The Trinity: June 2010
Table of Contents
The Trinity
The subject of this issue is beyond understanding. Yet, many things we know and enjoy are also beyond our understanding. As creatures we are finite while God is infinite. So He is beyond human understanding. But, blessed be God, He has chosen to reveal Himself to us through the Son in a way that we can know Him and worship Him.
We know the love of Christ, yet it “passeth knowledge.” The peace of God shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus, yet it “passeth all understanding.” The depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God produce “unsearchable judgments” and “ways past finding out.”
Wigram comments on this subject: “The human mind often makes great difficulties for itself on the subject of the Trinity—difficulties that do not exist. People have often said to me, ‘I do not like that word Trinity; I do not see how there can be three in one, and one in three.’ My answer is very simple: ‘I have no particular love for the word, yet I have a particular love for the truth which men have coined that word to represent, though I cannot say I understand it’ ” (adapted).
Let us not allow what we cannot understand to limit our enjoyment of our infinite God as He has revealed Himself to us.
God Fully Revealed
As another has said, it is a solemn but blessed thought that God has now been fully revealed. Surely man cannot have any relationship at all with God unless God chooses to reveal Himself. In consequence, the greater the revelation of God, the nearer and more blessed the relationship with Him, but also the greater the condemnation if this revelation is rejected. In the Old Testament God “at sundry times and in divers manners spake . . . unto the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1), but it was always and only a partial revelation of God. God has now “spoken to us in Son” (Heb. 1:2 JND) and has chosen to reveal Himself fully through Him, for the good pleasure of the Godhead was that all its fullness should dwell and display itself in Christ.
Man in Relationship
This marvelous fact is at once a wonderful privilege, but also brings man into serious responsibility. To think that God, who is infinite and thus unable to be known by His finite creatures, should choose to reveal Himself in Son, by that Son’s becoming a man and coming into the world! More than this, that revelation had as its object the ultimate blessing of man and the bringing him into a relationship with God that no human mind could ever have thought possible. For those who accept Christ as the revelation of God, the blessing is such that all eternity will not be enough for the display and enjoyment of it.
On the other hand, the full revelation of God only served to bring out more fully the total depravity of the human race and man’s opposition to God as revealed in Christ. Having fully revealed Himself, and in love and grace, too, God (we speak reverently) can do no more. If man rejects love and grace as well as truth (and all this was revealed and fully displayed in Christ), God must then act in judgment, although it is “His strange work” (Isa. 28:21).
For the believer, there are wonderful blessings associated with the full knowledge of God — blessings which are peculiar to Christianity in this time of God’s grace. We would like to mention a few of these, although it is beyond the scope of this article to go into detail concerning these blessings.
God As Our Father
First of all, we are brought into the knowledge of God as our Father. In the Old Testament, God was revealed as God Almighty and as Jehovah — as God Almighty to the patriarchs and as Jehovah to Israel. Neither of these fully represented God’s character to man, but now He has been revealed to the church as Father. It is in connection with God’s revelation as Father that we have eternal life, for while those in the Old Testament surely had new life, the expression “eternal life” was never applied to it. Christ came to reveal the Father, and as the Son, He was the only One able to do so. More than this, since His (Christ’s) work on the cross, He has brought us into that same blessed relationship with the Father. He could say to Mary Magdalene, “I ascend unto My Father, and your Father” (John 20:17). Prior to this, the Lord Jesus had spoken of “My Father,” “the Father,” and even “your Father,” but in this latter expression there was always the thought of “your heavenly Father.” Now we are free to call God our Father and to enjoy that relationship in all the nearness that Christ has brought us into. There cannot be anything more intimate than this.
But this revelation of God as Father was made by the Son, who became man in order to do this. “The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14). While the Person of the Son is a divine mystery and will remain so, yet He has fully revealed the Father. As man He walked through this world in company with men, experiencing all the sorrow that sin had brought upon them. He then died for us as a man and, having risen from the dead, will remain a man for all eternity, in order to enjoy our company. Well might the hymn writer say:
What raised the wondrous thought,
Or who did it suggest?
That we, the church, to glory brought,
Should with the Son be blest?
