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Welcome once more then, beloved, to this, the fifth of our sessions in which we have been exploring the glorious wealth and wonder of the Blessed and Holy Trinity. We very soon observed that if we would know what God is like in himself as the Holy Trinity, then we have no hope of knowing anything unless we come to Jesus Christ, whom God has sent to reveal to us as his only begotten son, to reveal to us the wonders of God.
So we spent, uh, two evenings together thinking about the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then we spent another lecture dealing with the humanity of Christ. We spent yet another lecture dealing with the deity of the Holy Spirit. We are aware, of course, that in many places the New Testament talks about the power that the Holy Spirit exerts. But whereas he exerts power, he himself is a person, and that the New Testament makes very clear.
We come then to this fifth session, and now we must begin to try to put together in our understanding what we have learned thus far about the divine persons. That God the Father is God is self-evident and needs no demonstration, but that Jesus Christ, his son, is both God and human. This naturally raises many questions in thinking minds. And that the Holy Spirit sent forth by the Father is also described as God, raises the big question of what is known as the Trinity.
And we have to think this evening, by God's grace and help, how we may learn to speak properly about the divine persons. And I pray God that I shall be kept for saying anything that is unworthy and incorrect about those illustrious persons. But there are many que- Christians known to me, loyal to the Lord Jesus and devoted to God, and dependent upon the Holy Spirit, who nevertheless feel in their hearts that all talk about the Trinity is perhaps unwise and certainly unhelpful.
The Trinity, they say, is not a biblical word. You will not find it anywhere in the Old Testament or the New. And they say theref- uh, also that the great creeds of Christendom, such as the Creed of Athanasius and the Nicene Creed, from which we have all learned a lot, even if we're not aware of it, are nevertheless couched in very philosophical and theological terms, such as substance and being and hypostatic union and suchlike terms that are beyond most people's familiarity and difficult to comprehend.
And they tend, say people, to make the Trinity sound some complicated, almost impersonal, philosophical and theological conundrum. And distant from the blessed Lord Jesus, whom we have learned to love and to trust. So they say, is it not better just to take Holy Scripture as we find it, and where it tells us of God, we believe it, and where it tells us that Jesus Christ, his son, is God, we believe that. And where it indicates the Holy Spirit is God, well, we accept that and say hallelujah in our hearts, without trying to put it all together in some theological scheme and work it all out, the how these three persons are related to each other.
And, as they say, the Trinity is not a biblical term. Should we not therefore leave it there and learn not to probe too far because the divine persons, by definition, go infinitely beyond our understanding? And therefore we learn to trust, that is wisdom, rather than to probe more than we are intended to into these matters. The Trinity, not a biblical term, therefore, on the whole, it is unhelpful. Well, I confess I have a certain amount of fellow feeling with those who hold that point of view.
I remember being some um ten years ago in Russia and being invited to address a small group of people, many of whom were sheer atheists brought up under Marxism and communism. And I was invited to expound the Christian gospel to them, and I did it to the best of my small ability and came nowhere near talking about the holy, uh, the Trinity whatsoever. I simply preached the simple facts of the Christian gospel. When I finished, the time for questions came, and one good lady, who I later discovered was a brilliant physicist, fixed me with her first question.
Why do we have to believe in the Trinity, says she? For she lived in a land where Christians emphasize the Trinity perhaps beyond all else. Why should we believe in the Trinity, and it doesn't make sense to me anyway? Well, what would you have said? I said, well, my dear, perhaps the best way to start thinking about the Christian gospel is to not to start with the Trinity. It's simply to start reading about the Lord Jesus and hearing what he has to say, and let him convince you that he is the truth, and the truth about God, and the truth about man, and the truth about salvation.
I suspect that the dying thief, the terrorist brigand, who was crucified on a cross next to Christ, and went home to glory, to paradise that very day with the Lord Jesus, couldn't, had you asked him, give any sensible interpretation or explanation of the Holy Trinity, wouldn't you agree with me? And he got to paradise in spite of it. So yes, I have a certain amount of sympathy that those who feel that, uh, trying to understand the deep things of the Trinity is not always helpful, perhaps it isn't always reverent. And, uh, perhaps therefore not wise.
