Do All Christians Worship The Same God Despite Division?

 They don’t just claim to worship the same God, but do! All Christians believe in the creeds of the church written by the church fathers, such as the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed. What makes a sect or faith Christian is whether they believe in the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all coequal, coeternal, and co-existent. It is the sects that deny equal status to Jesus as God the Father and make Him less than full deity.

There are only minor differences of opinion (people are human and can interpret certain passages of the Bible in a different light) and on areas that are only minor such as mode of baptism, church government, mode of communion, types of worship. Most Protestants feel they can get along with all other Protestants because they all oppose Roman authority over the church and its members; however, most believe Catholics are believers with irreconcilable differences. Most however Christians would concur with St. Augustine: “In essentials, unity, in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Amen! 

How To Address The Deity

I have heard prayers to every kind of deity imaginable as a Christian, having had fellowship with many factions, sects, and denominations.    The Mormons, for instance, like to think of God just as their "Heavenly Father."  They put God in a box, and fail to see Him as Redeemer, Judge, and Counselor as well.  God is multifaceted like a diamond and we shouldn't just see God as "the man upstairs,"  the "Great Spirit in the Sky" or "the Old Man," for instance.  We don't invoke God like the Greek pagans, who said, "O mighty Zeus, judge of the right, protector of the innocent, power behind the lightning bolt, ad infinitum; we don't try to butter up God, but simply call on Him as He gave us the right to do via Jesus' instruction in the Sermon on the Mount.

Suppose one person addressed the president as President so-and-so, another as John, and another as Dad; who do you suppose had the greatest privilege and intimacy?  There is power in knowing God as Father, and we have the right to be called the children of God (John 1:12).  In prayer, how would you feel if someone prayed in the name of the "Man Upstairs?"  Wouldn't it show more respect and intimacy to use Jesus' name?  Angels don't even have this authorization to pray to the Father in the name of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit--which is our formula for prayer,  Let your prayers show your intimacy with the Almighty and not alienation or unfamiliarity.  We go to the top, and the Most High has an open door policy for us.

"...I write to you dear children because you have known the Father" (1 John 2:14).
"So if you call God your Father..." (1 Pet. 1:7).

God has given us His covenant names to claim and to realize His divine nature, but He loves it when we address Him simply as "[Our] Father" (this is the most honorable appellation He has given us as His children--see 1 John 3:1).  Note:  There is no universal fatherhood of God--only believers can claim God as their  Father.  When Jesus introduced this, it was radical and revolutionary; it was a breakthrough and taking new ground or territory spiritually.  "The Spirit cries out with our spirit, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15). Per contra popular thought, Abba doesn't mean "Daddy," though abi does.   We have this divine privilege that angels don't have a family!  We are adopted into God's family and born of the Spirit.  If we pray simply:  "O God in heaven," it sounds like we don't know our Lord very well.

Surely God is in heaven, but He is here too! "Am I only a God nearby, and not a God far away?" says Jeremiah 23:23.   He is the "YHWH Shamah" or "the LORD who is there."  Case in point:  "Surely the LORD was in this place and I knew it not."  God is the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord is upon us to pray "in the Spirit" (Jude 20). The formula (cf. Eph. 2:18), I reiterate, and that the Bible sanctions are to pray in the name of the Son, in the power of the Spirit,  to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Eph. 2:18).   Note that I am not saying we cannot intersperse other forms of address in our prayer, like LORD God, but the primary focus is on His Fatherhood.

We are to "boldly approach the throne of grace" as Hebrews 4:16 exhorts and have faith.  When we take ourselves too seriously and take our eyes off of Jesus it is hard to penetrate His dimension ("Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise" per Psalm 100:4).   Jesus ushers us into the very throne room of God and we have access or entree and the right to go to the top with God's "open-door policy."  Jeremiah 3:19 says that God was disappointed that Israel didn't call Him "Father"  ("I thought you would call Me Father.") Father is a term of endearment or gesture of intimacy.

When Jesus cried out, "My God, my God," he felt distant from His God and Father. There is no greater honor (every human father is proud to have his son call him Dad and would be insulted if he were called "Mr. so-and-so," or even "Sir");  there is no greater privilege.  We should take advantage of this right and not feel estranged from God anymore.  When we pray we are to "put on the Lord Jesus" and that means to pray as a SON!

