Category: Trinitarian Commentary

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. My thanks for the prayers through my recent sickness. I did sleep in until a little after 10, which I can do since I have Saturdays off. As for the other area, I’m learning and growing a lot more in that area and I believe some progress is being made. For now, let’s move to the text. Tonight, we’re going to be looking at Hebrews 1:4-7:

⁴So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.⁵For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son;
today I have become your Father”? Or again,
“I will be his Father,
and he will be my Son”? ⁶And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.” ⁷In speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
his servants flames of fire.”

The writer of Hebrews was dealing with a system that held to several mediators between God and men. There were angels, the high priest, Moses, and Melchizedek. We’ll see in this book that all of them are dealt with. The first is angels.

First off, the Son is superior to angels because he has inherited a superior name. That name is of course the name of YHWH. Inheritance doesn’t mean that he got it at a point in time, but rather that he showed himself to be the true bearer of the name by what has been said about him throughout time, meaning not just the incarnation but the Scriptures as a whole.

The writer demonstrates this by showing the truths that apply to the Son that do not apply to the angels. The first is asking to which of the angels did he ever say “You are my son; today I have become your father.” This is a statement that was said at the coronation of the new king of Israel, but it does apply to the ministry of Jesus.

The Son did not become the Son at a point in time, but rather was declared to be the Son of God by God’s approval of his ministry at the baptism and at the transfiguration. The final vindication of this of course was at the resurrection. No angel ever received such confirmation of his relationship to YHWH.

The second statement of “I will be his father; and he will be my son.” This is a passage again about the king of Israel and the covenant relationship being continued through the king, but established par excellence in Christ. None of the angels were ones that God made a covenant promise with. They could be mediators of that covenant, but they themselves were not the basis for the covenant.

Also, when the firstborn is brought into the world, all the angels are to worship him. No angel is the proper object of worship. (Readers are recommended to see my earlier series on the Angel of the Lord as an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ.) The idea of Christ being worshiped should be sufficient to show his unique status.

Angels are also said to be servants. The Son is given a contrasting position even though he does willingly submit. What is that contrasting position?

That is what tomorrow’s blog is for.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. It looks like my flu could be in its last stages. Let’s hope so. I did manage to rest through the night but some Nyquil could have had something to do with that. As for the other area, it’s a work in progress, but I’ve not been one to give up on something worthwhile easily. I ask for your continued prayers.

For now, we continue our Trinitarian commentary with a look at Hebrews 1:3. Let’s go to the text:

³The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Early Christian apologists explained the relationship to the Father and the Son as to the sun and its light. What the sun gives off is what it is. The same can be said here as the Son is the radiance of the glory of the Father. God’s glory is shone through the Son and we know who the Father is by knowledge of the Son.

Most interesting for our purposes however is the idea that the Son is the exact representation of the being of the Father. The word used in the Greek for the exact representation is charakter. It is meant to give the idea of an engraving or stamping that is taking place. If you put a stamp down on wax, for instance, you could leave the charakter. It would be an exact representation of the stamp.

Jesus is just that to the Father. If the Father were to leave an impression of his very nature in a stamp, that would be seen as the Son. The Son does not just act like the Father in some ways nor does he just have the communicable attributes that we have. The Son is the exact representation. If it is an aspect of the nature of the Father, then you can be sure it will show up in the nature of the Son.

The Son also sustains all things by his powerful Word. It is because of the Son that you are now and it is because of the Son that I am able to type out this message. This is also on parallel with the Wisdom literature where it is by God’s Wisdom that the universe is held together.

We next have mention of the work of the Son in redemption. Jesus is the one who came and made redemption for us so that we could be free from the grip of sin and death. Notice however what he did when he was done. He sat down. Those words should be cause of excitement for everyone who is a Christian. It means Jesus’s works were done. This is a play we’ll see throughout this book as the author seeks to show Jesus is superior to the Old Covenant. In that covenant, the priest did not sit down. He always had work to do and after atonement was made one year, he would have to make it the next. Jesus, however, sat down. His work of purification was done for all time.

There is also the distinction between him and the Father in that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Jesus is not the Father, but the writer has no problem saying that Jesus is one who bears the exact same nature of the one he is with. Once again, we see the message of John 1:1 being brought out.

