The ESV Study Bible is our Bible of choice. To show how good the notes are, we’ve posted some free study notes on the doctrine of the Trinity—the oneness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in essence, distinct in function.

Posts in this series:

1. Biblical Doctrine: The Trinity
2. The Tri-Unity of God
3. The Mystery of the Trinity
4. Misunderstandings of the Trinity

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From the recent sermon Jesus the Prophet, on Luke 4:22-30.

What would compel you to reject Jesus Christ? Here are eight things that might cause you to reject Jesus, drawn from Luke 4:22-30.

1. Theology

The people in Nazareth love Jesus as a teacher and a healer and a feeder and a defender of the poor. But when he said, “I’m God, and I speak on behalf of God,” they said, “No, you’re Joseph’s son. You’re just a really good guy, but you’re not God.” Some of you do that. “Jesus is a good man, but not the God-man. He’s a good teacher, except for when he lies, saying things like ‘I’m God and savior.’” Don’t reject him theologically.

2. Control

You can reject him because of control. (Click here to keep reading.)

To answer any significant question about where we come from, why we are here, what is right and wrong, who God is, and where we are going when we die requires doctrine. Subsequently, everyone has doctrine. The only question is whether it is truthful, biblical, and helpful.

Admittedly, in the name of being doctrinally vigorous, some people go too far and put secondary issues—those that are unworthy of battling over—in the closed hand of conviction. Conversely, some people do not go far enough and put in the open hand primary issues that are worthy of battling over. In writing Doctrine, my coauthor, Dr. Gerry Breshears, and I sought to follow the storyline of the Bible and focus on the major unifying, liberating, and life-changing doctrines of the Bible.

The timing of this book is incredibly significant. At the very least, evangelical Christians in general, and younger evangelical Christians in particular, seem incredibly confused on doctrine. One study revealing the incredible need for Doctrine is the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (2008) (see note below). It reports the beliefs of the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month”:

• 97.2% believe in God.
• 96.6% believe that Jesus was/is the Son of God who was raised from the dead.
• 96.4% believe that God created the world.
• 89% “definitely” believe in angels.
• 76.2% “definitely” believe in demons.
• 82.5% “definitely” believe in any form of afterlife.
• 83.0% believe in astrology “not at all.”
• 83.2% believe in reincarnation “not at all.”
• 94.8% “definitely” believe in miracles.
• 95.0% believe in a coming judgment day, when God will reward some and punish others.
• 91.2% believe that God is a personal being who is still involved in the world today.
• 81.9% believe that only people whose sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus go to Heaven.
  Corollary: 5.3% say that only good people go to Heaven; 2.5% say that all people go to Heaven; 4.9% believe “something else” about Heaven, and 2.2% “don’t really know or care” who goes to Heaven. 3.3% don’t believe in Heaven at all.
• 1.6% tries to include practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, or other Asian religions.
• 85.5% say that it is “okay for religious people to try to convert other people to their faith.”
• 71.8% say that Christians should only practice one religion.
• 24.6% say that it is okay for Christians to practice other religions as well. (Another 3.6% don’t know.)
• Less than two-thirds (66.2%) say that “only one religion is true.”
• 70.8% say that it is not okay for Christians to “pick and choose their religious beliefs without having to accept the teachings of their religious faith as a whole.”
• More than one-quarter (27.0%) thinks that it is okay to “pick and choose.”
• 89% say that they have “a lot of respect for organized religion in this country.”
• Almost one-quarter (24.3%) agrees with or is still undecided about moral relativism.
• 36.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that “we should adjust our views of what is morally right and wrong” to reflect changes in our world.
• 52.0% “agree” or “strongly agree” that people should not marry someone of a different religion.

REMEMBER: These statistics are from the 13.5% of emerging adults (ages 18 to 23) in the United States today who self-identify as Protestant Christian and who attend an evangelical church at least “two to three times a month.” In Doctrine we hit all these issues and many more in a readable manner.

Note: The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) is the most comprehensive and rigorous social scientific research ever conducted on the religious and spiritual lives of American youth. It is based out of the University of North Carolina and the University of Notre Dame. The wave 1 survey was conducted among American youth ages 13 to 17 between July 2002 and April 2003, and produced a total N = 3370. Most recently, a third wave of the survey was conducted from September 24, 2007 through April 21, 2008 with the same respondents—when they were between the ages of 18 and 23 years. (This is during the first half of what developmental psychologists call “emerging adulthood.”) The National Study of Youth and Religion was generously funded by Lilly Endowment Inc. and is under the direction of Christian Smith of the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. For methodological details and related publications, visit: http://www.youthandreligion.org/.

