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Deity and Trinity - THE BIG QUESTIONS OF THE MAIN QUEST

SUMMARY

How are Jesus’ claims unique or different from claims made by all the religious leaders of history?
What does Jesus claim about Himself?
What response does Jesus’ deity call for from us?
What does the doctrine of the Trinity imply about the significance of relationship and love?

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Deity and Trinity – Study 18

DATE:

Suggested Reading: Revelation 22.

35. Jesus: Behold I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end (Rev 22:12, 13).

36. Personal Response Necessary

Trinity understands God as three-personed: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God in community, each ‘person’ in active communion with the others. We are given an understanding of God that is most emphatically personal and interpersonal. If God is revealed as personal, the only way that God can be known is in personal response. We need to know this. It is the easiest thing in the world to use words as a kind of abstract truth or principle, to deal with the gospel as information. Trinity prevents us from doing this. … Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Þ What are some other scriptures that might shed light on this important theme?

Þ What other quotes or comments would you add to this theme?

(WAYSTML) What are you saying to me Lord?

(IHYLNWAIDAI) I hear you Lord now what am I doing about it?

Prayers along the way:

O Lord, Grant us, according to the riches of Your glory, To be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in the inner man, So that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith; And that we, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the Breadth and length and height and depth, And to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, That we may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

from Ephesians 3:16-19

Thanks to Dr Dan Psaute (missionary to Slovenia) for the collection and sequencing of this material, and to Dr Paul Tarrant (UK) for some editing, instruction and lay out. (further info from This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Deity and Trinity – Study 17

DATE:

Suggested Reading: Revelation 1.

33. In the Revelation, when Jesus appeared to John on the island of Patmos, He said: I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. … Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades

(Rev 1:8, 17, 18).

34. Entering Reality

“In your going make disciples!” We can fulfil this commandment of our Lord – we can make disciples of Jesus in the full New Testament context – only when we have in view the full revelation of God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

This three-fold designation often is taken as a formula to be used at baptism. But it is not really prescriptive, as a formula; it is descriptive of the reality that the disciples are entering into.

The idiom behind baptizing “in/into the name of” is the Hebrew concept of l’shem, which means “with reference to” or “for the sake of.” “Father and Son and Holy Spirit” is not a formula that one must recite upon the occasion of immersion. It is a description of the reality that through Jesus, the Son, and his atoning death, burial and resurrection, we are brought into a relationship with the One True Living God, the Father. And from the Father proceeds the gift, the promise, of the Holy Spirit who now indwells us.

In every other instance in the New Testament when we hear about baptism, it is done “into the name of” Jesus. There is not a contradiction here, because the issue is not which formula do you use. The issue is: what is the reality you are entering? Our immersion is done Adon Yeshua L’shem, “with reference to” or “in the name of” Jesus the Lord – because it is Jesus who by his death, burial and resurrection secures for us eternal life and brings us into relationship with the Father, who then gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. The emphasis in Matthew 28:19 then is upon a descriptive reality, not upon a prescriptive formula.

The point is this: to fulfil the command to make disciples – who will become like their Rabbi, their Master, Yeshua – it requires the fullness of the Godhead. It requires relationship with the Father and the power of His presence in the person of the Holy Spirit.

Said another way, New Testament discipleship is distinctively Trinitarian, if you will. It is accomplished in relation to the fullness of the One God as Father and Son and Holy Spirit. And that is made possible because Yeshua became our Passover Lamb, and his sacrifice brings us into an intimate relationship with the Father. Through the Son we draw nigh to the presence of the Father from whom we have been separated by our sins, and He bestows upon us the precious promise of the Holy Spirit, a promise going all the way back to the covenant with Abraham.

Dwight A. Pryor , “Be Filled With The Holy Spirit,”

A sermon delivered at Church of the Messiah on 7 January 2006

(WAYSTML) What are you saying to me Lord?

(IHYLNWAIDAI) I hear you Lord now what am I doing about it?

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