Sunday, August 1, 2010

Communicating the Trinity, God the Son

Remember, if God is in the business of building a relationship with us then His claim of being God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and they being all one should be something that we can relate to.

But before we find out what that is, let us look at God the Son and then God the Holy Spirit.

God the Son:

Genesis 3:15
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."


This is the first reference in the Bible that gives us the idea of the “Son”. Actually, in the Old Testament the idea of God sending His Son to deliver His people was not really a consideration. The Israelite people were looking for a Messiah who would be sent from God to deliver them and to set up a kingdom with no end but they were not considering the Messiah to be “God the Son”.

They thought of Adam, the first man, to be the son of God, only because God made him and was in fact the “Father” or creator of Adam, but they did not consider him God the Son.

Luke 3:38
The son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.


The funny thing about all this is that there is one instance in the Old Testament where one unlikely man gets it right. Tucked away in time and located in the cradle of civilization we find a man, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the epitome of sin and its origin. He looks in and sees a fourth image walking around with the three people whom he has just had thrown into a fiery furnace. He recognizes the fourth man to be the Son of God, not just another man or a god, but the Son of God.

Daniel 3:22-25
22. Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
23. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell down bound into the midst of the burning fiery furnace.
24. Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonied, and rose up in haste, [and] spake, and said unto his counsellors, Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire? They answered and said unto the king, True, O king.
25. He answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.


Kind of like when Jesus was doing his teaching and miracle working and proclaiming who he was. No one was getting it. Only demons and evil spirits would testify openly like Nebuchadnezzar, that Jesus was the Son of God.

John gives us, in his Gospel, the key to this whole conundrum.

John 1:1-3
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2. The same was in the beginning with God.
3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.


I do not know if this was a new perception or if this was a generally held belief about God, but what we see in these verses shows us another way to view “God the Son”: “God the Word”. Before there was the concept of God the Son there was God the Word.

John says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We see this in Genesis 1:3

Genesis 1:3
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.


God said. God said what? Words. From the very beginning everything that was made was created out of spoken words. God "said" let there be light and there was light. God "said" let the ground produce, and it produced. Nothing happened until and unless it was spoken, until it was said.

Jesus was the “Word” made flesh.

John 1:14
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.


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

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