But then when I'm tempted to think that, I can't fail to observe what scripture itself says. And while I grant you the word Trinity is not a biblical term, we read in more than one place in the New Testament of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mentioned in the very same breath, the three persons together. Let's look at one or two of those places and begin in Matthew chapter twenty eight. Matthew chapter twenty eight and verse, uh, eighteen.
And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go you therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And we notice at once the three persons' name together, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We notice also, for it is significant, that the term the name of is used but once, not the name of the Father and the name of the Son and the name of the Holy Spirit, but in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
You can't deny that there are three, can you? What would you call it? Uh, if not a Trinity, a threesome or something? It's three, isn't it? But mark this more important thing. Try the thought experiment in your mind. How would it sound if we added a name or two more to the three? In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and uh, the angel Gabriel. How would that sound? You would all protest, you who are Christians at least, at once and immediately.
You can't join that name onto those three. Why not? Well, because Gabriel, for all his exaltation, is only a creature. You can't join that his name to those names, for they are names of the uncreated persons of the Godhead. All right, add a Christian name to it, in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit and the Apostle Paul. How would that do? No, you say you can't do that. There is an absolute gulf between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit on the one hand, and even the Apostle Paul on the other.
And if you didn't see it at once, Paul would be after you and say to you what he said to the Corinthians. What are you doing calling yourself after Peter and Apollos and Paul? Was Paul crucified for you? Into what name were you baptized? Into the name of Christ and Paul, or the name of Christ and Peter? Well, of course not. Mercifully, the Christian church has done some funny things all down the centuries, but it has never got to that length of baptizing people in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the Apostle Paul or Peter.
Of course not. These three are the Holy Trinity. They are God over all, blessed forevermore, ever distinct from creation and created things. But lest you should think that that is too theological, let's come now to something that is devotional. Let's look at one Corinthians, oh, sorry, two Corinthians chap- uh, the last chapter, Two Corinthians. The last chapter and the last verse, commonly known as the grace.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Ah, what a lovely benediction that is, isn't it? To be spoken to us in the name of God this very evening as we sit here before him. This is no mere theological doctrine. This surely is the Trinity. We have mentioned the Lord Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Spirit once more in the same clause. You may care to notice in passing that this time the order is different.
In Matthew it was in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This time it's in a different order. First comes the Lord Jesus Christ, then God, then the Holy Spirit, which shows us, incidentally, as we pass by, that not one of these persons is more God than the other. They're never to be read as though Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were in a descending order. Each is equally God as the other, and in that sense it doesn't matter which way round you put it.
But pray see with me how this is not just abstract theology. This is the very blessing of God on your head tonight. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. You know the grace of the Lord Jesus, don't you? How he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich. The grace of the Lord Jesus in his over- overflowing riches be with you. And the love of God. Oh, you know it, don't you? Herein is love.
Not that we love God, but he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. And the communion, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, himself God, God not content to reveal himself in Christ and to atone for our sins through the sacrifice of Christ, but to send God the Holy Spirit to dwell within our hearts and mind, that we may understand the things that are freely given to us of God and create the genuine fellowship. Oh, what a magnificent thing it is.
Let's not ever let it become something ordinary, that we here on this planet, and long before we get to heaven, have real, actual fellowship with the divine persons through the grace and operation of the Holy Spirit of God. The Trinity is bound up with our devotions. But it's not just devotional, it's a practical thing in the running of the body of Christ and therefore the church. Let's go back to one Corinthians twelve, if you will. One Corinthians twelve, and Paul is beginning to discuss spiritual gifts, and he says in verse three, wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking in the Spirit of God says Jesus is anathema, and no man can say Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit.
