Jump to content
IGNORED

The Trinity


Do You Believe The Doctrine Of Trinity is Essential to being a Christian?  

70 members have voted

  1. 1. Do You Believe The Doctrine Of Trinity is Essential to being a Christian?

    • Yes
      43
    • No
      10
    • I'm not sure
      3
    • It is secondary and doesn't matter
      1


Recommended Posts


  • Group:  Members
  • Followers:  0
  • Topic Count:  0
  • Topics Per Day:  0
  • Content Count:  29
  • Content Per Day:  0.00
  • Reputation:   0
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  03/23/2004
  • Status:  Offline

Posted (edited)
:laugh: Thanx shiloh and God-man Edited by BigD
  • Replies 199
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic


  • Group:  Diamond Member
  • Followers:  1
  • Topic Count:  31
  • Topics Per Day:  0.00
  • Content Count:  881
  • Content Per Day:  0.10
  • Reputation:   11
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  03/16/2002
  • Status:  Offline

Posted

BigD, You picked a very interesting combination of verses to hang your argument on. I don


  • Group:  Diamond Member
  • Followers:  1
  • Topic Count:  31
  • Topics Per Day:  0.00
  • Content Count:  881
  • Content Per Day:  0.10
  • Reputation:   11
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  03/16/2002
  • Status:  Offline

Posted
Jesus is Lord? Why is'nt it in the bible "Jesus is God".

Here is another verse I just noticed from Caspar's post.

Is 9: 6 For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder. And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

As I have said, I don't understand the Trinity, I don't try to explain it. It is just there plain as anything in scripture. As for essential doctrines, I think church goers have to tried define that from the very beginning. The best description I know is what Paul gave in what might be the most important chapter in the Bible:

1Co 15:1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

1Co 15:2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

1Co 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

1Co 15:4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

1Co 15:5 And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

I will say again, I think understanding the Trinity as best we can is essential to understand the LOVE of God and the PRICE He paid for our redemption.

If we could understand it we might be able to know the love of God which passeth all understanding.

Eph 3:14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Eph 3:15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,

Eph 3:16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;

Eph 3:17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

Eph 3:18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

Eph 3:19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

Eph 3:20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

Eph 3:21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.


  • Group:  Diamond Member
  • Followers:  1
  • Topic Count:  16
  • Topics Per Day:  0.00
  • Content Count:  557
  • Content Per Day:  0.07
  • Reputation:   10
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  05/07/2004
  • Status:  Offline
  • Birthday:  09/21/1976

Posted
Jesus Christ is the Father, the Spirit and the Son. The eternal invisible Holy Spirit of God the Father revealed in the Son of man Jesus Christ. The apostles always baptized in the name of Jesus.

It is true that there is a separation, and a oneness, when you, or anyone else choose to try to stop both, because both are true, you try to stop God. Now you do have the understanding of the oneness, but you do not have the understanding of the separation in fullness. The Word was God meaning He was The Father we can see Christ came from The Father, thus we can see Christ is The Father manifested in The flesh, but we can also see He is less then The Father in the separation. We are to baptize in Jesus Christ name very true, but to say The Oneness is all there is without the understanding of the separation, this is a mistake, both are part of God's Word.

Guest idied2
Posted

These scriptures claim that JESUS CHRIST and the FATHER and GOD are ONE and the same.

Ge 1:1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Ge 1:21

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Ge 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Colossians 1

1:16

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

1Co 8:6

But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him

John 14

14:8

Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.

14:9

Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?

They are the same: therefore are of the same nature. And since we have just removed one nature from the "triune nature of god" We can throw the whole doctrine out. Then we can realize why The LORD stressed so many times. "THE LORD IS ONE AND HIS NAME ONE"

In CHRIST JESUS :hug: :hug:


  • Group:  Diamond Member
  • Followers:  1
  • Topic Count:  31
  • Topics Per Day:  0.00
  • Content Count:  881
  • Content Per Day:  0.10
  • Reputation:   11
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  03/16/2002
  • Status:  Offline

Posted

What religious groups deny the Trinity? What are their names?

Is Pentecostal oneness exactly the same as Jesus only? Are there any others?

