Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 3.80 → restored 4.53
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
Welcome yet again to this, the last of the present short series, in which I'm trying to answer the question put to me by you, and particularly by the young people, how should we understand the Blessed and the Holy Trinity? In our first study, we introduced ourselves to the topic by asking why we should trouble to try and formalize our understanding of the three persons of the Trinity. Why can't we merely accept what the New Testament says when it says that Jesus is the Son of God and proclaims his deity?
And likewise when it indicates that he was fully human. Why must we try and think through how those two things are related? And similarly, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, why cannot we believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit and just leave it there. On that first occasion, however, we noticed that if we give attention, as we who love the Lord would want to do, to what our Lord Jesus says about himself, we shall notice that time and again he refers to the fact that he pre-existed before he came into this world, before even he became a man.
And we shall notice that the New Testament says the same thing about the Holy Spirit. He existed as a person before he came on the day of Pentecost to abide with us in this world. And because they tell us that, we cannot but proceed to ask, at any rate, if they pre-existed along with God the Father, how were they related to him? We raise briefly the notion, could they have been, so to speak, angels, superior angels, but angels?
And of course, we found the explicit answer in the New Testament, no, indeed not. Our Lord was infinitely superior to angels. So then, to help us come at last to some understanding of the relations between the three persons of the Holy and Blessed Trinity. We began in the second session by considering the full deity of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. His deity before the incarnation, his deity unlessened at his incarnation and through his life on earth.
His deity affirmed after his resurrection, and then at his ascension. And when the New Testament talks of his second coming, it talks again of his deity. We look for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior. And who might that be? None other than Jesus Christ, our Lord. In our third study, we did similarly for the Holy Spirit and studied various scriptures in the New Testament that affirm to us the full deity and personhood of the Holy Spirit.
That he is a person and not just a force or a power, like some divine electricity or something, is e- is clearly in the New Testament. In one passage, for instance, typical of others, it is said that the Holy Spirit himself maketh intercession for us. He is a person. He can be grieved and hurt, and so forth and so on. So we considered the deity, the full deity of the Holy Spirit.
That lays upon us, of course, the necessity to try and understand what then the new, the Bible means when it still affirms in the New Testament that there is one God. As Christians, we do not believe in three gods, but in one God. But if the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and they are persons, how can we believe in just one God? And yet we're required, so to believe, by the New Testament itself.
Nor is it a private matter for us Christians, is it? Because you won't be long talking to your, uh, Muslim friends, that they politely or otherwise will accuse you of being polytheist, and you believe in three gods instead of one. And of course you will protest you don't, but then you might be asked to explain how it is that you believe that the Father is God and Jesus, the Son of God, is God. So this is also a practical matter relating to our Christian testimony.
Now we have one session left merely in this series, so that tonight we must briefly attempt to do two things. We have talked about the deity of our Lord Jesus, but now we must talk about the mystery and the glory of his incarnation. Because the New Testament affirms not only his deity, but his real and genuine humanity. He was truly human, though divine.
And we are to see at the beginning how his humanity is as equally necessary to our salvation as is his deity. And of course, that will eventually, uh, enlarge our problem. How can our blessed Lord be simultaneously human as well as divine, as God. So that when we have considered that, then if we there's any time over, we must ask briefly how the three persons of the blessed and holy Trinity are related among themselves.
So let's start at once by reminding ourselves of familiar scriptures that tell us of the utter necessity of our Lord's being human. And I start by quoting from the Epistle to the Hebrews, chapter two. And I would like to call attention there to two similar but different verbs. And I read them in an old-fashioned English translation just to emphasize the point, of course. In Hebrews two, we are told in verse ten, for it became him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
For both he that sanctifies and they that are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. Notice that verb then, it became him, verse ten. And now notice the different verb in verse seventeen. Talking of our Lord, it said, wherefore it behoved him. That's Old English, very Old English, for expressing necessity. Therefore he had to. He must. Wherefore he must in all things be made like unto his brothers.
That is, he must be perfectly and in all respects, apart from sin, of course, truly human. Let us dwell just for a moment on the difference between those two verbs. In verse ten, it is speaking of God the Father, and of God the Father's, uh, projected strategy and means and methods in bringing us, his many sons, to glory. And this verse talks to us about the fact that God has chosen the only fitting way for accomplishing that great task.