In conclusion:  It is not wrong to pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit (though it is sinful to pray to any saint or invoke the Virgin Mary, which is Mariolatry); but there is little precedent for praying to Jesus (the text in John 14:13-14 is dubious),  or the Holy Spirit it in Scripture and we should really pray as the Lord taught us in obedience.  We are ushered into the dimension of God, His very throne room, and presence, by the virtue of Jesus' redemption on our behalf.

The scriptural formula is expressed in Eph. 2:18, NKJV:  "For through Him we both have access by one spirit to the Father."  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Universal Fatherhood Of God

German Lutheran theologian, and skeptic of the supernatural, Karl Gustav Adolf von Harnack, "reduced Christianity to two essential affirmations, the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man..." (according to R. C. Sproul).  Using the German term Wesen  (essence) to depict the sum total of  Christianity and epitome of the gospel message.  Catholics also generally believe in the basic, inherent goodness of man, denying total depravity and assuming a so-called semi-Pelagian view of man being only half sick and able to earn merit towards salvation.

The opposite was taught by Augustine of Hippo, who said that man is incapable of anything but sinning (non posse non peccare, or unable not to sin).  Man's goodness is as "filthy rags" according to Isaiah in Isaiah 64:6 and Hosea says our fruit comes from God (cf. Hos. 14:8).  Indeed, all we have done in the Spirit that can please God is enabled by the Holy Spirit and God gets the credit and glory:  Paul wouldn't "venture but to speak of anything except what Christ had accomplished through him]" (cf. Rom. 15:8).  Isaiah confesses:  "...you have done for us all our works" (Is. 26:12, ESV).  Man cannot boast in God's presence--even our faith is a gift and we believe only through grace, the unmerited favor of God (cf. Acts 18:27).  God as Father is the covenant name of God for Christians, as their prerogative.

Jesus made it clear to the Pharisees that they were of the devil and not children of God!  Only when we believe in Christ do we have the right to become the children of God (cf. John 1:12), implying that we weren't before.  John says in 1 John 3:1 what manner of love this is, to be called the children of God. 1 John 5:19, NLT, says:  "We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one."  The highest privilege we have as believers is to be adopted into the royal family of God as heirs of the Father and joint-heirs of Christ.  Only as believers in Christ do we earn this privilege and "are family!" as "members one of another."

Even today some generally believe man is basically good and we are all to believe in the goodness of man; Scripture teaches the opposite: man is inherently wicked through and through and there is no vestige or island or righteousness or goodness left in him--he's totally corrupted or radically sick, though not utterly depraved or as depraved as possible, he's totally depraved in the sense that every part of his being is corrupt and incapable of good. And  Jesus sees through our veneer and knows the real us, that we all have a dark side like the moon doesn't expose that no one sees.  This is God's estimation of man, not man's!  God doesn't grade on a curve!

The fact is that we all have feet of clay and "we sin because we are sinners, we are not sinners because we sin," the theological axiom goes.  "The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually"  (Gen. 6:5, ESV).  Man doesn't know his own condition and Carl Gustav Jung, a one-time student of Freud who broke away, and a Christian psychologist who worked with AA, said that "man is an enigma to himself," and "the central neurosis of man is emptiness."   As Scripture paints him:  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"  (Jer. 17:9, ESV); "For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot"  (Rom. 8:7, ESV).  The Law shows our crookedness (cf. Rom. 3:20, Phillips).  The purpose of the Law is to show we cannot keep it! 

We cannot just turn over a new leaf and reform ourselves:  "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil"  (Jer. 13:23, ESV).  The point is that we all share solidarity with Adam in his sin, and we cannot clean up our act, but need the grace to change us from the inside out as God grants us repentance and faith by grace working in us.  We are very bad, but not too bad to be saved, we are as bad off as we can be, but not as bad as we can be--God restrains evil to a certain degree.

Our radical degradation is in toto and permeates to our core being--our complete heart, which includes our intellect, volition, and emotion.  We are more than flawed beings, we are incapable of pleasing God in anything we do and cannot merit or even prepare ourselves for salvation.  We all like to say we have our shortcomings and like to compare ourselves with paradigms of evil like Adolf Hitler and say that we are saints if you look at them, but we are all in the same boat--God levels the playing field! We may see ourselves as run-of-the-mill sinners, but in God's eyes, we are totally depraved in our sin state.  The adages "to err is human" and "nobody's perfect" take on a new dimension in light of the Bible and man's consensus.

