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Sunday School

Lesson 7: The Trinity, Questions

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Note: This transcript and summary was autogenerated. It has not yet been proofread or edited by a human.

Summary

This lesson continues a study on the Trinity by addressing practical questions from the congregation. The focus is on how the Trinity relates to our prayer life and whether belief in the Trinity is necessary for salvation.

Key Lessons:

  1. The biblical model for prayer is to pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, through or by the Holy Spirit — each person of the Trinity plays a distinct role in our prayers.
  2. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us even when we don’t know how to pray, and He reminds us of our intimate relationship with God as our Father.
  3. Praying “in the name of Jesus” means both acknowledging what Christ accomplished on the cross and aligning our prayers with God’s will as revealed in Scripture.
  4. 1 John repeatedly ties salvation to confessing Jesus as the Son of God, making acknowledgment of the Trinity’s distinctions essential to a biblical understanding of the gospel.

Application: We are called to pray with confidence and boldness, trusting the Holy Spirit’s help, while being careful not to go beyond what Scripture reveals about God’s nature. We should hold firmly to the biblical teaching of the Trinity and lovingly discern when others deny it.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How does understanding the distinct roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in prayer change the way you approach God in your daily prayer life?
  2. Have you ever felt too broken or sinful to pray? How does Romans 8:26-27’s promise of the Spirit’s intercession encourage you in those moments?
  3. How would you lovingly respond to someone who claims to follow Jesus but denies the distinction of persons in the Trinity?

Scripture Focus: John 16:13-15 (the Spirit glorifies the Son), Romans 8:15-27 (the Spirit’s intercession and our adoption), Hebrews 4:16 (boldly approaching God’s throne), Acts 7:55-60 (Stephen praying to Jesus), and 1 John 4:9-15 and 5:10-13 (confessing Jesus as the Son of God for salvation).

Outline

Introduction

And we’re going to be talking again about the Trinity. This time we’re answering some of the questions that were posed. We got one question several times—several different people asked the same question. So I’m going to spend much of the time on that. I’m really only going to address like two or three questions.

Actually, I didn’t get a lot of questions, which either means everybody understands the Trinity or no one does. One of those two. So anyway, after this hour, my prayer is that we all understand it just a little bit better. And again, if you have any questions after this that I couldn’t answer, you can come to me and we can talk about it then. But let’s approach the Lord now and ask his blessing on this lesson.

Our gracious God, we just want to thank you for another chance we can come together and talk about your word and in particular talk about you, to know you better, to know the God that we serve, the God that created the universe and the God that saved us and called us to himself. I pray, God, that the words that I speak would be truthful, would be honorable, and they would shine more glory on your precious name and your character. And I ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Okay. So, as you can see, I don’t have slides, but I will be sending out a list of all the scriptures that are used and any other references. So you’ll still have that so you don’t have to write every single thing down if it’s going to be a distraction to you actually listening and engaging.

So the first thing I would say is we could turn to John 16. One of the biggest questions that came up and it was a practical one was about engaging with God, understanding that there is this Trinity and there’s this distinction of persons, and is there a way that we interact with the Holy Spirit that would be wrong or unwise to interact with the Father or the Son in that same way, particularly in talking about prayer.

So I thought we would look at just a couple of things that Jesus said about the Holy Spirit, and then we’re going to talk about prayer in particular and especially who do we pray to. So in John 16 we’re going to look at verses 13-15. And if you have the pew Bible, it’s on page 1080.

The Holy Spirit’s Role: Glorifying the Son

John 16:13-15 says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak. And he will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are mine. Therefore, I said that he takes of mine and will disclose it to you.”

Okay, let’s stop there. The first and I think the most important thing, at least for our discussion now, is we see in verse 14 that Jesus said one of the main jobs of the Holy Spirit when he comes is to glorify the Son. We also see in other places that he is to point to the Father and glorify the Father.

“One of the main jobs of the Holy Spirit when he comes is to glorify the Son.”

Roles Without Rank in the Trinity

It’s interesting that we see Jesus saying that he must bring glory to the father, that the holy spirit will bring glory to the father, that the father glorifies the son, the spirit glorifies the son, but it’s never mentioned that the holy spirit is glorified in that way outside of just being a member of the triune God. But neither the father nor the son state that they come to bring glory to the holy spirit. And I think that’s one important thing to remember: it’s about role and rank. While there is no rank, there is no hierarchy in the trinity, there are roles.

I think we can see that as well. I was talking to Dwayne a couple weeks ago. He mentioned how he’s had a lot of success in explaining the trinity to people by pointing to the two analogies that scripture gives: marriage and how there is unity and oneness with two distinct persons.

It’s not exactly perfect, one of the main reasons being that we sin and there’s no sin that exists in the trinity. But also the body—1 Corinthians 12 in particular talks about the body of Christ. The same thing: this one organism moving as one for one purpose and one function, but each member having a different role in that.

But that doesn’t put one over the other. So it’s just something to remember as we think about that. Just because the Holy Spirit is not being exalted in this way, and Jesus doesn’t say I have to give glory to the Holy Spirit, that doesn’t mean that he is lower in rank. There’s just distinct roles.