And all we notice at this point simply is that when it talks about Lord here, it's talking about Jesus, that Jesus is Lord. But now notice the next verses. Paul is going to discuss the various spiritual gifts that God has put in the church. Now there are diversities of gifts, says he, but the same spirit. And there are diversities of ministrations and the same Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the same God who worketh all things in all. Do you see the three names coming again?
The Trinity, my brothers and sisters, is a reality. It's not a theological doctrine on a page merely, it is the whole Godhead practically involved with his people, giving the gifts and administering them and working them. What a thing it is to be gathered with the people of God in assembly, and to realize that we are the objects of the whole Godhead, the Trinity, in the operations of the gifts that he has given.
And you will say to me, perhaps, but you've omitted the one that comes nearest our hearts. And that is what the Epistle to the Hebrews says about the great atonement that Christ has achieved for us. In Hebrews ten, it tells us that God prepared that body. A body thou hast prepared me, says the Messiah to God the Father. By the offering of that body, we are sanctified, the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. He took the body that the Father had given him and offered it without spot to God.
And says Hebrews chapter nine, and God the Holy Spirit was involved in it, who by the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God. Allow yourself a little imagination, if you will, to ponder in your mind's eye and in your heart's worship. The whole Godhead gathered, if I may use the term, focused on the cross of Christ to accomplish our redemption. Magnificent, isn't it? What a God we have.
Oh, don't let us say it again, that the Trinity is an unhelpful thing to talk about. Never mind the term. Pray observe the three divine persons involved with us from start to finish. It therefore matters for us that when we come to think of the divine persons, we should learn to speak rightly about them and think rightly about them.
In some part, it's a matter of growing up, isn't it? A little child will say things about its dad that an adult boy or girl wouldn't dare to say, I suspect, because the little child doesn't yet know all the wonders and the implications and complications of even human relations. And thus, we know as children of God, we know the Father, we know our sins are forgiven. We know the Father. A child in a human fa- family learns to say daddy. It's one of the first things it learns. And then as believers, as little, uh, uh, first born, first believers, we, we know our sins are forgiven.
The fathers are said to know him that is from the beginning. And since God has revealed himself to us, then it would be churlish on our part not to be interested, wouldn't you? We ought to be thinking about the divine persons and learn how important it is to learn to think properly about them. And therefore, now I beg your leave that I, I, I, I give a little, uh, demonstration by inviting you to turn to the first epistle by John, and noticing sundry features about John's epistle and what he says to us about the divine persons, and how he urges upon us the importance of speaking and thinking correctly when it comes to the divine persons.
Now, there are three major parts to the first epistle by John, and I want to concentrate your attention on the last verses of each of those three major parts. So we begin in chapter two and verse eighteen. Little children, it is the last hour, and as you heard that Antichrist cometh, even now have there arisen many antichrists, eh, whereby we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest how they are all not of us.
And you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written unto you because you know not the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar? But he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also.
If, verse twenty four, that which you heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. The importance, therefore, of learning to speak rightly about the Son of God and his relation to the Father. Two things stand out here before we move on. One is that direct and powerful statement, who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ, is the Messiah. Let me tell you two stories.
In my student days, I once, uh, gave a series of talks in a town called Newmarket, famous for its race horses in England, you'll see. And after one of these lectures, a gentleman came up to me and asked if he might, uh, speak, uh, and his story was that he had been out with the RAF in India, and in India he had got himself interested into yoga and beyond yoga into the, how shall I put it, the spiritism that is practiced in theosophical circles in that country.
Now he had come back, he was into, into England, he was in Civic Streets, Street, uh, but he's still working for the RAF and had gone along to the theosophists in Cambridge, and he was getting discontent with it all. And wondered how he could be saved, he told me. He was making no moral progress, and some of the things that he had come across frightened him. He said he'd ask his mother what he was to do, and she said, don't be worried, just say the Lord's Prayer, but he didn't find that helped. So eventually he came to see me in my rooms, in my student rooms, and when he came, he was convulsed, heaving in his chest.
