war and peace

Preaching Acts 22129

2006-06-09T09:27:00.000-07:00

Preaching Acts 22:1-29

LOVE
a.) To speak to them at all
it is amazing that he conquered those feelings and
had such compassion for people that he could call a group of men who had just tried to kill him “brothers” and then calmly and respectfully urge them to hear the message of Jesus. This is a kind of love that really is remarkable.
b.) to speak their heart language

Points of Identity

I am Jew by birth.

I was schooled by Gamiliel

I persecuted the church

Phil 3:  I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Romans 9  I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers and sisters, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

First,
he spoke of his Jewish birth and upbringing, and of
his training *in the law of our fathers* under Gamaliel (cf.
5:34), the most eminent teacher of that time and the leader of the
school of Hillel, whose disciple he had been. So his Jewishness
was incontrovertible. He was `a Hebrew of the Hebrews' (Phil. 3:5,
AV.).
Secondly,
he drew attention to his zeal for God, which was
as great as theirs, since he had persecuted  the followers of the
Way, both men and women, even to prison and to death. The
Sanhedrin could testify to this, since it was they who had issued
him with the extradition order which he took with him to Damascus.

     Thirdly,
Paul narrated the circumstances of his conversion,
which was entirely due to a divine intervention, and not at all to
any initiative of his own. A light from heaven had blinded him,
and the person who spoke to him had identified himself as Jesus of
Nazareth,
Fourthly,
Paul referred to the ministry of Ananias, whom
he deliberately characterized as *a devout observer of the law and
highly respected by all the Jews living there* in Damascus (12).
It was he who restored Paul's sight, who told him that *the God of
our fathers* had chosen him to know his will, see the Righteous
One, `hear his very voice' (14, NEB) and be his witness, and who
baptized him. Then fifthly, Paul came to his vision, which took
place in the very temple he was supposed later to have defiled,
and in which *the Lord* (Jesus is not mentioned by name) told him
to leave Jerusalem immediately, in spite of his reluctance and
objections. `Go', the Lord had said. `*I will send you far away to
the Gentiles.*' That is, *exapostelo se*, almost `I will make you
an apostle', indeed the apostle to the Gentiles (21:26:17; cf.
Gal. 1:16; 2:7-8).

Stopped
Paul

It was tantamount to saying that Jews and Gentiles were equal, for they both needed to come to God through Christ, and that on identical terms.  –Stott

     Looking back over Paul's defence, we may perhaps say that he
made two major points. The first was that he himself was a loyal
Jew, not only by birth and education but still. True, he was now a
witness where before he had been a persecutor. But the God of his
fathers was his God still. He had not broken away from his
ancestral faith, still less apostatized; he stood in direct
continuity with it. Jesus of Nazareth was `the Righteous One' in
whom prophecy had been fulfilled. And Paul's second point was that
those features of his faith which had changed, especially his
acknowledgment of Jesus and his Gentile mission, were not his own
eccentric ideas. They had been directly revealed to him from
heaven, the one truth in Damascus and the other in Jerusalem.
Indeed, nothing but such a heavenly intervention could have so
completely transformed him.

Intermediate Heaven vs. Eternal Heaven

2006-04-22T19:03:00.000-07:00

good, brief article on our layover and ultimate destination
EPM Resource - Intermediate Heaven vs. Eternal Heaven

chart

2006-04-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

creation fall redemption shalom/super-harmony

us & God

us & each other

us & ourselves

us & creation/environment

Shalom

2006-04-21T14:28:00.000-07:00

Specifically, instead of God’s shalom being
something into which we escape from this world, shalom is something that is poured from
above into the earth. This forms the distinction between a world-avertive approach to our
lives, and a world-embracing-healing approach. A world-avertive approach tends to see a
future of escape (e.g., Jesus as the captain of a lifeboat). A world-embracing-healing
approach believes that God is at work pouring out shalom on a broken world and seeks to
participate in that restoration. See the following quote that is commenting on why heaven is
depicted as a city and not a garden.
“…cities are noisy with self-assertion, forgetful and defiant of God, battering and abusive
to persons. The first city, Enoch, was built by the first murderer, Cain….Heaven surely,
should get us as far away from that as possible….Many people want to go to heaven the
way they want to go to Florida—they think the weather will be an improvement and the
people decent. But the biblical heaven is not a nice environment far removed from the
stress of hard city life. It is the invasion of the city by the City. We enter heaven not by
escaping what we don’t like, but by the sanctification of the place in which God has
placed us.”
Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder
Note, the direction spoken of here in Revelation is consistent with the direction
alluded to in the prayer “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven.”

all dallas willard, all good

2006-04-21T13:35:00.000-07:00

"I meet many faithful Christians who, in spite of their faith, are deeply disappointed in how their lives have turned out. . . . what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not. . . . Much of the distress of these good people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them."