Guest Mel2
Posted

The Triune Divine Family of God

1 John 5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

1 John 5:8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

Gen 1:26-27

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

"Let us.." more than one person.(Father, Son, Holy Spirit)

"our image"... Nearest resemblance. Only Christ is the express image of God

Guest idied2
Posted
:1 John 5:7  and these three are one.

You overlooked this part of the virse. If they are one their nature is the same. making the "triune natures of GOD" not a true statement. Making this just another false catholic doctrine.

Gen 1:26-27

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Ge 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Which one of these scriptures out of the same bible is correct. could it be that because you are believing a false doctrine you have chosen to overlook the scriptures that say so.

What religious groups deny the Trinity? What are their names?

As far as I know only the elect, the saints, CHRIST the first fruits, who are not complete yet.

And this question is for everyone. Was CHRIST'S birth part of creation?

In CHRIST JESUS :hug: :hug:

Guest Mel2
Posted

God in Christ, The only revelation of the Fatherhood of God.

Having found not better answer, nor to express this great truth more clearly, the following is offered for your review and consideration....

By Robert E. Speer

Secretary, Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.

New York City

"They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God. And these things will they do, because they have not known the Father nor me." (John 16:2-3).

These words suggest to us that it is not enough for a man just to believe in God. Everything depends on what kind of a god it is in whom he believes. It is a rather striking and surprising comparison at first that our Lord institutes here between a mere belief in God and the possibly horrible moral consequences, on the one hand, and a knowledge of God in Christ and its sure moral effects, on the other. And the lesson would seem to he the inadequacy of any religious faith that does not recognize the revelation of the Father in Jesus Christ and that does not know Jesus Christ as God. It is a little hard for us to take such a great thought as this into our lives, and yet our Lord puts it in unmistakable clearness: on the one hand, the moral inadequacy of a mere belief in God; on the other hand, the moral and spiritual adequacy of a recognition of God as Father exposed in Christ as God.

THEISM IS NOT SUFFICIENT

In the former of these two verses our Lord makes the first of these two points unmistakably clear. He saw no adequate guarantee of moral rectitude and justice in a mere theistic faith. He suffered in His own death the possibly bitter fruits of a mere theistic faith. The men who put Him to death were ardent believers in God, and they thought they were doing a fine thing for God when they crucified the Son of God. And He told His disciples that the day would come when conscientious men would take out service of God in executing them, and that those who would put them to death would not be bad men, but men who thought that by killing them they were doing God's will.

We see exactly the same great error in our own day. It is no sufficient protection to a man to believe in one God. There are no more rigid monotheists in the world than Muslims, and there are some who tell us that in India the moral conditions of the Muslims are even worse than the moral conditions of the polytheistic Hindus around about them. It is not so much a matter of how many gods you believe in. I would rather believe in three good gods than in one bad one. One religion is superior to another religion, not because it has less or more gods than that other religion, but because the character of its gods is superior to the character of the gods of that other religion. Our Lord understood completely that a mere faith in God was not going to make a good man, that a man might believe in God and be a murderer, or an adulterer, he might believe in God and put the very apostles of Jesus Christ to death and think that thus he was doing God a great service.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS IS NOT SUFFICIENT

It seems to me that it is worth while to stop here for a moment incidentally to note how easy a thing it is for a man to be guilty of conscientious error and crime. It is no defense of a man's conduct to say that he is conscientiously satisfied with what he did. I suppose that most bad things have been done in all good conscience, and that most of the sins that we commit today we commit with a perfectly clean conscience. There is such a thing as a moral color-blindness that is just as real as a physical color-blindness. I was visiting a little while ago one of our well-known girls' schools, and had a discussion with one of the teachers, who said that she thought it did not make so much difference what a pupil believed or did, provided only she was conscientious in her belief and conduct. I told her that it must be quite easy to go to school to her if it did not matter whether you answered right or not, if only you were conscientiously honest in what you said. She might get two absolutely contrary answers to a question and mark each one of them perfect. The whole foundations of the moral universe fall out from beneath the man or the woman who will take that view of it, that there is not really any objective standard of right or wrong at all, that everything hinges on just how a person feels about it, and if they only feel comfortable over the thing it is all right. These men who were going to put the disciples of Jesus Christ to death had no qualms of conscience about it. They would think in doing it that they were doing God a service. The idea that our Lord means to bring out is this, that the standards of a man are dependent upon his conception of God, and He saw no guarantee of moral rectitude and justice in a man's life except as that man grasped the revelation of God as Father that had been made in Jesus Christ, and himself knew Jesus Christ as God.

