God and the Trinity

Colossians 1:1-2

Col-021

Colossians 1:1-2. This is "Salutation," segment number 21.

"Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, who are at Colossae. Grace to you, and peace from God our Father." Paul, an Apostle by the special choosing of God's grace, along with his associate Timothy, to the Christians who are meeting in various house churches in the city of Colossae. The Colossian Christians are saints of God in the church set apart to eternal life in heaven, and they are found to be faithful to the Word of God and to the person of the Lord Jesus. Paul prays in this opening salutation for the Colossae Christians – that they would be oriented to the grace of God in reference to their personal salvation, and in reference to their daily lives. He also prays for the peace of God to flood their lives – a peace which is based upon their reconciliation to God's standard of absolute righteousness.

Peace

He's been satisfied relative to that. The penalty of death has been paid. Therefore, that, as a basis of reconciliation, makes reconciliation entirely a work of God, received as a grace gift, so that the believer can never contaminate the work of reconciliation, and thus become unreconciled again. There are many bases of evidence for the fact that once you're saved, you're always saved, not the least of which is the illustration Jesus used for Nicodemus – that salvation is like being born. This is a new birth. You can never reverse a birth. A birth goes only in one direction. And reconciliation is based upon that new birth, and you cannot reverse what God has done. So our eternal security, from which we have such peace and comfort, is the fact that we are in a born again status, and that's dependent entirely upon the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and is in no way affected by our carnality as that goes up and down.

So this assurance of reconciliation is the peace that Paul prays that God would flood the lives of these Colossian Christians within, and our lives today. And the reason that it will be true is because they know doctrine. Those of you who have now grasped, in the last couple of Sundays, the depth and the significance of the doctrine of reconciliation, have certainly a peace and an ease in your life and in your heart relative to facing God. You're not afraid to do that. It's going to come sooner or later, but there's no question that when it comes, it will be the greatest day of your life. This is the peace that Jesus gives.

Reconciling the lost sinner, who is God's enemy, to God's absolute righteousness standard, which makes the believing sinner as good and perfect as God Himself, was the hardest thing that God had to do for us. That was the hardest thing for God to do to preserve us from going into the lake of fire. When having done this hardest thing, Paul then says, as we have seen in the book of Romans, that God will obviously much more do the easier thing of keeping us saved. It's not so hard to keep us saved, because Christ did the saving, and nothing can undo His work. So that's the easy part. But to get us saved in the first place, to get us reconciled in the first place, that was the hard part. Therefore, we take great comfort from knowing that God has done the hardest thing already. So from here on out, we're home free.

The life of Jesus Christ in heaven, furthermore, is interceding in the believers' behalf. That is the power which preserves us in our salvation. Any attack upon us by Satan (and it's there, every time we sin) is covered by the defense of Jesus Christ at the Father's right hand in our behalf.

Now, I don't know how the mechanics of that works out. Somebody asked me. Millions of people are sinning, and millions of people are being accused, and Jesus Christ is handling all the cases. And all I can say is that heaven works on a different basis than we do. It is not the United States Congress. Therefore, it will get things done, in some marvelous way that we will learn in time. The Holy Spirit, then, says it is easier than to keep us saved than to save us in the first place.

Furthermore, reconciliation makes it clear to us that God always deals with us on the basis of His integrity; that is, His absolute righteousness – from the point of our salvation to our entrance eventually into heaven itself and to the eternal rewards that we will secure there for our service. All that is on the integrity of God. We can count on it. All blessings, therefore, that you and I seek from God our Father must be sought on the basis of His integrity. Don't be asking God for things that are violating His integrity. Don't be asking God to do things that will violate somebody else's integrity. Don't ask Him for something that would violate your own integrity.

Judgment

God

Polytheism

To the Only God

Jude verse 25 puts it this way, on the oneness of God. Jude verse 25 says, "To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord: be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, and now, and forever. Amen:" "To the only God." This little phrase, "the only God," means the unique being – to the one-of-a-kind person. That's what is inherent in the Greek expression, "the only God." He is the One Who is one-of-a-kind.

"Unique"

I direct you to Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is one."