We shall continue our look at Hebrews 1 tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. I do ask for your continued prayers. Last night was a very difficult night for me and one that was quite painful. There are just some issues that I’m working through and again, due to the personal nature of them, I choose to not go into them on the blog. I just ask for the prayers of my readers.

Tonight, we’re going to start the book of Hebrews and I have been looking forward to this for awhile. I believe Hebrews is my favorite book of the New Testament and it is just loaded on who Jesus is. This book should hopefully take awhile to go through. We’re going to start tonight in the first chapter with verses 1-2:

¹In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ²but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

One idea I want readers to keep in mind is that Hebrews has an underlying Logos doctrine where Jesus is to be understood as God’s Wisdom. An excellent look at this can be found in the book “The Gospel and the Greeks” by Ron Nash.

The book also comes from a historical perspective right from the beginning when it says “In the past.” This is in essence giving a Christian interpretation of history. The Jews were the people of the time who did not see the universe as cyclical but they rather saw that there was a story going on and that it was going somewhere.

The Hebrews writer refers to the prophets through whom God spoke. History in Judaism had a long line of prophets each building on the revelation of those before giving more and more clues to the story of the Messiah that was coming. They came at various times as the text says and they spoke in various way.

Quite different however is the last revelation spoken of through Son. Now some of you are wondering if I just used some bad grammar there. When I was in Bible College, I have never forgotten what one of the Greek professors said in that he said there wasn’t an article so it could be said that God spoke by Son. In other words, God spoke through the prophets, but the Son is his language. The Son is the eternal language of God.

This fits in with what we saw in John 1:18 with the Son being the one who exegetes the Father. The Son reveals the nature of the Father that we could not know on our own. In the same way, when the Father speaks, it is in the language of the Son.

This fits in of course with the overall prologue of John where the Son is referred to as the Word. It is by the Son that God creates and it is by the Son that his love for mankind is revealed. It is by the Son that we ultimately know God.

Again, the Son is the language of God.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Welcome back everyone. It has been an exhausting day. I didn’t get much sleep last night so right now I’m fighting to stay awake. However, I didn’t get much sleep because I was actually in a good mood. Odd how that works isn’t it? I do ask for your continued prayers in both areas I’ve asked for in the more confidential one, I believe I am likely to be somewhat of an iconoclast in a certain area but hey, we apologists can enjoy being iconoclasts.

Tonight, we don’t really have a text per se. We do of course, but it’s too long to quote and we’re not looking at one verse but rather the main theme of the whole book. That will be the book of Philemon, a book that’s only a chapter long in the New Testament. It’s the last Pauline epistle. (I do not consider Hebrews to be Pauline.) It is the story of Paul meeting Philemon’s slave Onesimus and getting him converted and sending him back to his master asking him to welcome him back as a brother.

The concept of slavery is interesting in this case however. When we think of slavery, we must not think of slavery that went on in England and America during the period it was practiced here. Slavery was often quite difficult and there were many great slaves such as the philosopher Epictetus and a slave had numerous rights that slaves in the more modern sense did not have. (Though slavery is no longer going on in our countries, any time it is referred to, it will be referred to as modern slavery.)

Paul saw himself as a slave of Christ in contrast to Onesimus being a slave of Philemon. He was the bondservant of Christ who was called to obey his master in all things. In the days of the Roman empire, the behavior of the slave reflected the behavior of the master. If someone was a good slave, it spoke little about the slave and instead spoke of the value of the master. This must be a master that one would willingly love to serve if the slave was a good slave.

Paul saw himself the same way as being a slave of Christ. He was the bondservant meant to be at the beck and call of his master. If Christ says to do something, well it is done. No questions are to be asked. The willingness Paul would obey his master would show the world around him how much he valued his master. It’s also noteworthy that Paul took on the title of slave, meaning he was willing to take on a lowly position in order to illustrate his obedience to Christ.

Paul did this showing Philemon that the position that Onesimus was in to him was to parallel the position that Paul was in to Christ in that Onesimus’s life was to be in Philemon’s hands. Philemon could have had Onesimus put to death for his trespass, and indeed, Christ would be just putting us to death for our trespasses.

