Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And you cannot find God, the first person, apart from the redemptive work of God the Son, the second person, and know the con victing and converting work of God the Holy Spirit, the third person. If you would have a secure place in heaven and be delivered from the di vine wrath to come, then turn to God at once through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. P art II I N CONSIDERING such an important "study as the Trinity, it is vital to concern ourselves with what the in spired Scripture has to say on this subject. It is, you see, exclusively a truth of divine revelation and not human reason. The God of the Bible is the only true God, “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6). Pause for a few moments and look up some of these key verses, asking the Holy Spirit to illumine your th in k in g : Exodus 20:3; I Corinthians 8:4; James 2:10. Then, the Word tells us God is alive today: Joshua 3:10; Psalm 42:2; Jeremiah 10:10; Daniel 6:26; II Corinthians 6:6; I Timothy 4:10. The next thing we learn of our Heavenly Father is that He is a per sonal God, possessing self-conscious ness and self - determination. The scope of His knowledge is unlimited: Proverbs 15:3; Hebrews 4:13. God alone knows the future even before the beginning (Isa. 46:10). The doctrine of the Trinity rightly holds that God exists as three Per sons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three are revealed from the very first verse of the Bible (Gen. 1:1), where we see the plurality of Persons in the Godhead. The word that is used is plural, which is fur ther evidenced in v. 26, “And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness.” The one speaking 11
Entertaining wrong ideas on this subject causes all of theology to be imperiled. Any departure from the doctrine of the Trinity is an aposta tizing from the faith (I Tim. 4:1). It is not possible to place in true per spective the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit apart from the trinitarian system of theology. Every religious or theo logical system which denies the Trin ity has failed to give the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit their proper place in the divine plan of salvation. These groups and individ uals drift away from the Bible as man’s final authority. Each Person in the Godhead must be seen as He is presented in Scripture. I say again, any theological system which de tracts from any of the Three Persons of the Godhead is a perversion of the historical Christian position as re corded in the Bible. The doctrine of the Trinity is important because of the influence of the extreme liberal position of Unitarianism. The doctrine of the Trinity in no way detracts from the unity of God. It is not necessary to reject one in order to believe the other. Failure to accept this will lead to the rejec tion of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Unitarians, Jews, and all oth ers who are anti-trinitarian, do not believe that Jesus Christ is God. Yes, the Christian idea of the Trinity is vitally necessary to the salvation of man and the enrichment of the Chris tian’s life, as well as the peace of mind that the human heart seeks. Faith in the death of God the Son, and the coming of God the Holy Spir it into the believing sinner’s heart, according to the plain teaching of Holy Scripture, furnishes assurance of salvation and the forgiveness of sins. If there were no Trinity, man’s state in sin would have been hope less. You and I need the God of the Bible: the world needs the God of the Bible. There is a tri-personal God, revealed in the Bible: God the
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