“While there is no hierarchy in the Trinity, there are roles.”

There are other things that we see here as well that we will work through as we talk. But in particular, he is the spirit of truth. He will guide us into all truth. And the Holy Spirit, because he is God, when he comes we are being ministered to by God and we are hearing from God. This isn’t an angel that’s coming. There isn’t a person like me that’s coming to deliver a message and I can easily fumble it and say wrong things and you don’t know how much of it you can trust. But this is God speaking to us. This is God ministering to us.

Who Do We Pray To?

One of the questions within that—like I said, this was the question that was most often repeated—was to whom should we pray? Should we pray to the Son, to the Father, to the Holy Spirit? So we just always say God in a way that includes them all in every sentence of our prayers. I want to look at a couple of things, but I would say that the model that we find in the New Testament is that we pray to the Father in the name of the Son through the Spirit.

“We pray to the Father in the name of the Son through the Spirit.”

Praying in the Spirit

And we’ll look at each of those things and what they mean. First, in Ephesians 6:18, and I’m going to read these two fairly quickly, but Ephesians 6:18 says, “With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit.” And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. So we are to pray at all times in the spirit.

Jude 1:20 says, “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.” So again, we see that the pattern of the Old Testament, and we’ll see that even about the sun, is that we are to pray in the spirit. And what does that mean?

Ephesians 6:18: “Pray at all times in the Spirit.”

The Spirit Helps Us Pray

So it means that we pray with the help of the Holy Spirit, the enablement of the Holy Spirit, the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, to especially help us to honor God, to give him glory in our prayers, the Father and the Son. We’ll see how that works in a second. I see a couple of verses that actually say the same thing, but one word changes and kind of changes the meaning of it. The Holy Spirit will help us to pray correctly and effectively.

There are a lot of times, especially I would say especially with new believers, but I’ve met people who have been saved longer than me who still struggle with prayer. It’s like, “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know even how to approach God or I don’t know how to approach him correctly.”

Maybe they come from a background where you only speak to God in a very formal way, as if he’s grading your essay and you have to speak in this proper tone. And if you don’t, or worse, you’ll be irreverent. You can’t just speak in a normal way to God. And so they get tied up. “I don’t have that language. I don’t have that speech.”

At the risk of offending certain people, I mentioned before I went to public school, so I don’t have all of those words. I can’t just grab them and sound majestic in my prayers. That’s just not who I am.

If y’all if I start talking like that, y’all would look like, “What is he doing? What is he putting on an act? Why is he talking like that?” And I can’t tell you how many people speak like this, but then when they go to pray, especially in public, King James, and that’s it.

“Thou, oh God, we beseech thee.” Oh, you can’t even define half the words you said. There’s no way you’re praying from your heart. But a lot of times we get stuck in that mindset and we don’t think we can, and the Holy Spirit is helping us to pray. So one thing I would say, just in your prayers, Acts.

This isn’t a Sunday school about prayer. But if one of the things the Holy Spirit will do is to help us in these moments and make intercession for us and with us, we relax because we know God is in us crying out to God. And that should help us just speak, and he will even help us with the words. We’ll see in a second that even when we don’t know what to say, the Holy Spirit is there.

“The Holy Spirit will help us to pray correctly and effectively.”

The Spirit Cries Out ‘Abba, Father’

A couple of verses point to what the Holy Spirit does in our prayer in particular: Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15. Just remember, I will be sending out all of the verses that I’m saying and their context as well. Don’t rush to turn to everything or write all the references down. You’ll get them in a couple days.

Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Romans 8:15 says, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father.”

I want you to notice a distinction here. In Galatians 4:6, it says that the spirit comes into our hearts and the spirit cries out Abba, Father. In Romans, it says that we’ve received this spirit and we cry out Abba, Father.

So in one case, the Holy Spirit is doing the crying out, and in the next, we are doing the crying out. It’s stating the same thing: in your prayers, he will sometimes even give you the words to say or remind you of this relationship in particular—that God is now your Father, that he is not just some far off creator, but that he is a Father that you have an intimate relationship with. The Holy Spirit will remind you of that in your prayers, especially in moments when we feel broken because of our sin, that he is still our Father.

“In your prayers, the Holy Spirit will remind you that God is your Father — especially when you feel broken by sin.”

We don’t now come and say, “Okay, I’ve sinned. I displeased God.” I used to do that all the time. I wouldn’t go to God because I’m like, “Oh, I sinned. I yelled at someone yesterday or I cut somebody off.”

Usually, I was saying to someone the other day—I don’t have a place in my mind when I yelled at someone like in their face, but you cut me off or no, you ain’t got to cut me off, just drive 40 in the fast lane and I’m like, “Come on, get out the way.” Like, I will go up a few octaves in decibels, but I’m not in that face, so it’s okay. But I may do that a couple of times, and I come and I do that on the way to church and they’re like, “Haulif, can you pray?”

I don’t know. I was just sinning against somebody. I don’t know if I could pray now. That’s the mindset that we have.

