Our Triune God E-Book

Philip Graham Ryken

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 185

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

How are we to relate to a three-personed God? The idea of the Trinity may initially seem too abstract to understand, but the truth is that a deeper knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has daily importance. Convinced that many Christians "have some level of awareness that God is triune…[but] are virtually Unitarian," the authors have written a practical and theologically robust resource to help readers grow closer to the Triune God.  Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre examine the doctrine of the Trinity in four parts. They explain the roles of the Father, Son, and Spirit in salvation; answer difficult questions about the Trinity; explore the believer's relationship to each person of the Trinity; and provide an exposition of the various Gospel narratives depicting how the three persons of the Trinity work together to accomplish the redemptive purposes of God. Their careful treatment of these central truths captures important implications for the Christian life. Our Triune God is a helpful guide for Christians wanting to deepen their faith and for pastors as they shepherd their congregations toward a richer love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Leseprobe

Thank you for downloading this Crossway book.

Sign-up for the Crossway Newsletter for updates on special offers, new resources, and exciting global ministry initiatives:

Crossway Newsletter

Or, if you prefer, we would love to connect with you online:

“Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre have written a delightful book that will help us to better understand the great truth of the Trinity: one God in three Persons. Better yet, it should cause us to grow in our appreciation of the distinct works of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our salvation and sanctification. I heartily commend this book.”

Jerry Bridges, author, The Pursuit of Holiness

“The Westminster Shorter Catechism tells us that ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ In this book, the authors bring that affirmation to life by showing us that the Trinity is not just a doctrine to be believed but a relationship to be experienced and enjoyed. Pastors, teachers, and believers everywhere will be refreshed and challenged by this stirring call to a deeper participation in the love of the triune God.”

Gerald Bray, Research Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School

“At a time when biblical theology gets more attention among pastors, the twin advantages of systematic theology—namely that it will hold you to orthodoxy in the face of difficult Biblical texts and that it is organized according to the categories in which the non-Christian world speaks and thinks—cannot be under-estimated. With this as the backdrop, Ryken and LeFebvre’s Our Triune God fills a void in Christian literature. The chapters are formed as carefully reasoned expositions on the subject of the Trinity, and as such, this book provides us with a model worth emulating across the spectrum of systematic categories.”

David Helm, Pastor, Holy Trinity Church Hyde Park; Chairman, Board of Directors, Charles Simeon Trust

Our Triune God

Copyright © 2011 by Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre

Published by Crossway                      1300 Crescent Street                      Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

Cover photo: iStock & Photos.com

First printing 2011

Printed in the United States of America

Italics in biblical quotes indicate emphasis added.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-1987-1 ISBN-10: 1-4335-1987-9 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1988-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1989-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-1990-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publlcation Data

Ryken, Philip Graham, 1966–

Our triune God : living in the love of the triune God / Philip

Graham Ryken and Michael LeFebvre.

        p.     cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-1987-1 (tpb) ISBN-10: 1-4335-1987-9

ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-1988-8 (PDF)

ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-1989-5 (Mobipocket)

1. Trinity. I. LeFebvre, Michael. II. Title BT111.3.R95            2011

231'.044—dc22                                               2010023931

In memory of Bud Wilson

CONTENTS

Foreword by Robert Letham 11Introduction 131    The Saving Trinity 19Our Triune God and the Plan of Salvation2    The Mysterious Trinity39Our Triune God and Human Comprehension3    The Practical Trinity 69Our Triune God and the Christian Life4    The Joyous Trinity 95Our Triune God and His People

FOREWORD

It should be obvious that at the center of Christianity is the worship of God. It is from this, glorifying God and enjoying him now and forever, that the Christian life and its various outworkings proceed. The supreme biblical revelation of God is that he is triune—he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three Persons in indivisible union. The Trinitarian baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19–20) is pronounced over everyone who can be called a Christian.

Yet in the Western church the doctrine of the Trinity has been greatly neglected. For most Christians it is little more than an arcane mystery, of little significance for everyday life. While it may be believed, our knowledge of God is strangely disconnected from the reality of his tri-personal being.

