A Partial Case for the Trinity

God is Jesus, God is the Father, but Jesus Is Not the Father

I wrote this for someone on Quora who seemed unsure about whether Jesus is God, but not the Father.

Science tells us that, when God made the universe, it had to involve creating energy, matter, space, and time. Having creative power over space and time, God entered time to experience it in three roles. From our perspective, God is three Persons, yet one God.

It is, as we used to say, mind-blowing! Here is just a sample of of the biblical evidence:

• Jesus called Himself “I Am” (John 8:58).  God called Himself I AM (Exodus 3:14) 
  
  (Note: Through translation from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, YHWH turned into “Jehovah,” which has little resemblance to the original word. For this reason, sects that make a big deal out of knowing the name “Jehovah” are founded on a myth.)
  
  
• Jesus claimed to have existed before Abraham, who lived about 1900 years earlier. (John 8:58)
  
  
• John wrote that God the Son (“the Word”) made all things that have come into being. (John 1:3)
  
  
• Paul wrote that God the Son created all things, and He is what holds all things together. (Colossians 1:16-17)
  
  (Note 1: In verse 16, one very bad translation inserts the word “other” so it reads, “created all other things.” They insert the word because they deny that the Son of God was created and not the Creator.
  
  Note 2: Some will say, “But look at verse 15! It says he was the first one born, so He was created. However, the Greek word translated “firstborn” in verse 15 does not mean “first one born.” It means Preeminent One. If you search the scriptures, you will find men who were called firstborn but were not the first ones among their siblings to be born. They were “firstborns” despite not being first ones born.)
  
  
• Jesus existed with the Father before creation, sharing in God’s glory. (John 1:1-2, John 17:5, John 17:24)
  
  
• If you read the last reference in context (John 17), you will notice that Jesus talks to the Father as separate Persons. The Father sends, glorifies, give authority to, gives followers to, gives a mission to, and shares glory with the Son. The Son prays to, glorifies, receives glory from, accomplishes work assigned by, shared and will share the glory of, conveys the words of, goes forth from and returns to, the Father. And that’s just the evidence from one chapter that, although the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are two distinct persons.
  

As I said, this is just a sample of the evidence. Many scoff at the Trinity, but they have to twist hard to get the scriptures to indicate that the Son and Holy Spirit are not Persons of God, or that God just switches identities to trick us into thinking a single Person doesn’t pray to Himself, delegate to Himself, send Himself, go forth from Himself, and obey Himself.

Here’s why this is very important: If you were saved by the wrong God, you still need to be saved.

Did God Change His Mind about Creation?

If God knows all things, why did he regret making man (Genesis 6:6)?

Let's add verse 5 to that:

• Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.
  And the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him in His heart.
  (Genesis 6:5-6, Berean Study Bible)

The logical answer is not always a satisfying answer, but let's deal with the flaw in the question first.  It is illogical to assume that foreknowledge precludes regret. The question assumes that knowing something will happen precludes regretting it when it happens. A parent knows an inoculation is necessary, yet can regret that it causes pain and wailing (or in my case, fainting).

The Hebrew word translated sorrow or regretted has a very wide range of meanings:

• for others: be sorry, moved to pity, have compassion
• of one’s own doings: be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
• comfort oneself, be comforted, ease oneself, take satisfaction (through vengeance)

It’s important to recognize the weakness of any argument based on such an ambiguous word.

• NASB and NKJV use sorrow, which is purely an emotion. 
• In the Atheist’s argument, the NIV's and BSB's word regretted implies admitting to having made a mistake. 
• The KJV's word repent implies a change of mind that motivates a change in actions. 

Both repent and regret go a bit far by implying thought and planning processes whereas sorrow emphasizes the emotional side and is more true to the Hebrew text. 

We could end the argument here: So God experienced an emotion. So what?

An illustration might make this more intuitive. I read of a lone climber who fell in a crevasse and spent several days and nights with his arm pinned. Believing that another night of dehydration, hunger, shock, and exposure would kill him, he decided to amputate.

Imagining myself in his place, once I started… separating tissues, to put it gently… even though the action served a greater good, I would feel mixed emotions. Even though I would be following a plan that saved my life, I would feel conflicted about inflicting agony and the irreversible loss of a limb on myself. I’m not sure I’d have the courage to do that.

Scripture says that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would prefer that all come to repentance and faith. When God saw the wickedness of man and man’s nearly universal rebellion against Him, He experienced sorrow (or whatever the intended translation was) while knowing the cause of the sorrow served a greater good.


Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Permission granted for personal and non-profit use, but please give credit where credit is due.

The Heresy of Forgiveness

Or more precisely...

The Heresy of Requiring Forgiveness to Get Forgiveness

Many people fail to discern the difference between the preaching of Law that demands repentance and the preaching of Christ that demands trust in Him to redeem us. One heresy is the idea that, if we do not forgive all who sin against us, God will not forgive us. This is based on Jesus's preaching to the self-righteous Jews.

• "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6:14-15

Jesus used the Law and rules like this to show self-righteous people that they could never achieve the level of righteousness needed to stand justified before God. 

• Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law [Jews], so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.

Anything less than lifelong sinless perfection would desecrate God's holy presence. 

The Jews added thousands of commandments to the 600+ in the Old Testament, yet Jesus said...

• unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:20).

This was to drive us to depend on God's grace:

• the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24).

So then, we are justified not by do's and don'ts such as forgiving others, but by the grace of God, and if justified by grace, then we are no longer under the law of death that condemns, but under the law of love that liberates and rewards.

• But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24).

This does not mean we can get away with sins such as unforgiveness. God chastises us to form righteousness in us. 

• Listen up, Joel Osteen! Listen up, Prosperity preachers! For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives (Hebrews 12:6). Christians' lives are actually MORE painful than non-Christians' lives. But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons (verse 7).

But although we are under our loving Father's disciplinary hand, He will never, ever cast us out of His family, reverse our adoption, or un-birth us; and our Big Brother Jesus will never, ever disobey our Father's command to lose none of us. 

Saying that God's grace of forgiveness is contingent on our good work of forgiveness contradicts the gospel. It even contradicts itself: Grace means "gift," so anything earned cannot be grace. The gospel commands us to let go of all forms of self-merit and rely 100% on God's gift. If we do not receive the gift as a gift, we insult the Giver and receive neither the gift nor the Giver.

The unsaved forgive to get forgiveness. Christians forgive because they have been forgiven. To say otherwise may simply reflect confused and incomplete thinking about the gospel. However, adding any condition such as forgiveness to the gospel costs people their salvation. When salvation is jeopardized, heresy is not too strong a word.

If you depend on your ability to forgive others in order to attain to God's forgiveness, repent of this form of self-righteousness and trust Christ alone. Now, before you forget.

Copyright 2020, Richard Wheeler. Edited version of a previous post on Facebook. Permission granted for personal, non-profit use; but please give credit where credit is due.