The task of getting the likes of you and me home to glory. Now it became him. It was fitting for him. He was, of course, uh, the one through whom all things are, do you see? Almighty in power. But he had concern for what would be a fitting method of bringing us home to glory. You will say the Queen might attend, uh, St. Paul's Cathedral, perhaps, to hear a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury on her great and long reign, you see.
Now, what would you say would be a fitting way for the Queen to get from the palace to, um, St. Paul's Cathedral? Uh, on the back, uh, as a pigeon rider on the back of a motorcycle, perhaps? Get there quickly, wouldn't she? Well, if the traffic wasn't too much. And very efficiently. But no, no, no, you say, you can't have the Queen of England on the back of a motorcycle. Why not? I've been on one. Yes, yes, you say, but it don't matter. The Queen, the only fitting way to transport her, uh, from Buckingham Palace to St.
Paul's Cathedral will be in a stately car- uh, motorcade, of course. Mm. And God considered what would be a fitting thing to get us, his many sons, to glory. Says God, you'll have to provide them with a file leader, somebody to lead them the way and go on in front of them and show them what the way is. Marvelous. More than that. The only fitting way to get them to glory, seeing the many sufferings that they have to go through, would be to provide them with a leader, a fire leader, who has qualified to help that kind of person, qualified through his sufferings.
How would he lead the likes of you and me to glory? We mere human beings. If in leading us, he didn't know what it feels like to suffer. Cloud thought, decided it was fitting, uh, to be our fire leader, he should be qualified through sufferings. That is marvelous in itself. But when one comes down to verse seventeen, we notice something even more marvelous.
Wherefore it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest. Now it's talking about not what is fitting, but what was absolutely necessary. He had to. Now let's be clear. God was under no obligation to save us. Nor was the Son of God under any obligation to save us. But when he put his hand to the project of saving the likes of you and me, then there followed an inevitable and unavoidable necessity.
You'll see, for as much as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he himself also took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their living time subject to bondage. To get them home to glory. Uh, some of them will go without dying. Oh, joy and delight, should we go without dying?
Ah, yes, yes, yes. The majority will go through death. It's not merely a matter of going through death, it was a matter of breaking the power of him that has the power of death, that is the devil. And the only way he could do it was by dying himself. And how could one who is God... die? That is the mystery of the incarnation, isn't it?
He partook of flesh and blood so that he might die. You'll never read of angels dying. God, by definition, doesn't die. He who is God took our humanity, became really human, so that he might die and deliver us from him who had the power of death, that is the devil. And when we think of that, we can begin to see another reason why our blessed Lord had to become fully human.
Unless he were fully human, he couldn't be our perfect representative before God. When he died for us at Calvary. You know, sometimes we speak a little bit carelessly about our blessed Lord. We say how he died for us, though he was sinless, and scripture tells us that he died the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. He was sinless himself. So we preach him the sinless savior, and God punished his sinless son on behalf of us sinners.
Well, as far as it goes, it's correct. It's hardly enough, is it? Because, you see, it opens itself, if you put it just like that, to the criticism of your unbelieving friends. Really, are you telling us, they say, that God took an innocent third party and punished him for the sins of the guilty? How would that be just? If they even, if they did it even in Zimbabwe, the world would say, but that isn't just.
To take an innocent third party and punish him for the sins of the guilty. And your answer is, of course, that he was innocent. He wasn't a third party. In the amazing condescension of God, our blessed Lord became human and identified himself with us. Which is why it is said that those who believe on him, when Christ died, they died.
Truly human, but refusing to be severed from his brothers, as he calls them. And it's when we are with him and joined with him, that his death is accepted as our death. That is an amazing story, isn't it? The sheer wonder of the incarnation of God. And Romans five nineteen reminds us that he couldn't merely deal with our individual sins.
Because, you see, the fact that we do individual sins rises from a root cause. Romans five nineteen makes the point, as through the disobedience of one man, the many were constituted sinners. The doctrine of the fall is in one sense a very kind doctrine, isn't it? We each are responsible for multitudinous sins. We're not, in spite of what some say, responsible for what Adam did.