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Leaders Lead Themselves

Leaders should spend 50% of their time leading themselves. So suggests Dee Hock, author of Birth of the Chaordic Age. When most leaders think of leadership, they think of downwardly leading those for whom they’re responsible. But you really lead upwardly (with those to whom you are responsible), horizontally (with those who are your peers), and, perhaps most importantly, inwardly (you lead yourself). If I am not able to lead myself, how can I lead others? Leadership has a great deal to do with modeling. So what is involved with leading yourself?

When I began to consider self-leadership, my mind raced back to a verse I memorized long ago from Song of Solomon 1:6, which says: “…they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!” A modern rendering of that might be: “They made me responsible for taking care of what belongs to others, but I have not taken care of what belongs to me.” I have not done a good job of managing, stewarding, and leading myself, yet I am tasked with trying to lead others.

Self-Management

The two key passages on leadership in the New Testament (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1) deal primarily with self-management or self-leadership as a prerequisite for leading others. Could it be that the reason so many leaders fail in upward, downward, or horizontal leadership is that they have not done a very good job of inward leading?

A Checklist For Self-Leading

Here are a few areas to consider that are consistent with 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 as you reflect on leading yourself.

1. My gifts. How am I doing at leading myself to know my gifts, stay within my limits, and develop those gifts to their highest, God-pleasing potential?
2. My character. How am I doing at leading myself to be a person of integrity who follows through on promises made and is a person that others can trust?
3. My purity. How am I doing at being careful of what my eyes see, my ears hear, and my mind thinks about? How are my relationships with members of the opposite sex? Do I have guidelines, safeguards, and appropriate and honest accountability?
4. My pride. How am I doing at keeping Christ at the center? Am I the hero of my own stories? Do the words I speak communicate an attitude of arrogance and superiority, or am I characterized by humility and teachability?
5. My pace. How am I doing at leading myself in the use of my time? Is my schedule writing checks my body can’t cash? Am I going at an unbalanced pace that is digging myself, and those whom I lead, an early grave? Do I have a biblical view of work and leisure, or am I a workaholic who gets a sense of self-worth based on my work?
6. My finances. How am I doing at leading myself in the money arena? Do I have healthy protection and checks and balances built-in regarding organizational funds that don’t belong to me? Are there healthy audits over all financial dealing with which I am associated? Do I resist the lusting and grabbing lifestyle of my culture, choosing instead to be content and satisfied with God’s provision? Or is my happiness at the door of the next purchase?
7. My anger. How am I doing at leading myself emotionally? Do I have a reputation for being a hothead and having a short fuse? Do I keep score regarding perceived slights, insults, and put-downs? Do resentment, bitterness, and lack of forgiveness characterize me? One survey I came across revealed that bitterness is the major cause of burnout for men between 38 and 50 years of age.

These are my key areas of “self-leadership.” What areas of self-leadership do you need to focus on?

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From the recent sermon Jesus Without Sin, on Luke 4:1-13.

1. Satan is a real enemy

Satan is a real enemy. Do you believe that? You need to discuss that at your community group and with your friends. If you don’t, if you still think, “I think that’s hocus pocus. I think that’s psychological projection. My community college professor really confused me on this point,” you need to articulate that. Don’t be a liar. Be honest. Come clean.

See, one of the most amazing things Satan did is he presented himself in the media: cartoons, little horns, red cape, and pitchfork. “Here he comes. Yeah, we know it’s him. How can we tell? He’s the red guy.” It’s not that easy. He’s into marketing and advertising. He’s subtle and crafty and sly and he’s very adept at baiting the hook. You have a real enemy. If you don’t believe that, confess that as sin. That’s the beginning of all your troubles. You have a real enemy. You’re born into a real war. You’re born again as a Christian on Christ’s side of the battle. But, the battle rages in your life as it did in his.

(Click here to see the rest of this post)

Sinless

This poster explains the doctrine of the perfect, sinless life of Christ and how it relates to our salvation. By God’s grace, the perfect obedience of Christ is attributed to all who put their faith in him.

Download the Sinless poster here.

Click here for ideas for how to use the posters.

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Video, audio, and images from the Advance 09 conference in Raleigh-Durham, NC, June 2009. Find out more.

