I AM that I AM

“How on earth can a holy and righteous God know what I thought, did and said yesterday and not kill me in my sleep last night? Why is it that we are here today? Why is it that He has not consumed and devoured each and every one of us? Why, why O God, does your judgement and wrath tarry?”
-Voddie Baucham

There is a doctrine, a belief if you will, that is the most important but most overlooked doctrine of the entire Christian faith. That is, the doctrine of the Trinity.

Although Catholics, Protestants and the majority of the other sects of Christianity hardly ever deny the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity, it is hardly ever expounded. It is never taught, nor is it delved into by majority of people who still have big questions left about their faith; but fail to study the truth that will give them what they need.

Why is it then that the doctrine of the Trinity is so important but so easily overlooked? It’s because it’s basic conceptual nature is easy to understand. Any Christian with any amount of faith finds it easy to believe that God is 1-in-3. He is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Simple.

But we never take it deeper than that. We never attribute more to this doctrine than numbers. Let me explain why it is so crucial to every other doctrine within Christianity.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the base for every other doctrine that exists within the truth. Before the foundations of the world were laid, before you and I were created, before time started, there was the Trinity. God eternally exists (eternally in this case also meaning without beginning) in complete glory, love and satisfaction within Himself. Since there are three person within the Trinity, there is relationship. Since there are three persons in relationship in all things good, there is glory. Henceforth since there is eternal glory within the Trinity there is nothing greater than Trinity itself.

God is not an idolator, He places nothing above Himself.

Let me define some of the attributes of Trinity to help explain this relationship:

God is omnipotent (all powerful). God is omniscient (all knowing). God is omnipresent (He is everywhere, including in, out and through time). God is omnibenevolent (all glorified and lovely). God is also sovereign.

You see if God was omnipotent but not sovereign, man could use God in His power (sovereignty of man). If God was omnibenevolent but not omniscient, He couldn’t express the beauty and love that lies within the Trinity. So on, and so forth.

Now you have a basic understanding of the nature of God and how He relates to Himself. But what’s the big deal? How does this change the rest of Christian doctrine and dogma?

God cannot love others if He does not love Himself.
God cannot extend mercy if He does not have authority.
God cannot give grace if He did not know how to go beyond Himself.
God cannot be the dictate of all things if He is not all powerful.

Everything you know that accummulativly impacts Christianity to it’s entirety is based upon the doctrine of the Trinity. God’s love, grace, knowledge, power, being, beauty, wrath, anger, wisdom and timing is all rooted in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The largest question to me in my mind, is not what God is, but how God is in relationship to man.

It’s not hard for me to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s hard for me to understand (but do so with God’s grace, ironically enough) that such a God with such a nature would turn His head to look upon me, justify me through the death of Himself on the cross, and accept me as I am into His eternal presence.

I do not have to move to the left or to the right for God to love me. And that’s because He is who He is. He does not need ANYTHING.

I am not anything without Him.

http://prayerfoundation.org/st_patricks_breastplate_prayer.htm

Amidst all the blackness

“Follow me.”
-Jesus Christ

 

One of the things God has been placing on my heart (or rather slapping me upside the head) with recently is the mystery that He still holds in my life. The unexplainable yet undeniable truth and presence He has within me and life around me, and in fact to all creation.

Antinomies for example. An antinomy is when you have two truths that sit side by side, seemingly in direct opposition to each other but yet both undeniable. For instance I believe in both the Sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Man is predestined to his eternal salvation or damnation yet is still held accountable for the words and deeds of his life. This is an antinomy. I could try to explain but that’s entirely a whole different note

One of the simplest antinomies we all as Christians believe in and yet hardly realize is that God both loves Himself and loves the bride of Christ. You see when you have an infinitely beautiful, perfect and powerful God it is not wrong nor is it obscene for Him to say, “Look at me! I am all things good and beautiful. I am the epitome of all that is holy.” God does all things for His own glory. And He does so rightfully.

Yet He loves us. He still sent His son, Christ Jesus, the very personification of both God’s love and man’s complete and total depravity, to take on the burden that is ours and to bring us in communion with a holy God.

How can God, being all things infinitely good, take His eyes off of Himself to love us?

You see it’s easy to say God is all powerful because we serve Him, and we know if we serve Him and love Him by following His word, we are justified and so excused from eternal hell. It also just as easy to say that God loves us because His incredible and amazing work in our lives is evident and we are met with grace and mercy each day.

In what we perceive of logic and wisdom, these things cannot go together. You cannot have omnipotence and free will. You cannot have glory and love. God can’t become man and we can’t come to Him.

It is impossible, simply impossible to have a relationship with Christ and not see these things! You wouldn’t be any kind of Christian if you haven’t stepped back and said, “Now wait a minute, I don’t get this.” In your searching for God and His wisdom, in pursuit of sanctification you have come across things that you cannot explain, and at times feared believing because you could not properly defend it with doctrine or apologetics.

The only way you’re going to find the truth in these matters is by denying yourself which is the method of sanctification, and seek God. Just God! Only Him. Lock yourself in a closet and don’t come out till He’s spoken to you. Why would an atheist care if God is completely Sovereign or if He has some understanding for man’s own will? Why would an atheist care if it were both?

To a person who isn’t regenerate would think of these things as scandals. And that’s what the Gospel is to a person who does not seek God…a scandal. Are you ashamed of the scandal of Jesus Christ? Are you one of God’s own fools? Would you take up your own cross or present yourself a living sacrifice upon a fiery alter?

I cannot stand, keep dry-eyed or hold myself up when I am in fullest realization my mortal body can carry me when I realize that God has saved me. When I give Him my broken and contrite heart, that’s the only time I see things with heavenly wisdom. He saved me just as I was, He came down from the Throne and spilled His blood to cover my iniquities.

That’s where passion comes from. The fuel of my eternal passion for God is that He saved me. Isn’t salvation enough

“Here you may suppose the Father to say, when driving his bargain with Christ for you: 

Father: My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them: What shall be done for these souls?

And thus Christ returns:

Son: Oh my Father, such is my love to, and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their surety; bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee; Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them; at my hand shalt thou require it. I will rather choose to suffer thy wrath than they should suffer it. Upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.

Father: But, my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite, expect no abatements; if I spare them, I will not spare thee.

Son: Content, Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it: and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, yet I am content to undertake it.”

-John Flavel