We were born sinners. Because we belong to a fallen race. We were constituted sinners, not what by what we did ourselves, but what the first man, Adam, did. The old theologians used to illustrate it by saying, an apple tree is not an apple tree because it bears apples. It's the other way round, you know. Even if it never bore any apples, it would still be an apple tree, wouldn't it? It bears apples, that's the way round it is, because it is an apple tree.
And we sin. Oh, in multitudinous things, it's our own fault, of course. But basically we sin. Born sinners. At the very root of humanity. By one man's disobedience, the many were constituted sinners. And the glorious gospel is this. Christ does not merely forgive our individual sins. He goes down, so to speak, as the representative man, goes right down to the very root of it, the root cause of our sinership. And as by one man's disobedience, the many were constituted ri- uh, sinners, so by the obedience of one shall the many be constituted righteous.
Oh, shout hallelujah if you've got a hallelujah to spare in your hearts, anywhere at all, in some reserve cupboard rarely opened. All the glory of it. A new human race. Not the old one patched up, but the new human race, perfect at its root, and because of our Lord's obedience unto death. They who come from him are, are, are his descendants, so to speak, the new human race constituted righteous.
It extends, you know, not merely to our consciences and our sins and forgiveness, but one Corinthians fifteen reminds us of this glorious fact that as in Adam all die, that is physically die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. It's marvelously good news, is it not? It's been going around for two thousand years anyway, but it's good still and fresh. You will see there's a new order of human being. The first man was of the earth earthy, the second the Lord from heaven.
The first man was a living soul. The second is a life-giving spirit. When he was here on earth, he told his astonished contemporaries that just as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself. And because he has life in himself, the hour is coming when even those physically in the grave shall hear his voice, and they can be as dead as they are, but they shall come forth. The hour is already that they who are spiritually dead, hearing the voice of the son of God, can receive new life, eternal life, and be assured they shall never come into condemnation.
A new race of human being. No angel could have done it for us, could he? He had to be truly human. Though divine, to be the beginnings of this new human race. If that be so, and our Lord Jesus had to be human, we now have a a a little bit of a theological problem, do we not? How can we reconcile the facts that on the one side the scripture tells us that he's God, God incarnate, and on the other side he is human?
Because superficially there are problems, aren't there? The Old Testament says of God that he that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleep. God himself in Isaiah forty through the prophet says, you'll see that he neither grows weary. Never grows weary, not God. And yet, it is said of our Lord in John chapter four, that having walked all mar- morning in the ever hotter sun, he came at last to a place called Sychar and sat on the well, worn out, says the Greek word, worn out with his journey.
Amazing savior, that. How did he ever conceive of having a human body that could be worn out? That was truly human. And on another occasion, after a day's preaching, they took him in a boat and moved out, and he was so tired he fell asleep in the boat. How can you reconcile that with the qualities of God on the one hand and the real experience of true humanity on the other.
How could they subsist in one and the same person? Well, in the course of the centuries, false answers have been given to the problem. And I shall not detain you long with the false answers. They are just worth noting. Because in theological circles, at least at academic level, you will find their modern representatives still. There is what goes under the grand name of docetism. Don't ask how you should spell it, because you don't have to spell it if you don't want to. Docetism sounds a learned word, but it's only the Greek for, uh, appearing to be something when you're not, you'll see.
And these people suggested that Christ appeared to be human, but he wasn't really human, you'll see. And that's how you can account for his miraculous powers. He wasn't really human, he only seemed to be. Quite false. If he only appeared to be human but wasn't truly, there is no salvation for us, of course. Another false explanation is called adoptionism, and that says that Christ was born an ordinary human being and lived as a human being, but he behaved so well, if I might put it crudely, that in the end God, so to speak, adopted him and conferred on him deity, the status of deity.
So he wasn't God to start with, but became God later on through adoption. That's absolutely false as well. There's another way of talking, and it's a convenient shorthand, and we all know what we all me- mean when we use it, but strictly speaking, we oughtn't to use it. And that is, we say, you'll see, for instance, um, when he fell asleep in the boat, he was acting as a man. He did that as a man. I see. And when he arose in the boat and stilled the storm...