Jesus points the disciples to the power of the Holy Spirit

At the last supper Jesus points to the coming of the Spirit, which will allow them to continue in the work that he's started. Jesus is under no illusion that the sheep have become smart enough to stay away from the dangers of wolves, disease, bad pastures, and the like. He knows they will need guidance, they will need power, and they will be given all of that by the Spirit.

Jesus makes sure that they know that the Spirit is operating out of the same authority from the Father that he was given. He tells them that they are dependent on the Spirit for everything they will need.

We must point our disciples to the Spirit. They need him. They need his power. The Spirit is often avoided because he's not defined in the flesh and blood way the Son is, nor is he as obvious as the Father, but the Spirit is full of power, and is omnipresent, and is omni-powerful, and is good, and is essential to the salvation of all people. Disciples need the Spirit, without the Spirit you have sheep leading sheep off a cliff or into a wolf's den. We need the Spirit to guide us, to convict us, to empower us, to lead us to repentance, and to continue to point us to the cross of Christ.

This is a series of reflections on how Jesus made disciples, based on the book of John.

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Biblical Doctrine: The Trinity Click | View Series

One of the most fundamental ways to misunderstand the Trinity is tritheism, which overemphasizes the distinction between the persons of the Trinity and ends up with three gods. This view neglects the oneness of the natures of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the other end of the spectrum is the heresy of modalism (also known as Sabellianism, named after its earliest proponent, Sabellius, 3rd century), which loses the distinctions between the persons and claims that God is only one person. In this view, the appearance of the three persons is merely three modes of existence of the one God. For instance, God reveals himself as Father when he is creating and giving the law, as Son in redemption, and as Spirit in the church age.

A contemporary version of modalism is found in the teaching of Oneness Pentecostalism. Both tritheism and modalism fail to maintain the biblical balance between the one reality of God and his eternal existence in three persons. A third error is to deny the full deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and to say that they were at some time created. This is the heresy of Arianism (after a teacher named Arius, c. a.d. 256–336), and it is held today by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Practical Implications of the Trinity

What are some of the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity?

1. The doctrine of the Trinity makes definitive revelation of God possible as he is known in Christ: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:18). No man can see God and live (Ex. 33:20; 1 Tim. 6:16), but God the Son provided an actual manifestation of God in the flesh.

2. The Trinity makes the atonement possible. Redemption of sinful man is accomplished through the distinct and unified activity of each person of the Godhead: “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14).

3. Because God is triune, he has eternally been personal and relational in his own being, in full independence from his creation. God has never had any unmet needs, “nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Personhood becomes real only within realized relationships, and the reality of relationship can only exist where one has something or someone that is not oneself to relate to; if, then, God had not been plural in himself he could not have been a personal, relational God till he had begun creating, and thus would have been dependent on creation for his own personhood, which is a notion as nonsensical as it is unscriptural.

Between the persons of the Trinity, there has always existed total relational harmony and expression; God is, from this standpoint, a perfect society in himself. Apart from the plurality in the Trinity, either God’s eternal independence of the created order or his eternally relational personal existence would have to be denied.

4. The Trinity provides the ultimate model for relationships within the body of Christ and marriage (1 Cor. 11:3; 12:4–6; Eph. 4:4–7).

The doctrine of the Trinity is well beyond human ability to ever fully comprehend. However, it is central to understanding the nature of God and the central events in the history of salvation, in which God is seen acting as, in effect, a tripersonal team. Biblical Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity.

Taken from the ESV Study Bible. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

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Biblical Doctrine: The Trinity Click | View Series

A Trinitarian New Testament

The NT authors employ a Trinitarian cadence as they write about the work of God. Prayers of blessing and descriptions of gifts within the body of Christ are Trinitarian in nature: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14); “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone” (1 Cor. 12:4–6).

The persons of the Trinity are also linked in the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19–20, “baptizing them in [or into] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” There are many other passages that reveal the Trinitarian, or at least the plural, nature of God (e.g., John 14:16, 26; 16:13–15; 20:21–22; Rom. 8:9; 15:16, 30; 2 Cor. 1:21–22; Gal. 4:4–6; Eph. 2:18; 4:4–6; 1 Pet. 1:1–2; 1 John 4:2, 13–14; Jude 20–21).

Roles Within the Trinity

Differences in roles also appear consistently in biblical testimonies concerning the relationships between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The uniform pattern of Scripture is that the Father plans, directs, and sends; the Son is sent by the Father and is subject to the Father’s authority and obedient to the Father’s will; and both Father and Son direct and send the Spirit, who carries out the will of both. Yet this is somehow consistent with equality in being and in attributes.