Recent decades have seen a recovery of interest in the Trinity at the academic, theological level. What is vitally needed is for this to percolate through to the pew. Once it does it will transform our faith and shed light on a vast range of areas, while both stimulating and enhancing evangelism.

This book is exactly what is required. Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre present this most mysterious and yet crucial truth in a compelling way that should be enlightening to a wide readership. They are faithful to the truth and attuned to the questions raised by believers and unbelievers alike. Their presentation is lucid and readable without cutting corners or sacrificing principles. There is much wise biblical exposition, and the context of worship is persistently stressed, but the authors do not shirk the difficult questions and do interact with the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics and with Islam. If you are looking to grow in your knowledge of God and want a straightforward but intelligent guide to the Trinity, look no further—this is it.

I am delighted to commend this volume and pray that it may be instrumental in stimulating the faith, understanding, worship, and Christian lives of all who read it.

Robert Letham

INTRODUCTION

God is one; . . . this one God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; . . . the Father is the Father of the Son; and the Son, the Son of the Father; and the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Father and the Son; and . . . in respect of this their mutual relations, they are distinct from each other. (John Owen)1

To know God is to know him as triune. There is one God in three Persons. Or to express the same truth in a different way, God is three Persons in one being—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This Trinitarian truth is foundational to the worship and the service of God. To know God as triune is to worship him as he is, rejoicing in his very being. We praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for having equal, divine majesty, while at the same time honoring each Person’s unique personality: the Father is the Father of the Son; the Son is the Son of the Father; the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. Out of this worship comes our service, as we show the Father’s mercy and proclaim the Son’s sacrifice in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Historically, the church has placed great importance on the doctrine of the Trinity, which has been held universally across the church and around the world. The early church father Irenaeus claimed that apart from the reality of the Trinity we cannot know God at all: “Without the Spirit it is not possible to behold the [Son] of God, nor without the Son can any draw near the Father: for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son of God is through the Holy Spirit; and, according to the good pleasure of the Father, the Son ministers and dispenses the Spirit to whomsoever the Father wills and as He wills.”2

The same Trinitarian doctrine is clearly confessed in the ancient creeds of the Christian church. In the Apostles’ Creed, for example, believers confess their faith in “God, the Father Almighty,” in “Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,” and in “the Holy Ghost.” Similarly, the Nicene Creed states, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth . . . and in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God . . . and in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”

The Trinity was strongly reaffirmed by the Reformers, believing as they did that the doctrine was plainly taught in Scripture. Like many Christians, Martin Luther found it hard to understand how one God could exist in three Persons, yet had to affirm what he read in God’s Word. Luther said, “Since I see that it is so distinctly contained and grounded in Scripture, I believe God more than my own thoughts and reason and do not worry about how it can possibly be true that there is only one Essence and yet that there are three distinct Persons in this one Essence: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.”3 Similarly, John Calvin exhorted the readers of his famous Institutes to know God in the fullness of his triune majesty: “God . . . proclaims himself the sole God . . . to be contemplated clearly in Three Persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.”4

Sad to say, although the church has long cherished this doctrine, a very different attitude has emerged in recent centuries. The eighteenth-century Enlightenment launched an era of heightened rationalism in the West. Human reason came to be viewed as the ultimate standard for determining truth. According to the spirit of the age, doctrines marked by a supernatural character tended to be pushed to the sidelines. The mysterious doctrine of the Trinity was an early casualty of modernist rationalism, for who can comprehend the idea of one indivisible being existing in three distinct Persons?

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s influential book The Christian Faith, first published in 1821, illustrates this new attitude toward Trinitarianism. In his summary of Christian doctrine, Schleiermacher left the subject of the Trinity to a few paragraphs at the very end of the book. The doctrine was more like an afterthought than a prominent focus of his thinking. This is a very different priority than that found in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), in which the Genevan Reformer placed an entire chapter on the Trinity in his first volume.