Ah, you say, well, then he was acting as God. Well, we all know what people mean when they talk like that. It's not the happiest way of talking, because it might suggest that our Lord was a split personality. Sometimes he acted in, in one way as God and another way as human. But our blessed Lord was not a split personality. There is what one person. He was one person, not two. It is truer to say that though one person, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, the God-man, if you like, he had two natures, unlike us.
He had a nature that was perfectly human. He had a nature that was fully divine. So let us think what that, uh, could mean. And we come back to the great basic statement of John chapter one, that the Word, who in the beginning was with God and was God, no less God, second person of the Trinity, the Word became human. If I might, uh, put it that way, God became human without ceasing to be God.
To emphasize the point, according to scripture, the eternal Son of God, who always existed and was with God and was God, became through the incarnation what he had never been before, and became fully human. Without, I stress it, without ceasing to be God. You say, half a minute.
Can God do something like that? What the eternal God? Is that... is that possible? For the eternal God to become human and yet not cease to be God, but to become human and live as a human. Well, we begin by just accepting what scripture says. The Word became flesh, that is, became human.
Listen what that meant. I quote you, for instance, what is said in Hebrews five six to ten, that our Lord, in the days of his flesh, learned obedience by the things that he suffered. He didn't learn to obey. He'd always obeyed his father and done the will of his father in perfect harmony with the Father. But now, in humanity, he learned obedience.
What it costs. What it costs in this fallen and sinful world. What it costs to obey the Father. And because of that obedience, to face death. And he cried, we are told, with strong crying and tears to him that was able to save him from death. For him, sinners, to face death as a consequence of his obedience to God in this fallen world was hideous enough.
Yes, you say he was acting as a, a be- a human being there. Now come, come. Let's listen rather to scripture. The whole thing begins with the words, son though he was. That is the marvel of it. In the days of his flesh, when he was offering up strong crying in tears, he was, for he had never ceased to be. Son. That is Son of God. Some English translations have it, though he was a son.
And that isn't quite good enough, is it? It wasn't a son among many. The Greek is better translated. Son though he was, everlasting son of the everlasting Father, God in human form. God become human, and God become human, learned, learned what obedience costs. It is amazing, isn't it?
I'm going to pause now just to give you time to think. Do you believe it? Do you believe that he who learned what obedience costs at the moment he was learning was in fact God incarnate? Or has he ceased to be God incarnate just for the time being? You say it's a great mystery. Ah yes, it is a great mystery. But it's a fact we are called upon to believe it goes right down to the root of our salvation. God incarnate.
Listen to him as he rose from prayer in the garden with a strong crying and tears. And the band came to arrest him, along with Judas. And he said, whom do you seek? They said, Jesus of Nazareth. He said in the Greek idiom, I am. Well, it's Greek for I am he, of course. But as he pronounced those words, I am, they fell back, fell to the ground.
This was God incarnate, the I am incarnate. Not ceasing to be God. Even he who a moment before was uttering strong cryings and tears as the stones of Gethsemane bit into his knee. Amazing story of salvation, is it not? You see, the Bible never says that God died for us, does it?
So I mustn't say that. I can say this. If the one who died for you was not God, you're not saved. And there's no such thing as salvation. How could a mere man bear the punishment due to the sins of the world. If he were nothing more than a mere man. But you see, God was in Christ.
Not imputing to the world its trespasses was made sin for us. He who knew no sin. And when Thomas, after the resurrection, saw not merely the risen Lord standing in front, but saw the evidence he'd asked for, as the Lord stretched out his hands and said, Thomas, put your finger in the wound marks, and your hand in my side. Thomas replied, my Lord, and my God.
It was doctrinally a little bit excessive, wasn't it, for for Wesley to sing, that thou, my God, shouldst die for me. Scripture never uses the exact phrase, but I repeat that he who died for us was God incarnate. And God incarnate knows what it is to die. Amazing story. You'll understand how it tugged at the hearts of those that had actually seen the blessed Lord.