CHRIST'S MENTION OF "THE FATHER"

There is no room here to trace this great thought through all the teaching of our Lord, but it would be a good and helpful thing if many of us would take the four Gospels and sit down with two sheets of paper, and write down on one sheet everything that Jesus had to say about the Father, and on the other every mention in Christ's teaching of the name of God. Lately, I read through the last discourses of Jesus in John with this in mind. Only four times does Jesus so much as mention the name of God, while He speaks of the Father at least forty times. Evidently our Lord conceived that His great message to men was a message of God as Father revealed in His own life, and He conceived this to be a great practical moral truth, that was to save men from those errors of judgment, of act and of character about which a man has no sure guarantee under a mere monotheistic faith.

1. I think we might just as well now go right to the heart of the thing by considering, first of all, THE RELATIONSHIP OF THIS REVELATION THAT JESUS CHRIST MADE OF THE FATHER-CHARACTER OF GOD IN HIMSELF TO OUR OWN RELIGIOUS FAITH. We begin our Christian creed with the declaration, "I believe in God the Father Almighty." I believe that no man can say those words sincerely and honestly, with an intellectual understanding of what he is saying, who is not saying them with his feet solidly resting on the evangelical conviction; for we know practically nothing about God as Father except what we learn from the revelation of God as Father in Jesus Christ. Men say sometimes that the idea of God as Father was in the Old Testament, and there is a sense doubtless in which we can find it there: a patriotic sense for one thing, a poetic sense for another thing. The Hebrews thought of God as the Father, the national Father of Israel.

Now and then there is some splendid burst in the prophets that contains that idea, as when Jeremiah, crying out for God, says, "I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn" (Jer 31:9). Or when Israel is itself crying out through Isaiah, "Jehovah is our Father. He is the potter and we are the clay." But in each sense it is a sort of nationalistic conception of God as the Father of the whole people Israel. And even when the note comes out poetically, it is patriotic still. Turn some time to Ps 103, where there is the best expression of it, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him" (Ps 103:13), and even there it is the national cry. Or turn to Ps 89, and there, too, it is national and patriotic: "And he shall cry unto me, Jehovah, thou art my Father, my God; and the rock of my salvation" (Ps 89:26). And if in all the great body of the religious poetry of Israel there are only two or three distinct notes of the fatherhood of God, we cannot believe that that idea filled any very large place in the heart of Israel. And in the very last of all the Old Testament prophecies, the complaint of God is just this, that the Israelites would not conceive of Him as their Father, and that even the political conception of God as the Father of the nation was no reality in the experience of the people.

A NEW CONCEPTION

The revelation of God as the Father of men was a practically new conception exposed in the teaching and in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ-not in His teaching alone. We should never have known God as Father by the message of Jesus Christ only; we should never have been able to conceive what Christ's idea of God was if we had not seen that idea worked out in the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. It was not alone that He told us what God was. He said that when He walked before men, He was Himself one with the Father on Whom the eyes of men might gaze: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also; from henceforth ye have known Him and have seen Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus said unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth His works" (John 14:6).

JOHN AND MATTHEW

We cannot separate the Christological elements of the Gospel from the Gospel. The effort is made by throwing the Gospel of John out of court, and then we are told that with the Gospel of John gone the real work of Christ was just in His message, making known the Father to men, and that the Christological character that we impose upon the Gospel was something foisted upon it later, and not something lying in the mind and thought of Jesus Christ Himself. But I do not see how men can take that view of it until they cut out also the 11 th chapter of Matthew. Christ sets forth there the essentially Christological character of His gospel just as unmistakably as it is set forth anywhere in the Gospel of John: "No man knoweth the Son save the Father; and no man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." What I mean is just this, that the only defense of the Unitarian position is a ripping of the Gospel apart so that you cannot recognize it as the Gospel any more. You cannot tear Christ's revelation of the fatherhood of God away from the person of Christ. He did not expose the fatherhood of God by what He said; He exposed the father-hood of God by what He was; and it is a species of intellectual misconception to take certain words of His and say those words entitle us to believe in God as our Father, while we reject Jesus Christ as His divine Son, and think that it is possible to hold to the first article of our Christian creed without going on to the second article of it, "And I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."