The Divine Revelation
The revelation of God in trinity has occasioned much controversy, not only among unbelievers, but even among Christians. All this ultimately stems from the age-old determination of man to grasp, in divine things, what is beyond his understanding. When he cannot do so, he reduces it to something he can understand. In so doing, he invariably corrupts the truth of God and falls into error. When God is revealed as the Father and the Son, man makes the mistake of reasoning from human relationships to try and understand divine ones, and in doing so always dishonors God and spoils his own enjoyment of what God has given. In human relationships, a father must exist before his son, and the son must be procreated by the father. But in divine relationships, Father and Son coexisted from all eternity — something the natural mind cannot understand. Rather than questioning or trying to understand, it is for us to bow in wonder and adoration! If we start with divine relationships and then go to what is human, God is glorified and man is far more blessed.
In addition to this is the revelation of relationship, for man was formed in the image and likeness of God. In knowing divine relationships, we can better understand human relationships, although they are of necessity inferior, because of the difference between finite and infinite. But the enjoyment of God as Father and Christ as the Son makes us realize that human relationships are patterned on, although not equal to, divine ones. It brings a dimension into our spiritual lives that was not there before and brings a pleasure that could not be known when God was not fully revealed.
The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit
Finally, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and He is present here on earth, dwelling in each believer individually and among believers collectively as the house of God. His coming is referred to as “the promise of the Father” (Acts 1:4), and the Lord Jesus could speak of “the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name” (John 14:26). The entire Trinity is involved in the blessing of the believer. It is by the Spirit of God that we are in direct association with Christ — a risen Christ in glory. The Spirit of God was known in the Old Testament, for it is recorded that He came upon individuals from time to time, enabling them to give out the mind of God and write the Holy Scriptures. However, consequent upon the glorification of Christ at God’s right hand, the Spirit has come down to take His place in this world until the church is called home.
To live during this time when the Spirit of God is here on earth is a tremendous privilege. He is here as the paraclete — one who takes charge of and looks after all of our affairs. He leads us into all truth, reveals the things of Christ to us, and gives us the enjoyment of Christ in our hearts. His ultimate goal is to make us more and more like Christ, for “in beholding . . . the glory of the Lord,” we are “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). He leads and guides both individually and collectively in our lives, for God’s glory and our blessing, whether in worship or service. This is a privilege that was not known before the day of Pentecost, nor will it be known on earth again after the church is called home.
Well may we say, along with another hymn writer:
Blest our portion thus to be
Glorying in the Trinity;
For the gospel from above,
For the word that “God is love.”
W. J. Prost
The Godhead
Every activity of the Godhead is always in trinity. The first time the name of God is mentioned in the Bible, the Hebrew word used is God in the plural. In the Hebrew language there is singular, dual and plural. The Hebrew word for God in the plural is Elohim. This is the word used in Genesis 1:1. The Hebrew word for God in the dual is Elohaim. It is never used in the Scripture. The Hebrew word for God in the singular is Eloah. The first time this is used is in Deuteronomy 32:15-17 where He is contrasted with idols.
The order in Scripture is always God the Father in purpose, the Son the One who carries out the purposes of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit the power by which they are fulfilled. This truth runs all through the Word of God.
Creation
It was the purpose of God the Father that creation would be the sphere for the display of all His counsels (Eph. 1:9-10).
The Son is the One by whom all is created and upheld (John 1:1-4; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:1-3).
The Holy Spirit is the power in creation (Psa. 104:30).
Redemption
God the Father in His love purposed the blessing of man (John 3:16). “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Christ in the obedience of love accomplished the work of redemption (Heb. 10:7-10).
He (Christ) “through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God” (Heb. 9:14).
Resurrection
God the Father raised Christ from the dead (Acts 3:15).
Christ, the Son, raised Himself from the dead (John 10:18).
The Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead (Rom. 8:11; 1 Peter 3:18).
God, the Son
As Man, He could be hungry, thirsty and weary, that He might be a sympathetic High Priest. As God, He could still the winds and the waves. He could raise the dead. He could open His disciples’ understanding. He could and did communicate power. He knew the thoughts of those about Him. He could and did foretell the manner of His death.