We do want to be careful and we don’t want to be flippant when we approach God. But we want to understand that the spirit of God is in us and will sometimes even give us the words and will cry out on our behalf or help us to cry out to God and remind us also that we’re coming to God and coming to our Father.

So, making sure I line this up.

Approaching God with Confidence

In Hebrews 4:16, it tells us, “Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.” We went from being enemies of God to being brought into his family. We went from not being able to approach God at all to now being able to come to him at any time.

It reminds me of the story of Esther where the king had issued an edict that you could not approach the king unless it was your appointed time or the king called you separate from your appointed time. There was a fear that if she went in to talk to him on behalf of her people, she may be killed because she approached him at that time. Similarly, we didn’t have a right to approach God unless we are repenting and begging for forgiveness of our sins. We didn’t have a right to approach God before we came to Christ.

Now we not only have a right, we have the privilege, we have the honor of approaching God. We can approach our father at any time. All times we should be praying and talking to our father. And Hebrews says that we do it with confidence.

Hebrews 4:16: “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.”

In the King James, it says with boldness. We can boldly approach the throne.

And that is the way that we should be praying and talking to our father in this, knowing we’re talking to the sovereign creator of the universe who is our loving father who has an intimate relationship with us.

The Spirit Intercedes in Our Weakness

Now in Romans 8:26, and this verse will come up again. You can turn it. This verse will come up again when we talk about spiritual gifts. I think I’m teaching spiritual gifts—I’m not even sure—but if I am, this verse will come up again for sure because it’s one that has been kind of misapplied, I think, in many ways. And the misapplication of it causes us to miss the beauty of it and to miss what God is really promising us about the Holy Spirit.

But Romans 8:26-27 says, “In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Verse 27, “And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

So look at this promise here. There are times where we can be so beaten down and broken and depressed and discouraged. It could be because of a situation that we’re in. It could be because of our health or lack of resources or we lost someone dear to us or even because of our own sin.

And these situations will have us not even knowing how to pray or what to pray or feeling that we can’t even lift our voice up to God. And in those moments, in those times, the Holy Spirit is praying on your behalf.

“In those moments when you can’t even lift your voice to God, the Holy Spirit is praying on your behalf.”

It doesn’t say that he’s giving you the words to pray. It doesn’t say that he’s moving you to go to prayer meeting. It says that the Holy Spirit himself is praying. He’s interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.

And I won’t talk about how it’s been misapplied because that would take us in a totally different direction. But when we focus on these verses, this is the focus that we have: the Holy Spirit who will intercede for us and then we have the Son interceding for us as well.

So we’re covered, right? I mean, in the simplest terms, we have the triune God praying for us within the Trinity itself.

God’s ‘No’ as a Blessing

And working out the things that are being prayed for because what’s being prayed for is according to the will of God. It’s not just the things that we want. There was a situation I was talking to my wife about this morning and saying, “I’m so glad that what we were praying for didn’t happen.”

And this is real. Like we say that sometimes, right? But this is real. It was about a job. I went up for a promotion that would have been two steps above, and the person that came in and they gave the job to instead of me has been perfect for the job and has taken a lot of stress off of me.

A lot of things have come into my life in the last month or so that has put so much stress and has become such a drain on our time, our energy and our emotions that it would have been impossible to do that job well.

Not only that, we have someone else come in, so I don’t have to do the job, but I was doing the job anyway, kind of behind the scenes. You guys know how that works. And now I’m not even doing that anymore. So I still had a relief of stress from the job while all these things are going on so I can give my attention to them. And we were saying, just imagine if God had said yes to our prayers and other people who were praying for us at this time. Imagine how much more hectic things would be, how difficult our lives would be right now if God said yes.

But the Holy Spirit, being God and knowing the will of God, interceded for me in that moment to get a no, and the no came and it’s been a great blessing.

“The Holy Spirit, knowing the will of God, interceded for me to get a ‘no’ — and the ‘no’ has been a great blessing.”

The Practical Impact of the Trinity

I just want us to be encouraged. We’re talking about the trinity, but I want us to see how the doctrine of the trinity, or at least the workings of the trinity, have a practical impact in our lives. It’s not just getting a technical point right, but it’s understanding how God interacts with us.

This is beautiful: the Holy Spirit comes and when we talk about the roles, the Holy Spirit teaches us and leads us into all truth. The Bible says in 1 John 2 that we have this anointing so that we don’t have to be taken away by false teachers. That’s the context there.

Some people like to quote that when they don’t go to church at all and say, “Well, it says you don’t have need for a teacher.” But it’s talking there about being drawn away by these false teachers, by these apostates. But it says you don’t have to just accept it when someone says, “I’m your pastor.

I’m one of the teachers, or I’m coming into town as an evangelist and I have this new message.” You don’t have to be swept away by that because the Holy Spirit will keep you grounded in his word.

“It’s not just getting a technical point right — it’s understanding how God interacts with us.”

Praying in the Name of Jesus

In prayer we pray through the spirit, by the spirit we pray in the name of the son. We pray in the name of Jesus, and a lot of times that just comes—it’s kind of slapped on, “in the name of Jesus,” like whatever. And we just kind of say that at the end of our prayers.

