Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
No Third Person in trinity
(From Forerunner Commentary)
|
1 Corinthians 1:3
The most curious—and theologically significant—facet of these epistolary salutations is the wholesale absence of greetings from the Holy Spirit. In nearly every greeting, the writer sends greetings from God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. A Bible reader brought up in traditional Christianity would expect that the so-called Third Person of the Trinity would get equal billing with the Father and the Son from the apostles, but the biblical text omits all mention of the Holy Spirit in terms of personal greetings to the churches. Is this just a mistake? An embarrassing omission? A slight? If greetings from the Holy Spirit were absent in some but not all the salutations, we might make a case for any of these explanations, but because they are entirely absent among the greetings of twenty epistles (not counting Hebrews) from five apostles, they make an implicit theological point: The Holy Spirit sends no greetings because there is no Third Person in the God Family to send them! Put simply, the Father and His Son are the only divine Persons, and in grace, mercy, and peace they send their personal greetings to the church. Not being an additional, distinctive entity, the Holy Spirit does not send any greetings. The clearest biblical explanation of this truth appears in John 14, where Jesus Himself provides the correct understanding: . . . I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. . . . If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14:16-18, 23) Jesus teaches here that the Holy Spirit is not another personality but the divine essence of both the Father and the Son that comes to and resides in each of God's chosen sons and daughters. Since Jesus Christ is the One who most often interacts with humans, the apostles single Him out most frequently as "the Spirit." In II Corinthians 3:17, Paul states this plainly, "Now the Lord is the Spirit. . . ." It does not get much clearer than that! The apostle also equates "the Spirit Himself mak[ing] intercession for us" (Romans 8:26) with "Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us" (verse 34). The "Christ in you" statements (see Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27; etc.) also have this sense: The Spirit of the Son lives, abides, or continues with us. Broadly, the Holy Spirit is the personality, mind, and power of God to do His will throughout His creation. But for those of us who believe and love Him, it is also the means by which the Father and the Son live in us, interact with us, empower us, and enable us throughout our developing relationship with them. In a way that we as humans cannot fully fathom, the Spirit is both of them in us, uniting us with them, as Jesus explains in His prayer in John 17:20-23: I do not pray for these [disciples] alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Because the Father and the Son are fully united in all things, when Christ is in us, the Father is in us also, and we are thus united with both of them in spirit and growing to become united with them in character. There is no need for a Third Person of a Trinity. It is truly amazing what can be learned from realizing that we must live by every word of God—even what the salutations of the epistles do not say is instructive!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Whither the Holy Spirit?
|
|
Revelation 6:15-17
The setting is the time of the sixth seal on a badly degraded planet earth. Jesus Christ here quotes the words of some end-time cave dwellers. What do these two sentences tell us about them? The first sentence is a somewhat illogical command for the "mountains and rocks" to fall on them, hiding them from God. In making this statement, the cavemen demonstrate at least some correct understanding of the proximate source of their difficulties. They recognize two Beings as the cause: "Him who sits on the throne" and "the Lamb." This is remarkable in itself since, to this point, they have seen neither Being. The cavemen call one of these two Beings "the Lamb." This clearly implies that they understand the Lamb to be Christ, the second divine Person. Incidentally, John makes 26 references to Christ as the Lamb in the book of Revelation. Further, the cavemen understand that these two powerful Beings are angry. In assigning a cause to their difficulties, these people utterly shun the voice of the secularist or the atheist. They do not, for example, blame nature for their troubles. They do not say, "We have a really bad weather situation here, but it's just a cycle. Nature will clean up the air and water, and everything will be okay in a little while." Rather, they squarely identify the cause of their present problems on the wrath of the Father and Christ. What is even more fascinating is their silence concerning the Holy Spirit. In their dire straits, where their lifestyle has so dramatically changed, and their lives are in clear-and-present danger, they make no reference at all to the Holy Spirit as a separate person. Their silence implies that they have abandoned Trinitarian doctrine. This is even more remarkable considering the cornerstone status nominal Christianity has accorded to that false doctrine. We are left to speculate why these cave dwellers make no reference to the Trinity at this juncture. The cavemen's second sentence is a question rather than a statement or command. The cavemen, in stating that "the great day of His wrath has come," recognize that their situation is special; theirs are extraordinary times. They understand that they can no more defer the effects of God's ire than they can blame those effects on nature. Their reference to "the great day of His wrath" indicates their at least superficial realization that they are facing the Day of the Lord. In asking, "Who is able to stand?" they recognize that they are powerless to defend themselves against the wrath of these two God-Beings. In short, the cavemen's comments indicate that they understand God in a substantially different way than most people in the world today. How many individuals whom we would today classify as "the kings of the earth, the great men" would refer to Christ as the Lamb? How many whom we would categorize as "the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men" know about the prophesied Day of the Lord? Comparatively few. Most individuals in the wider society, the secularized, cosmopolitan mess we call the Western world, would find these concepts alien to their thinking. Moreover, most of those who are familiar with the concepts of Christ as the Lamb or the Day of the Lord also fervently believe in the Trinity—something our latter-day cavemen do not allude to at all. So, what is happening here? These people have listened to the preaching of the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11:1-14), who started their work at the time of the fifth seal. God's Word does not return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11), and these erstwhile movers and shakers in the world have heeded, at least to an extent. As a result, they have a more thorough—though far from complete—understanding of God and His purposes. While they do not shake their fist at God, expressing outright rebellion, neither do they admit personal guilt. They express no repentance. While they recognize the existence of the Father and Son, they do not understand that God is a Family into which they can be born. They do not know—or believe—the full gospel. They express no knowledge of the fact that they can develop a personal relationship with God and grow to become like Him. In other words, the cavemen's words are not those of converted individuals, not by any stretch of the imagination. They still have a long way to go, but they have started on the right path. God has planted some seeds in their minds by the preaching of the Two Witnesses. He may have generated a small segment of mankind who are wise enough to "run for the hills," a people He can use later on as the Millennium gets underway.
Charles Whitaker
End-Time Cavemen
|
|
 |
The Berean: Daily Verse and Comment
Sign up for the Berean: Daily Verse and Comment, and have Biblical truth delivered to your inbox. This daily newsletter provides a starting point for personal study, and gives valuable insight into the verses that make up the Word of God. See what over 150,000 subscribers are already receiving each day.
Email Address:
|
We respect your privacy. Your email address will not be sold, distributed, rented, or in any way given out to a third party. We have nothing to sell. You may easily unsubscribe at any time. |
|
|