He is the eternal I Am (John 8:58).
To deny the full Godhead glory of the Lord Jesus Christ is to turn one’s back on the only Saviour. Those who do so will die in their sins (John 8:24). The Scripture says, “None . . . can by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him” (Psa. 49:7), but the Lord Jesus was perfect God and perfect man as He walked here on earth. It is His Person (God the Son) that gives value to the work of atonement He accomplished when lifted up on the cross (John 3:14). Thus we see that in order to have the knowledge of salvation as in John 3:16, one must believe in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).
H. E. Hayhoe
The Trinity in Unity
God is one, but He never was or ever could be fully revealed as one. He was made known to be one in contrast with a multiplicity of gods, but at that time He was not fully revealed. He existed always in trinity in unity. I do not pretend to understand this, but I know it, because, when God is fully revealed, He is so revealed. When He was made known as one (Deut. 6:4), He did not allow Himself to be approached, but dwelt behind the veil. He used various sensible figures to show that He was not known, that the true light did not shine, and that the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest.
God Revealing Himself
But when He does reveal Himself, the Son is on earth, yet in the bosom of the Father. He is the image of the invisible God. He that has seen Him has seen the Father. The light of God was in the world, but man did not see nor comprehend it. The revealed One, the Father, was known in goodness by the Son. Though the invisible God was made known by Him who was His image, yet if He had ceased to be invisible, Christ would have ceased to be a special revealer and image. If He had not perfectly shown and revealed Him as really manifested (that is, if he had not been God), there would have been no revelation. If he had not been Son, He could not have revealed the Father to us as such.
But this is not all. The darkness did not comprehend the light. The Holy Spirit became power to give competency of understanding and to reveal, as the communicating power, having quickened us so as to have a capacity to understand. I am not saying this by mere deduction, but from the revelation of God.
God’s Nature
Without the Trinity, love, righteousness and holiness were not known — the spiritual nature of God and purity as such. All the true nature of God, that is, what He is, without the Trinity is unknown. The Father wills; the Son quickens whom He will. But because we have separate wills, why would we necessarily desire to have the Father and the Son? The Spirit distributes to whom He will, but this is not separate from the will of the Father and the Son. They have not the same counsel but one counsel, mind, purpose, thought; yet they act distinctly in the manifestation of that counsel. The Father sends the Son, and the Son the Spirit. Yet when the Son comes, He is not thereby separate from the Father. “The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works” (John 14:10). So Christ casts out demons by the Spirit of God; yet He casts them out. There is unity in all that constitutes oneness when we speak spiritually — not unity as one by arriving at the same things, or union, or by being united as we are by having only one Spirit dwelling in all, but — by being one in eternal being, so that all else flows from that one will and counsel, yet so as that distinction in action in that will is revealed to us. This is not distinct will, but distinct willing.
Not that I have the least pretension to understand this divine mystery where all are God, all one God, God all three; yet the Father is revealed, the Son reveals, and the Holy Spirit quickens and makes known. The Son who reveals is not different from the Father whom He reveals, or He would not reveal Him. By the Spirit who quickens and makes known, we are born of God and know God dwelling in us. He reveals Him to us by His own presence and is in every way the power of God, active in the creature.
The Finite and Infinite
Nor could the creature reach to God, or God would not be God. It is simply impossible, for if finite reaches to infinite, there is neither finite nor infinite. And the infinite God could not, as such, reveal Himself to a finite creature. Nor is this mentally true only, for if God in His glory had done so, the creature could not have existed before Him. So if morally revealed (that is, as righteous and holy, and in essential glory), man could not have stood before Him. Man was morally contrary. Not even love would do, for what was it to man as he was? There was no link, no desire, and, if man was a sinner, no fitness in the simple display of it.
The Capacity for Communion
But in the Son by the Holy Spirit, by the work of Christ and the operation of the Holy Spirit, God is revealed, and in the love of the Father, righteousness and holiness are maintained and glorified, with capacity of communion in enjoyment of both the Father and the Son and intelligence of all these ways conferred by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Hence, while John says God so loved the world, we find, whenever he speaks of grace and power bringing man into the knowledge and enjoyment of God, he speaks of the Father and the Son, adding afterwards in the words of Christ the presence and work of the Comforter.