"Those who have apprenticed themselves to Jesus learn an undying life with a future as good and as large as God himself. The experiences we have of this life . . . now fill us with anticipation of a future so full of beauty and goodness we can hardly imagine. . . . Our future can be incorporated into our life now and our life now can be incorporated into our future."

We should think of our destiny as being absorbed in a tremendously creative team effort, with unimaginable splendid leadership, on an inconceivable vast plane of activity, with ever more comprehensive cycles of productivity and enjoyment. This is the ‘eye hath not seen, neither ear heard' that lies before us in the prophetic vision (Isaiah 64:4)" (p. 399).

harps, crowns, gold

2006-04-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

"There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolic attempt to express the inexpressible . . . People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs."
------C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 118-9.

pearly gates

2006-04-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

pearly gates@Everything2.com

beautifully angry thoughts

2005-09-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

What do you hate? That question has come to me as one that can help someone define their calling ... either vocationally, what they will do as a career, or as a primary ministry area they'll pursue for a period. Example: I know a nurse who was in our church during UF days, now she's going to be trained as a biblical counselor she writes:

I'm hoping to eventually work with kids and families dealing with chronic illnesses- more specifically cancer and AIDS. In Nashville I worked on the Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplant unit and saw that those kids and families have to go through a lot- physically and emotionally- and a lot of the emotional stuff gets lost in the shuffle. I kind of felt that I wanted to minister to their spirits as well as their bodies.

I think another way of saying that could be: "I hate to see the emotional trauma lost in the shuffle when a family is dealing with these horrible physical trials."

Another person may say: "When i see the results of sin causing the destruction of the body it makes me angry. So angry that i want to learn how to do something to reverse/stop/slow down the spread of that destruction.

There's a song on the recent U2 album called Miracle Drug. Bono says: “We all went to the same school and just as we were leaving, a fellow called Christopher Nolan arrived. He had been deprived of oxygen for two hours when he was born, so he was paraplegic. But his mother believed he could understand what was going on and used to teach him at home. Eventually, they discovered a drug that allowed him to move one muscle in his neck. So they attached this unicorn device to his forehead and he learned to type. And out of him came all these poems that he’d been storing up in his head. Then he put out a collection called Dam-Burst of Dreams, which won a load of awards and he went off to university and became a genius. All because of a mother’s love and a medical breakthrough.”

In addition to the beautiful story as it already stands, Bono makes this amazing connection (i think) between the work of science and medicine and Jesus' command to "give a cup of cold water in my name".

Beneath the noise
Below the din
I hear a voice
It’s whispering
In science and in medicine
“I was a stranger
You took me in”

"In science and in medicine, i was a stranger you took me in."
There is one mother in Ireland who is glad that some scientists and doctors were beautifully angry about her boy being unable to communicate. And in serving the least of these, we serve Jesus.

anger....for parents

2005-09-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

You will be provoked.
You can’t avoid it: “Stumbling blocks are sure to
come” (Luke 17:1). When your child mocks or defies
you as a parent, you don’t simply observe in a
detached way, “Oh, that’s interesting. Now, I believe
I’m hearing and seeing something that perhaps fits
the category of ‘sin’. Why, yes indeed, as I think about
it, that pattern of words seems inconsistent with obedient
respect. Hmm, I wonder how I ought to handle
it?” Oh no! You are made to react emotionally. A child
is not supposed to mock his parents! The offense rightly
pushes a button and arouses something in you.
Now, that anger easily becomes sinful, but it needn’t.
It can be bridled: “Let’s deal with this.” The anger provides
energy to name clearly what was wrong, to discipline
the child, to talk with him, comfort him, and
give love to him. Anger is sinful and destructive if
punitive, righteous and loving if disciplinary.

vigilantes of love

2005-09-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

“Anger is the emotion that has been given by
God to attack problems…. The energies of anger
[must be] productively released under control toward
a problem. [Anger] must be directed toward destroying
the problem, not toward destroying the person….
Anger, like a good horse, must be bridled.” Jay Adams

justice & our children

2005-09-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Coronary Christians
We need to be more like the heart and less like adrenaline | by John Piper

February is Black History Month and National Heart Month. Feb. 24 is the 195th anniversary of England's abolition of the slave trade. Both the month and the day are worth remembering by American Christians weary of fighting racial injustice and abortion. They call us to be coronary Christians, not adrenal Christians.

