Monday, January 27, 2025
Holy Spirit
But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. John 14:26
Please read John 14:15-31 today. As we begin our look into the Holy Spirit there is so much to be considered! Jesus promised he would ask the Father to send another Helper to be with his disciples forever. Who is this helper? What can we know about hm? How does he help us? How can we know he is? How can we know he is with us? Sometimes it can seem there are more questions than answers. The beauty of the Holy Spirit is that we find him all throughout Scripture. He is there in the very beginning hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2). He is there at the end (Revelation 22:17) empowering the Bride. Jesus wanted his disciples to know they would not be left alone. He had come as Emmanuel. In him they had discovered God with them. In the Spirit they will discover God in them. The Helper was coming. Take some time today to think about the Holy Spirit. Consider what you know about him and what it means to you to consider him as your helper.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
God
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” Deuteronomy 6:4-5
God makes it clear to the nation of Israel through Moses that there is only one God. Indeed, this is what set Israel apart from all the nations around them. Monotheism is the word that describes the belief that there is only one God. The nation of Israel knew that God was God and that he was to be worshiped above all and that they were to have no other gods before them. While they struggled and failed at this throughout the Old Testament, turning away from God and embracing the false gods of the nations around them, they still at their core knew that they were a people set apart to worship the one true God. When Jesus began to make claims that he was God it was a great offense to all they believed and indeed the very basis of their faith and understanding of who God is. The religious Jewish people are strongly monotheistic. Followers of Jesus today are monotheistic as well. We believe that there is one God and that we are made to worship him with all that we are. We celebrate that he has made himself known to us so that we can worship him. Take time today to consider your love for the Lord. The verses above are verses that have reminded countless Jews and Christians that there is one God who is alone worthy of our love!
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Trinity
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:14
The doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine that helps us understand the nature and essence of the one true God. It is true that God is one and yet Scripture reveals that God exists in three coeternal and coequal persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who are the same in essence but distinct in necessary existence. He is not three or one. He is both three and one simultaneously. While he is three in Person, he is still one in essence existing for all time in perfect unity. The Lord God is one and we are to have no other gods before him. So how are to understand the tri-unity of God? We see in Scripture that all three Persons of the Trinity are referred to as God. The Father (Colossians 1:3), the Son (John 1:1-2), and the Spirit (Acts 5:3-4). Jesus commands his disciples to baptize in the name of the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). And the verse we are looking at today is another place in Scripture where all are referred to. While the word trinity is not found in Scripture, the principle is seen throughout as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each referred to as being God. As we have seen this cannot mean there are three gods. There is only one God. The best way to describe this is that God is one in essence and three Persons within that essence that are coeternal—God has always been God in three persons. This is a core understanding of the Christian faith and it is faith that allows us to believe it is true even if we cannot fully understand it!
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Trinity (part 2)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:14
The diagram shown is a very old and is an attempt to show a map of the key terms in the doctrine of the Trinity. It shows there are three who are the one God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Each of them is God as the lines going in show. Yet each of them is truly distinct and so, each of them “is not” the other, which the lines on the outside of the triangle represent. This allows us to begin to think of the Holy Spirit as God. Pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. This is what we will be doing over the next few weeks together. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is God is the beginning of that study. Knowing that he is a Person instead of some other type of existence is key as well. He is not an “it”, he is a Person. Have you known this to be true? How does the Holy Spirt being God impact how you understand his role in your life?
Friday, January 31, 2025
Relationship
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:20-21
Please read John 17 today. Understanding Trinity must go deeper than the drawing we looked at yesterday shows us. The drawing is very helpful, but it falls short in helping us understand one of the most important aspects of God in three Persons—relationship. God has existed for all time in perfect relationship within himself. It is when we begin to see this amazing relationship revealed that we truly get a sense of the relationship that God has designed for us to have with him. We get a beautiful glimpse of it in the prayer that Jesus offers on the night he was betrayed. This is relationship at a depth we can only begin to understand, yet when we do we begin to find the fullness of the abundant life Jesus spoke of. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father and the Spirit is eternally proceeding principally from the Father. There is a perfect loving relationship that allows us to see the relationship that God designs for us! Consider—truly consider—the prayer that Jesus offers in John 17. This is the prayer of God for his adopted children. Intimate relationship.
Saturday, February 1, 2025
Inseparable
I and the Father are one. John 10:30
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 2:11
The two most important events in salvation history are the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost. The Son incarnate and the Spirit indwelling. If we do not understand the doctrine of the inseparable operations of the Trinity, we will tempted to believe that these things happen independently. The doctrine of inseparable operations allows us to understand that every act of God, because of who God is as Father, Son, and Spirit, is from the Father, through the Son, and by or in the Spirit. This doctrine does not indicate a hierarchy in any way, but rather a unified order, involving all the Persons of the Trinity. It is not that part of God accomplishes something, which is what we can come to think when we too strictly define roles. One author puts it this way: That is, it is biblically sound and theologically faithful to appropriate, or attribute, particular acts of God to one of the persons of God. When we do so, we are not saying that it is only that one person who carries out that act, but we are saying that the act is uniquely associated with the mission of that one person. So, for instance, yes, it is only the Son who becomes incarnate. In this sense, the act of redemption, specifically through the incarnate Son’s penal substitutionary death, is appropriated to the Son. Jesus saves! But it would be a mistake to say that because only the Son becomes incarnate, only the Son saves. Instead, we should say that the one act of salvation is carried out by the one God—Father, Son, and Spirit—in a way that reveals the unique personal properties of each. The Father sends the Son, the Son is sent by the Father, and the Spirit is the agent through whom the Father sends the Son. It is the Father who sends the Son to the virgin’s womb, the Son who takes on human flesh in the virgin’s womb, and the Spirit who causes the virgin to miraculously conceive the incarnate Son.
Emerson, Matthew Y.; Smith, Brandon D.. Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit
As we continue our quest to know the Holy Spirit more we will see this inseparable operation repeatedly and it will allow us to see the fullness of God that is found in him!