If you and I subtract from our conception of God what we owe to the person of Jesus Christ, we have practically nothing left. The disciples knew that they would have little left. When it was proposed that they should separate themselves from Christ and the revelation that He was making, these men stood absolutely dumbfounded. "Why, Lord," they said, "what is to become of us? We have no place to go. Thou hast the words of eternal life. There is nothing for us in Judaism any more." Monotheism was in Judaism; the revelation of God was in Judaism; but that was nothing to the disciples now that they had seen that glorious vision of His Father made known to men in Jesus Christ His Son. It would seem to follow that our attitude towards Jesus Christ is determinative of our life in the Father, and that the imagination that we have a life in the Father that rests on a rejection of the' claims of Jesus Christ is an imagination with no foundations under it at all.

Take those great words of our Lord: "He that loveth me not keepeth not my words; and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. If man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him" (John 14:24). All through these last discourses of Jesus you come upon the two terms, "word" and "words." In the Greek they are not just the singular and the plural of the same word. The word that is translated "word" here is the same word that in the beginning of this Gospel is translated "word," logos (NT:3056), which does not mean the utterances of Jesus, which does not mean. the things that Jesus said, which does not mean the ideals of life that Jesus erected. We are not complying with that condition when we try to be kind and unselfish and to obey the Golden Rule. What Jesus is setting forth there as the condition of a right attitude toward God is a man's acceptance of the inner secret of His own life, a man's deliberate committing of himself to the great principles that underlie the character and the person of Jesus. a sympathetic union with Himself. And He summed it all up in those words to Philip, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). It is in this sense, I say, that you and I cannot honestly declare that we "believe in God the Father" unless we go right on to say, "And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." for we know practically nothing about God as Father except what was revealed of God as Father in Him Who said, "I and the Father are one." Do we believe in the fatherhood of God in that sense?

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

2. Perhaps we can answer that question better by going on to ask, in the second place, whether we are REALIZING IN OUR LIVES ALL THE PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THIS REVELATION OF THE FATHER-CHARACTER OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST. For one thing, think how it interprets the mystery and the testing of life. Now life is simply an enigma on the merely theistic hypothesis. We get absolutely no comfort, no light, no illumination upon what we know to be the great problem of life from a simple belief in God. It only becomes intelligible to us as we understand God to be our Father in the sense in which Jesus Christ revealed Him. Dr. Babcock used to put it in the simple phrase: "You have got to take one of two interpretations of it. You have got to read your life in the terms of fate, or you have got to read it in the terms of fatherhood." Once I accept the revelation of God made in Jesus Christ, my life is still a hard problem to me. There are many things in it that are terribly confused and difficult still; but I begin to get a little light on its deep and impenetrable mysteries. It was just in this point of view that the writer of the great epistle to the Hebrews thought he had some clue to the mystery of his own life, to the chastening of it, to the hard and burning discipline through which he sees we are all passing. It was only when he conceived of himself as being a son of the great Potter Who was shaping the clay Himself that the mystery began to clear a little from his pathway. And it was just so, you remember, that Christ got light on the mystery of His life: "Father, not my will, but thine be done" (Luke 22:42). Only as He remembered and rested deeply upon the character of God as His Father did those great experiences through which He was passing have full intelligibility to Him. After all, it was no fancy that connected the two great ideas of Isaiah, the living idea of the fatherhood of God and the metaphorical idea of God as the Potter shaping his clay. It is only so that we understand both aspects of our human life. We turn to Rabbi Ben Ezra and see the mystery wrought out there:

"He fixed thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent.

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed."

When the wheel moves fast, and the hand of the Potter seems cruel upon the clay, and the friction is full of terrible heat, we begin to understand something of it all in realizing that the Potter's hand is the hand of a Father shaping in fatherly discipline the life of His son. "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as sons" (Heb 12:7).