He said, I have had an enormous struggle to come here, but he managed to come. Well, there followed a long story and many meetings. He eventually told me, I have found peace through the written word. But on one occasion he asked me, would I come with him because he had borrowed books from the Theosophists, and he wanted to give them back and was afraid to go back by himself. And so I went with him, of course, but I said to him, tell me, what do these people tell you about the Christ? Who is the Christ?
Do they tell you he's Jesus? And of course, the good man, he didn't know his New Testament whatsoever. Oh no, he said, no, no, they they no, they don't say that that the Christ is Jesus. No, the Christ is the great world spirit who once upon a time filled Jesus. The Christ is coming again, but it won't be Jesus. He will fill someone else, will the world Christ. And when I heard the good man say that, I read him this verse of scripture and showed it to him. Who is the liar, save he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?
Somewhere about nineteen seventy six, I suppose, four or five or six, I don't know, there was an Indian from India who, uh, traveled the streets of Belfast in, in a lorry, uh, all decked out with various things, and his, uh, the followers would come round the door to present to anybody that would listen the Divine Light Mission. So one afternoon, a nice little Irish girl came to my door, do you see, and she told me how I could go to London and see the great light. She said she had seen this great light, and I could if I wanted to. I said, I've no doubt you've seen a great light.
The question is which light it was, whether it was God or the devil, because the devil transforms himself into an angel of light. Well, she was soon out of her depth, but the man in charge of the group came up rather angry. Why was I continuing the conversation? And anyway, you bigoted evangelicals here in Belfast, we all preach exact the same thing. Why can't you, uh, agree with us instead of arguing with us? I believe Jesus is the Christ, said he. I said, you don't, do you? Yes, I do. No, you don't, I said.
And there happened to be two milk bottles standing on my doorstep. You can tell how long ago it was when the people delivered milk. There were these two milk bottles, and I said to him, now see those two bottles there? Yeah. I said, if you filled them with milk, both of them filled with milk, you wouldn't say there were two milks on the step, would you? Two bottles, but just one substance, milk. And I said, you don't believe that Jesus is the Christ, do you? You believe the Christ is the great world spirit, and he filled Jesus when Jesus was on earth, and now he fills the leader of your divine light mission.
Well, yes, he said, that is what I believe, and he went away like Naaman in a rage. We need to know how to speak rightly of the divine persons. Jesus is the Christ. But notice what the next thing says. It's the relationship between him and the Father that is important. He that denieth the Son, verse twenty three, the same hath not the Father. How is that? Well, we're not thinking here of God as the great Father of mankind.
We're thinking of the persons of the Trinity, and in the Trinity there is the Father and the Son. If you deny the Son, you haven't got the Father, have you? He couldn't be Father unless he stood in relation to one who is Son. Even in our little planet, a man is married to his wife, but he isn't a father yet unless he has a son or daughter, is he? And if g- if there wasn't such a thing as the Son of God, then God wouldn't be Father, would he? If you deny the sonship of Jesus Christ our Lord, you automatically deny the fatherhood of God.
It is vastly important, my dear brethren and sisters, that we learn to understand the relationships between the persons of the Godhead. Turn over the page, will you, to chapter four. Chapter four. this comes at the end of the second big section of the first epistle by John. Verse seven. Uh, uh, uh, you see, uh, no, not verse seven. eh, verse one. Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
Hereby know you the Spirit of God. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God, and this is the spirit of Antichrist, whereof you have heard it comes, and now it is in the world. And now it's a question of the Holy Spirit and how you identify the Holy Spirit and how you s- distinguish between the Holy Spirit, member of the Trinity, God him- uh, God, how you distinguish him from false spirits, and many false spr- spirits have gone into the world, out into the world, says John.
How do you recognize the genuine spirit of God, himself God? And you know it by what he says and testifies about the Lord Jesus. Spirit that confesses that Jesus is come in the flesh. If you want an example of those that deny that Christ is come in the flesh, go and listen to the Christian scientists. With them too, the Christ is the great world spirit. And he never would have come in the flesh.