The reason most Christians believe in the basic goodness of man is the philosophy and worldview of Secular Humanism, which promotes the goodness of man, dethroning God and deifying man in the process, trying to make a name for mankind while believing God is irrelevant and that we don't need Him anymore, even if He does exist.  Why am I painting such a pessimistic picture of mankind?  C. S. Lewis said in a famous catch-22 that we must "see how bad we are to be good, and we don't know how bad we are till we've tried to be good."

We do a man no favor by being optimistic about his fate, nature, and ultimate Judgment Day and reckoning, and we must make him realize like Jonathan Edwards preached in 1741 the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," from Deut. 32:35 (KJV) to inaugurate the Great Awakening:  "... [Their] foot shall slip in due time; the day of their calamity is at hand...."   Soli Deo Gloria!

God's Complex Desires

God is a complicated Being that we cannot fully apprehend or put in a box, as if He were one-dimensional.  There's always more to God than we can apprehend!  Try not to think of Him as just a mean Judge, for example.  Muslims view God as being capricious, arbitrary, and whimsical; therefore they live their lives in fear of not doing enough good deeds to balance out or outweigh their bad ones.

God's desires and wants are not like man's, who goes primarily by emotion, instinct, passion, lust, or even hormones; God's will is at play too, and to Him, that is the paramount deciding factor in what happens.  God's Plan A is taking place without anyone able to thwart it or force God into Plan B.  It is written:  "... As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand" (Isaiah 14:24, ESV); and again, "For the LORD of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it?  His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?"  (Isaiah 14:27).  God knew that Adam and Eve would sin and this was all in His plan too, but that doesn't mean He desired it--it was necessitated.  

John Wycliffe's tenet is that "all things come to pass of necessity."  Also, Ephesians 1:11 says that God works all things according to the counsel of His will. Yes, He sovereignly directs, disposes, and governs all creatures, actions, and things (from The Westminster Confession, 1646) as the causa prima or sole primary cause of the universe (got the ball rolling as unmoved mover).  NB:  God's name I AM can be translated, "I cause to be."

God is using us for His purposes.  Today's common secular worldviews deny that anything has a purpose, which is a dirty or forbidden concept to them who deny this concept known as teleology. All nature teaches that God has a purpose for everything if you examine it with an open mind.  I refer to the Anthropic Principle that says everything was designed for human habitation.  We are called according to His purposes (cf. Romans 8:28). When David "had fulfilled God's purpose" the Lord took him.

However, God doesn't cause evil (He uses evil ones to do it), but uses and allows evil to His glory (Psalm 76:10 says, "Surely your wrath against mankind brings you praise..." in the NIV, and in the ESV it says, "Surely the wrath of man shall praise you....").  "The LORD works out everything to its proper end--even the wicked for a day of disaster"  (Proverbs 16:4, NIV). Ecclesiastes 3:1 says "there is a time and purpose for every event under the sun." God makes everything beautiful in His time. Eccl. 3:11

Evil wouldn't exist if it didn't glorify Him in the end.  God was not defeated by Satan and had to come up with some salvation plan to rescue man. Man usually does according to the natural inclination of his evil desires, but God has the power to restrain Himself, so as not to sacrifice His glory.  "... But He does according to His will in the host of heaven....  And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, 'What have You done?'" (Daniel 4:35, NASB). "But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases" (Psalm 115:3, NASB).

His justice is just as important to demonstrate as His grace and mercy; both will be brought forth. A good judge doesn't "desire" to send people to the death chambers when he metes out justice but is committed to doing the right thing.  A judge can't be "soft," but he still desires to render justice as well as mercy.  Thus, God gives everyone a chance to be saved, though He is not obligated to woo everyone (cf. John 6:44, 65), not necessarily the same amount of wooing to anyone, but no one has an excuse at Judgment Day (cf. Rom. 1:20).   "Yet he did not leave himself without witness..." (Acts 14:17,  ESV).    Caveat:  "Note then the kindness and severity of God..." (Romans 11:22, ESV).

1 Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all to be saved and in some versions, it says "wants all." 2 Peter 3:9 says God wants everyone to come to repentance yet in 2 Tim. 2:25 it says "if perchance God will grant them repentance" (repentance is by the grace of God, just like its flip side faith is).  Acts 11:18 says that God has even granted to the Gentiles the repentance unto life (it's a gift, God is under no obligation or it would be by justice).   It is God's preceptive will (what God's Word reveals to us as right and wrong) that no one perishes because He commands all to repent, yet His decreed will is that some receive His mercy and some His justice for the sake of His ultimate glory.  