It’s just how you end: “in the name of Jesus. Amen.” A lot of times we—I’m very guilty of that. I’m saying “we” in a real sense, not saying “we” so I can talk about you guys, but in a real sense, I have to catch myself a lot.

Just like, did I just throw that in? Did I just say that because I don’t know how to have a conversation? It’s awkward. You’re like, I don’t know how to end this conversation and just walk away. And like, “Yep, I’m praying in the name of Jesus.

All right, thanks God.” And I could just step away now because I said the thing I need to say to end the prayer. But there are two things that are really kind of brought out in this phrase, “in the name of Jesus.”

First, it means that we pray in light of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. So you pray in the name of Jesus because of what Jesus has done. We couldn’t even approach God in this prayer if it wasn’t for Jesus and his cross.

And we could come boldly because he paid the price for our sins. We can stand before God as those who are righteous because Jesus lived a righteous life and then took his righteousness and put it on our account. So that now God looks at us as though we are righteous and interacts with us and treats us as though we are righteous, even in the middle of our sin.

And I mean today as believers when we sin, God still looks at us and treats us as righteous. We have been redeemed.

“We pray in the name of Jesus because we couldn’t even approach God if it wasn’t for Jesus and his cross.”

So now we are the sons and daughters of God. And we could come boldly and we come in the name of Jesus, not in our own name, not because of our own works, not because of our own merit. We don’t come representing ourselves. I’m not coming in the name of Khalif. I’m coming in the name of Jesus. That mighty, matchless name, Jesus, the one who died for my sins. The one who saw me as an enemy and said that is going to be my friend.

That is the name that we’re approaching God in. That is how we are praying. That is how our prayers should be encapsulated.

In the Name of Jesus Means Alignment with His Word

That I’m coming in the name of Jesus because of what he did. And second, it means that we’re praying in agreement with or in alignment with what Jesus said.

The word of God. I’m coming now in the name. Now, many of us have seen like TV shows or movies. You’ll see like a police officer chasing somebody, especially older ones. I don’t know if they still continue this phrase much now. And they’ll say, “Stop in the name of the law.” They don’t say, “Stop because I’m Officer Bob.” They say, “Stop in the name of the law.” Right? You stop because I’m coming at you. I have this badge. I have this shield. And it represents the city or the county or whatever whoever has given me this authority.

So in the name of is not only the authority and we do have authority as believers. We have authority over sin. We’re no longer slaves to sin but we now can master it. We can master our bodies. We’re not to let anything master us.

And we are coming in as a representative in agreement with what Jesus said.

“Praying in the name of Jesus means we are coming as a representative in agreement with what Jesus said.”

So it calls for obedience. It calls for an understanding of the promises of the commands, the expectations of me, of my rights and my responsibilities as now a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

And we’re coming to God. We’re praying.

Praying for God’s Will to Be Done

And think about what’s typically called the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. We’re praying that God’s will be done. And if that is our actual prayer, then we are praying in alignment with what the Bible says about everything that we should do. We’re praying for our enemies because we want God’s will to be done.

If I’m praying in the name of Jesus, I’m praying for his will to be done even if it means I don’t get the promotion.

Even if it means that healing doesn’t come in this life, right? It means that I am in agreement with what God is doing. And not only in agreement with it, I submit to it and I want to be a part of making it happen.

“If I’m praying in the name of Jesus, I’m praying for his will to be done — even if it means I don’t get the promotion.”

So we pray in the name of Jesus and we pray by or through the Spirit. And our prayer is typically directed to the Father.

Can We Pray to the Son or the Spirit?

And even though when the Bible points us to pray and we see the models of prayer, the Father is the one we’re typically praying to, that doesn’t mean we can’t pray to the Holy Spirit or pray to the Son.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t pray to the Holy Spirit or pray to the Son.”

I think of Stephen and I noted this down in Acts 7. It’s all of Acts 7 and even a little bit of Acts 8 where Stephen is being martyred and actually you could turn to Acts 7.

It might be good to note it’s page 196 in the Pew Bible.

Stephen’s Prayer Reveals the Trinity

Stephen is being martyred for his faith. At the end of the chapter, they take him out and begin to stone him basically because he’s calling them out, calling them sinners, and saying you sinned in the same way your fathers have sinned against God.

It’s interesting here because in verse 51 he mentions the Holy Spirit and he says, “You men who are stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears are always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing just as your fathers did.” Then in verses 55 and 56 he talks about the Son. He says, being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

So right there he has mentioned the Trinity just in a few short verses, and we’ll talk about kind of why that’s important in a second, but I just want to point that out. In verse 59 he prays to Jesus. He says they went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

The Father was right there. He saw him. He literally got a vision of heaven for that moment and saw the Father seated on his throne and the Son by his right side, and he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” God didn’t come down and say, “I you prayed to the wrong person. You didn’t pray to the Father. I’m sitting here and you’re going to pray to the Son?” No. The prayer went to Jesus and it was fine. Jesus is God.