Deuteronomy 4:35 "To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord: He is God. There is no other beside Him."

Come over to Isaiah 44:8, "Do not tremble. Do not be afraid. Have I not long since announced it to you, and declared it, and you are my witnesses? Is there any God beside me? Or is there any other rock? I know of none." God doesn't know of any other God. People do, but not God.

Isaiah 45:22: "Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God. There is no other'" All of these Old Testament passages are stressing one point: a unique God, one-of-a-kind. There is only one God.

Coming into the New Testament that same emphasis is there: the unity of God. I Corinthians 8:4, "Therefore, concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one."

Then, in James 2:19: "You believe that God is one. You do well. The demons also believe, and they shutter." The demons know there's a unique God, and He's the only one. Satan, their leader, says that he is God, but they know that's not really true, but they have to follow him because they've committed themselves to him.

The Essence of God

So the Bible makes it clear relative to the nature of God that there is one God. Now, how is that true? In what way is there one God? What this refers to is God in His essence. The Bible is emphatic that God is one in essence. There is only one God. And that one God has the essence of sovereignty. By "essence," we mean His attributes, or His characteristics: His absolute righteousness; His justice; His love; His eternal life; His omnipotence; His omnipresence; His omniscient; His immutability (He doesn't change); and, His veracity. Those are the basic characteristics that constitute the oneness of God. This is His unity – His essence. So when the Bible speaks of one God, this is what it's talking about. And yet we know that within this essence, there is a Godhead that actually is made up of three persons.

Light

Take a look at whatever you're wearing. The color that we see on you now tells us that all the other colors have been absorbed. Some of you are sitting here in red outfits. That tells us that every other color has been eaten up by your clothing, and you come out with only one color: red. Some of you are appropriately dressed in black, and that means that all the colors have been absorbed. You don't give anything back. So you come out looking black, because all the colors have been absorbed. Whereas, others of you find that all the colors are reflected, so your shirt is white. It won't absorb any colors.

So there's a reaction at this end that is interestingly comparable to the unity of God. God, the Light, shoots into this prism. What's the prism? The prism is the revelation of the Word of God. And out comes ten factors that tell us the essence of the nature of God, as the prism of glass shows us the nature of what is in the light. So, out of that prism, we discover these characteristics of God. God is One in His essence. But that single essence contains all of these ten basic characteristics.

So, it's no small thing for Paul to say, "I pray for grace and peace from God," because suddenly we're dealing with a magnificent person that can produce, because of his characteristics, all of the things that any human being ever needs or ever looks for. And that's why Paul's prayer has such great significance.

Under varying circumstances, the different characteristics of God are manifest. Here comes the light of the world, the Light of God. It hits your life here, and you have a problem in some respect. And that's why I have repeatedly told you to know the essence of God. When you get a problem in your life, and you look up the essence of God, it will be comfort to you to know that God is not going to treat you in some way that is incompatible with His essence. If we are told that God is true, He's not going to lie to you in some respect. He's not going to tell you something in the Word of God that is not true. If God says He's going to handle a thing in this way, in the Word of God, it gives you the principle of doctrine. He is immutable. He's not going to change and make it different in your case.

So if you want to play the fool and say, "Well, in my case, it's an exception. I can do this wrong thing because God has told me do it." No, He's immutable, so He doesn't change on His principles. If you remember the three omnis, that's a great comfort. You deal with a God who really is omniscient. He really is omnipresent. He really is omnipotent. He is not the gods of the pagans, and not the gods of our society. But this is the God of reality. This is the God that really exists. And when you understand these two factors in Him: His absolute righteousness; and, His perfect justice, that's what constitutes holiness. That's His integrity. And suddenly you know that you're not going to play loose with God. You can go ahead and lie to yourself, and pretend that something is so, which is not so; pretend that some evil is okay; or, pretend that some evil is righteousness. But you're not going to go over the integrity of God.

Therefore, if I tell you something on the basis of the Scripture, you should not get all upset and distressed because you don't like it. It is not my invention, but, nevertheless, I should tell it to you.