And Paul, Saul of Tarsus being converted with the voice that came from the excellent glory, sums it up thus: I live by faith, not of Jesus, the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Now I must raise a, a profound matter. When our blessed Lord, God incarnate, suffered at Calvary, what is your feeling as you understand scripture?
Did God suffer? Generation of church fathers have taught that it is impossible for God to suffer anything. We'll come to the reason why they thought it, it presently. But, may I just remind you of what scripture said? God didn't spare his son. Can you not perceive in that remark the movings of a father's heart?
If it must mean the giving of his own dear son, and God didn't spare his own son. How is it possible to imagine that when Christ was suffering at Calvary, and the Father's face had to be turned away from him, that God felt completely impassive and indifferent, as cold as any judge on the bench. Indeed not.
The love of the Father for the Son was tested to its limits. And when Christ suffered, the Father suffered too. You say, that's impossible. Now you are talking, now you are talking, uh, do you see, uh, what is not true? God can't suffer at all. But we'll come to it in a moment. But I want to point out the implication of Calvary. You'll see death and sacrifice of Christ, as the New Testament represents it, is an expression of the unchangeable and eternal love of the whole Godhead.
It was not something enacted on the spur of a moment. The Lamb had been known before the foundation of the world. Not only did Christ as the Lamb die for us, but the Father gave the Son. And the epistle to the Hebrews tells us that the Son, by the eternal Spirit, offered himself to God. And all three persons of the Trinity were involved in that astounding event of Calvary.
The Father giving, the Son giving himself for us, the Son offering himself in the power of the eternal Spirit. Calvary, the expression of the heart of all three persons of the blessed and holy Trinity. And because it is so, well, we sin it, sing it, don't we, in our humble, sinful rhymings. We say the blood of Christ shall never lose its power till all the ransomed host of God are saved to sin no more.
Well, it's one way of telling it. It's not merely the blood of Christ. The significance of Calvary is eternal because all three persons of the eternal Godhead were involved in that event by deliberate, determinate counsel of God. And that love of God that initiated it all shall never cease. Shout your, if you've got to say hallelujah, shout your hallelujah, my brothers, lest you get to heaven and wish you'd shouted hallelujah a few times before heaven, you see.
We must come now to what is a theological and philosophical problem. I, the Lord, change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Or, as Balaam was told to tell Balak, God is not a man that he should lie, or the son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said it, and shall he not do it? Of course he will. Will never be false to his word. How can you think then, you say, how can you say, Mr.
Preacher, that God became what he never was before? That is what I'm saying, isn't it? That the eternal Word, who was God, at one stage in history became what he never was before. Yes? If he's really God, how could he do that? I can tell you another thing he did before then. There was a time when God wasn't creative, you know. But then Genesis tells you that there came a beginning of our universe. In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth.
So this universe had a beginning. There was a time when it didn't exist. God existed, of course. And when he made our universe in the beginning, he didn't make it out of already existent stuff. There wasn't any already existent stuff to make it out of, anyway. He made it, as some of the theologians say, ex nihilo, not out of pre-existent stuff. He just created it by the word of his power. Cool. I sometimes wish I'd been there.
God, you know, I th- that is true, he's unchangeable, ah, it's utterly unchangeable. That is in his moral character. He will never be untrue to himself. He cannot lie. Why can't he lie? Well, the reason why God cannot lie, he cannot go counter to his own very nature. He cannot, in a word, deny himself. That's why he can't lie. It inheres in his very nature that he can't lie, because to lie would be to deny himself.
You'll see. So he doesn't change. He's morally the same. In his faithfulness, he's utterly the same, and so is our blessed Lord. He is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and forever, isn't he? Cannot change morally. But then the Greeks and some Christian theologians, uh, got the wrong end of that stick. They thought that God could never do anything new because that would involve God changing, you see. And that was a little bit silly. Because we just quoted one thing.
There was a time when God wasn't creator, and then he did something new. And the angels clapped their hands for sheer joy. The greatness of God is not some static iceberg, not God. He's the unchanging God, but because what is that, if you say what is it, is he unchanging, he's unchanging in his very nature, his life, his exuberant life. Is ever doing new things. He's God. Listen to the joy when he announces, behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth.