The difference between Calvin and Schleiermacher illustrates the unfortunate shift that has occurred. The contemporary church has largely forgotten the importance of knowing God as triune. Granted, most children who grow up in the church today are taught in Sunday school that God is three in one—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But Christians are rarely encouraged to think deeply about the Trinity or to make God’s triune being the focus of their worship and service to God. This detrimental trend needs to be corrected, and the present book is offered to address that need by helping Christians grow in their relationship to God in his triunity.

The approach we take is not only theological but also biblical, and therefore practical. Chapter 1 (“The Saving Trinity”) looks at the book of Ephesians, where the apostle Paul teaches us to think about our salvation in Trinitarian terms. Salvation is not the work of a flat, nondimensional deity; rather, salvation is the glorious work of the cooperative majesty of the triune God. To know and to praise God as our Savior is to love him as the Trinity.

Chapter 2 (“The Mysterious Trinity”) considers some of the questions that make the Trinity hard to comprehend. People sometimes wonder whether it is even reasonable to believe in a God who is three in one. Moreover, they wonder how to relate the Old Testament emphasis on monotheism with New Testament teachings on God’s triune nature. Rather than confusing us, these points of intellectual challenge should be part of our thoughtful reverence—loving God with all our minds.

Chapter 3 (“The Practical Trinity”) focuses on John 13–17, where Jesus teaches his disciples to relate to God as triune. Far from treating the subject as an intellectual discourse, Jesus shows the practicality of this doctrine for shaping our daily relationship with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The final chapter (“The Joyous Trinity”) explores a series of passages in Luke where the cooperation of all three Persons is described. Luke’s reporting on the Trinity in these texts displays the power and joy that God has within himself and intends to share with us as we know him in his triune being and action.

The present volume is not a historical theology of Trinitarianism. It is designed instead to help Christians grow in their personal relationship with God as triune, and we pray that the Lord will bless it to that end.

There is an intentional focus throughout on the individual Christian and his or her personal relationship with God. Another volume would be needed to address the subject of the church’s relationship to the triune God corporately—in congregational worship, body life, and corporate acts of service. Nevertheless, the church’s communal service for God together is an outgrowth of knowing God as individual believers. So our personal relationship with the Trinity is an important starting point.

Something else this book does not include is a history of the church’s debates over the doctrine of the Trinity, as valuable as such a history would be. The church’s delight in the Trinity has many exciting chapters, worthy of study and attention. Beginning with the apostles, early Christian missionaries went throughout the world planting new churches in the name of the triune God, as Jesus had commanded: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). While expanding into new lands over many centuries, the church has continued to treasure the doctrine of the Trinity. Many false teachings emerged over time as well, including heresies that persist today (for example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses hold views of Christ similar to those condemned when the fourth-century church confronted the teachings of Arius). Other books will prove worthwhile for readers who are interested in learning more about the history of this doctrine and the heresies that arose against it. We particularly recommend Robert Letham’s book, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship.

The main chapters in this volume began as talks delivered to the 2007 Conference of the Reformation Society of Indiana, which was hosted by the Second Reformed Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis. Carlisle “Bud” Wilson was the enthusiastic visionary not only for that conference but also for many other initiatives over the years aimed at promoting Reformation theology, including the formation of the Society itself.

Unbeknownst to us at the time, the Autumn 2007 conference was to be the last that Bud would organize. On March 19, 2008, after many years of faithful service to his beloved Savior Jesus Christ, leaning on the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God the Father, Bud entered the presence of his triune God. With thanksgiving to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for his ministry, this volume is dedicated to the memory of Bud Wilson (1932–2008), with appreciation for his wife, Marty.

1William H. Goold, The Works of John Owen (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1980), 2.377.

2Irenaeus, Dem. ap. 7. Translation from St. Irenaeus: The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, trans. J. Armitage Robinson (London: SPCK, 1920), 76.

3Martin Luther, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian, ed. Ewald M. Plass (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1959), 1388–1389.

4John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics, 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), I.xiii.2.