OUR IDEALS

Or think, in the second place, how this conception of God inspires and rectifies the ideals of our lives. It was this that suggested the idea to Jesus here. He saw that there was absolutely no guarantee of right standards of life in a mere theistic faith, and there are none. We cannot morally trust Unitarianism if we take it away from living contact with the evangelical tradition. There is too much loose, subjective caprice in it, there is not enough firm and unassailable anchorage in the objective realities of a revelation of the character of God made known to us in His divine Son. We have no guarantee whatever of just and perfect moral ideals that we do not get from the exposure of the father-character of God in the person of Jesus Christ and from personal union with God in Him.

As a simple matter of fact the best ideals of our life we all owe to just that revelation. The ideal of purity-the Jews never had it. They had an ideal of ritual cleanliness, but they had no Christian ideal of moral purity. You cannot find the ideal of purity anywhere in the world where the conception of the father-revelation of God in Christ has not gone. Explain it as you will, it is a simple fact of comparative religion. Can any man find the full ideal of moral purity anywhere in this world where it has not been created by the revelation of the father-character of God in Christ? We owe it to that, and we can not be sure of its perpetuation save where the conviction of that great revelation abides in the faith of man.

Or take our ideal of work. Where did Christ get His ideal of work? "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17). On what ground did He rest His claim upon men to work? "Son, go work today in my vineyard." Our whole ideal of a workingman's life, of a man's using his life to the fullness of its power in an unselfish service is an ideal born of the revelation of the father-character of God in Christ. And forgiveness is an ideal of the same kind. We owe all the highest and noblest ideals of our life to that revelation. And it seems to us something less than fair for a man to take those ideals and then deny their origin, trampling under foot the claims of Him from Whom those ideals came into our lives.

IT SWEETENS OBEDIENCE

And think how rational and sweet this conception of God makes obedience. There is something rational but hardly sweet in the thought of obedience to Him under the simple theistic conception. All the joy of obedience comes when I think of myself as my Father's son and sent to do my Father's will. Our Lord thought of His life just so. "Simon," He said that last night that Simon tried to defend Him by force-"put up thy sword into its sheath. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" We get our ideals of obedience and the joy and the delight of obedience from the thought that after all we are simply to obey our Father. In the 14 th chapter of the Gospel of John, we get a little vision of what Christ conceives to be the sweetness and the tenderness and the beauty that can come into life from a real acceptance of this revealing of His. "In that day," He says, "ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself unto him. If a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him" (John 14:20).

(from The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Electronic Database. Copyright © 1997 by Biblesoft)

COURAGE AND HOPE

And what new courage and hope it brings into a man's life. You say to me, "Man, you have got to be like God," and I reply, "Take your preposterous blasphemy away. To be like God?" But you say to me, "He is your own Father, and you are His son. We are not asking you to become like that to which you are essentially unlike; we are simply asking you to become like your Father. It is His own nature in you that He will develop until restored to its full relationship to Him from Whom it came." You talk to us that way about our duty as men in the world, and it makes all the difference between death and life to us. If God the Father did not come near to men in Jesus Christ, I do not know what I am going to do; I do not know where to find the help that I know I need. Nowhere else in the world has any voice arisen to offer it to men. But if God came near men in Jesus Christ and thereby guaranteed our own kinship to Him, I may believe that I can become like Him Whose son I am. It is on just this ground that Paul makes his appeal: "Be ye therefore imitators of God as dear children."

RELATION TO PRAYER LIFE

3. And, last of all, think on THE LIGHT THAT THIS CONCEPTION OF GOD THROWS UPON OUR LIFE OF PRAYER. I suspect that prayer has been just a sham to many of us, or a thing that we have done because other people told us it was the thing to do. We never got anything out of it; it never meant anything to us. We might just as well have talked to stone walls as to pray the way we have prayed. We went out and said, "God," and we might just as well have said, "hills," or "mountains," or "trees," or anything else. Why have we not gone into the school of Christ and learned there, alike from His practice and His doctrine, what real prayer is and how a man can do it. You cannot find a single prayer of Christ addressed to God, not one; nor can you find a single prayer of Christ's in which He so much as mentions God. The third verse of the 17 th chapter of John, which says, "And this is eternal life, that they might believe in thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent," may be an exception, but you will find that Westcott, and others of the best New Testament commentators, regard that phrase as a parenthesis of John the Evangelist, and not part of our Lord's great prayer.