There is nothing but spirit, according to Christian scientists. You may take it from John that the spirit behind them is not the Holy Spirit, but a false spirit. And when we come to the very last verses of John, verse twenty of chapter five: and we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. My little children, guard yourselves from idols, and idols are false.
And false gods needn't be made of metal or wood. False gods can be mental. Ideas we have in our heads. Keep yourself from idols. This is the true God. How would you know who the true God is? And how would you understand him? Well, says John, we know that, uh, we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we might know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even through Jesus Christ, his son. The true God. If you will understand him, then Jesus Christ is the one that can give you that understanding.
Three persons of the Trinity, therefore, the Son, the Spirit, and the Father. We must learn to say, speak properly and rightly about them. What lay, therefore, behind the very big creeds of Christendom, over which Christians thought and thought and struggled to try and get a form of words that is true to scripture and say it speaks rightly about the Son of God, the Holy Spirit, and God himself? Why, because from the very earliest days, Christians were assaulted by the world.
The early Christians didn't live in a world surrounded by miles, Christians miles deep, and never coming anywhere near pagans. They had to meet with them every day, and some of the pagans they met with were highly trained philosophers, and when they heard the Christians speaking and talking about God and the Son of God and the Spirit of God, as though there were three gods, the Jews, of course, protested. We were taught in the Old Testament that the Lord our God is one Lord. What are you saying that the man Jesus is God?
You seem to believe in three gods, don't you? So what would you say to them? And then eventually the Muslims came along, did they not? And to this very present day, one of the big things that they have against Christianity is that to their eyes, Christianity seems to be idolatrous. It says that Jesus Christ is God, and with them there is only one God. Incidentally, the best way to deal with them, again, is not to argue about the Trinity and the deity of Christ. Get them listening to Christ. So Christ is so lovely, far more lovely than ever Muhammad knew how to be.
Tell them the stories of Christ and let Christ capture their hearts, and then let the Lord lead them into the wonders of his deity and the wonders of the Trinity. But then there were within Christendom what became to be known as heresies. Because people faced with the claims of Christ and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, some of them suggested they had an explanation of these things. There was A- Arius, for instance, author of the Arian heresy, as it came to be known, who said that Jesus, or Christ, was not equal with God.
He was a creature, a very exalted creature, but not God, and therefore was inferior to God. And true believers, of course, had to fight it and expose it and show that this was utterly false, according to the God revelation that God has made to us through Christ and in his word. Why does it matter? Well, as I said a a a a lecture or two ago, if Jesus Christ were not God, then you are not saved. Who less than God could have taken away as the Lamb of God the sins of the world?
What creature could do it, highest archangel though he was? It is important. They're not only Arius, of course, but, um, there were others that went to the other ex- uh, the uh, side. The uh, people that said that Jesus was not a real man. He only appeared to be a man. He was God, and that's it. Why was that wrong? Well, it wasn't true, but why does it matter? Because if Jesus wasn't a man, you're not saved either.
Because for Jesus to bear our sins, he had to be a man like us, that he could be our representative and bear our sins in his body on the tree, so that as just like one man's disobedience, sin entered to the world, and the many were constituted sinners. So by the obedience of one, that is the blessed man Jesus Christ, the many constituted righteous. There were those who said that Jesus wasn't God to start with. He was a ordinary man, but at his baptism, the Holy Spirit came on him and kind of, so to speak, transformed him into God, at least for the time being.
That, of course, is nonsense, isn't it? The Word of God says that the, uh, uh, the Word of God, the Son of God, was eternal. And our modern world is full, even in theological circles, of denials of the truth of the Trinity. Some um twenty years ago, maybe now, nearly twenty years, maybe, there was a book published by a number of clerics and professors of theology in some of our universities. The title of the book was The Myth of God Incarnate.
They told the world there's nothing in it, the incarnation, the doctrine of the incarnation is a nonsense. And they said it in the name of Christian theology. And the faith of multitudes and generations of students has been corrupted because their teachers taught them that Jesus was only a man. He was a very special man. He was a kind of window into God. If you looked at him, you might sort of see through him to God, but that's all he was. And because he was a man, a very special man, but then he didn't know what scholarship now knows about the Old Testament.