Distinction of Persons
and Unity of Nature
Thus we see that there could be no full revelation of God but through the Son by the Spirit, and thereby of the Father. The full revelation of the one God is only thus — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is what the one God is, one identity of will and being, so that they are essentially one and one only, yet distinct in willing and acting (and we can distinguish them in willing and acting: hence we commonly speak of persons), yet never willing or acting but in the common will and unity of nature.
I fear much human language on this. But I affirm that the only full revelation of the one true God is the revelation of Him through the Trinity. Our prayers rise up the same. Through Him (Christ the Son) we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
Selected from J. N. Darby
The Unity of the Godhead
The unity of the Godhead was the great doctrine of the Old Testament, and this in contrast to the plurality of the gods of the heathen. There were hints constantly given, and no doubt in measure seen to faith, that more was coming, and behind all this. But the unity of the Godhead was the subject in hand. “Hear, Israel, Jehovah our Elohim [God] is one Jehovah” (Deut. 6:4 JND). “Unto thee it was shown, that thou mightest know that Jehovah, He is Elohim — there is none other besides Him” (Deut. 4:35 JND).
The Trinity Revealed
The Trinity of the Persons was never known in the soul until the Holy Spirit was given to dwell in us. Hence, even the apostles knew not fully who it was who graciously walked with them on earth. If it had been possible for them to know that God was there — when the Son was revealing the Father on earth — it would have been possible to know God in duality; that is, that He could be known in but two persons. This could not be. The Son reveals the Father on earth, the Father dwells in Him and does the works, but the Holy Spirit was the power by which the Son cast out devils — all was presented to man. But Christ must die and rise again and go on high and give the Holy Spirit to those that obey Him, and now, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I know the Father, revealed in and by the Son. One God is thus known in the Trinity of the Persons, as a subjective truth in the consciousness of the soul. Peter might say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and have a divinely-given revelation of this from the Father, but it was inoperative at the time, as many things are in ourselves, until known subjectively in our souls. A few verses later on in Matthew 16 he shows that flesh was not broken in him up to the height of the revelation, and indeed it never had its power until he afterwards received the Holy Spirit. The Spirit given when Jesus was glorified made all the difference.
The Fullness of the Godhead
In Jesus “all the fullness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily.” There will never be and there could not be any further revelation of God, for all has been revealed, else the Son of God has not fulfilled His mission, which is simply impossible. The Trinity of the Persons is made known, and the Son has taken manhood into the Godhead — wrought redemption and reconciled us to God by His death, and, risen with Him, we are sealed with the Spirit of God, and thus before Him in Christ Jesus, and He in us before men. The one settles our place before God; the other, our duties before men.
The Distinction of Persons
There is no confounding the Persons of the Trinity, yet there is no separating them. Each Person (as we speak) does different things, yet all work in concert and in the unity of the Godhead. The Father sends the Son; the Son does not send the Father. The Son dies for me, not the Father. The Spirit sanctifies, quickens, yet so do the Father and the Son. All this is now known in Christianity and under grace and is quite different from what was hoped for by those under Promise or felt by those under Law. Under the former, the Patriarchs knew Him as El Shaddai (God Almighty). See Genesis 17:1 and Exodus 6:3. He was the all-powerful One, to watch over the pilgrim of faith. With Israel it was Jehovah — the self-existing One, who would bring to pass all He had promised. With us it is the Father, revealed by the Son and known by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us — one God in trinity. Yet He who is such to us — the Father — tells us that He is the same who was Almighty to the Patriarchs and Jehovah to Israel. Compare 2 Corinthians 6:18 and read “Jehovah” for “Lord,” where it has this significance.
The Knowledge
of God’s Character
You ask also, “Would the knowledge of the character of God alone give certainty?” In the abstract, I would reply, Yes. But I would qualify my answer by saying, that you could not know His character fully until the cross was past, so that the work of Christ must come in, as well as God having been revealed on earth. I may be attracted to Him as a Man on earth, but the conscience must be purged by His work which rends the veil, and all God’s character must be known, perfect in grace, face to face with man at his worst. With the knowledge of such a revelation there must be certainty.