Ezekiel 33:11 assures us that God takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked."  They have only themselves to blame for their rejection of His love (sin is basically "the refusal of the love of God," according to Dr. Karl Menninger).  They made the condemning choice themselves and are culpable for it. They rejected God, but we all rejected God and chose self over Him in Adam, and none of us would have sought Christ had we not been wooed and sought out by the Holy Spirit (cf. John 6:44, 65).

God reserves the right to have mercy on whom He will have mercy and harden whom He will (cf. Romans 9:18).  We didn't choose Him as Jesus said in John 15:16, but He chose us ("Many are called but few are chosen" per Matt. 22:14).  In view of election, no one can say that they were just on the wrong list because God doesn't make anyone deny Him or reject Him against their free will.  (What this means is that God doesn't make anyone do anything he doesn't want to do, and in that sense we are free to act on our desires--but God made our nature the way it is (e.g., melancholy, choleric, sanguine, impetuous, etc., and we act according to our God-given nature!)


God decreed that His sheep would be saved, and He does everything to make sure it happens, while He lets the lost go their own way, of their free will, and reject Him.  Whenever God doesn't intervene a person is lost. Jesus said in John 15:5 that apart from Him we can do nothing, and this includes coming to Him.  This doctrine is called preterition and means God simply passes over the non-elect and doesn't choose to save them. The elect receive grace and mercy, the non-elect receive justice.  

Salvation is not a right and no one deserves to be saved or it would be justice and not mercy.  God can save anyone He wills and condemn anyone He wills and, as the Potter, can make either vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor as He wills.  God's glory is at stake. We don't know why God chose us, but it was "according to the good pleasure of His will." (Eph. 1:5). 

What is the logical conclusion and application of the subject at hand?  We should not wish people should go to hell or curse them to go there. Even some atheists sometimes wish there was a hell to send their enemies. We don't know who the elect are and must give everyone equal opportunity as far as we are concerned without bias or unfairness. We are to copy, emulate, or mimic this attitude of loving people into the kingdom, not arguing them in--you can win the argument and lose the seeker. 

God is uniquely able to separate His desires from His will and act in the best interest of His glory, which is His overall objective.  He takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked " (cf. Ezek. 33:11, NIV) and desires [wants] all to be saved (cf. 1 Tim. 2:4), but it is not His will.  "Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him [the good pleasure of His will]" (Psalm 115:3, NIV).  We are limited and must learn to trust God for the outcome that He knows best, and our work is not in vain in the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 15:58).    Soli Deo Gloria!

The Trinity In Symbiosis

Is there something in the deal for me? Remember, it's not all about you!  Is it a win-win situation, as it were?  These are normal questions. Symbiosis is defined as a cooperative venture in which all involved parties benefit from each other in a give and take relationship.  There are several examples of symbiotic relationships in Scripture, including the husband-wife, the parent-child, and the employer-employee relationships. There are even examples in nature such as zebras and ostriches herding together because of the senses of smell and hearing of the zebra and the good eyesight of the ostrich, that they become mutually beneficial and complement each other. The phrase "You rub my back, I'll rub yours" takes on a whole new slant. Each party participates only because he gets something out of the deal--sort of like making a profit as a motive--they are all in sync, in cahoots, and on the same page!

"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, ESV).  This verse shows the cooperating work of the Trinity.  There is subordination in the Trinity, but subordination does not denote, nor connote inferiority, but orderliness and respect for authority as voluntarily given.  Christ voluntarily became subordinate for us (the doctrine of the kenosis, whereby He voluntarily submitted and emptied Himself of any independent use of His divinity), because we were insubordinate to Him!

God is a unity and exists in a tri-personality (three persons, personas, or self-distinctions), but is only one in essence or being--all members are equally God and have the same divine attributes, known as the tri-unity of God.  God is thrice holy:  "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD God Almighty, " it says in Isaiah 6.  Even though the God the Father is called that and the Son proceeds from the Father in submission, doesn't define Him as domineering or of lording it over the Son, who voluntarily submits (submission does not mean inferiority).