So he quoted the Old Testament, but got it all wrong and didn't know who the author was, and, uh, you can't accept necessarily what he said about the Old Testament. Generations of students have been taught it, and their faith thus destroyed. It is exceedingly important, therefore, that we, uh, talk, uh, rightly and think rightly about the persons of the Godhead and their relations one with another. So let's come to to two big difficulties that people feel. The doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God.
Only one God. We do not believe in three gods. There is only one God. But there are three persons. That at least is the word that is n- normally used, three persons. One God, but three persons. Let's pause and think about that for a few moments, because there comes a difficulty. Because nowadays, in modern English, if you talk about a person, it's equivalent to using the word people. How many people were there? Oh, there were three persons there. Persons, people, you see?
They are very often interchangeable, and therefore, when people hear the statement that one God but three persons, that sounds to them as if you're saying one God but three people somehow in the Godhead, and that seems a contradiction and somewhat absurd. The reason is that we're using the old word that was used by the early Christians. And originally the, the word was a Latin word, persona, and persona was a mask that in the theaters of the day, the big amphitheaters, when plays were put on and the actor would come onto, uh, the, uh, uh, scene there in these big theaters, so that people at the back could see, the actor would wear a mask that would immediately tell the audience what character this person was playing.
Do you see? Person in persona is the name, the Latin name for a mask, and it therefore indicated the character that was being played by the actor on the stage. The early Christians then took that word and developed it, and when they talk about three persons in the Godhead, they don't mean three people. They mean that in the Godhead there are three relationships. Three substantial relationships, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Say, that doesn't help very much, that doesn't, uh, how can I begin to visualize it?
Well, forget the Trinity for a moment. I'm going to use a human example. Pray don't think I'm saying that the, uh, G- Godhead is like this human example. I'm just using it to get our thoughts, sort of thought out. Have you ever sat down in a chair and begun thinking? Well, I'm sure you have. Have you ever, as you sat thinking, thought about yourself? Well, I expect you have. So there was you doing some thinking, and then there was yourself that you were thinking about. Two things?
And then the next day, perhaps you sat down again and you reviewed the thoughts you had about yourself. So now you've got three things. You, yourself, and the thoughts you had about yourself. Tell me, which of those three was you? You who did the thinking? Or the you that you thought about? Or the thoughts that you had about you? You say they were all me. And yet, when you sat there thinking, I fancy that you saw very clearly that were you were thinking about you, and you weren't thinking about your next door neighbor.
You were the object of your thoughts, though you were the subject doing the thinking, and what you were thinking were thoughts. Now, please don't, uh, uh, understand I'm saying that this is exactly how the Godhead is. I'm merely saying that we know this kind of situation at our very lowly level, do you see? We mustn't be surprised at if at an infinitely higher level with many, many differences. There are three relationships, and the Father thinks about the Son and loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, and the love of the Father and the thoughts of the Father towards his Son are not just abstract thoughts.
They are themselves a person, namely the Holy Spirit. Relationship, let me try to get that across. And here I'm coming down to simple things once more, to a very lowly level. Pray don't think I'm saying the, the, the Trinity is like this, is infinitely above us. But here are two people. There's a man and a woman. And though they are different, one is a man and one is a woman, they both have the same essential nature. They are human beings, and the man isn't more human than the woman is, and the woman isn't more human than the man is.
They are both human beings. But now the man and the woman get married, and the woman agrees to have him as her husband. Now what is done? They're both humans, but what now has been added? Well, this human now has become a husband, and this woman has now become a wife. And you say, oh, I see. Well, now a husband is something addition to a man, is it? It's a... I could find a hus- a man here and a husband here. No, no, it's the man who is the husband. And now you should distinguish between his human nature, that is basic, and this relationship that he has taken on with this woman.
