The Trinity made easy

[mikesw]

See you make the jump to say divine in this case and in your mind divine means God. Scripture does not make that jump. To Scripture the resurrected Christ Jesus who is the Messiah is that mediator.

I cannot quite blame you for misunderstanding Gal 3:19-20. It has not been well-understood among scholars. It is an unusual passage where you have to recognize the divinity of Christ in the Godhead. Some scholars have come close to utilizing that but have still come short of a full explanation.
You also have to deny that the promise was made to Abraham and the promise was made to Jesus in Gal 3:16. The Son (now known also as Jesus) had to exist to be the recipient of the promise. Then in verse 19, Jesus came in accord with the promise made to him. So you pretend that every verse that reveals his divinity is instead to be interpreted with an unlikely meaning. Sure, you have to do that to be consistent to your view, but at some point, the scriptures should have greater relevance than your view.

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

Your previous post was attempting to show how we ourselves as believers are given the same authority or brought up to the same status as Christ by God the Father. I see you have abandoned that idea when it comes to what Jesus did on the Cross and with His Resurrection. So it looks like we have some form of an understanding here. That's good if you agree.

Hi Synergy

I couldn't get back to you until now. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
Neither our status nor our mission is the same as Jesus Christ.

My examples dealt with a common feature of Christ and humans, which is that our power is given. God was the ultimate source of all Jesus power, and God is the ultimate source of all our power.

Even in regard to the cross and resurrection, Jesus also asked us to take our own cross (Luke 9:23) . Paul speaks of himself as being crucified with Christ, (Galatians 2:20) and speaks about believers about having been resurrected and ascended to celestial places. God is the source of our ability to be crucified with Christ, raised from dead and sit on heavenly places. So, in this respect as well, we, as Jesus Christ, derive all our power from God.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and He raised us up and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-6, MEV)

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

Now you've shifted to Jesus' relationship with God the Father.

I'm still on the issue of power. The relationships I highlighted are relationships of power and authority.

It is not like if Our Father and Jesus played roles that were just "different". The roles they played revealed a clear asymmetry in power.
The asymmetry continued even when Jesus had been resurrected, and even when He had been exalted in heaven. That is why in the Book of Revelation Jesus continues to call His Father not just "God" but "My God".
The asymmetry will continue even after the end of salvation plan, when Jesus delivers everything to God, so that God becomes "everything in everyone".

Certainly, that asymmetry is also present between the believers and Christ. We can be one with Christ, and get his power to work marvels, but we are not Christ. That shouldn't worry us, of course. And we shouldn't worry that Christ is not God. What is important is the kind of unity that Christ keeps with God is the kind of unity we can achieve, through his grace, among ourselves and with Him.

You have to understand that one of Jesus' prime purposes on Earth was to be an Exemplar for us. I see how you can be totally enthralled and absorbed by that view and miss out on the fact that Jesus never ever deprived Himself of His Divinity - nor could He. In fact, the Person of Jesus is the same Word of God Person Who has always existed alongside God the Father, even before creation. Please read Rev 19:11-16 about the Word of God Person and tell me what you think about Him.

The rider of the white horse is the Word of God, manifested in this concrete, historical context, in Jesus Christ.
The author of the Book of Revelation understood that this exalted being, Jesus Christ, had a God, and that such a God was his Father, as attested since the opening verses of the book (v. 5,6):

To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. ​

But to leave things even more explicit, Jesus mentions four times in the Book of Revelation that God is not just God, but His God.

Look, I am coming quickly. Hold firmly what you have, so that no one may take your crown. He who overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My own new name. (3:11,12)​

If a person refers to a god as his god, it means that person worships that god. Otherwise it would not be his.
So, if Jesus Christ, who has already been exalted, crowned, and placed above anyone else, says He has his god, it is because Jesus worships him.
God cannot worship anyone else, or otherwise God would not be God.
Therefore, Jesus Christ is not God.

 

[Peterlag]

I cannot quite blame you for misunderstanding Gal 3:19-20. It has not been well-understood among scholars. It is an unusual passage where you have to recognize the divinity of Christ in the Godhead. Some scholars have come close to utilizing that but have still come short of a full explanation.
You also have to deny that the promise was made to Abraham and the promise was made to Jesus in Gal 3:16. The Son (now known also as Jesus) had to exist to be the recipient of the promise. Then in verse 19, Jesus came in accord with the promise made to him. So you pretend that every verse that reveals his divinity is instead to be interpreted with an unlikely meaning. Sure, you have to do that to be consistent to your view, but at some point, the scriptures should have greater relevance than your view.

Why is it hard to understand God telling His Old Testament Prophets about His plans for the coming Messiah?

 

[mikesw]

Why is it hard to understand God telling His Old Testament Prophets about His plans for the coming Messiah?

Usually the OT prophets are not preexistent when given promises long before their incarnation. The OT prophecies were made hard to understand so that they would hold ideas that were not readily understood. Just as Jesus said in Matthew 13 about them remaining blind who did not accept Christ. I can tell that you are having trouble figuring out the promise to Christ. You also fail to understand Jesus is and always has been more than a man.