Not that adrenaline is bad. It gets me through lots of Sundays. But it lets you down on Mondays. The heart is another kind of friend. It just keeps on serving—through good days and bad days, happy and sad, high and low, appreciated and unappreciated. It never lets me down. It never says, "I don't like your attitude, Piper, I'm taking a day off." It just keeps humbly lubb-dubbing along.

Coronary Christians are like the heart in the causes they serve. Adrenal Christians are like adrenaline—a spurt of energy and then fatigue. What we need in the cause of racial justice and justice for the unborn is coronary Christians. Marathoners, not just sprinters. People who find the pace to finish the race.

This is what I preached last month on our "Racial Harmony Sunday" and our "Sanctity of Life Sunday." O, for coronary Christians! Christians committed to great causes, not great comforts. I pleaded with the saints to dream a dream bigger than themselves and their families and their churches. I tried to un-deify the American family and say that our children are not our cause; they are given to us to train for the great causes of mercy and justice in a prejudiced, pain-filled, and perishing world.

My blood was boiling on this issue of rugged, never-say-die, Christian commitment to great causes because I've been brimming these days with the life of William Wilberforce. Now there was a coronary Christian in the cause of racial justice. He was deeply Christian, vibrantly evangelical, and passionately political in the House of Commons over the long haul in the fight against the African slave trade. On Oct. 28, 1787, he wrote in his diary at the age of 28, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of [Morals]." Battle after battle in Parliament he was defeated, because "The Trade" was so much woven into the financial interests of the nation. But he never gave up and never sat down. He was coronary, not adrenal.

On Feb. 24, 1807, at 4:00 a.m., 20 years later, the decisive vote was cast (Ayes, 283, Noes, 16) and the slave trade became illegal. The House rose almost to a man and turned toward Wilberforce in a burst of parliamentary cheers, while the little man with the curved spine sat, head bowed, tears streaming down his face (John Pollock, Wilberforce, p. 211).

The coronary Christian, William Wilberforce, never gave up. There were keys to his relentlessness. The greatness and the certainty of the rightness of the cause sustained him. Abolishing the slave trade was "the grand object of my Parliamentary existence."

"Before this great cause," he wrote in 1796, "all others dwindle in my eyes, and I must say that the certainty that I am right here, adds greatly to the complacency with which I exert myself in asserting it. If it please God to honor me so far, may I be the instrument of stopping such a course of wickedness and cruelty as never before disgraced a Christian country" (Pollock, p. 143).

He saw that adrenal spurts would never prevail: "I daily become more sensible that my work must be affected by constant and regular exertions rather than by sudden and violent ones" (Pollock, p. 116). He had learned the secret of being strengthened, not stopped, by opposition. One of his adversaries said, "He is blessed with a very sufficient quantity of that Enthusiastic spirit, which is so far from yielding that it grows more vigorous from blows" (Pollock, p. 105). In other words, knock him down, and he gets up stronger. Most of all, the secret of his coronary commitment to the great cause was his radical allegiance to Jesus Christ.

He prayed—and may this prayer rouse many coronary lovers of Christ to fight racism and abortion (and heart disease!) with unwavering perseverance—"[May God] enable me to have a single eye and a simple heart, desiring to please God, to do good to my fellow creatures and to testify my gratitude to my adorable Redeemer" (Pollock, p. 210). •
Copyright © 2002 WORLD Magazine
February 23, 2002, Vol. 17, No. 7

anger, sinful and righteous

2005-09-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

We often fail to see that God’s anger and love
are entirely consistent with each other as different
expressions of His goodness and glory. The two work
together: “Jesus burned with anger against the
wrongs He met with in His journey through human
life, as truly as He melted with pity at the sight of the
world’s misery: and it was out of these two emotions
that His actual mercy proceeded.” warkield You can’t understand
God’s love if you don’t understand His anger.
Because He loves, He’s angry at what harms.
But notice the way God’s children experience His
anger: His anger is expressed on their behalf as
supremely tender love! As we will see, the Bible is
consistent about this truth. Yet anger is by definition
against things, with an intent to destroy, so how can
God’s wrath become something God’s children love
and trust rather than something they fear or dislike?
In what way is God’s anger an expression of how He
is for us, rather than the expression of how He is
against us?
Powlison