F. G. Patterson
One God - One Mediator
“There is one God, one mediator also of God and men, Christ Jesus a man, who gave Himself a ransom for all, the testimony in its own times, to which I was appointed a preacher and apostle (I speak truth, I lie not), a teacher of Gentiles in faith and truth” (1 Tim. 2:5-7 WK).
The unity of God is the foundation truth of the Old Testament, as it was the central testimony for which the Jewish people were responsible, in a world where everywhere else was given over to idolatry. We must add that Jehovah, the God of Israel, was that one Jehovah, His proper name in relationship with His people on earth. “Ye are My witnesses, saith Jehovah, and My servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He; before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. I, even I, am Jehovah; and beside Me there is no Saviour” (Isa. 43:10-11 JND).
But during the Jewish economy, God, though known to be one, was not known as He is. “He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel.” He dwelt in the thick darkness, even where He surrounded Himself with a people for a possession, and a veil shrouded what display there was of the divine presence, so that the high priest approached but once a year, with clouds of incense and not without blood lest he die. It was only Jesus that made Him truly known, as we see (where it might least have been expected) by that act of incomparable grace in which He was fulfilling all righteousness when baptized of John in the Jordan. There, as the Holy Spirit descended on Him, the Father from heaven proclaimed Him to be His beloved Son. The Trinity stood revealed. It is in the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that God, the one God, is really known. Without Jesus this was impossible; when He takes the first step, the Trinity in unity shines out — love and light, wherein is no darkness at all. How infinite is our debt to the Word made flesh, who deigned to tabernacle with us, only-begotten Son who declared God and revealed the Father.
Thus, as we need, we have an adequate image of the invisible God, and this Jesus is mediator of God and men, though mediation, of course, goes farther than representation, for there are two parts in it, His manhood and His ransom, both of special moment if God is to be known and if sinful man is to be suitably blessed in the knowledge of God.
The mediator is a man, that God may be known of men. The Absolute is distinct from the relative by a gulf impassable to us. We creatures universally are relative. But if man cannot himself rise to God, and those of mankind who are, by grace, righteous would most of all repudiate and abhor so presumptuous a thought, God can and does in infinite love come down to man, to man in his guilt and misery with an endless judgment before him.
Bible Treasury, 15:90
The Baptism of Jesus
Jesus presents Himself for baptism, but He comes to place Himself in the midst of His people. Assuredly He does not join Himself with the rebellious and intractable people, but from the first step taken by those who, by grace, listen to the word of the testimony of God, from the first step in the good way, He is found with them in His infinite grace. We know and agree with the testimony of John that He who came had no need of repentance. Quite the contrary; He was fulfilling righteousness. But for His own, it was just the thing according to God. The life of God, which put forth its first breath in the atmosphere of God, took its first step in the divine way in the midst of men, toward the kingdom which was going to appear. He would not leave them there alone; He takes His place with them. Infinite grace, sweet thought, full of His love for the hearts of His own!
Note also how He abases Himself here to the level of His messenger: “Thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” He says, as it were, “You have your part, I Mine, in accomplishing the will of God.” There He is already a servant! He is baptized, and His place taken in the midst of His own — in the midst of the faithful remnant that walked under the effect of the power of God’s Word. And now where is He, the Servant, He who humbled Himself, who has His place with His poor people, the poorest of His flock? Heaven is open, the Holy Spirit descends on Him, the Father owns Him as His Son, He is the model of the position He has taken for us by redemption. Never had heaven so opened before; never had there been on earth an object which He could own as making His good pleasure. Now there was.