I hope I am not misunderstood. I am meaning only that Christ's conception of God and His practice of prayer did not rest merely on the theistic interpretation of the universe and the nature of its Creator in His majesty and almightiness. They rested on the father conception which He revealed in Himself. Just run over in your thought His prayers: the prayer that He taught us to pray, "Our Father, who art in heaven;" the prayer He offered Himself when the disciples of John the Baptist came to Him: "I thank thee, Father, lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and the understanding, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for it seemeth good in thy sight" (Matt 11:25; Luke 10:21; Acts 17:24); the prayer that He offered in the temple, when Philip and Andrew came to Him with the message about the Greeks who were seeking to see Him: "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour" (John 12:27); the prayer that He offered before the grave of Lazarus, "Father, I thank thee that thou hearest me, and I know that thou hearest me always" (John 11:41); the prayer that He put up in Gethsemane, "My Father, if this cup cannot pass from me except I drink it, thy will be done" (Matt 26:42); and the last prayer of all, when, as a tired little child, He lay down in His Father's arms and fell asleep: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

He never pushed God off into His almightiness; not once in all His life of supplication can you find Him dealing with God in this way. He never smote the heart with the chill of the divine attributes. You may be recalling, perhaps, that one cry of His from the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Ps 22:1; Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34).-a quotation from one of the Psalms and a shout of victory. I think that could be demonstrated to be a shout of victory and not a cry of isolation; but that alone would be your exception. All the other times it was, "Father," "my Father," "holy Father," "righteous Father"-sometimes, we may believe, in the quiet intimacy of His secret consciousness, "my dear Father." What a reality this conception of prayer gives to it. We are not praying to any cold theistic God alone; we are praying to our Father made real to us, warm with the warmth of a great tenderness for us, living with a great consciousness of all our human suffering and struggle and conflict and need.

It makes prayer, for one thing, a rational thing. I can go to my Father and ask Him for the things that I need. There is an exquisite passage in Andrew Bonar's journals in which he speaks of sitting one day in his study and looking out of his window and seeing two of his children pass through the fields. He said as he saw those little children making their way across the fields, the love in his heart overcame him, and he pushed his books away from him on the table, and went to the door and called out across the field to them, and they came running eagerly in response to their father's loving call. And when they had come, and he had caressed them, he said he gave each one of them something simply because the ecstasy of his fatherly love made it impossible that he should not do something then for those two children who were so dear to his heart. Do you suppose that God is an inferior sort of a father? Do you suppose that there are impulses in us toward our children, or in our fathers toward us, that are not simply just the dim and the faded suggestion of nobler and diviner impulses of the father heart of God? Prayer in the sense of supplication for real things becomes a rational reality to men who believe in God in Jesus Christ.

FELLOWSHIP

And how sweet it makes prayer in the sense of living fellowship. Do you suppose that we are nobler characters than that great Father after Whom these human fatherhoods of ours are named? Do you suppose that if it is sweet to us to have our little children come creeping to us in the dark, it is not sweet to our heavenly Father here, everywhere, to have men, His sons, come stealing to His side and His love? This is no excessive way of putting it. Is it not guaranteed to us by those words which our Lord spoke that Easter morning as He stood there by His open grave, and the woman who adored Him was about to clasp His feet, "Mary, go and tell my disciples that I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, my God and your God" (John 20:17). Yes, that is the right way to put it today. No God for us, nowhere through the whole universe a real and satisfying God for us, except the God Who is discovered to us in Jesus Christ, and Who is calling to us today by the lips of Christ, "My son, O my son," and Who would have us call back to Him, if we be true men, "My Father, O my Father."

In the Love of Christ Jesus,

Mel2


  • Group:  Diamond Member
  • Followers:  1
  • Topic Count:  16
  • Topics Per Day:  0.00
  • Content Count:  557
  • Content Per Day:  0.07
  • Reputation:   10
  • Days Won:  0
  • Joined:  05/07/2004
  • Status:  Offline
  • Birthday:  09/21/1976

Posted

Personally I believe in One God, and that one God has chosen to separate Himself to make lesser parts of Himself, that is how we get the trinity, but then also I believe anyone in The One God who choose to separate Himself, also is apart of The One God yet being less then The One God in One, and in Three, and thus they are other manifestations of The One, and Three, and we know according to scripture although there is One God both in One, and Three, that The Father is Lord, and God, and Father of all.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Our picks

    • You are coming up higher in this season – above the assignments of character assassination and verbal arrows sent to manage you, contain you, and derail your purpose. Where you have had your dreams and sleep robbed, as well as your peace and clarity robbed – leaving you feeling foggy, confused, and heavy – God is, right now, bringing freedom back -- now you will clearly see the smoke and mirrors that were set to distract you and you will disengage.