Second, in love, God’s anger works to disarm the power
of your sin. His anger at sin is again expressed for your
well-being. In the present, He deals continually with
indwelling sinfulness itself. (Awork that will be completed when we see Jesus return on
the day of wrath. See, for example, Philippians 1:6; 1 Thessalonians
5:23; 1 John 3:2.)
The Holy Spirit, who
pours out God’s love within you, is a burning fire of
anger against evil, not to destroy you but to make you
new. In steadfast love, He remakes us, not by tolerating
our sin, but by hating our sin in a way that we
learn to love! The process is not always pleasant
because suffering, reproof, guilt, and owning up don’t
feel good. But deliverance, mercy, encouragement….

Who is the angriest person in the Bible? Satan.
His anger, also, does not turn away. He has “great
wrath,” being a “murderer from the beginning” even
until now. (revlation and john 8)Satan’s anger springs from malice and
the desire to hurt people. His anger, the paradigm of
all sinful anger, is the antithesis of God’s. Satan’s hostility
aims to make things wrong, in service to his own
cravings. This also tells us something very important.
Anger can be utterly wrong, bad, inappropriate, ugly,
a completely destructive response. Such anger summarizes
the very essence of evil: “I want my way and
not God’s, and because I can’t have my way, I rage.” Sinful anger usurps God and does harm; godly anger loves, enthroning God and doing good to people.--powlison

RP:That is a huge idea: my anger is either reflecting God or Satan. When my anger is turned on someone for malice and to hurt them… I am the tool of the other side. I’m in the employ of Voldemort, The Dark Side, Saruman, Satan!
Memories of Bilbo’s face when he almost stole the ring from Frodo.
Harry’s thoughts of hatred and wanting to kill Dumbledore in Order of Phoenix.
That is gripping for me to be in the employ of those who I truly hate.

bb warfield on anger of jesus in mark 3

2005-09-09T08:14:00.000-07:00

What is meant is, not that his anger was modified by grief, his reprobation of the hardness of their hearts was mingled with a sort of sympathy for men sunk in such a miserable condition. What is meant is simply that the spectacle of their hardness of heart produced in Jesus the deepest dissatisfaction, which passed into angry resentment. The hardness of the Jews’ heart, vividly realized, hurt Jesus; and his anger rose in repulsion of the cause of his pain. There are two movements of feeling brought before us here. There is pain which the gross manifestation of the hardness of heart of the Jews inflicted on Jesus. Bb Warfield

The Dying Church

2005-08-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

The Dying Church

Holy Spirit as Chief Witness To Christ

2005-05-21T13:39:00.000-07:00

Absolutely staggering stuff in Ferguson's Holy Spirit book...

"Trials in our Lord's culture weren't like ours:
a.) Not by jury but judge eliciting truth from witnesses
b.) advocate/defense counsel sought by an accused person was not a highly-trained professional, but someone who would vindicate him or her by telling the truth. An eye-witness and/or a character-witness was what was required; someone whose relationship to the accused enabled him to speak with authority; an intimate friend rather than a person professionally trained in the law."
So you have HS as chief witness for Christ, and He is an intimate friend who has been with Christ. Strangely warmed when i think of the Holy Spirit being an intimate friend of Jesus'.
back to Ferguson...
"Against this background, the Spirit is ideally suited to be the CW for X b/c He was the intimate companion of Jesus throughout his ministry.
The Holy Spirit was Christ's inseperable companion . . . all the activity of Christ was unfolded in the presence of the Holy Spirit. . .
--Basil of Caesarea (c.330-379)
That is why His witness is so important, potent, and reliable. From womb to tomb to throne, the Spirit was the constant companion of the Son. As a result, when He comes to Christians to indwell them, the Holy Spirit comes as the Spirit OF CHRIST in such a way that to possess him is to possess Christ himself, just as to lack him is to lack Christ. --end ferguson

womb to tomb to throne

bring home smallman on what is reformed?

