7
– The Doctrine of the Trinity (Each Person is Fully God)
Yesterday, we talked about God, the Holy
Spirit, is Distinguished from God (the Father).
Today, we’ll look at Each Person is Fully God.
Each Person is Fully God
Certainly
God the Father is fully God. “This is
evident from the first verse of the Bible, where God created the heaven and the
earth. It is evident through the Old and
New Testaments, where God the Father is clearly viewed as sovereign Lord over
all and where Jesus prays to his Father in heaven” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 233.
Certainly
Jesus is fully God. We can see from John
20:28, the deity of Christ, where Thomas refers to Jesus as, “My Lord and my
God!” How would you answer the skeptic
who says – Thomas thought Jesus was God/deity but Jesus isn’t speaking
here. (And, Thomas got carried away.)
One
passage that is a particular favorite is Hebrews 1:3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and
the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful
word.” Notice that Christ is the “exact
representation,” the exact duplicate of the being of God. So, “God the Son exactly duplicates the being
and nature of God the Father in every way:
whatever attributes or power God the Father has, God the Son has them as
well” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology,
p. 236.
See
also the famous Christmas passage from Isaiah 9:6. We often miss this in the Christmas story
about the cute, little baby, born of Mary.
We may inherently know of the virgin birth of this baby, born in a lowly
manger, but we often forget that this baby was Deity!
For to us a
child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his
shoulders. And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
He
will be called Mighty God!
Another
quick point, often overlooked when discussing the Trinity is Exodus 3:1-7a
where God appeared to Moses in the burning bush as THE angel of the LORD (See
also Genesis 16:13, Exodus 23:20-22, Numbers 22:35-38, Jeremiah 2:1-2, 6:11-14).
Virtually all would agree that Moses saw God, Deity, in the burning
bush, but a study of the phrase, the angel of the LORD, will cause one to
understand that the angel of the LORD is Jesus.
“Many understand the angel of the Lord as a
true theophany” Walter A. Elwell, Ed., Evangelical
Dictionary of Theology, Second Edition, p. 62. Meaning “A theological term used to refer to
either a visible or auditory manifestation of God” Ibid., p. 1190.
Similarly, “the house of David is seen as a
reference to Jesus” The Biblical Illustrator,
Copyright © 2002, AGES and Biblesoft,
Inc.
On that day the LORD will shield those who live in
Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of
David will be like God, like the Angel of the LORD going before them. On that day I will set out to destroy all the
nations that attack Jerusalem. And I
will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit
of grace and supplication. They will
look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one
mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a
firstborn son. Zechariah 12:8-10
Again, see from John 1:1-2, indicating that
the Word, that is, Jesus is in fact deity.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was with God in
the beginning.
Certainly the Holy Spirit is fully God. Matthew 28:19 (“baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”) shows the Holy Spirit as
having equality with the Deity of the Father and the Son.
Another particularly good passage:
Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so
filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for
yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was
sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the
money at your disposal? What made you
think of doing such a thing? You have
not lied to men but to God.’
Note particularly that lying to the Holy
Spirit IS lying to GOD!
See also Psalm 139:7-8, 1 Corinthians
2:10-11, John 3:5-7.
We’ll look at “He is One God” tomorrow.
Doug
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