      Right now God is declaring a "no access zone" around you, and your enemies will no longer have any entry point into your life. Oil is being poured over you to restore the years that the locust ate and give you back your passion. This is where you will feel a fresh roar begin to erupt from your inner being, and a call to leave the trenches behind and begin your odyssey in your Christ calling moving you to bear fruit that remains as you minister to and disciple others into their Christ identity.

      This is where you leave the trenches and scale the mountain to fight from a different place, from victory, from peace, and from rest. Now watch as God leads you up higher above all the noise, above all the chaos, and shows you where you have been seated all along with Him in heavenly places where you are UNTOUCHABLE. This is where you leave the soul fight, and the mind battle, and learn to fight differently.

      You will know how to live like an eagle and lead others to the same place of safety and protection that God led you to, which broke you out of the silent prison you were in. Put your war boots on and get ready to fight back! Refuse to lay down -- get out of bed and rebuke what is coming at you. Remember where you are seated and live from that place.

      Acts 1:8 - “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses … to the end of the earth.”

       

      ALBERT FINCH MINISTRY
        • Thanks
        • This is Worthy
        • Thumbs Up
      • 3 replies
    • George Whitten, the visionary behind Worthy Ministries and Worthy News, explores the timing of the Simchat Torah War in Israel. Is this a water-breaking moment? Does the timing of the conflict on October 7 with Hamas signify something more significant on the horizon?

       



      This was a message delivered at Eitz Chaim Congregation in Dallas Texas on February 3, 2024.

      To sign up for our Worthy Brief -- https://worthybrief.com

      Be sure to keep up to date with world events from a Christian perspective by visiting Worthy News -- https://www.worthynews.com

      Visit our live blogging channel on Telegram -- https://t.me/worthywatch
      • 0 replies
    • Understanding the Enemy!

      I thought I write about the flip side of a topic, and how to recognize the attempts of the enemy to destroy lives and how you can walk in His victory!

      For the Apostle Paul taught us not to be ignorant of enemy's tactics and strategies.

      2 Corinthians 2:112  Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. 

      So often, we can learn lessons by learning and playing "devil's" advocate.  When we read this passage,

      Mar 3:26  And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end. 
      Mar 3:27  No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strongman; and then he will spoil his house. 

      Here we learn a lesson that in order to plunder one's house you must first BIND up the strongman.  While we realize in this particular passage this is referring to God binding up the strongman (Satan) and this is how Satan's house is plundered.  But if you carefully analyze the enemy -- you realize that he uses the same tactics on us!  Your house cannot be plundered -- unless you are first bound.   And then Satan can plunder your house!

      ... read more
        • Oy Vey!
        • Praise God!
        • Thanks
        • Well Said!
        • Brilliant!
        • Loved it!
        • This is Worthy
        • Thumbs Up
      • 230 replies
    • Daniel: Pictures of the Resurrection, Part 3

      Shalom everyone,

      As we continue this study, I'll be focusing on Daniel and his picture of the resurrection and its connection with Yeshua (Jesus). 

      ... read more
        • Praise God!
        • Brilliant!
        • Loved it!
        • This is Worthy
        • Thumbs Up
      • 13 replies
    • Abraham and Issac: Pictures of the Resurrection, Part 2
      Shalom everyone,

      As we continue this series the next obvious sign of the resurrection in the Old Testament is the sign of Isaac and Abraham.

      Gen 22:1  After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
      Gen 22:2  He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

      So God "tests" Abraham and as a perfect picture of the coming sacrifice of God's only begotten Son (Yeshua - Jesus) God instructs Issac to go and sacrifice his son, Issac.  Where does he say to offer him?  On Moriah -- the exact location of the Temple Mount.

      ...read more
        • Well Said!
        • This is Worthy
        • Thumbs Up
      • 20 replies

×
×
  • Create New...