Not just stuck with the past and can't change anything. So, was a time when he wasn't creator, but then he became creator. There was a time when no member of the Godhead of the Trinity was human. Staggering this. Who raised that wondrous thought? Or who did it suggest? That God should become what he never was before.
And the word of God, who was God, become Human. That makes you think a little, doesn't it? Well, does me. When God made Adam, a bright idea indeed that was, um, did God know that one day God would need to, the blessed Son of God would need to become human? You say, yes, you've just told us the lamb was foreknown before the foundation of the world. I wonder, did God say to himself, now I must be careful how I make this new creature, this human being, you see, uh, uh, and I'll make him so that one day I could become one of them.
And enter humanity. Well, God doesn't necessarily have to have conversations with himself like that. He does his divine will. That's what it involved, did it not? Made man. Such that he could, one day become man. And what a masterstroke of genius it was. We remember how, in the book of the Revelation, John the seer describes in a vision the state of this wicked world and the ultimate rebellion that shall occur at the end of this age, when under the inspiration of the very devil, man shall follow his absurd fantasy and try to be God.
Of course, that was an idea put into Adam's head by the serpent himself, wasn't it? In the Garden of Eden, do you remember that bit of the story? How Satan said to the woman, and therefore to the man as well, take that fruit and you shall be as God. No longer needing to depend upon God. Man fell for the lie. And in spite of Earth's history, it nestles in the human heart still, doesn't it? Well, I suppose if there's no God out there, somebody ought to start to be God, I suppose. I don't know, but man wanting to be God.
And the last great rebellion, Satan inspired in the heart of the beast, shall claim divine honors and demand that everybody bow down and worship his image on pain of death. And John, with the skill given him by the Spirit of God, paints the scene. There is the dragon, breathing out fire and brimstone, of course. Standing in front of him is a woman. Revelation 12, this is. And when you look closely, she's with child. And the dragon is waiting that as soon as the child is born, he'll gobble up the child, and that will be the end of that.
Because Satan knows that this child is destined to rule the rod of, uh, the rule the nation with a rod of iron. And if that child is going to reign, the serpent can't reign. The serpent must destroy the child, if he can. But I stand looking at that, uh, dramatic scene pictured in Revelation twelve. There's the dragon, therefore, about to incite a human being on Earth to try and be God. And I look at this woman, and there's that child in her womb.
Who is that child? Well, you will probably have your favorite interpretation. Forgive this simple-minded man when he says what whatever else it means or doesn't mean, it will mean this. The wonder of God's strategy against the very devil. To counter his effort to get man to defy man. God says, I'll tell you what I'll do. I will descend and become human. That is the story of God's victory over the serpent, you know.
God become man to deal with man's fatal notion that man could become God. You say you haven't said anything yet, therefore, you promised you would, but you haven't said anything yet about how the divine persons are related within the Trinity. My brothers, my sisters, you should pray for me in these next very few moments, lest I should do anything comparable to Azza when he put forth his hand and touched the ark.
Or that we should begin to think that by our human reason, we could work out all the relationships in the blessed and holy Trinity. By definition, that Trinity goes beyond us. On the other hand, we do have to listen to our blessed Lord. It is the fact that it is through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Son of God, incarnate in our space-time, that we can begin to know what the Trinity in itself is like. For our blessed Lord has said certain things about the state of things before he was incarnate and his relationship with the Father even when he was incarnate.
And following what he said, we can begin to see things, can't we? I shall content myself with quoting to you what he said twice, if not on more occasion. In John chapter ten, at the end of it, and in John seventeen, he says, the Father is in me, and I in the Father. A statement not merely of what was happening on earth, a statement of the eternal relationships within the Godhead.
The Father in the Son, and the Son in the Father. What is called by the theologians the co-inherence of the three persons of the Trinity. Each has its own distinctive function, and therefore its own distinctive name. And yet, they are not thought of as separate persons, as though they were separate individuals, three gods. Though each has its particular function, and therefore a particular name.