“Stephen called out, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ — and God didn’t say he prayed to the wrong person. Jesus is God.”

We also don’t want to get so caught up in the nuances that we become rigid. I won’t say legalistic here because it’s not really about salvation, but we just don’t want to become so rigid and dogmatic that we miss the blessing of the Holy Spirit and of Jesus because we’re like, “Oh, we didn’t pray to the Father.” Now we don’t want to thank the Father for dying on the cross.

Just like we don’t want to become sloppy in our prayers because we’re like, “Oh, they’re all interchangeable in these roles and in the way they function.” You don’t want to because you just want to be mindful in your prayers. But if you do, I don’t think lightning is going to come and strike you.

But you do want to be mindful. You want to be involved in your prayer mentally. If you’re thanking a member of the Trinity for doing something, make sure that it’s a member of the Trinity that’s doing it, or it could just be the Godhead himself doing it.

The Trinity Revealed Naturally in Scripture

And why I said it was important that he mentioned the trinity here was because it’s one of these things, and I said two weeks ago where one of the objections that we usually get is the word trinity is not in the Bible. We talked about that some last week where the trinity is just a collection of doctrines all related to the identity of God. We just see what does the Bible say about God, and then put it together and we just gave it a name for shorthand rather than trying to describe the whole trinity.

When you want to say one thing, just “trinity”—all right, I know what you’re talking about. So it’s just a shorthand way of describing this collection of doctrines that are all taught in the Bible. So that’s not a real objection.

But we see here, and I think it’s really great whenever the Bible shows us something without that being the main point. Stephen didn’t say, “Before I die, let me just slip in a doctrine of the trinity real fast.” Right? He’s praying to Jesus. He told them that he saw the father, and he scolded them a few verses earlier for not listening to the Holy Spirit. He mentions all members of the Godhead, and it wasn’t even his point to talk about. He didn’t know 2,000 years later we will be examining his words talking about the trinity.

So this and other places where we see that it always gives me great confidence when it’s not the Bible setting out to make an argument and you say, “Oh, the author just had an axe to grind or he just had this thing that he wanted to say.” So every time he could, he would slip in the words. He was slipping the doctrine of the trinity there.

But outside of him, you don’t see it. No, you see all the time anyone who’s engaging with God in the Bible. When they identify—even the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament will be identified with the second person of the Trinity, the son of God—they’re not doing that to prove a distinct point about the nature of God in that moment. But it’s still being revealed to us. And that’s what we’re putting together to get this doctrine.

“It always gives me great confidence when the Trinity appears in Scripture without anyone trying to prove a point about it.”

And even with the Holy Spirit, many of us pray to the Holy Spirit. Anytime I’m going to approach the Bible, I pray to the Holy Spirit to help me to understand the truths of scripture because that’s one of his jobs—to lead us into all truth, to guide us, to illuminate scripture so we can understand it better for ourselves. And if I’m ever going to teach, I need the Holy Spirit to be with me if I’m going to ever speak on behalf of God. And so I pray directly to the Holy Spirit that he would come and that he would fill me, that he would teach me, he would correct me.

And so the Bible doesn’t say you can’t pray to those, but the normal typical pattern of the New Testament is that we pray to the father in the name of the son through or by the spirit.

I tried to answer the other question kind of embedded in this: Should Christians relate differently at all to the different members of the Trinity? Like I said, I think only as much as it’s revealed in scripture, but we don’t want to go beyond that. We don’t want to start going into our relationships and picturing those things, especially the fathers here.

You don’t want to say, “As a father, I relate to my son like this, so this must be what it’s like in the Trinity, and so this is how I need to view them.” And if that alters how you engage with the father or engage with the son, then make sure that you get that out and only do what the Bible says.

This is a very difficult topic to understand because it goes beyond anything else we have in creation—the nature of God. And so the simplest way we can understand it is just to take what scripture says only. And so there’s a lot of questions, and I’m glad those questions didn’t come that I would not be able to answer because the Bible doesn’t state it. And I can get up here with every philosophy that I want, but it would not be the word of God. And if you want to hear my opinion, ask me on a Tuesday somewhere on the street, but not while I’m teaching here.

You can ask my opinion while I’m here, but know that it’s not the word of God or anything close to that.

But we do want to make sure that we don’t go beyond scripture. And that’s with what we say, but also our fears. We don’t want to put a fear on ourselves or a limitation on ourselves that scripture does not require.

Do You Need to Believe in the Trinity to Be Saved?

Here’s another big one, and this is a big question that I have gone back and forth with over time. Do you need to believe in the Trinity to be saved?

And kind of within that, what is enough to believe about the Trinity? How much do you need to understand exactly to be saved, if anything at all? And then what about the Old Testament saints who didn’t have all of this revealed in the same way?

“Do you need to believe in the Trinity to be saved? How much do you need to understand to be saved?”

Old Testament Saints and the Trinity

The Old Testament definitely supports the doctrine of the Trinity. Two weeks ago when we looked at the Trinity, we spent time in the Old Testament as well. We didn’t look at this one, but even Psalm 110 where it says Yahweh says to my Lord and goes on with that, right?