This also tells us of course how Paul viewed Christ. Christ was the one Paul had placed his life into the hands of. Christ was the one who Paul was to obey the every command of. Christ was the one Paul was to show the world was his master. In essence, Paul would have had to have a high view of Christ in order to do this.

And could it be, a view that saw Christ as deity?

Why it just might have been.

I look forward to tomorrow when we start the book of Hebrews!

Welcome again everyone to Deeper Waters. I do seem to be recovering so thanks to those of you who have been praying. I did have a skeptic come to my blog today shocked that I asked people to pray and I believe it works. Well, I do. Do I need more faith in prayer? I’d say so. I also thank you for the prayers in the other area in my life I’m not sharing right now for reasons I wish to keep secret.

Tonight, we’re going to finish up the book of Titus. We’ll be in the third chapter tonight and looking at verses 4-7. Let’s go to the text:

⁴But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared,⁵he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

This is a passage describing sanctification and it is, well, bathed in Trinitarian terminology as it describes our being bathed in the regenerative work of the Trinity. Now as to what the washing of rebirth means in this passage, I’m going to leave the baptism debate to you all to work out amongst yourselves.

How does Paul start? He starts with the statement of the appearing of the kindness of God our savior. As we go through this text, it will become apparent that he means God the Father. So for now, I ask the reader to simply assume God the Father for the time being.

However, the Father does not do this work alone but he does it by the Holy Spirit. Again, the baptism aspect is for you to figure out, but the transforming power of the Holy Spirit is at work no matter how one views the subject of baptism and whether it relates to this passage or not. Washing could refer to literal baptism or it could refer to a sort of purification using the imagery of water in a metaphorical sense to speak of how we’re cleansed from our sins. The main point we wish to see is that the Holy Spirit is at work.

Now we see why this is talking about God the Father. The text says that He poured out the Holy Spirit on us through Jesus Christ. Notice that the Spirit is also referred to as a whom and the one through whom this is done is Jesus Christ. We see again the way the persons of the Trinity relate to each other.

The end result of this is that we would become justified by grace and have eternal life. Notice however that this is a Trinitarian process. It is God the Father by the Spirit through his Son. All three persons are at work in the Trinity and this passage makes perfect sense in a Trinitarian framework.

No Trinity. No justification.

We shall move on tomorrow.

Welcome back everyone to the Deeper Waters blog. I appreciate your prayers for my recovery. I woke up at 4 AM this morning with a sore throat. I did get back to sleep but I’m wondering if this is going to be a “symptom of the day” thing. I have been taking on a much more normal schedule. I also appreciate prayer in the other area I spoke of. I’ve found some areas that need a lot of work. I suppose it’s God doing a work of healing and it’s sure nothing pleasant. (By the way, this isn’t physical healing I mean.)

Anyway, we now continue our Trinitarian commentary with a key verse. We’re going to be in Titus 2:13 tonight. Enough chat! Let’s skip to the text!

while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,

Some of you might be wondering about the name of this blog post. It comes from a Greek grammarian who came up with a rule that has held strong. James White of Alpha and Omega ministries describes the rule in this way:

Basically, Granville Sharp’s rule states that when you have two nouns, which are not proper names (such as Cephas, or Paul, or Timothy), which are describing a person, and the two nouns are connected by the word “and,” and the first noun has the article (“the”) while the second does not, *both nouns are referring to the same person*.

This is the same layout that we see in this verse which means that great God and savior refers to Jesus Christ. However, when we come to what the Jehovah’s Witnesses have in their translation, we see this:

while we wait for the happy hope and glorious manifestation of the great God and of [the] Savior of us, Christ Jesus,

The Watchtower changes this to the appearing of two persons. That’s problematic in itself as I know no place where we are supposed to see God appear, especially since men cannot see God. What is going on in this case is a violation of the Granville Sharp rule. Of course, if they’re wanting to see the Father and the Son, for all we know, maybe they’re wanting to become Mormons.

In the orthodox view, we can see this as a high Christology once again. Paul is speaking about the hope of all Christians which would be the appearance of the glory of Jesus Christ. Now how you are going to relate this eschatologically again is up to you, but all views of Christianity which are orthodox would hold to this.