Now The Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son and has another role.  The fact that at creation God said, "Let us make man in our image" shows that God is a plurality (Deut. 6:4 says that the Lord is one as in echad) [Hebrew for unity, like in a cluster of grapes].  They act together and there is never any conflict of interest or selfishness at stake--it is like the Three Musketeers, who sang, "All for one, and one for all."  It's a win-win-win proposition!  We can no more explain the Godhead or Deity than why three lights on the ceiling all make one light in the room or why matter usually exists in three states (gas, liquid, and solid--each equally the same substance).

The whole issue is how does God have a symbiotic relationship?  All members must be benefiting and working together for each other in love and not thinking of them self first.  They all have different roles to fulfill and work in harmony to complete the unified will of God in them. For example:  In salvation, the Father planned, initiated, originated, or purposed it; the Son revealed it, and the Holy Spirit applied and executed it.  God the Father is the author of our salvation, God the Son is the agent who actually redeems and accomplishes it; and God the Holy Spirit is the power behind the work itself who sanctifies and regenerates.  They all need each other and you cannot say one part of the effort is more important because they are all necessary for salvation to be complete. All members submit to each other within the confines of their "job description," if you will.  They all know their roles to fulfill and do not interfere with each other's work--there is no conflict of interest and it is a win-win-win victory!

Truly it was revolutionary for the God the Son to incarnate and submit to the Father in completing His will--He had to relinquish in the Garden of Gethsemane and say "Thy will be done" to the Father. Jesus only said what the Father told Him to say and did what He saw the Father doing.  Jesus so humbled Himself that He is exalted above all and all authority has been given to Him.  Jesus also said, "I and the Father are one" (cf. John 10:30).  All that we can know of God and see of Him is in Jesus, His personification.  To say that God is three and He is one may sound like a violation of the law of noncontradiction; however, He is three in another sense that He is one and this is no contradiction. We do not say that God has three roles (like a man being a father, husband, and brother), and manifests Himself threefold, but that He is one in essence or being, but three in personhood--a three-in-oneness.  Soli Deo Gloria!

How Big is Your God?

A recent book by J.B. Phillips, Your God Is Too Small, was popular in Christian circles a while back and it was concerned with the fact of confining or defining God and putting Him into a box or limit as if we can analyze Him to spec.  God is without definition or limit and is infinite as the Greeks said, "The finite cannot grasp the infinite."  This is called the profundity or incomprehensibility of God and we will never fully know Him throughout all eternity simply because we are finite creatures.  There is always more than we can apprehend.  What can be known, however, is given us in the person of Christ.  Christianity is a revealed religion, not speculation or imagination, myth or fable, but history and revelation in the incarnation of God Himself.  All that we know about God is in the Scriptures, not in our own fabrications or subjectivism.

C. H. Spurgeon said, "The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father." We cannot plumb the depths of God.  He goes on:  "Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity." He says nothing so humbles the mind!  If we have a high opinion of ourselves, then our idea of God must consequently be small.

In The Knowledge of the Holy, by A. W. Tozer, he entertains the idea that an "inadequate view of God is actually idolatry."  We gravitate toward our image of God and our worship is no deeper than our understanding and concept of Him.  C. H. Spurgeon said that nothing so humbles the mind of man than thoughts of God--it boggles the mind and is a mental gymnastic workout that blows your self-perceived concepts away. The query is not what can we imagine of God to be, but what He has revealed of Himself.  Thales, the first of the Greek philosophers, was asked to describe God, and he couldn't!  Eventually, Greeks said He had to be immutable, immaterial, and eternal or undefined by time.

There is only one necessary being in the cosmos, and that is God; we are not necessary for the existence of the cosmos, because we don't sustain it and didn't create it.  The Greek philosophers also described Him as the first cause, or the unmoved mover, because something or someone had to be behind it all and get the ball rolling.  Nothing happens by itself or can be its own cause, according to the fundamental law of causality, or cause and effect.  God is not an effect and needs no cause and that is why He is eternal. However, we cannot know what God is like personally unless He chooses to show Himself in person and reveal His propositional truth.

It is important to have a big God because we have big problems and we must have the faith that our God can meet them all.  No situation is too big a problem for God!  Everything is small to Him and nothing is too trivial either because of that fact.  It takes great faith in a great God to meet these desperate times, but it isn't so vital how big your faith is, but in whom it is--the object of the faith.  It is better to have small faith in the right God who is great, than a big faith in a false God.  The bigger our faith the more we can accomplish with God as our partner, because Christ said, "... 'According to your faith be it done unto you'" (Matt. 9:29, ESV).