For us, too, the veil is rent, and heaven is open. We have been anointed and sealed by the Holy Spirit as Jesus was; the Father has owned us to be His beloved sons already in this world. He was such in His own proper and full right, worthy of being so in Himself. We are introduced by grace and redemption. But entered into the midst of His people, He shows what is the position which in Him belongs to them; as I have just said, He is its model. What happiness! What grace! But, carefully notice, His divine Person remains always such, a difference besides which is never lost, whatever be His abasement and His grace toward us. When heaven is open for Jesus, He has no object above to which He looks to fix His attention. He is Himself the object that heaven contemplates. When heaven is open for Stephen, as for us by faith, Jesus, the Son of Man, is his object in heaven, which is open for His servant. In grace the Lord takes a place with us. He never loses His own either for the Father or for the heart of the believer. The nearer we are to Him, the more we adore Him.
Note here also another thing. It is in and by the voluntary humiliation of Jesus that all the Trinity is for the first time fully revealed. The Son is there, the object especially conspicuous as man, the Holy Spirit comes and abides on Him, and the voice of the Father owns Him. Marvelous revelation associated with the position that the Son had taken! The Son is recognized as Jehovah in Psalm 2. The Holy Spirit is found everywhere in the Old Testament. But the full revelation of the three Persons in the unity of God — the basis of Christianity — is reserved for the moment when the Son of God takes His place in the midst of the poor of His flock, His true place in the race in which He had His delights, the sons of men. What grace is that of Christianity! What a place is that where our hearts are found. If taught of God, we have learned to know this grace and Him in whom it is come to us! Here, then, is our position according to this grace in Christ Jesus, before God our Father, accepted in the Beloved.
Adapted from J. N. Darby
Opposition to the Truth of the Trinity
Satan first deluded men by introducing the worship of many gods (polytheism) and then when God called Abraham and his seed to witness against this evil, Satan was ready with the lie that there were two gods—one of light and the other of darkness. God then spoke through Isaiah the prophet against the devil’s falsehood of dualism. Israel’s distinct testimony for God, insofar as there was faithfulness, was that Jehovah alone was God—Jehovah being the name by which He had revealed Himself in covenant relationship with Israel.
The Revelation of the Trinity
When we come to the New Testament, we find a further revelation of God, for there we find that there are three distinct Persons in the one Godhead—God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The word “Trinity” has been used to express this blessed truth. That each one of the Persons of the Godhead is God is definitely affirmed in the Scriptures: “My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God” speaks of the Father as God (John 20:17). “This is the true God, and eternal life” is conclusive evidence that the Son is God (1 John 5:20). Many verses speak of the distinctness of the Person of the Holy Spirit and of His deity. In Acts 5 Peter charged Ananias with lying to the Holy Spirit in verse 3, and then in verse 4 he says, “Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.” Of whom but God could it be said that He (the Holy Spirit) divides to every man severally as He will (1 Cor. 12:11)?
While there are intimations in the Old Testament that there are three Persons in the Godhead, it was not really disclosed until the baptism of the Lord Jesus—the Son—in the Jordan River. At that time the heavens were opened on that fair Object on earth, and the Father spoke to the Son, saying, “Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him (Mark 1:10-11; Matt. 3:16; Luke 3:22).
The Witness in the Old Testament
This revelation of the Trinity was obstinately refused by the Jews, although the Old Testament, which they professed to believe and honor, intimated it; for instance, the very first verse of Genesis 1 was an enigma until this light shone upon it. “In the beginning God created” as written in the Hebrew language has a plural noun (Elohim) combined with a singular verb (created). The inference very plainly is that Elohim includes the different Persons of the Godhead, and the singular verb indicates their acting as one in creation. (We should note, however, that when the creation is attributed to any one Person of the Godhead in particular, it is to the Son [Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2].) The same thing is also seen in connection with the creation of man. In Genesis 1:26 we read, “God [Elohim] said, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”
The Counterfeit
The day is coming soon when Satan will have another counterfeit with which to oppose the Trinity of the Godhead. He will himself head up a trinity of evil. He will give his power to the coming head of the revived Roman Empire (called in Scripture “the beast”), and together they will work with the apostate head of Israel in the land of Palestine (the false prophet that speaks lies) in a last, desperate attempt to frustrate God’s purposes concerning His King in Zion.