Yet each one is in the other, and the other is in each one. You say you don't understand that, that's baffling. Well, let me use an illustration. It is bound to be, uh, unsuitable, really. It won't take you very far. Uh, even should you consider me for a moment. Pluck up all your powers of endurance to do it, you'll see. And yet you could talk about me, couldn't you? You talk about my mind. You could talk about my words. You could talk about my acts.
But I'm a mere human, you see. You wouldn't say there are three persons there, would you? There are, there's Gooding's mind, that's one, and Gooding's uh uh uh uh uh thoughts, that's two, and Gooding's words, that's three, and Gooding's actions, that's four. That's all Gooding, you know. And if one of my actions was to ram another car on the road, and I said it wasn't me, it was my action, I could hardly convince a piece of the profundity of that remark. No, it's all you. And yet you can logically distinguish it, can't you?
I'll tell you something about me and my words. Uh, when I've said a whole scoop of things, I can see how puzzled my friends look. I explain to them, well, yeah, well, that's not really what I mean, you see. That's not really expressing what I was thinking. I see. So there's a difference between my words and me myself. Not with God. God. Of course, it's God. The word of God, that is the expression of God, is also God.
Perfect expression of the Father. John chapter 1 and Colossians chapter one. The word of God is a person, the perfect expression of the Father's mind and heart. And God's acts? How did they happen? Well, through the word of God... was the wor- world created. And indeed, we're told in Genesis chapter one that in the beginning, when God made the heaven and earth, the Spirit of God moved on the face of the water.
So, in closing, I'm making two suggestions to you for your reverent and worshipful study. One, what is called the co-inherence of the divine persons, the Father in Christ and Christ in the Father, the Spirit in Christ and Christ in the Spirit. All three distinct, and yet all three involved in what each one does. So we've seen it in creation. God made the world, yes, but he made it by the word of God, the person who is the word of God, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters, yes?
So it was in the, um, conception of our blessed Lord in the womb of the Virgin, wasn't it? The power of the Most High shall come upon you, and the Spirit of God shall cover you. Therefore, that thing born of thee shall be called the Son of God. It was so at the baptism, wasn't it? For as John baptized our blessed Lord, John says, I saw the Spirit descend like a dove upon him, and a voice came, thou art my beloved Son. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all involved simultaneously.
And when Christ did his miracles, he did them in the power of God, you say, yes. And talking to his, uh, fre- for his enemies, he said, if I with the finger of God do turn out demons. Another gospel has him phrase it this way, if I through the Holy Spirit of God cast out demons. Yes, God, the Spirit, and Christ, all involved in his ministry, and in his dying, of course, and in his resurrection.
I lay down my life, I take it again. I have that commission from my Father. So Christ rose. Yes, but other scriptures will tell you that God raised him from the dead. And Romans one will tell you he's raised from the dead by the spirit of holiness. All three members of the Trinity involved in the work of the other. But the particular work will alert you to what is the, so to speak, the leading member of the Trinity that does that particular. And when it comes to the church, one body, there are many different gifts, aren't there?
Only one spirit. And many different operations, but only one Lord. And so on and so forth, and only one God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all involved in the gifts of the church, in the body of Christ. And if, and with this I close, and if when God created the world, he did something new, and if when our blessed Lord was incarnate, God did something new, and if in the resurrection of Christ, God did something new, let's hear the other new thing that God did, and praise God for it.
For on the day of Pentecost, there happened a something that had never happened before, and this was the Holy Spirit himself, who hitherto had not come to abide in this world, had visited it from time to time, but on the day of Pentecost, a new thing. The Holy Spirit come to reside and to form what had never been before in history, that is the new body of Christ. Exciting, isn't it? What's it going to be like when you get home, my dear brother or my sister?
Do you think of it often? Perhaps you should think about it a little bit more. Aha. What will it be to dwell above and with the Lord of glory reign, to discover through unending ages of eternity all the new things that God will do out of his infinite riches that belong to his very nature. So forgive the length of this discourse, but it is my last on this topic on this occasion. And if I've kept you too long, your recourse is open to you.
Mention it to the elders as you go out, and they'll never invite me again. But God bless our feeble attempts to inquire into the persons of the blessed and holy Trinity, and may he inspire in us suitable worship in response and devotion of life. Shall we pray?