It is important to note that we are not judged by our faith, which is a gift of God (cf. Rom. 12:3) and we are stewards of this faith to produce fruit, or it is a dead faith.  Men of old were approved by their faith (in what they did with it), as we see throughout Hebrews 11.  We are judged according to our deeds done in the body as to whether they deserve a reward (our sins have been dealt with on the cross and are paid for in full).   "He will render to each according to his works"  (Rom. 2:6, ESV).  The hall of faith in Hebrews 11 mentions that these saints were commended for their faith, but note that it was faith in action that mattered;  "By faith Abraham obeyed ...."   Anyone can say they have faith, but the faith you have is the faith you show!  Jesus rebuked the disciples for their small faith, but at least that is better than no faith.  He also said it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains.  To move a mountain, so to speak, we need a big God who has power over everything, or who is almighty.  God is plenipotent or omnipotent, as theologians say.  Nothing is a problem, hassle, or a big deal to God, you might say.

Thoughts of God are meant to humble the mind because we will never grasp Him fully.  When we say things like, "I like to think of God as a kind, old, sentimental grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, even spoiling them," I am putting God in some prefabricated box and making Him out as one-dimensional.  While we live in four dimensions of the space-time continuum, God may live in many more than that.  We can also do this by believing He is primarily a cosmic killjoy, kind Father Time, a mean judge, the man upstairs, the Great Spirit in the sky, cosmic energy or force, or even a genie who gives us our wishes in prayer.  We must not limit God in this way, but must see the whole picture as revealed in Scripture, and put God into the full equation of our reality. Having a biblical conception of God will give faith in any circumstance and be big enough for any problem we encounter without being unbalanced.

Will Durant, a historian, has said that the "greatest question of our time is whether man can live without God."  Solzhenitsyn has said that man has forgotten God!  We must put God into the calculus to live right and any worldview without Him is bleak and gives man no dignity:  Without God we are nothing; with God, we have extrinsic dignity, being created in the image of God, and not being glorified algae that came to life by some fluke of nature.  If we don't have a big God we have a small image of ourselves and the answers to the questions:  How did I get here?  Why am I here? and Where am I going? go unanswered and man has no purpose and meaning in life but to avoid pain and seek pleasure as animals in heat.  And so there is value in knowing God:  We can truly know ourselves because the God who tells us what He is like in the Bible tells us what we are like too.            Soli Deo Gloria!

Why Isn't God A Woman?

"...[For] I am God and not a man...[God isn't even human!]"  (Hosea 11:9, ESV).
"God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind..." (Numbers 23:19, ESV).
"God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth"  (John 4:24, ESV).

Doesn't woman mean that she came out of man?  Man was created first in the divine order and scheme of things and then Eve or the woman out of Adam's rib.  Our God is one of design and order and not of confusion or disarray.  Woman was made for the man, and not the man for the woman as a helpmate for him.  Woman is really the pinnacle and zenith of God's creation--the ultimate masterpiece and crown of all creation.  A woman is no way inferior to man but is his equal and counterpart.  I believe God saved the best for last!

Many men have likewise pondered why God isn't a woman and even New Agers believe in Mother Nature, so to speak; because they would rather lust after a beautiful woman than worship some "old man" as God is often stereotyped and caricatured.  If God were a woman hypothetically speaking, some would counter:  "Why isn't God a man?"

God cannot literally be an "it" or a thing, but He is in the sense that He is spirit and not flesh and bone like us--God has no body and can incarnate and make theophanies at will to appear as He wills--even as fire or an angel.  The reason God is referred to as Father is because Jesus asked us to call Him that and He was His Father. This is not a throwback to our need for a father-figure, but God is attempting to show us that there is a correlation between His relationship with us and that of a father to a child. Think on this and go figure:  If God is in you, what sex is God then? The issue is whether He indwells you or not, not what His gender is.

God has no sex like the angels, but He did say, "Let's create man in our image."   This implies that He gave us the ability to communicate with Him and have a living relationship.  We have a will, emotions, and an intellect.  And He has attributes like courage, strength, compassion, tenderness, humility, and condescension that are not necessarily that of any certain sexual persuasion. God transcends gender definition and is the source of all good attributes.   It is too simplistic to say God is a man; however, Jesus is the Son of Man or the "human one [not the Father, the human one]."  God may be masculine, but if He didn't have a feminine side, where did these traits and characteristics come from, if not God?  Soli Deo Gloria!