In one sense, the false prophet is called the antichrist, but in another sense the whole wicked triumvirate will be anti (or, against) Christ — Christ in His threefold character of prophet, priest and king. The head of the Jewish state will be “anti-prophet,” for he will speak lies and perform lying wonders; the head of the Roman confederacy will be “anti-king,” for he will be the ruler who will exercise great power and defy God and His Christ; the devil himself is “anti-priest,” for he is the accuser of the brethren, and at that time he will throw his power into the fight against the remnant who fear God.
All Enemies Put Down
But all the power and wit of man and devil shall not avail, for Christ will come at the appointed hour and cast the beast and false prophet into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20), and the devil will be cast into the bottomless pit for one thousand years, after which he will also be cast into the lake of fire where the beast and false prophet will still be (Rev. 20:1-3,10). All the might of the darkness of this world must give way before Him when He comes to make His enemies His footstool (Psa. 110:1), and He must reign until He shall have put all enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25). And to think that He will associate us who believe on Him in the day of His rejection with Himself in that day when He shall rule the nations with a rod of iron (Psa. 2:9; Rev. 2:27)!
“Lord, haste that day of cloudless ray,
That prospect bright, unfailing;
Where God shall shine in light divine,
In glory never fading.”
P. Wilson
Prayer to God
I cannot make a prayer to God without the whole Trinity. “Through Christ we have access by one Spirit to the Father.”
J. N. Darby
God’s Dealings With His Children
We who know, as individuals, the love of the Lord Jesus ought to have distinctly before our minds the unsearchableness of His Person, realizing that His glories are of the highest character possible. He Himself states it and says, “No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27). Any attempt to analyze and any feeling of our having comprehended the Son is all wrong. The Son has presented the Father and the Father’s plans, and it is not ours to comprehend Him by whom they have been presented.
The Creator
In Colossians 1 we find some amazing glories. Paul speaks of the image of the invisible God, the First-born of every creature, preeminent there, 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. John states it also. Not one thing was brought into existence but by Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. He that brings anything into existence must be above that thing, and indeed also above all things. He adds that they were created not only by Him, but for Him. All were connected with Him and with the manifestation of His divine glory. Again (vs. 17), “He is before all things.” He was before all, as He was the only cause of all, and the cause must have priority and superiority to every effect, and he adds, “By Him all things consist,” or stand together. He holds everything by the hand of His power.
Then he goes on to speak of redemption, the peculiar place He would hold to one part of the redeemed, “head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell; and having made peace by the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Col. 1:18-20).
The Church and Israel
He is looking forward to that amazing time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness: all brought by Himself under the power of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in heaven above Himself having the church, the bride, on earth having Israel, the nation under government and then under blessing, and everything that would not be subject sent down to the lake of fire.
Who, from first to last, is the doer of it all? The Son of God, the Man who loved me and gave Himself for me — the Man who hung between two malefactors on Calvary. Divine power was His; the name of everyone who should be with Him in glory was given to Him by the Father. What sort of person was that? Oh, beloved friends, the light which was active in the kingdom of creation was displayed. What a display of power, of tenderness, to those on earth! What an almighty power that will bring forth out of the dust all those who sleep in death and raise them to heavenly glory and fill the earth with a new race, equal to Him in the glory above, filling all, and forever, in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwells righteousness!
The Divine Plan
I think I can trace, from creation down, gradual steps from man set in the Garden of Eden down to the lowest order of creation. But from the highest expression of human perfection to the infinite God there is a chasm between the two. The smallest grain of sand carried by the wind had a nearer relation to me than I have as a creature to the almighty, infinite God. When I look to the end of what God is doing, I am astounded. There is the fullness of divine glory in a Man, and in all the height of that glory the perfect Man, and a people in heaven. Heaven was not made for man; the earth has He given to the sons of men. But a people are quickened by the Holy Spirit, adopted as children, clothed upon with glorious bodies, and down from Him the whole is blended together up to God. All the Father is presented in the Son, God in divine glory, the God-man on that throne, and a company prepared as the bride in the glory, and right down from that, step by step, it gives unity in what is before the divine mind.