1THE SAVING TRINITY

OUR TRIUNE GOD AND THE PLAN OF SALVATION

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. (Eph. 1:2, 13)

To the great One in Three Eternal praises be, Hence evermore.

His sovereign majesty May we in glory see, And to eternity Love and adore.

(Anonymous; eighteenth century)

A good place to begin knowing the triune God is at the very beginning, which is where Ephesians 1 begins. Before we were born—before anyone was born—before God made the heavens and the earth, even before the angels first praised their Maker, God was planning to save his people from their sins. We were destined to salvation long ages before the world was ever created. This was the work of the triune God.

The plan of salvation required the active engagement of every Person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. Therefore, in the opening chapter of Ephesians, the apostle Paul praises first the Father (vv. 3–6), then the Son (vv. 7–12), and finally the Holy Spirit (vv. 13–14) for the part each plays in salvation. Salvation is administered by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Spirit. The mystery at the epicenter of the universe—namely, the triune being of God—is also the heart of our salvation. Our redemption is Trinitarian in its structure.

THE THREE-PERSONED GOD

It is sometimes thought that because the term Trinity does not appear in Scripture, the doctrine is unbiblical, or at least irrelevant. One famous critic was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who claimed that “the doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally, has no practical relevance at all, even if we think we understand it; and it is even more clearly irrelevant if we realize that it transcends all our concepts” (emphasis in the original).5 It is true that the biblical doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious. It is such a great mystery, in fact, that we may never be able fully to understand it, let alone explain it. One thing we must do, however, is to believe in the Trinity, for in his perfect Word God has revealed himself as one God in three Persons. The true God is a triunity.

For all its complexity, the biblical doctrine of the Trinity can be stated in seven simple propositions:

1. God the Father is God.

2. God the Son is God.

3. God the Holy Spirit is God.

4. The Father is not the Son.

5. The Son is not the Spirit.

6. The Spirit is not the Father.

7. Nevertheless, there is only one God.

This is the doctrine of the Trinity, stated in propositional form, as distilled from Scripture. In his treatise On Christian Doctrine, Augustine used somewhat different language to express the same eternal truths:

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God. . . . The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son: but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit.6

THE TRIUNE GOD WHO SAVES

Ephesians 1 brings these bare propositions to life, for it shows the triune God working out our salvation. The Trinity is not an abstraction but a living, working, Creator-Redeemer. God is who he is in his triune being for our salvation. We are chosen by God the Father, in Christ the Son, through God the Holy Spirit. Or, as we have already noted, salvation is administered by the Father, accomplished by the Son, and applied by the Spirit. To express the same truths in yet another way, the salvation that was planned by the Father has been procured by the Son and is now presented and protected by the Spirit. Whatever words we use to describe it, the point is that our salvation from sin depends on a gracious cooperation within the Godhead.

Nearly the whole first chapter of Ephesians is one long sentence in the original Greek. As the apostle Paul began his letter to the church in Ephesus, he was overwhelmed by God’s grace in salvation. So he wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). Then Paul proceeded to praise God for all the blessings of salvation, which takes a while, and the apostle did not stop until he was finished.

The long sentence that runs from Ephesians 1:3 to Ephesians 1:14 stretches from eternity to eternity, showing the full saving work of the triune God. It lays out the whole scope of salvation, the plan that God has been working on forever. Our salvation began in the mind of God before the beginning of time, when our God and Father planned to save a people for himself. He planned to adopt us as his own sons and daughters. He planned to redeem us from our sins by sending a Savior, his own Son, Jesus Christ. He planned to sanctify us, to make us holy. Finally, God planned to bring us to glory.

What a great plan! The late James Montgomery Boice summarized it by comparing it to music:

This story has three movements, like a symphony. The first movement is the sovereign election of God according to which he has chosen to bless a special people with every possible spiritual blessing in his Son Jesus Christ. The second movement is the accomplishing of that purpose through the redeeming death of Jesus. . . . The final movement . . . concerns the work of the Holy Spirit by which those who have been chosen by the Father and redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ are actually “linked up” to salvation.7