How To Explain The Trinity

DISCLAIMER:  NO ONE CAN FULLY FATHOM GOD'S DIVINE NATURE MANIFESTED IN THE TRINITY; HOWEVER, ILLUSTRATIONS AND REASON CAN GIVE INSIGHT AND FAITH.

The Trinity, a term coined by the Church Father and lawyer Tertullian, is terminology for our God who is one in essence (i.e., that they share the attributes of divinity such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence), and is three in person--i.e., uniting three personas.  You might say He is triune or has a tripersonality.  He is a threesome, that in one sense is three, and in another only one.  God is one in the sense of a union or of being one like one cluster of grapes (from the Hebrew Echad).  Each of the members of the Godhead work together for one purpose, goal, and will to accomplish it with different job descriptions or roles:  In our salvation, the Father planned it and authored it, the Son accomplished it and achieved it, and the Holy Spirit applies it and completes it; In creation as well as in salvation, the Father initiates, the Son redeems, and the Holy Spirit regenerates.  This is like three functions of matter in the three states of solid, liquid, and gas. Water, ice, and steam are all the same element chemically, though they have different properties.

How can you say that there are three and one and not be contradictory?  If you mean it in a different sense it is no contradiction. According to the law of noncontradiction, something cannot be something and not be something in the same sense at the same time!  If you have three lights on in a room and behold only one light doesn't that mean there is but one light with three sources?  One person may say, from his viewpoint, that there are three lights, and another that there is only one!  It all depends upon perspective.  Charles Taze Russell, who founded the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, said this doctrine was illogical and therefore rejected it; however, God's nature isn't necessarily perceptible, apparent, nor lucid to our feeble minds.  You may say it is simple arithmetic:  1 + 1 + 1 = 3; however, 1 X 1 X 1 = 1.

No one can adequately explain the Trinity because the finite cannot contain the infinite, as the Latin maxim says.  We have to take it on faith that this is so!  God will give us enough to take the leap of faith, but He expects us to have faith and not let our cerebral doubts get in the way.  Our intellects can be a stumbling block to our faith, get in the way, and hinder true faith--God honors the faith of a child.

What I'm getting at is that you cannot fathom nor explain this doctrine, even if you have all eternity! We cannot peg God, put Him in a box, nor analyze Him to our specs or satisfaction!  Just accept it by faith and realize that God is infinite and you are finite and cannot comprehend God. God boggles our mind and just thinking about Him is mental gymnastics. There is always more to God than we apprehend--this is called the profundity of God.  God speaks to us in baby talk, or lisping, and is condescending to our level to have a relationship with us, who are in His image--that's why we are capable of it.

In conclusion:  I confess I cannot fully comprehend it, but I believe despite this.  You don't need all the answers to have faith, just go in the direction of the preponderance of the evidence like a jury is instructed to do.  God with the flow!  When the majority of the evidence suggests or dictates a conclusion--go with it!  Behold the "three-in-oneness" of God. "God in three persons, blessed Trinity."  They say the Trinity is not three ways of looking at God (like a man may be a husband, brother, and son), nor three persons or personas that together make up or complete God (this is called tritheism and is like the parts of an egg or apple together make up the whole egg or apple), but a threesome and a union incomprehensibly made one.    Soli Deo Gloria!

Did God Die?

I will use a syllogistic proof (a major premise, a minor premise, leading to a conclusion) that shows God as dying on our behalf on the cross: Christ is God; Christ died on the cross; hence God died on the cross. Now some may balk at this kind of logic and seem to think that it is impossible for God to die; but what is here, but separation from the Father and Holy Spirit, in a cry of dereliction, taking on the sins of the world until Christ pronounces tetelestai or "it is finished," [a done deal!].

You have to look at your definitions of God and to see the logic. The sky went black from 12 noon till three o'clock that day as the Father could not look on the Son bearing our sins. Since God is infinite, we cannot put Him in a box and confine Him to logic that makes His Godhead understandable to us, but as the song goes, "Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God, should'st die for me!" Lee Strobel refers to "Deicide" as what we did to Christ on the cross.

If Jesus was only a man the sacrifice would be imperfect and insufficient for us. The triune God works together to accomplish a unified plan and goal. The Father purposes and plans, the Son implements and carries through, the Holy Spirit applies and completes the plan. Jesus experienced separation from the Father and in this sense, He died and wondered about His being forsaken. This is a paradox because in one sense God died for us and in another sense, God judged sin in Jesus as our substitute and is very much alive and working to preserve the cosmos.

