The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 1301-J, titled "Bible Questions and Answers Part 12." A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. ©1980. All Rights Reserved.
Question
I’m having trouble defining the Trinity at this time. I never really got
into studying it; I just accepted God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. And I still, in studying, I haven’t found any mention of the Trinity in
the books.
Answer
Well, let me just say this to begin with, you’ve been right all along. The
Trinity is right: the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. You can read the Old
Testament. Just sit down and read it and read it and read it and read it and
read it, and when you get all done reading it, you may not pick out a single
specific verse that says these are the three. But there won’t be four; there
won’t be two; there’ll be three. You read the New Testament, you may go right
over the verses. And you’ll get all done, and you’ll say, obvious, God the
Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. It’s so patently obvious, but apart
from that, there are some specific—very, very specific verses; for example, in
the Baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have one, I think in Matthew 4—right
at the end of chapter 3, right before 4. “And Jesus,” verse 16, “when He was
baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened
unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon
Him: and a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.” Now, who do you have there?
Questioner
I have the Father and the Son.
Answer (continued)
And the Spirit descending like a dove—all three.
Questioner
But, I understand that, but when Jesus was on earth, He prayed to His
Father in heaven, which, to me shows a separation.
Answer (continued)
I’ll get to that. I’ll get to that. OK? At the end of 2 Corinthians, 2
Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14, it says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” All
right, do you agree there are three?
Questioner
Yes.
Answer (continued)
They’re all one. Because Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “ The LORD our God is one
LORD.” Because Jesus said, “ I and the Father are one.” Because in one place it
says, "the Spirit of God"; in another place, Romans 8:9, it says, "the Spirit of
Christ." They’re all one. And yet they’re separate.
Questioner
But are they one in spirit and purpose, I mean, like our congregation is
one.
Answer (continued)
Don’t say that "one in purpose." That’s the lie of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That’s particularly Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons, too, but that is particularly the Jehovah’s Witness thing.
But what you, what you need to realize is there are three and yet one. They
are one in essence. They are one in essence, and yet they are three distinct
persons. Now, you can’t understand that; there’s no way. People say, oh, it’s
like ice—water and steam; it’s all H2O. No, no, no, because it can’t
be ice, water and steam at one time like God is. You say, oh, it’s like an egg;
you have the shell, the yolk and the white. No, no, no, God is not like an egg.
People say, well, it’s like a man; a man is a son, and if he has a son, he’s a
father, and if he has a brother, he’s a brother. So he’s a son, a father, and a
brother all at one time. No, no, no.
Questioner
But he’s not one in all those things.
Answer (continued)
He’s still one, not three; he’s just one. The point is this: if you start trying to unscrew the "unscrutable," if you start trying to figure out the Trinity, you’re going to find yourself under the pew saying the Greek alphabet, even if you don’t know it, because it’s beyond your comprehension. You see, let God be God; if you can figure God out, and get Him all reduced down to what you can understand, then you’d be equal to God. See?
God is one—that is the heart of all Biblical theology. “The LORD our God is
one LORD.” Monotheism was what identified Israel as over against all of the
polytheism, animism, polydemonism and everything else that was going on around
Israel. The Lord is one, and yet He manifests Himself in three distinct persons.
You can have the Son praying to the Father; you can have the Spirit praying to
the Father, from the believer; you can have all of these things within the
framework of God, and all it simply means is that you don’t understand God. You
see, it’s like if you—I’ll illustrate it this way—if you took a little cup down
and you scooped out the Pacific Ocean, you wouldn’t have the ocean in your cup.
It’s way beyond you. I mean there’s so much more vastness to the immense reality
of God that we can’t perceive. You just have to let it go at that. I don’t
understand it. I know He’s one; I know He’s three—indivisible, indivisible
oneness.
Questioner
When He said the Father is mightier than I, then what, why would…
Answer (continued)
He was talking in His humiliation. He said the Father is greater than I, not
in essence, but in my humiliation. He said, for example, I have taken on the
role of a servant. He even said, "No man knows the day nor the hour," right?,
"not even the Son of man." What was He saying? He was saying I limited myself in
my submission. You see, when Jesus refereed to Himself over 50 times, He called
Himself the Son of Man. When He came into the world, He “thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. He thought it not something to hold onto and to grasp. But
He took upon Himself the form of a servant. And He humbled Himself, and was
found in fashion as man,” Philippians 2. Now in His humiliation and His
humbling, He submits Himself in some divine fashion that’s beyond our
comprehension to the will of the Father. And in His submission and in His
humanness, and in His earthliness, He says, “the Father is greater than I.” Why?
Because the Father was not fulfilling the role of a servant; He was. And He
submitted Himself to the Father in that sense. He said, I only do the things the
Father shows me to do, and so forth and so on. Now the mystery of that is way
beyond us. In fact the Bible calls it a mystery, doesn’t it?
Questioner
If we’re never to see God, and if He came to earth as man, then we have
seen God. And He said no man will see God.
Answer (continued)
Well, we’ve seen God in Christ. You see it says in John1:1 that “in the
beginning was the Word and the Word was” face to face—prostontheon
(sp?)–was face to face with God in an equality. “In the beginning was the
Word…the Word was God”—face to face with God.
Questioner
Do you think this is essential to salvation to believe in the three in
one.
Answer (continued)
Absolutely, because if you don’t you’ve fallen to the old error of what was
known as Modalistic Monarchianism or Sabellianism—that God simply appears once
for a while like this and once for a while like this, and He has different
uniforms He wears. But you can’t do that because you’ve got the Son praying to
the Father in the Spirit. If you don’t believe in the Trinity, then who loses
their deity? You take God’s deity away? You take the Son’s deity away? Or the
Spirit’s deity away, and you deny the reality of the person of God. And
invariably, the cults do this. You’ve got a group in the middle of Africa; they
believe in the father, the son, and the spirit of Zimbabwe. What is that? Or
you’ve got the Mormons who believe in God, and Jesus is a created being. That’s
deathly, because if you preach any other Christ than the Christ of the Word of
God, you’re anathema. And the Christ of the Word of God said, “If you’ve seen me
you’ve seen the Father.” “I and the Father are one.”
So the thing you want to do is accept it by faith and not try to understand it
intellectually because it’s beyond your understanding. OK? That’s a hard one.
That’s a fair question, though.
Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and
Answers" by:
Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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