"It is a good rule that the works of the blessed Trinity are undivided . . . So we may say that whatever things the Father does the Son does likewise, and those things the Holy Ghost does also"(Love, Grace, 157).

CHRISTOPHER LOVE
4. While each is fully divine, the three persons of the Godhead are related to each other in a way that implies some differences. Thus, it is usually said in Scripture that the Father (not the Spirit) sent the Son into the world (Mk. 9:37; Mt. 10:40; Gal. 4:4), but that both the Father and the Son send the Spirit (Jn. 14:26; 15:26; 16:7). We don't know fully what such a description of relationships within the Trinity means. But usually it is said that the Son is subject to the Father, for the Father sent him, and that the Spirit is subject to both the Father and the Son, for he is sent into the world by both the Son and Father. However, we must remember that when we speak of subjection we do not mean inequality. Although related to each other in these ways, the members of the Godhead are nevertheless "the same in substance, equal in power and glory," as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says (Q. 6).

5. In the work of God the members of the Godhead work together. It is common among Christians to divide the work of God among the three persons, applying the work of creation to the Father, the work of redemption to the Son and the work of sanctification to the Holy Spirit. A more correct way of speaking is to say that each member of the Trinity cooperates in each work.

One example is the work of creation. It is said of God the Father, "Of old thou didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands" (Ps. 102:25); and "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). It is written of the Son, "For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible" (Col. 1:16); and "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn. 1:3). It is written of the Holy Spirit, "The spirit of God has made me" (Job 33:4). In the same way, the Incarnation is shown to have been accomplished by the three persons of the Godhead working in unity, though only the Son became flesh (Lk. 1:35). At the baptism of the Lord all three were also present: the Son came up out of the water, the Spirit descended in the appearance of a dove and the voice of the Father was heard from heaven declaring, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Mt. 3:16-17). All three persons were present in the atonement, as Hebrews 9:14 declares. "Christ... through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God." The resurrection of Christ is likewise attributed sometimes to the Father (Acts 2:32), sometimes to the Son (Jn. 10:17-18) and sometimes to the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1:4).

We are not surprised, therefore, that our salvation as a whole is also attributed to each of the three persons: chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood" (1 Pet. 1:2). Nor are we surprised that we are sent forth into all the world to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19).

Threefold Redemption

Again let me note, although we can say meaningful things about the Trinity (on the basis of God's revelation of them), the Trinity is still unfathomable. We should be humble before the Trinity. Someone once asked Daniel Webster, the orator, how a man of his intellect could believe in the Trinity. "How can a man of your mental caliber believe that three equals one?" his assailant chided. Webster replied, "I do not pretend fully to understand the arithmetic of heaven now." The doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that three equals one, of course, and Webster knew that. It means rather that God is three in one sense and one in another. But Webster's reply nevertheless showed a proper degree of creature humility. We believe the doctrine of the Trinity, not because we understand it, but because the Bible teaches it and because the Spirit himself witnesses within our heart that it is so.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foundations of the Christian Faith. James Montgomery Boice. Inter Varsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, Illinois 60515. 1978. Pages 113 to 116.

Let's start with an affirmation of the doctrine of the ontological Trinity, which states that God exists in three persons and one essence. This is a careful way of conveying the following truths: 1) there is only one God; 2) the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all God; and 3) the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are different persons. With the possible exception of a couple technical attributes generally ascribed only to one or another person of the Godhead, and which are aspects of the way God exists in three persons, all those attributes native to God's being are shared equally by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In his divine nature, Jesus the Son of God is fully God (John 1:1; Tit. 2:13; 2 Pet. 1:1), possessing all the attributes native to God in his essence, that is, all the attributes that God possesses just because he exists as God. Omniscience and omnipotence are of this category, so that Jesus possesses both, making him equal to the persons of the Father and of the Holy Spirit in knowledge and power.

However, Jesus also has a human nature. Because omniscience and omnipotence are infinite by definition, and because man is finite, man cannot possess these attributes. Thus, in his human nature, Jesus the Man cannot be equal to any of the persons of the Godhead in knowledge or in power. Generally, the Bible speaks of Jesus from the perspective of his human nature, as in the passages you stated. Granted, the distinction between what Jesus knows in his human nature and what he knows in his divine nature is a difficult one to fathom. It is one of the mysteries of the hypostatic union (the union of a divine nature and a human nature in the one person Jesus Christ) that is beyond our experience and normal patterns of thinking.