Oh, what a place the Man that died on Calvary had in the mind of God the Father! No wonder Paul’s heart was bursting: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). “All spiritual blessings” — ours through Him, in Him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He chose us in Christ before the world was. The mind goes back to the place He had in the bosom of the Father. What do we understand by all spiritual blessings? Have we clear thoughts as to them? Could we sit down and write a list of them, just as of property in this life we could sit down and give a list? Blessings to Israel — what are they in comparison?
Communion
In divine things Scripture alone will not do; it is a matter of communion. Do we know what fellowship with the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is? People who do know would be likely to show it in their faces. Do we know what this means — what a blessed thing it is for the Father to have such a Son, and for that Son to have such a Father! To say, lying on your bed at night, “There they are up there; how blessed God is with such a Son! What a happy person Christ is to be the Son of such a Father — the Son who has brought forth all the riches of grace, so that even I can enjoy them!” The heart looks from one to the other, knowing the relationship and what the relationship involves, and delights in it. It is a little taste of the new creation.
We have to wait in patience with Him, not only for Him. He is waiting for His church which is created by God in Christ Jesus. But the church is created unto good works, and God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Are there no works to which you are created? The One who died for you, who lives for you — have you not got to live for Him? In great things? No, in little details. To eat to Him, to drink to Him, to sleep and wake to Him. How that ennobles the whole course of a Christian! When I go to rest, will the eye of Christ be on me? In the morning, when I start up, is it with Christ — to live to Christ? How can I? We are one spirit with Him.
Adapted from G. V. Wigram
The Unity of Love for Us
I have been deeply interested and touched by the reciprocity of interest between the Father and the Son in their love for us (John 17). Their communications are between themselves, or at least by the mouth of the Son who addresses the Father, and I learn the manner in which they share this love. The Father has given us to the Son; the Son has manifested to us the name of the Father. He has kept the disciples in the name of the Father; now the Father is to keep them. The Father is to bless them because they are His, but also because the Son is glorified in them. The Son has also given us all the words which the Father has given Him for His own joy. What a thought, that the Father and the Son think thus about us!
J. N. Darby
The Fullness of the Godhead
In the expression, “It pleased [the Father] that in Him should all fullness dwell” (Col. 1:19), the reader may see upon the face of it that the word “Father” is put in by our translators. This deprives us of the development of glory in the Person of our most blessed Lord. “All the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him.” In its present reading it is merely the pleasure of the Father about the Son, which I apprehend to be a mischievous derogation from the divine glory of the Son, to deprive us of the revelation of that in which to me Christianity consists — a revelation of the Trinity known in the relationship in which we are brought by faith to it. In chapter 2 we have the fact, “All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily” (Col. 2:9), that is, in the incarnation of the Son. While He was the Son in personal union with flesh as Jesus, there could be no separation of the Son from the Father or the Spirit, though most distinct in their relationship. Therefore the Lord says, though He Himself wrought the miracles, “The Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works” (John 14:10), and again, “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matt. 12:28). That He was the Son, however, is the direct object of faith, but revealing the Father, and therefore, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). In a word, the fullness of the Godhead (as is declared by the Spirit concerning Him) “dwelt in him bodily.” These things may be difficult as to human explanation, but not as to communion, where the Spirit of God is, for He reveals in communion, according to the power of truth, and no way else. And I believe that, while the human intellect will break itself to pieces against the glory of the divine revelation, the fullness of our joy and hope, the soundness of our Christianity, and, consequently, Christian strength and energy chiefly depend upon the distinctness with which we are cognizant of the unity and Trinity, withal made known to us in the incarnation, which is the revelation of it. I believe it to be a revelation, known, where only it can be known, in communion, by those made partakers of the Spirit by faith in Christ Jesus.
J. N. Darby, adapted
The Trinity
Praise we to the Father give,
God in whom we move and live;
Children’s praise He loves to hear;
Children’s songs delight His ear.
Praise we to the Firstborn bring,
Christ the Prophet, Priest and King;
Glad we raise our sweetest strain
To the Lamb that once was slain!
Praises for the Holy Ghost
Sent from heaven at Pentecost!
’Tis through Him alone we live,
And the precious truth receive.
Blest our portion thus to be
Glorying in the Trinity;
For the gospel from above,
For the word that “God is love.”
Montgomery, Little Flock
Hymnbook, #131