 

[mikesw]

Hi Synergy

I couldn't get back to you until now. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
Neither our status nor our mission is the same as Jesus Christ.

My examples dealt with a common feature of Christ and humans, which is that our power is given. God was the ultimate source of all Jesus power, and God is the ultimate source of all our power.

Even in regard to the cross and resurrection, Jesus also asked us to take our own cross (Luke 9:23) . Paul speaks of himself as being crucified with Christ, (Galatians 2:20) and speaks about believers about having been resurrected and ascended to celestial places. God is the source of our ability to be crucified with Christ, raised from dead and sit on heavenly places. So, in this respect as well, we, as Jesus Christ, derive all our power from God.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and He raised us up and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-6, MEV)

Right God was the source of Jesus' power since it is his divinity from before his incarnation. That is hard for someone of Bahai' Faith to comprehend since they believe in some odd unity of religion that would deny the revelation of the one true God through Christ's incarnation among man. It is disruptive for you to be participating in this when you do not believe the basics of who Christ is.

 

[mikesw]

I'm still on the issue of power. The relationships I highlighted are relationships of power and authority.

It is not like if Our Father and Jesus played roles that were just "different". The roles they played revealed a clear asymmetry in power.
The asymmetry continued even when Jesus had been resurrected, and even when He had been exalted in heaven. That is why in the Book of Revelation Jesus continues to call His Father not just "God" but "My God".
The asymmetry will continue even after the end of salvation plan, when Jesus delivers everything to God, so that God becomes "everything in everyone".

Certainly, that asymmetry is also present between the believers and Christ. We can be one with Christ, and get his power to work marvels, but we are not Christ. That shouldn't worry us, of course. And we shouldn't worry that Christ is not God. What is important is the kind of unity that Christ keeps with God is the kind of unity we can achieve, through his grace, among ourselves and with Him.

That is really yucky that you speak in first person plural here when you have nothing in Christ. Christ is not acting for some grand unity scheme where everyone come together in their own way to God. Jesus is the way , the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through him. You are given latitude to hear the gospel and not accept it. I can appreciate how God has not forced people to come to him. So you can enjoy that latitude as you wish.

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

Right God was the source of Jesus' power since it is his divinity from before his incarnation.

Jesus specifically refer to His Father as the source of his power. Not his own intrinsic deity.
The evidence is overwhelming in the gospels. Jesus claims over and over and over to be recipient of authority from Our God and Father.

That is hard for someone of Bahai' Faith to comprehend

It is hard for any person to comprehend, including Christians and including you, my friend.
You believe these things out of faith, not out of comprehension. Do you agree?

 

[mikesw]

Jesus specifically refer to His Father as the source of his power. Not his own intrinsic deity.
The evidence is overwhelming in the gospels. Jesus claims over and over and over to be recipient of authority from Our God and Father.




It is hard for any person to comprehend, including Christians and including you, my friend.
You believe these things out of faith, not out of comprehension. Do you agree?

I reject things against scripture. Some people are persistent in speaking contrary to scripture and some people do this as an outsider of God's calling.

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

That is really yucky that you speak in first person plural here when you have nothing in Christ.

If I were a Jew, would it sound yucky for you as well?
The God of those who listened to Jesus was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Such God is the God that the apostles worshiped.
The God you and I pray to. Our Creator and Sustainer.

 

[mikesw]

Reply

If I were a Jew, would it sound yucky for you as well?
The God of those who listened to Jesus was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Such God is the God that the apostles worshiped.
The God you and I pray to. Our Creator and Sustainer.

Sure. It is improper for anyone to speak of sharing in some unity of Christ that have not come through Christ. It indeed was the true God that the apostles worship. They followed Christ, the one sent from God for our justification and reconciliation. Christ is not some broad way of accepting all humanity. You must come through the way. Christ is the only way. We all enter to God's grace through Christ without benefit of our genetics, our culture, our deeds or any other claims.
In the Old Testament, we see this in a different way. No strange fire was allowed -- no distributed ways of sacrifice were allowed. It had to be God's way. Now that way is Christ.

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

I reject things against scripture. Some people are persistent in speaking contrary to scripture and some people do this as an outsider of God's calling.

My brother, I respectfully encourage you to think:

It is against the Scripture to say that Jesus Himself claimed to receive power and authority specifically from His Father and not from a divine half of Himself?

All things have been handed over to Me by My Father. (Luke 10:22)

Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. (John 5:9)

The Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, (John 5:23)

For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son to have life in Himself, (John 5:26)

I can do nothing of Myself. As I hear, I judge. My judgment is just, because I seek not My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30)

 

[Peterlag]

Usually the OT prophets are not preexistent when given promises long before their incarnation. The OT prophecies were made hard to understand so that they would hold ideas that were not readily understood. Just as Jesus said in Matthew 13 about them remaining blind who did not accept Christ. I can tell that you are having trouble figuring out the promise to Christ. You also fail to understand Jesus is and always has been more than a man.