I mean, and this is why I think I was talking about that legacy standard Bible because it makes it clear here that there’s a distinction in creation itself. Seeing that the Bible attributes creation in many places, but particularly in 1 John to the son, we see that the father was there in creation and that the spirit was there in creation as well. We looked at Genesis 1:1-2, or even later on in Genesis when they’re creating humanity and saying “let us make man in our image,” and the result was male and female.

Even then we see the trinity in this plural language, and also in the result of humanity being crafted in the image of God—two genders that come together as one.

Or even in the Tower of Babel that we looked at where he says, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language.” That’s Genesis 11. You see here again this plural language that God is using, the Trinity is using in the Old Testament.

Now, it’s hard to imagine that every Old Testament believer was so aware of the Trinity that they all saw this God in three persons as we describe it now and worshiped him in that way. Just from what we see revealed in the Old Testament, it’s hard to get that and assume that everyone did. But I think we’ve seen in other places and with other doctrine that there are even times when the New Testament says that the writers of the Old Testament didn’t fully understand everything that they were writing.

Those things would be revealed more as God came and revealed them and came in the flesh. Even the writers of the New Testament after Jesus ascended into heaven were writing things and pulling the Old Testament and saying this was the fullness of what was written there or this was the purpose of the law. It was a tutor to bring you to a point where you knew you could not obey Christ fully.

So we see these things, and I think that the only conclusion we can draw, at least from the Bible that the Bible reveals to us, is that as much as was revealed to these people, they were required to believe that about God.

“As much as was revealed to these people, they were required to believe that about God.”

Now, that’s different, and I just want to make it clear. It’s different than someone saying, “Well, this person grew up all their life and they never heard the gospel, but they knew that there were bees and the sky and everything should be worshiped. They started worshiping the creation because they knew there was something bigger and greater than them out there. Does that mean they were saved because they never heard the gospel but they responded to the things that were greater? They knew there was something out there.” No, that’s very different.

When we’re talking about Old Testament saints, we’re talking about people who worshiped Yahweh. We’re talking about people who anticipated the coming of the Messiah. They anticipated that God would send one that would redeem them and that would pay the price of their sins. They performed these sacrifices in anticipation of the future once and for all sacrifice.

That’s very different than someone worshiping the trees and the river because they didn’t hear the full gospel in their life. Those are two very different things. We’re now just talking about those being saved because God revealed many things to them, but they didn’t know that one day in the future people would be indwelt permanently by the Holy Spirit.

Encountering Modalism

And because they didn’t know that they couldn’t be saved. That’s what we’re making a distinction of. As far as those in the New Testament and I, to those quick when I first came across this doctrine and when I say the term modalism people may already know what that is I was at a church and I was playing it wasn’t a concert but I remember it was set up kind of like this but the music was all right there so we’re like five feet away from whoever’s preaching and at that time the musicians all stayed on the instruments during the preaching.

So I’m sitting there on the keyboard and the guy the preacher comes and he says, “Now we all know that Jesus is the son of God.” I’m like, “Yeah, okay.” Then he said, “And we all know that Jesus is the father.” And I’m like, “Oh man, he misspoke there. I hope he catches himself.” Then he said, “And we all know that Jesus is the Holy Spirit.” And I’m like, “What?” And then he said one other thing that I don’t remember.

And then I just said that’s it. I walked out and I had to get up and leave the pulpit area and walk past the church fit five hundred people. So it wasn’t like this intimate setting. I had to walk what was like the longest hallway. Have y’all ever saw a poltergeist where the hallway just kept getting longer as they walked? That’s what it felt like walking down there. I need to get out of this place because they all saying amen.

Nobody else was shocked. I walked out and I was playing with my friends and they all came out. “You okay? What’s wrong?” I don’t even know if cell phones existed back then or not. So they couldn’t have thought I’ve got a call, but it was like, what happened? Are you okay? What’s going on? You sick?

And I’m like, did y’all hear what he said? I just repeated what he said. And one of them said, “Oh, you’re a trinitarian.”

And I was like, “A what? I didn’t even know that was a thing. I’m a Christian. I thought that came with it. That’s like going to someone and be like, ‘You breathe in oxygen? You’re one of those?’ Like, what? I didn’t know there was any other option besides a Christian who believed the Trinity. Like, I didn’t know that.”

That was a distinction I had to make with my friends who I was playing with for several years. Like, we done played through all the tri-state area. I done preached in their churches, did all that. I’m like, I didn’t know y’all believe this.

And then for about a year, we just it just led to a series of debates, friendly loving debates, but we just debated every time. And so much so that my one friend said, “I believe like you’ve proven it, but I grew up in this and so I can’t leave this.” We just refer to them as Jesus only churches and bless you.

The way they will look at scripture and try to put this together at least in a very simplistic way. There’s more nuance than this, but they’ll say he was the father in creation, that he was the son during the earthly ministry, even through the cross and resurrection, and he is the spirit in us all now.

“I didn’t know there was any other option besides a Christian who believed the Trinity.”

