Bible Question: I am helping someone new to the faith understand some things about the Word. This person is having a problem understanding the Holy Trinity. Could you please help break it down to a more simple form so that I can help this person get a better understanding?? |
Bible Answer: God is great, and in many ways beyond our understanding. But the fact that the three persons exist and work as one is not difficult to accept or understand, unless you make it so. But the folks on this forum are tough! Ouch! Be careful with them. If you are a new Christian and don’t know what happens here, you night get hurt! Tell the new believer: they do not sound too much like Jesus, but I do believe they are Christian. They are forgiven. They are my brethren. These are the kind you’ll find in church. So be prepared. Love them anyway. And do not leave. But please do not believe them when they say “the Bible describes God as one single being”. It does not. If they had seen it in the Bible they might quote the verse. They cannot. They say that the concept of three being one is beyond our human understanding. The Bible does not present it as incomprehensibel but simply presents our God three in one. We are not spooked when one of them says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). The Spirit is moving (Genesis 1:2). The Son is creating (John 1:3). God the Father put all things under the Son (1 Corinthians 15:27) and the earthly scene unfolded. When Jesus is on earth and a voice speaks from heaven saying, ”This is my beloved son”, this is not ventriloquism. It is one person speaking to another. When the Spirit descends on Jesus, it is not an apparition. He is another person entering the scene. These are not one person, my friends, but three. The Bible does not say that the three are one person. We Christians have a hard time tolerating our oneness (1 Corinthians 1:12). We bite and devour one another (Gal 5:15). We divide into denominations and we have racial hatred, and we have cliques and church splits, and even religious wars. We have to try hard to keep the unity that God has set up, and peace (Ephesians 4:3). No wonder some of us have a hard time understanding how the Father and the Son and the Spirit can be one. We quarrel and fight and throw insults. But there is no such thing within the godhead. They are united. And Jesus prayed that we would be one, just as they are one (John 17:22). But it is difficult for some of us to understand and practice. That is the way it is with us concerning many things that God says. We find it hard to do, so we prefer to study. But the behavior on this forum, on this thread, proves the point that Bible study is not helpful. It is not helpful, I say, because it does not translate into behavior. We pursue knowledge and not godliness. The fact is, we do not practice what we know. We can give a good exegesis of love but we do not practice love. In fact we often do the opposite of what the Bible says. Many of us have yet to learn that God is not interested in what we know, but in what we do (1 Corinthians 8:1). Some people who have had no Bible behave better than we do. Abraham had no Bible, but he obeyed God (Hebrews 11:8). The Gentiles did not have the law, but they did the things contained in the law (Romans 2:14). And we have Bible schools. We pass man’s exams, but fail to do the will of God. You might as well say this to the new believer. This is what we do, and this is what they can expect. And let my brethren prove me true by lashing me again. No, I’m no masochist, my friend, but I am a realist. I know what to expect and I can take it. A doctor learns medicine in order to practice healing. A psychologist leans about human behavior to help humans to make good decisions. An architect learns the building trade to erect and fix buildings. Believers study the Bible in order to … I’d like to see us win a soul here, or heal a marriage, or restore a backslider, or do something else that God says. We like to display what we know, and so we study. And yet, a brother has been studying comes on here to say that “study to show thyself approved” means to study the Bible. And so, with ideas like that, we enter Bible study rooms and express our opinions. We are none the better for it. Some of us have seen so much of it, we are tired of it. But we do not give up. We practice patience and take their jabs and prod them still to love and to good works. We will not be weary in well doing. God’s goal for us is that we be one. And we will be. Just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one. Separate persons but one God. Grace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Don't study these things, my friends. Do them. And the God of peace will be with you. |