The question of authority is more complicated. It involves issues related to the hypostatic union, the economic Trinity, and the ontological Trinity. The economic Trinity describes the way in which the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit interact with and relate to one another, as opposed to the ontological Trinity which describes the way they exist. Authority is often described in terms of right and power. Inasmuch as Jesus is divine, he possesses equal power to the Father and the Holy Spirit. His divine right over creation is absolute as well. Moreover, his authority even in his human nature is now absolute over creation. This, I believe, is what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 15:28 -- the context specifically refers to Jesus' human nature (1 Cor. 15:21). I believe this is also the perspective expressed in Mark 10:40. It is safe to conclude that all members of the Godhead hold equal authority over creation.

But is there an inter-Trinitarian authority heirarchy? Yes. In the economic Trinity, the Son willingly submits to the Father's authority, and the Holy Spirit submits to both the Father and the Son. Most people would understand this to demonstrate that the Father's economic inter-Trinitarian authority is greater than the Son's and the Holy Spirit's, and that the Son's is greater than the Holy Spirit's. I suppose there might be some who argue that all persons of the Trinity are ontologically equal in authority, while being economically unequal, but I am unfamiliar with anyone who actually makes this case. Equality of authority is not something generally asserted in statements of faith, creeds or confessions.

Answer by Ra McLaughlin

Economic Trinity: When we describe the acts of the triune God with respect to the creation, history, salvation, our daily lives, etc, we describe the Economic Trinity. Refers to how the Trinity operates within redemptive history as we think of the roles or functions performed by each of the persons of the Trinity.

The ontological Trinity, on the other hand, speaks essence (John 1:1-2), nature or attributes of the Trinity. Or more simply - the ontological Trinity (who God is) and the economic Trinity (what God does). The economic reflects and reveals the ontological.
There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties.

- WESTMINSTER LARGER CATECHISM #9

Subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father

Loraine Boettner

In discussing the doctrine of the Trinity we must distinguish between what is technically known as the "immanent" and the "economic" Trinity. By the "immanent" Trinity we mean the Trinity as it has subsisted in the Godhead from all eternity. In their essential, innate life we say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same in substance, possessing identical attributes and powers, and therefore equal in glory. This relates to God's essential existence apart from the creation. By the "economic" Trinity we mean the Trinity as manifested in the world, particularly in the redemption of sinful men. There are three opera ad extra, additional works, if we may so describe them, which are ascribed to the Trinity, namely, Creation, Redemption and Sanctification. These are works which are outside of the necessary activities of the Trinity, works which God was under no obligation or compulsion to perform.

In the political realm we may say that the president of the United States is officially first, the governor of a state officially second, and the private citizen officially third. Yet they are each equally possessed of human nature, and in fact the private citizen may be a better man morally and spiritually than either the governor or the president. Also, two men of equal rank in private life may join the army, one to become a captain, the other to become a private soldier in the ranks of this captain. Officially, and for a limited time, one becomes subordinate to the other, yet during that time they may be equals in the sight of God. In the work of redemption the situation is somewhat analogous to this,-through a covenant voluntarily entered into, the Father, Son and holy Spirit each undertake a specific work in such a manner that, during the time this work is in progress, the Father becomes officially first, the Son officially second, and the Spirit officially third. Yet within the essential and inherent life of the Trinity the full equality of the persons is preserved.

Richly Furnished but Dimly Lighted

2005-05-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

"The Old Testament," says Dr. Warfield, "may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but only dimly or even not at all perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended and enlarged" (BB Warfield, Biblical Doctrines, p. 142).

HOLY SPIRIT CLASS QUOTES

2005-05-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

Christian believers can turn to the Psalms not only to find their own experiences of sorrow, doubt, fear, and even despair mirrored there, but, as is commonly confessed, to find examples of wholehearted adoration and devotion that exemplify what it means to worship God by the Spirit. --Sinclair Ferguson, p.25

Starts Sunday September 19

2004-09-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

War & Peace: A Class on Conflict & Biblical Peacemaking
Sundays at 9am in the Library/Media Center of Oak Hall

Class Rythym
8:50-9:10 Gather, enjoy refreshments
9:10-9:35 Rob’s interactive teaching
9:35-9:49 Discussion in small groups around tables

A tremendously graphic article giving a new vision for conflict & healing in marriage:
http://junkmail.chattablogs.com/archives/010971.html