Sovereignty

So here's God's light. It comes into the prism of revelation. And out of it comes these facets of the attributes of God that constitute His essence, which constitute His oneness. What are these? They are, first of all, His sovereignty. That means that God is King. He has complete freedom to decide as His nature desires. He alone directs Himself. He is completely independent of any other will. This is taught in Ephesians 1:5 and Psalm 115:3. Now we have gone over these in great detail, so I just go through them to remind you what comes out of the prism of revelation.

Righteousness

We also see that God is absolute righteousness (Romans 3:22, 2 Corinthians 5:21). That means that God is absolute perfection. He can do no wrong. He is absolute goodness. Human righteousness is relative goodness. You're better than some other people. But God rejects that completely.

Justice

Love

Eternal Life

Omniscient

God is omniscient (1 John 3:20, Proverbs 15:3). God always knew everything that was, or is, or will be known. God never had a way to find something, because He's sovereign. Sovereignty and omniscience go together. He knows everything because He decides everything. God reads man's mind, Job 42:2 tells us. He knows everything.

Omnipresent

Omnipotent

Immutable

Veracity

So on the one hand, when Paul tells these Colossian Christians, "The grace and peace that I pray for you, I pray that it may come from God," this is the unique person that he's talking about – one fully capable of delivering that to these Colossian Christians.

The Trinity

But then he says God our Father, and he adds a new element. He adds the word "Father." In the Greek Bible, it's the word patér (pat-ayr'), P A P A T E R. What this word does is it stresses the separate persons of the Godhead of the Trinity: Father; Son; and, Holy Spirit. Persons of the Godhead are co-equal, and co-eternal, and They all have the same essence. The role of each person of the Trinity is distinctive. It is the Father who formulated the plan of salvation. It is the Son who executed the plan of salvation. It is the Holy Spirit who reveals and applies the plan of salvation.

So to complete our doctrine of the essence of God in its unity, now the Godhead is demonstrated as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all of Whom have this identical essence. They are one in essence. They are Trinity in the Godhead. They are three individual personalities. God is not some Star Wars force. These are Persons, and these are beyond our comprehension, except as They have revealed Themselves to us in Scripture.

So the doctrine of the Trinity is taught in the Word of God. Sometimes people come and say, "You can't say that. The word "Trinity" isn't in the Bible. Well that doesn't mean that the Bible doesn't teach that just because the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible. There are many other doctrines that don't have a specific word that are still taught in the Word of God. But this is a theological word because it describes what the Bible teaches. While the Bible reveals that God is One in essence, it says that He is three in personality. All three Persons act in total unity with one another. They all have the complete essence of deity. And this union of three-in-one is called the Godhead. Colossians 2:9: "For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. The word "deity" is sometimes translated as "Godhead," because that is what it means. This union of three-in-one is called "the Godhead."

So the divine essence expresses itself in three separate and distinct personalities. So when we use the word "Trinity," you can see how we have combined the fact that God is "tri" and "unity." On the one hand, He is Three; and, on the other hand, He is a unity of One. The very word "Trinity" was picked because it said "three-in-one." It's a technical term of theology. The Godhead is made up of three Persons: Father; Son; and, Holy Spirit. The United States is one country, but it's made up of 50 states. Man is a single being. And yet you are tripartite too, aren't you? You are a body; you are a soul; and, you are a spirit. So we have examples of that. God is One Being in essence, existing as Three Persons.

Now there's evidence for this Godhead (the Trinity) in Scripture. And it begins in the Old Testament itself. It begins in the very first verse of the Bible. Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This word "God" here is the Hebrew word "Elohim" (el-o-heem'), E L O H I M. The Hebrew word "Elohim" is plural. It is not a singular word. "Elohim" refers to a plurality. It is referring to the true God. But when it refers to the true God, there is much emphasis in the Old Testament on the unity of God, and the Oneness of God. In the Old Testament, the emphasis is heavy on the Oneness of God. But in the New Testament, the emphasis is heavy on the three Persons of the Godhead. But when God the Holy Spirit wrote the very first verse of the Bible, He was careful to use a Hebrew word that indicated Trinity of personalities in the Godhead.

Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image according to Our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea; over the birds of the sky; over the cattle; over all the earth; and, over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

Animals

Souls

I can tell you that my cat has a soul in that respect. When I call her, she ignores me. She looks at me, and she makes a decision. She thinks it over. She has feelings about me. And then later on she regrets it. And while I'm sitting studying, she will come up, and she'll put her paw up on my leg. And I'll look down at her, and I'll exercise my soul and ignore her. Then she gets mad. So she backs off, and I see those calculating green eyes, gauging her distance, and with one leap, she's up on top of my desk. Then she sits there looking at me. She has intellect; she has sensibility; and, she has will, but she does not have spirit. She can connect with me in those respects, but she cannot connect with me as I can connect with God. The cat cannot connect with God.

That's what's different. When God said, "Let's make man in Our likeness and image," what is God like? One: we are all the same humanity. What is the image of God? Tripartite. We are intellects; we are wills; and, we are emotions. So, we have been created in the image of God. And because we have spirit, as well as a soul and a body, we can communicate and be in touch with God, where the animals cannot. When the animals die, they're gone. When we die, we're not gone. We have a future, either in heaven or in hell.

So here's Genesis 1:26. It is very clear that there's a plurality in the Godhead. And the people in Genesis 1:26 are identified even here, from our knowledge of the New Testament: "And God said." Who is the speaker? God the Father. He's the One who speaks here. And in Genesis 1:2, we're told the earth was formless and void, and there was darkness over face of the earth, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." Who is that? The Holy Spirit, hovering over the chaotic, pre-created, constructed earth. And Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created." From John 1:1 and John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16, we are told that Jesus Christ was the Creator. So there in the Old Testament, in Genesis 1:1, it's talking about Jesus Christ. We know that from the New Testament. He is one who is the Creator.

The prophet Isaiah gives us information on this. Isaiah 48:16: "Come near to me. Listen to this. From the first, I have not spoken a secret. From the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord God has sent me and His Spirit." Isaiah 48:16 says, "I was there." Here He is speaking relative to creation. This is Jesus Christ (John 1:1). The speaker is Christ here, not the prophet.

Compare verses 12-15 here, and you'll see that it is not the prophet speaking. It is Christ who is speaking. And when it says "the Lord God," it's referring to the Father. And when it says "to His Spirit," is referring to the Holy Spirit. So here you have: "I have been there from the beginning in the creation – the Lord God (the Father), the Spirit sent me (the Holy Spirit).

So throughout the Old Testament you'll find that the full name of God is: "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." This is further stressed in the book of Isaiah chapter 6. The Trinity is in Isaiah 6:1-3: "In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. The Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings. With two, he covered his face. And with two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. And one called out to another and said, 'Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.'" Three "Holies" indicate three persons of the Godhead (the Trinity), all equally holy. And the oneness is stressed by the word "Lord (singular) of hosts." And "the hosts" means "armies:" "The Lord of the armies." Here you have three "Holies" for the three Members of the Trinity. Then you have one Lord that is referred to as being this Holy One. And Isaiah saw only one Person (and there is only one Person of the Trinity that can be seen by mankind, and that's Jesus Christ (John 1:18, John 6:46).

So, the Old Testament emphasis is on the unity, or the oneness of God. But the Trinity is quite evident even there. And in the New Testament, that becomes explicitly clear. You're acquainted with Matthew chapter 3. Matthew chapter 3 is a clear presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Matthew 3:16-17: "Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan. And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon Him, and, behold, a voice out of heaven saying, 'This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.'" That's very clear. There are three persons in the Godhead. The Son is in the River Jordan. The Holy Spirit is in the form of a dove, resting on Him. And the voice from heaven is of the Father speaking. And here Jesus is going through the ritual of water baptism to identify Himself with His mission, as when we go through water baptism, we identify ourselves with having died and been raised with Christ. False Views of the Trinity There are a couple of false views of the Trinity you should not fall into.