I was sad today over you. Really sad that you don't know who the Christ is. You can't see the difference between him spoken about as a man in Romans and the resurrected Christ spoken about in Galatians because you think he was God and so he's all the same to you.

 

[mikesw]

My brother, I respectfully encourage you to think:

It is against the Scripture to say that Jesus Himself claimed to receive power and authority specifically from His Father and not from a divine half of Himself?

All things have been handed over to Me by My Father. (Luke 10:22)

Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do. (John 5:9)

The Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, (John 5:23)

For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has given to the Son to have life in Himself, (John 5:26)

I can do nothing of Myself. As I hear, I judge. My judgment is just, because I seek not My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me. (John 5:30)

That is part of the problem I speak of when you try to interpret scripture. We have seen here in many ways the divinity of Christ. Paul even referred to Jesus in the Godhead in Gal 3:18-19 and did that after indicating that his apostleship did not come from man but came from God and Christ. All things have been explained, my friend.
I can repeat some ideas though. God has chosen to leave us to dig deeper into understanding of him. We see even that detractors were blocked from that, in Matt 13. The Pharisees, for the most part, were left in their blindness. So Jesus came on human common ground and spoke from that without shouting out his divinity. But even the Pharisees recognized he was doing divine acts while failing to recognize it was God's hand at work.
If you are saying you are a Jew, I indeed hope you can recognize Christ as the one sent from God and thus the only way, truth and life to bring you into proper relationship with God. That requires dropping off baggage that is not scriptural -- such as some sort of weird unity of all peoples in Christ despite not following Christ.

 

[mikesw]

I was sad today over you. Really sad that you don't know who the Christ is. You can't see the difference between him spoken about as a man in Romans and the resurrected Christ spoken about in Galatians because you think he was God and so he's all the same to you.

You can remain sad until you understand what I have shared. You deny that deity of Christ by making up alternative readings to everything that testifies of Christ.

 

[Peterlag]

You can remain sad until you understand what I have shared. You deny that deity of Christ by making up alternative readings to everything that testifies of Christ.

Show me where I am wrong. Give the verse on how I make up alternative readings.

Romans 5:15 says “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Some theologians teach that only God could pay for the sins of mankind, but the Bible specifically says that a man must do it. The book of Corinthians makes the same point Romans does when it says “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:21).

What part of the above Scripture am I making up?

Here I will now make up my own writing of those verses to read the way you want it to read...

“For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one God-man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Some theologians teach that only God could pay for the sins of mankind, but the Bible specifically says that a man must do it. The book of Corinthians makes the same point Romans does when it says “For since by a man came death, by a God-man also came the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians

 

[mikesw]

Show me where I am wrong. Give the verse on how I make up alternative readings.

Romans 5:15 says “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Some theologians teach that only God could pay for the sins of mankind, but the Bible specifically says that a man must do it. The book of Corinthians makes the same point Romans does when it says “For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:21).

What part of the above Scripture am I making up?

Here I will now make up my own writing of those verses to read the way you want it to read...

“For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one God-man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” Some theologians teach that only God could pay for the sins of mankind, but the Bible specifically says that a man must do it. The book of Corinthians makes the same point Romans does when it says “For since by a man came death, by a God-man also came the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians

i have no idea what you are saying. The scripture stands in connection with Christ in the Godhead. Scripture can talk about Christ as a man. That is called the Son in his incarnation. Maybe you do not yet understand that.

 

[charismaticlady]

Since I was a teenager I have always believed I was body, soul, and spirit.

Why do you see yourself as a triune being, but cannot see God, who we are made in His likeness, as a triune being?

 

[Pancho Frijoles]

Why do you see yourself as a triune being, but cannot see God, who we are made in His likeness, as a triune being?

With your permission, @Peterlag Let me advance an answer from my side

Because I don't have three minds: one in my spirit, one in my soul, and one in my body. I don't have three wills. I'm not three persons in one.

So, for this reason, the analogy is irrelevant for the discussion of the Trinity, unless your theology is not Nicean but, say, modalist.
For a modalist, there is only One Mind, One Will, that manifests through the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That kind of belief in the Trinity is compatible with the concept of One God and could be represented by your analogy of body, soul and spirit.

 

[synergy]

Hi Synergy

I couldn't get back to you until now. Thanks for continuing the conversation.
Neither our status nor our mission is the same as Jesus Christ.

My examples dealt with a common feature of Christ and humans, which is that our power is given. God was the ultimate source of all Jesus power, and God is the ultimate source of all our power.

Even in regard to the cross and resurrection, Jesus also asked us to take our own cross (Luke 9:23) . Paul speaks of himself as being crucified with Christ, (Galatians 2:20) and speaks about believers about having been resurrected and ascended to celestial places. God is the source of our ability to be crucified with Christ, raised from dead and sit on heavenly places. So, in this respect as well, we, as Jesus Christ, derive all our power from God.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and He raised us up and seated us together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-6, MEV)

The fact remains that only God saves and Jesus did just that when He descended into Hades and crippled it by His sheer presence as God. That's something that only God can do no matter how many personal crosses each one of us carries.