As long as you define your terms you can make this statement. God is three persons in one essence. Jesus is two natures in one person, neither separated, confused, mixed, nor divided. He is not a deified man nor a humanized god or theanthropos, but the infinite God-Man, perfect God, perfect Man, very God of very God, and very man of very man (not a God in human disguise, nor a man with divine attributes). Jesus' two natures can be distinguished, but not separated; due to the hypostatic union.

In the final analysis, it depends on how you define death.  Christ's Spirit was indeed separated from His body and when we die our spirits are separated from our bodies too.  Christ never was separated in His divine nature from the Trinity but lost fellowship during His passion on the cross.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Who Indwells The Christian?

Most Christians will testify that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and hence the third person of the triune God does indeed indwell us. But do you realize that Christ himself has taken up residence if indeed you are born again? Rev. 3:20 which pictures Christ knocking at the door of our heart is a case in point where Jesus seeks to live in our heart and not just in our head as head-knowledge. Paul says in Gal. 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me...." We should come to the realization that not only is Christ God Almighty but that He takes up residence within us.

You may say that the word for "in" is to be used figuratively and not literally (Scripture warns against quarreling about words in 1 Tim. 6:4 and 2 Tim. 2:14), but Scripture after Scripture verifies this doctrine, and the clarity of Scripture forces us to take the obvious meaning, rather than argue over the meaning of words, "which only ruins the hearers." Col. 1:27 says that the mystery is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Col. 3:11 says, "...but Christ is all and in all." Rom. 8:10 says, "But if Christ is in you...." Eph. 3:17 says, "So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." Gal. 4:19 says, "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you...." This concept is not taught from this vantage point, simply because most Christians never actualize the role of Christ in their lives. When others see Christ in you, you will know what I mean.

The union with Christ is called the mystical union, or the unio mystica in Latin. If you want to believe that this is only in theory or figurative, I won't call you a heretic; I'll just think that you don't quite get it--Jesus wants to be real to you! In a sense you are denying the Trinity unwittingly, because Jesus, being God, is omnipresent and by definition, there is no conflict with Him living in our hearts (Eph. 3:17 says, "that He may dwell in our hearts by faith")--or do you deny that possibility, thinking that Christ is limited to a physical body in Heaven?

Though Christ became a man He is still, and always was and will be God. (The finite cannot contain the infinite.) "Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and forever." During his earthly humiliation He merely gave up the privileges of Deity and His independent usage of His attributes; He never gave up any of His divine attributes--He is no less God than the Father or the Holy Spirit. And so, Jesus is physically in Heaven seated at the right hand of the Majesty on High, but in spirit, He is omnipresent--just like the Father. Jesus is here in a special way when two or more gather in His name or when we share the Lord's Table as He promised--this is another proof of His omnipresence (N.B. though Christ is in a body, He is not limited by it in His Deity).

The Monophysite heresy said that Christ was either a humanized god or a deified man, but not perfect man--perfect God or the infinite God-Man, as is taught in Scripture. The Chalcedonian definition of Christ was that He had two natures in one person which was neither mixed, confused, separated, or divided. He is vere homo, vere Deus or truly man, truly God, joined together in a hypostatic union, beyond our comprehension (referred to as the unio mysticall).  'We are not to confuse the nature nor divide the person!  

Martin Luther was attacked for his belief of what became known as "ubiquity." His view was that Christ was physically present in the communion elements, which lead to the doctrines of transubstantiation and consubstantiation. These were wrong views of His omnipresence and I will not fault Luther for not being right on everything--he was human.

Let's not forget the Father, who also takes up residence spiritually. Eph. 4:6 says, "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Yes, the entire Godhead indwells the believer! (1 John 4:15 says, "Whosoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.) A pertinent exhortation is John 15:5 as follows: "Abide in Me and I in you...."This doctrine is the test that Paul used in 2 Cor. 13:5 which says, "Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.    Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you? Unless indeed you fail the test."  We are also exhorted to test ourselves at the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. 11:28.

In summary, we should be as confident as Martin Luther that Christ lives in us. Billy Graham tells of how Martin Luther overcame the devil: "When the devil comes to the door, Jesus answers it, and when he asks for me, Jesus says, 'Martin doesn't live here anymore--I do!'"   Soli Deo Gloria!