Modalism

The Arian Heresy

The divine Trinity is also illustrated by light, to tie this up. That is interesting. The single essence of God has three personalities, and the Godhead is made up of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as we have seen in Genesis 1:26 and Matthew 3:16-17. The single ray of light through our prism has another feature that we should note – that, as these rays of light come out, there's something else they produce. They produce something which is called an actinic effect. These are science terms. You don't have to worry about remembering them. But the meaning of actinic is that it produces chemical changes.

Actinic

This refers to God the Father. You cannot see Him, and you cannot feel Him, but He produces changes. Light produces certain changes. Every time you take a picture with your camera, you have let light enter. The light has hit the chemicals on the film, and it produces changes. You can't feel it, and you can't hear it, but the results become evident. So, light has an actinic effect comparable to the Father.

Luminiferous

Calorific

So Paul says to the Colossian Christians, "I do pray for you, believers, as you meet in the city of Colossae, that God's grace will be upon you, and that you'll have peace. And all of that comes from God – the single person, the one God, our Father, the Trinity of the Godhead." When you understand this, you have a little better appreciation for the magnificent person we deal with. Can we ever comprehend it? No. We go as far as what the Bible tells us. We try to grasp it with our limitations. But the Word of God says, "My thoughts are as high above your thoughts as the heavens are above the earth. But do not let the word "God" be minimized; be degraded; or, be trivialized in your thinking. It is a word that comes very quickly to the hearts and the minds and the lips of people in public places to talk about God.

I hope that, as a result of what you have learned today, when the word "God" hits your ears and your eyes, you'll have a deeper sense of appreciation, and it will be a sense of great awe. This is why the Jews, when they came to that most sacred name of God, "Yhvh" (yeh-ho-vaw'), the sacred four-letter word called the sacred Tetragrammaton ("Yhvh"), they wouldn't pronounce it. They won't say it. When we read the Scripture, that name of God comes up. And in our Bible translations, it's always spelled capital "LORD" to let you know that, in the Hebrew, it's that sacred word. They use the word "Adonai" which means "Lord." And they simply will not even let the magnificent word "God" come off their lips. And they don't understand what you know today. They don't understand the depth of the essence of the oneness of God, and the trinity of the Godhead. That they don't understand.

You can ask them: "What about those plural pronouns?" You can ask them, "What about 'Elohim,' with it's plurality of meaning?" They say, "Well that's just majesty words." No it isn't. It's exact language words. And they have no explanation for it, because they don't dare admit that God is three persons, because now they have to dispose of Jesus Christ. The serious thing is, though, that to dispose of Christ is to lose it all. "No one comes unto the Father," Jesus says, "but by Me." That's why it makes sense when Jesus says, "The way into heaven is by a small gate and a narrow way, and only a few people are going to find it." Now you just go through your mind very quickly, those who understand God in His essence, and the Godhead of the three Persons, and the revelation that we have concerning eternal life through this God, and all the lifestyle that is laid out for us as Christians, which we conform to or violate in various degrees, and all that there is to know about Him; and, then compare that to what people out in our society know, and how they function relative to this God. They're ignorant. They know nothing. They have no sense of the awe of being related to this God who didn't have to do anything for us, and yet chose to put Himself out in our eternal behalf.

So, I'm not unreasonable when I say that you should have your life focused on the mission of God for your life. I'm not unreasonable when I stress to you that all of us should quit breaking the rules of Scripture. Start playing your role in life. If you're a father, be a father. If you're a mother, be a mother. If you're a child, be a child. And you see to it that everybody does the role to which they've been called. And when you're out in society, you act as an employer or an employee, you act your role, and you act with integrity. And you stop pretending that you're dealing with some nincompoop out there (some wishy-washy character) that the world calls "God." That is not the God of Scripture. He is the magnificent essence that we have learned of today. And He is the powerful Trinity of the eternal God. We who are rightly related to Him will live lives that are as magnificent as He is. That is our potential. And every time we start groveling around down in the dirt, it's time to confess; straighten up; let Him brush us off; forget what you did; never refer to it again; and, go on. That is the God of all grace, who then gives us His peace.

Father, we thank you for this thy Word, and we ask thee to instruct us, and to have a new appreciation for the Word.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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