What is going on with the Watchtower I contend in this and many other passages is a deliberate attempt to hide that which is taught in the text. Greek grammarians throughout time have understood that this is a reference to Jesus Christ alone and the Granville Sharp rule helps point that out. We should be thankful for the great minds that have gone before us in helping us understand the biblical languages and the great truths they reveal about Christ

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome once again to Deeper Waters. I thank you all for praying for me in my recovery from the flu. Last night was a kind of horrid night in some ways, but after reading D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on spiritual depression, I think I found some spiritual truth for my own life and it ended up being an epiphany.

Tonight, we’re continuing our Trinitarian commentary by starting the book of Titus. We’re going to be looking at the first chapter and verses 3-4. I’ll be starting at verse 1 to get the context:

¹Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ for the faith of God’s elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness— ²a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, ³and at his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior,

⁴To Titus, my true son in our common faith:
Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

What I find most interesting is the comparison between verses 3 and 4 in this passage. God has been referred to as savior in the Pastoral epistles before, notably 1 Timothy 1:1, but here, we have God listed as savior and then we have Christ listed as savior.

When we come to the pastorals, it seems that Paul is willing to use the terms savior practically interchangeably. What does this tell us? It tells us that Paul sees the divine identity involved fully in the role of the salvation of man and Paul does not hesitate to attribute to Jesus that which is attributable to YHWH.

In the OT, there were some who were saviors, but never in the sense that Jesus is in the NT. Other saviors would come and save Israel from her physical enemies, such as Ehud in the book of Judges. In the NT, it is Christ who saves us from the enemy of sin.

It was always YHWH however who was the one who saved peoples souls from Sheol. It was he who removed the sins of others. No priest would have ever claimed to have been the savior of Israel in saving them from sins. However, Jesus readily accepts that he is the savior of Israel and even in the Samaritan village, that he is the savior of the world.

Jesus can be called the savior because he does not carry the taint of sin first off. Second, he is one who is able to become like us in our nature. Third, he is the one who is in his divine nature the standard of holiness and can truly act as a judge. Angels do not act as judges.

It is important then that Paul does not hesitate to put Jesus in this divine role and the two so close together implies that Paul wants us to notice this connection. He wants us to see that Jesus and YHWH are necessarily linked in salvation.

We shall continue Titus tomorrow.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters. I appreciate your continued prayers and it seems again that there is something else to pray for. As I write this blog, I am currently battling the flu. No. I don’t have swine flu. I have the regular flu. It’s nothing pleasant however.

Tonight, we’re going to be finishing up 2 Timothy with a passage from 2 Timothy 4. Our text will be the first verse of that chapter. Tomorrow, we shall go to the last pastoral epistle, the book of Titus.

¹In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:

What is noteworthy for our purposes here is how Christ is described as the one who will judge the living and the dead. He is also seen as the one that charges of the faith are made before and as everything being in his presence, which would point to his omniscience.

The idea of Christ as judge however is taking a prerogative that belonged to YHWH in the Old Testament. After all, YHWH was the one who determines our fates. He is the only one who is holy so only He has the right to judge.

We see this idea of Christ as the judge later on in verse 8:

⁸Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

Once again, righteousness is connected with judgment. Because Jesus is righteous, he can judge. Anyone who is less than pure holiness in his nature could not judge the way God judges. Now we all do have to make some judgments, but the eternal destiny of someone cannot be determined by our judgments because we’ve already fallen short as well.

This concept is also in the Old Testament. Most notably in the book of Ruth:

“The LORD bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our kinsman-redeemers.”

The concept here is of the living and the dead both being seen as blessed. What’s important is that Ruth is a chiastic book where the main point is right in the middle and if there is one point the author wanted the reader to know, it was this one.

I do realize this is something said of Boaz also, but I believe that Boaz is acting out of the covenant between God and Israel and he is not forgetting the living or the dead because of the promises of YHWH. In the same way then, Jesus is seen in that same relationship to the living and the dead as YHWH. He is the righteous judge who can determine the eternal destiny of someone. In the Old Testament, that is something that belongs to YHWH alone. That Christ has that prerogative in the NT shows the way Paul viewed it.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. Again, I appreciate the prayers that are being offered up on my behalf as it seems things are getting along better, but there is still a continual up and down as I do find areas in my life that I need to work on, but they shall all be overcome with the help of God.