The Father created through the Son (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2), and the Father planned redemption and sent the Son into the world (John 3:16; Rom. 8:29; Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:3–5). The Son obeyed the Father and accomplished redemption for us (John 4:34; 5:19; 6:38; Heb. 10:5–7; cf. Matt. 26:64; Acts 2:33; 1 Cor. 15:28; Heb. 1:3). The Father did not come to die for our sins, nor did the Holy Spirit, but that was the role of the Son. The Father and Son both send the Holy Spirit in a new way after Pentecost (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7). These relationships existed eternally (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4; Rev. 13:8), and they provide the basis for simultaneous equality and differences in various human relationships.

The Mystery of the Trinity: Unity and Diversity

Within God there is both unity and diversity: unity without uniformity, and diversity without division. The early church saw this Trinitarian balance clearly. For example, the Athanasian Creed (c. a.d. 500) says:

We worship one God in the Trinity and the Trinity in unity; we distinguish among the persons, but we do not divide the substance. . . The entire three persons are co-eternal and co-equal with one another, so that . . . we worship complete unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.

This unity and diversity is at the heart of the great mystery of the Trinity. Unity without uniformity is baffling to finite minds, but the world shows different types of reflections of this principle of oneness and distinction at every turn. What is the source of the transcendent beauty in a symphony, the human body, marriage, ecosystems, the church, the human race, a delicious meal, or a perfectly executed fast break in basketball? Is it not, in large part, due to the distinct parts coming together to form a unified whole, leading to a unified result? Unity and distinction—the principle at the heart of the Trinity—can be seen in much of what makes life so rich and beautiful. Woven into the fabric of the world are multiple reflections of the One who made it with unity and distinction as the parallel qualities of its existence.

To be continued.

Taken from the ESV Study Bible. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

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Biblical Doctrine: The Trinity Click | View Series

Equal in Essence, Distinct in Function

As the nature of God is progressively revealed in Scripture, the one God is seen to exist eternally in three persons. These three persons share the same divine nature yet are different in role and relationship. The basic principle at the heart of God’s triune being is unity and distinction, both coexisting without either being compromised. Anything that is necessarily true of God is true of Father, Son, and Spirit. They are equal in essence yet distinct in function.

Old Testament Hints

The doctrine of the Trinity is most fully realized in the NT where the divine Father, Son, and Spirit are seen accomplishing redemption. But while the NT gives the clearest picture of the Trinity, there are hints within the OT of what is yet to come. In the beginning of the Bible, the Spirit of God is “hovering over the face of the waters” at creation (Gen. 1:2) and is elsewhere described as a personal being, possessing the attributes of God and yet distinct from Yahweh (Isa. 48:16; 61:1; 63:10). Some interpreters think that the plurality within God is seen in the Hebrew word for God, ’Elohim, which is plural in form (though others disagree that this is significant; the word is used with singular verbs and all agree that it has a singular meaning in the OT).

In addition, the use of plural pronouns when God refers to himself hints at a plurality of persons: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’” (Gen. 1:27; cf. Gen. 3:22; 11:7; Isa. 6:8). The plurality of God also seems to be indicated when the Angel of the Lord appears in the OT as one who represents Yahweh, while yet at times this angel seems to be no different in attributes or actions from God himself (cf. Gen. 16:7, 10–11, 13; 18:1–33; Ex. 3:1–4:31; 32:20–22; Num. 22:35, 38; Judg. 2:1–2; 6:11–18).

There are also passages in the OT that call two persons God or Lord: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions” (Ps. 45:6–7). David says, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’ ” (Ps. 110:1). The God who is set above his companions (Ps. 45:6) and the Lord of Psalm 110:1 are recognized as Christ in the NT (Heb. 1:8, 13). Christ himself applies Psalm 110:1 to himself (Matt. 22:41–46). Other passages give divine status to a messianic figure distinct from Yahweh (Prov. 8:22–31; 30:4; Dan. 7:13–14).

Fully Revealed in the New Testament

The OT glimpses of God’s plurality blossom into the full picture of the Trinity in the NT, where the deity and distinct personalities of Father, Son, and Spirit function together in perfect unity and equality (on the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, see pp. 2515–2522). Perhaps the clearest picture of this distinction and unity is Jesus’ baptism, where the Son is anointed for his public ministry by the Spirit, descending as a dove, with the Father declaring from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:13–17). All three persons of the Trinity are present, and each one is doing something different.

To be continued.

Taken from the ESV Study Bible. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

Re:Train

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