And they would look at verses like John 10:30 that says, “I and my father are one.” And I’m like, well, obviously, okay, Jesus and the father are one. And then when I would point out things, but look at literal conversations they’re having.

Jesus is saying, “Not my will, but your will be done.” When he’s in the garden, look at Jesus being baptized. Look at even the plural language in the Old Testament and the angel of the Lord. And all of this just all of these different things we will point to.

And he said one of them said I have to stay in this. The other his sister developed a crush on me because she said oh no one’s ever challenged me like this. Well then leave it then. So fun fact that’s how me and Sherenne got together because we were friends and she poured out her heart to Sherenne and once Sherenne heard that she was like I got to get him. Hey, you can ask her. It happened.

But this was the first time that I met people who were passionate about God pull out their hearts, their whole lives was about ministry, was about serving, not just because they played and we enjoyed doing music together, but it was about like serving and going out and we got to feed the homeless and doing this stuff. And they would make true stands. And whenever they got into relationships, they’re just like, “Yep, I’m abstinent.

I don’t if I’m not married, not having sex.” And like they would take these things like even affecting their behavior. And I’ll have to look and say, “Are you saved? Are you like, is it possible that they’re not believers?” And I went back and forth a lot about that.

Ultimately, they concluded that they were not and then kind of thought about it more as I got older and weren’t in touch with it anymore. Like maybe they were and maybe it is possible to not have this understanding. And then it was John Piper had a discourse with someone and he said this thing that just stuck with me that look at First John and when you look at First John and First John was written what for a couple reasons, but one of the main ones was to equip the believers who were under his care to be able to recognize false teachers.

He gave them the true gospel. And that’s why you have these strong statements. It’s like, if someone doesn’t love his brother, he doesn’t love God. He doesn’t know God. Because he’s making it clear these people coming in. Watch the way that they move and they act. They’re not loving. They’re coming and they’re coming with this heavy hand over you and to be your leaders. And they’re teaching you things that are different than the gospel that you first heard and you first learned.

And in that he describes salvation.

1 John: Jesus as the Son of God

And every time, or many times, when he talks about salvation he points to Jesus not just as God but as the Son of God.

His sonship is important that he keeps pointing it out. I read a few. If you want to turn to 1 John you can. I’ll be going kind of quick through these. 1 John 4:9 is going to be the first one.

1 John 4:9 says, “In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him.” Then go down to verse 15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him.

You need to know that. We’re going to look at a couple others, but listen here. He doesn’t just say whoever thinks Jesus is divine, whoever thinks that the gospel is true. He says whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God. He is constantly pointing at Jesus’s sonship as part of this understanding of the gospel, understanding of who God is. The triune God is understanding Jesus as the son.

1 John 4:15: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him.”

1 John 5:10 says whoever believes in the son of God has a testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar.

Verse 11. This is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and this life is in his son.

1 John 5:13, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.

The Difficulty of Denying Someone’s Faith

Each time in these passages he mentions salvation. He points to Jesus being the son. It’s very difficult for me then to look at someone who does not acknowledge that and say yes, you are a believer.

Now I’ll admit it’s very difficult for me to look in the face of these people who are serving who they serve more than people who have a more orthodox view of the trinity.

And there are people who you see their hearts and you see what motivates them to do things and say, “You don’t love God. You don’t know God. You don’t have the love of God in you.” That’s difficult for me as well. But that’s more of me making a judgment call.

And sometimes we have to do or say difficult things. But when we look at what scripture says, the more difficult thing is for me to take someone who is separating Jesus from what the Bible says about him and inventing someone else and declaring that Jesus is the father and Jesus is the Holy Spirit.

“It’s difficult to look at someone who separates Jesus from what the Bible says about him and call them a believer.”

So when Jesus said he’s sending the Holy Spirit, what was he saying? He didn’t say, “I’ll come back to you and just take on a different form. I’ll come back to you and be invisible this time.” He didn’t say that. He said, “I’m going to send the comforter.”

So what was he saying then? In looking at that, I do believe for Old Testament saints who all this wasn’t revealed to, but they believed everything that God said about himself, they’re believers.

For those who have a more full picture of God revealed and deny some of those aspects of God, ones that John said you have to acknowledge, I can’t call them believers. I can’t call them brothers.

And that makes me sad. That isn’t me gloating and saying, “I got something you don’t. You’re not smart.” That makes me sad to think that.

Don’t Go Beyond Scripture

I do think that with the Trinity there are so many things that we have not said that go beyond the scope of what we’re talking about here—understanding what we teach and believe at Calvary about different doctrines. The most important thing I can say is don’t go beyond the Bible and let the Bible speak. There are so many other things that we could look at and discuss, things that we’re thinking about. For instance, is there rank? Is there hierarchy? The Bible doesn’t say that, but we can say, “Oh, but in these relationships, we do see it,” or we like to think we do. Don’t do that.

