare some women in the field, but
(55:17):
it's dominated by men, likeover 99%.
If you go to the hospitals,there's some male nurses, but
this is still a field whereyou've got nurturing, caring,
going on.
It's predominantly dominated bywhich side of the human race
Female.
Does that have anything to dowith the way they're made, like
design, their makeup?
(55:38):
Well, yeah, of course it does.
Um, because god has invested ineach one different constitution
, different roles, differentbody type, different hormones
and all sorts of things thatwill relate to these areas that
they would have an interest inand they would, you know, be
proficient at.
I mean I, I, probably you, somedoctors.
(56:00):
Doctors tend to tend to be men,but they're both sides right,
male and female, but a lot ofmen they men doctors.
They are always criticized forhaving poor bedside manners.
Why?
Because they're guys.
They're just there to fix theproblem.
They don't care about the restof it.
Okay, they don't want to knowyour personal stuff.
I fixed your brain.
Leave me alone.
I got to go see the nextpatient, you know.
(56:22):
I mean, that's just because oftheir makeup.
They're not trying to be rude,that's just who they are.
But women, I'm sure, as theirbedside manager is probably a
lot better than guys, probablylovely, so.
But this is my point is thatjust because there's
subordination of roles, such asin marriage or certain things
(56:42):
that are described in the Bible,that doesn't mean that women
are any less persons than men.
They're 100% equal as humansand can do a lot of things way
better than us as men, totallybecause they're proficient in
those things.
They're designed for thosethings, and those things are
their glory, right, and the men?
These things are their glory.
Don't try to make everybody fitthe same mold, right.
(57:04):
Let them be who God made themto be and everything will work
better.
Speaker 1 (57:08):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(57:28):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
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