And similarly with her, human nature, yes, but now she has taken on this relationship. She's a wife. It adds something to her significance and his significance, doesn't it? That's what the old idea of person is. It is a relationship. And the marvelous thing that God has revealed to us about the Godhead is that God isn't a monolith. He is a relational being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Person in that sense, sustaining a relationship. Only, of course, the person sustaining the relation in the Godhead are substantive persons, such that the Father can send the Son, and the Sen- Son come to our world. One God, then, one a basic being and substance, but these relationships, that's what a person really is. And let me come down to our own humble level, if I may. What does it mean to be a person? You wouldn't call a rabbit a person, would you?
What does it mean to be a person? I think you'll find, if you think about it, no, I'm not asking what does it mean to be human, what does it mean to be a person? Let me put it in practical terms, what does it mean to be a husband? Well, husband is the name of a relationship, because the dear lady has consented to take him. He now has this status of being a husband and is known as a husband. And when it comes to us, we're persons. What does it mean that you are a person? Well, you say I've got all sorts of relations with my friends and families.
Yes, that's good. But the ultimate basis of personhood, pray observe it. You and I were nothing. God created the universe, and ultimately us too, out of nothing. How did we become persons? Because he chose to bring us into a relationship with him. We not only know God, says Paul, we are known by God. But oh, my brother, my sister, pray, think what it means that you are known by God.
What a person that makes you. You know, if you went to Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, and said, do you know Gooding, Your Majesty? She'd say, who? Gooding what? No, of course I don't know Gooding. You went to God and said, do you know Gooding? And God would say, ah, I have a personal relationship with him. My son died for him. And he will be a person for all eternity. I'm the God of Abraham. I describe myself by my relationship.
I'm the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Oh, what a wonderful thing this is, the personhood of the Godhead, creating us out of nothing, that we may become persons, personally related to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So do we think of the persons of the Godhead, the relationships between the members of the Godhead. Finally, the big question, how can it be that Jesus can be both man and God? The thing goes beyond our understanding, let's freely confess it.
No one knows the Son except the Father, said Christ. There are depths which we perhaps shall never know, but what we are told we can believe and know. The Word was made fresh. The Word became fresh. That is, the Word who was eternally God and with God chose in the freedom of Godhood to take humanity to himself, and so to take it that he and human were one. We shouldn't talk of God, uh, Christ as though he were God on the one side and man on the other, as though he were a little bit schizophrenic or something, or too per- two people.
It's only one person. But it's one person based in the union of God and man. The wonder of it, we shall never, we never fathom it, even when we get home to glory. But it belongs to our salvation. I say it again. If Jesus were not both man and God, we would not be saved. He came and showed us the heart and love and holiness of God in human terms.
And God himself, I say it reverently, discovered by experience, that is, what it means to be human. And as human, God as a being human in Christ, learned what it is to obey God. So you'll find our Lord talking about the Father as my God, because he was verily human. God as human, learning to obey God and the cost of obeying, and telling out the heart of God, the holiness of God, and the love of God for us sinners, and at the same time representing mankind to God, standing with us and for us, sinless himself as the God man, bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, and as my representative represented me to God, and bore the wrath of God against my sin.
Hallelujah. What a savior. We are to share eternity with him. The wonderful thing is this, that before our Lord left us, he made his union with the Father the model of our union with him. As once more we read his words, as now we do at the end of our session, we shall have to be aware of the gulf. We should never be God. When our Lord spoke to Mary, he said, I ascend to my God and your God.
Never once did he say, I ascend to our God. Never. He told the apostles to pray, our Father, because all believers can join in that and say, Our Father. He never prayed it with them. With his disciples, he never prayed, Our Father. He remains the God-man, verily God, truly human, a God incarnate. But the union with the Father becomes the model of our union, uh, with him. Let me read you, as I finish, the words that he spoke.
I pray for those that thou, uh, believe on me through their words. That they, Father, may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given unto them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that thou didst send me and lovest them, even as thou lovest me.
Father, that which thou hast given me I will, that where I am they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst send me, and I made known unto them thy name and will make it known, that the love wherewith thou lovest me may be in them, and I in them.