Don’t make the analogies and don’t say it’s like the sun is ice and the spirit is the vapor and the father is the water and they are all different parts at different times, because that’s really modalism. He was the father and he was the son and then he transforms into the spirit when he needs to be. On the cross, I don’t know what was happening because now you’re just jumping back and forth. You’re going up to heaven and pouring out some wrath and then racing down to the cross, jumping on it so the wrath falls on you when you come. I don’t even know what that looks like.

It’s like some Bugs Bunny type stuff.

That’s what we end up doing when we go beyond what scripture says or we try to fit God in the box of our own mind.

“Don’t go beyond the Bible. That’s what we end up doing when we try to fit God in the box of our own mind.”

And God has to operate the way that I can picture it and think as if we’re God and nothing can exist that’s bigger than this.

The Wrath of God Belongs to the Whole Godhead

And one other quick note that I want to say is talking about the wrath of God. The Bible many times when it points to what happened at the exact moment on the cross, you had the father, son, and spirit all operating differently. It’s sometimes easy to fall into the idea that the father had all this wrath stored up like an angry dad and he just wanted to wipe out humanity.

And this is what he was doing in the Old Testament sometimes is the argument, and he just wanted to continue with that.

But his son stepped in and said, “Dad, no, I’ll take the penalty this time. Don’t continue to be so harsh on them. I’ll step in and I’ll take the penalty.” And so it’s not just the father who has this wrath. Jesus hates our sin just as much as the father and as much as the holy spirit. Even the ones who are making intercession for us as sinners, indwelling us as sinners. They hate sin just as much. The wrath the father was pouring out was the wrath of God.

The triune God, the Godhead’s wrath against our sin.

So we have to just make sure that we have that understanding because again, it’s very easy to slip into that. And then when you go from there, it’s well, they have different minds and they have different wills and one just had to submit to the other. Then we go to this idea that it could easily take us into heresy.

From a simple misunderstanding in year one, five years from now we could really be saying some things that are really against what the Bible says. So that is one thing that we have to make sure that we get right: this wrath that was poured out against sin was the wrath from the Godhead, from the triune God. And it was not just the father who had that role because the son was receiving that wrath on behalf of humanity.

“The wrath poured out against sin was from the Godhead, the triune God — not just the Father alone.”

Q&A and Closing

That’s the last thing that I wanted to say. We have like five minutes for questions as long as you’re not trying to trip me up with anything. If you have any questions at all, if you don’t, I do see one hand. If you don’t, you can always come to me after, email me, anything like that. I’ll also say there will be a Q&A with the elders next month, and that’s when you can ask the harder questions because I can make Greg answer those.

Glenda, what would you like to say?

In his service.

The pastor came with his father at one time.

You must in the beginning.

I believe.

Yeah. It’s amazing how that can hide because you don’t talk about that every day, and it’s usually when they—I don’t know what the preacher was talking about in my case—that he felt the need to declare that to a church that already believed. I don’t know why he said that. But I guess in the same thing when you guys knew what it was, it sounds like your husband distinctly said, “I’m going to make sure I preach the truth,” and they hear the truth, and so that’s really commendable, especially in places like that because they get really aggressive sometimes with what they believe.

Is there anyone else? Yes, sir.

Oh, that’s good. So the question is, would you pray with someone who is oneness or Jesus only or believes modalism? That is, I think it depends on the relationship.

I think what I would do with my those friends if they came back around and wanted to pray, I would say, “Well, we think differently. Do we still think differently about this? Because this is who I’m praying to, and it depends kind of on the interaction I think I would have with them.” But anyone I didn’t know so well, I wouldn’t. I’m really careful. Even when people say I want to pray for you and stuff, I’m like, “Nah, don’t be talking to your demons for me,” like I don’t know you. So I’m really careful about that.

And so I would say mostly I would want to just say no. Like, don’t pray. You’re never dishonoring God by being careful.

Even if you’re being a little overly cautious in that and you get to heaven and God just says, “Hey, what? That one day it would have been okay if you prayed with them.” Okay. But I’d rather err on that side of caution and make sure that they are, because they could also be just bad at kind of explaining the idea, and some of them may not even be so entrenched in that belief. Mike Affirmation.

And that’s just someone that’s already a brother.

Yeah.

Yeah, great points. And so we hit 10 o’clock and I want to be mindful of that, especially if there needs to be like a sound check or something. I don’t want to encroach on that time. So I saw there were two hands at least, Arthur and Tony. If you can come talk to me after. And so let’s just close our Sunday school with a prayer.

Closing Prayer

A gracious God, we want to thank you for this time now. God, we thank you for clarity that your word brings. We thank you, God, that you even show us through your word that who you are is bigger than we can imagine.

And Lord, that gives us comfort. It gives us comfort to know that you are so big, you can’t fit in our minds. We can’t just relegate you to what we can imagine.

That you are not like the idols of the world that were fashioned by man’s hands and man’s imaginations. But you are the creator of all, Father, Son, and Spirit. All creating, all working in salvation, all working in our sanctification, and all bringing us to glorification.

We thank you God that you are one and that we can know you. And I pray God for the rest of our time together, our fellowship, our service, the preaching, the singing that all of it will exalt your name and bring us closer to you and allow us Lord to even love each other with a greater love. And I ask all

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