Tonight, we’re going to continue our Trinitarian commentary with a look at 2 Timothy 2:19. To get the context for this verse however, we are going to start at verse 14. Let’s go to the text:

¹⁴Keep reminding them of these things. Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. ¹⁵Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. ¹⁶Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. ¹⁷Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, ¹⁸who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.¹⁹Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”

Paul is exhorting Timothy on how to live and how to handle those who cause division in the church. He is to be a student who is well studied and knows sound doctrine, something I wish more pastors knew today. It’s my conviction that there are a lot of pastors who have no business being pastors. They have no study in sound Christian doctrine but just an idea that they were “called to preach.”

Paul also warns him about those who are teaching doctrine that is heretical. We know this because it has destroyed the faith of some. We are in an age where heresy needs to be dealt with as more and more people are falling prone to it. Now I realize there are teachings that are just aberrant and some that we can justifiably divide over, but Christians need to learn about essential Christian doctrine.

Timothy need not fear however because Timothy is in the covenant which is the point of our passage tonight. We are told that the Lord knows those who are his. Paul also says that everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness. The Lord knows who belongs to him and those will be they who also have lives of righteousness.

The first reference comes from Numbers 16 with the rebellion of Korah where God knows who belongs to him. In the same way, those who are pretending to be teachers of righteousness but are really apostates will be found out. Korah’s followers aren’t praised much in the NT. They’re just as much condemned in Jude.

What is of interest is the idea of the Lord knowing those who are his. The Lord as we have said most often refers to Jesus. I believe further mandate is found for this based on those who confess the name of the Lord, which is echoing what we have seen in Philippians 2 and Romans 10.

What this would mean is that the Lord of the covenant would then be Jesus, which would of course make Jesus be considered to be within the divine identity of YHWH. If my interpretation is correct, and I don’t see reason to think it isn’t, then we have a very high Christology indeed.

We shall continue 2 Timothy tomorrow.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Deeper Waters. I do appreciate your continued prayers on my behalf if you’ve been given them. There’s a lot of learning going on, though not necessarily of the academic kind. Still, the continued prayers are both needed and appreciated.

Tonight, we’re going to start our study of 2 Timothy in our Trinitarian Bible Study. We’re going to be emphasizing verses 9-10 of chapter 1 tonight, but to get the full context, I’m going to quote verses 8-12.

⁸So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, ⁹who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ¹¹And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. ¹²That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

Paul is telling Timothy to not be ashamed of the gospel, a lesson we all need to learn. The gospel is never seen as an accident. The cross of Christ is never described as a “plan B.” It is what was intended all along. Paul speaks of the grace of Jesus given before the beginning of time.

This could then also be a reference to the pre-existent Christ, but not just pre-existent, but existent before there was any time whatsoever. Before anything began, there was the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together.

The appearing is an interesting concept as this comes as a contrast to the pagan gods. We will see about the appearing of Jesus as savior in Titus, but here, the idea of his appearing as savior refers not to his return but to his incarnation.

Most noteworthy is that Jesus brought life and immortality. This is interesting due to the fact that it is along the lines of first off, what John says in his prologue when John tells us that in Jesus was life. The next point is that Jesus brings immortality, which he has in himself. This is especially relevant in light of the blog post we had yesterday where God is said to be the one who alone possesses immortality. Note also that not only do these belong to Jesus but we are also told of the grace of Jesus, contrast to what we would usually expect to hear concerning the grace of God.

Finally, to bring to light is not an accidental phrase I believe. The Hebrews had a strong emphasis on light in that Jesus, according to Isaiah, was a light to appear to the Gentiles and that the Lord was seen as the light of the Hebrews. The light pointed to the revelation of salvation and there is no difference here. Jesus is the light that brings salvation to all who come. He gives life and immortality for he possesses these fully in himself as the God-man.

We shall continue 2 Timothy tomorrow.