Three Divine Persons

All right, good afternoon. Today, we are continuing and indeed concluding our three-part series on the Holy Trinity, where we've been considering the fundamental biblical foundations of this wonderful doctrine that is so close to the heart of our faith. In the first part, we saw that Scripture proclaims that God is one. There is only one divine being, one God. And in the second part, we found that Scripture declares that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit each are the one and only God.

Then finally, in this third and final part of this series, We're going to consider how the scriptures teach us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct. We're going to see that this is a distinction of person that's grounded in the eternal relations between these three. To begin our reflections, we're going to turn to the account of Jesus' baptism in Matthew chapter three. So please turn there. But before we read, we will say a word of prayer and ask for the grace of the Lord to be with us once again.

So let's pray. Lord God, our Father, I give you thanks for drawing us together once again for worship. It is indeed a great privilege that we have to come together as the assembly of your saints to be among those whom you call children, those whom you have chosen, forgiven, adopted, and even made holy by your grace. We know, Lord, that you delight to feed your children by your word. And so, Lord, we ask that you would continue to feed us today as you have already begun to do.

Feed us with rich, nourishing food for our souls, that we would grow and be strengthened and be equipped for the life that you have called us to live, a life of faith and love. Grant us, Lord, reverence because you are so high and holy. Grant us humility of heart because we are so very lowly. Open our minds, Lord. Make our hearts wide to receive what you wish to teach us.

Grant us faith. Grant us your spirit, because these things, Lord, we are not discerned in the flesh. They're discerned only in the spirit. So help us, Lord. Be with us by your grace.

Forgive us, Lord, for how far we fall short. Lord, we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. So let's read from Matthew's Gospel, chapter three. We'll read from verse 13 to the end of the chapter.

So just a short reading for today. Once again, I'll be reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. Matthew 3, starting with verse 13. Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent him, saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?

But Jesus answered and said to him, permit it at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he permitted him. And after being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were opened. he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And behold, there was a voice out of the heavens saying, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

Amen. I wanted to begin with the account of Jesus' baptism in the Jordan because this is one of the clearest places in all of Scripture where the Trinity is manifested in space and time simultaneously as three distinct persons. So here we have the Son in the flesh, In his mission to fulfill all righteousness on behalf of sinful humanity, he submits to John's baptism in the Jordan. Then we have the Holy Spirit. He descends in the form of a dove and rests upon Jesus.

And then finally, the father manifests himself as a voice from heaven and declares that this Jesus is his own beloved son. And thus we have in this moment, a powerful revelation, not only of the unity of the three persons in the work of redemption, but also a revelation of the distinction of the persons. Jesus does not descend upon himself in the form of a dove, nor does he declare from heaven that he is his own son. Now it's clear here that the three are to be distinguished. The traditional language is to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three co-equal and co-eternal persons.

And this distinction of persons is what we're going to be considering today as our third key foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity. You might remember that the first foundation we considered was monotheism. is only one God, you could say there is one divine being or essence or substance. The second foundation was that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each identified with this one God. Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

Then we have our third foundation, which is our topic for today. This is that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons, and the way these persons are distinguished in eternity is that they stand in unique personal relations to one another. The father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. The son is begotten of his father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son, and thus there are three distinct persons.

Affirming these three truths together get us to the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. This is what scripture compels us to affirm. There is one God in three persons. What I want to show you today from the scriptures is that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, they are not interchangeable, but are truly and eternally distinct.

What we're going to see is that this distinction between these persons is grounded in what we might call eternal relations, or perhaps eternal relations of origin. It is these relations that make the three distinct persons without making them different gods. And this is the crucial point. We've already said that the three divine persons share the one identical being. We have to say this because scripture clearly teaches that there is only one God.

And so if we're going to distinguish the persons, those distinctions can't be on the level of being. That is, it can't be the kind of distinction that exists between one thing and another thing. Rather, we have to maintain that the being of the Father is identical to the being of the Son and of the Spirit. If we fail to be clear about this and distinguish the persons on the level of being, then we'll end up with three distinct gods, which would not be biblical at all and would in fact violate the first foundation of the Trinity that we've already identified. So the way we distinguish the persons has to be in a different way that's not on the level of being.

What I want to show you today is that scripture leads us to distinguish the persons in terms of their relations to one another. These relations describe the way in which each person has the one divine essence relative to the other persons. So we describe this in terms of these eternal relations of origin. You might also hear this described in terms of modes of subsistence, personal relations, or even peculiar relative properties. You'll find some of those in the Second Lunder Baptist Confession of Faith in chapter two.

These complicated terms just describe the unique relations that exist within the divine essence that distinguish the three persons. So first, the father begets his son, which is to say he is eternally father to his son, and the son is eternally son. his father. And secondly, we also say that from the father and the son proceeds the Holy Spirit. These words begotten and proceeding describe these mysterious eternal relations between the three persons and it is these relations that distinguish the three persons.

And so what I want to do first today is just briefly see how these three are distinguished in the life of Jesus and in the economy of salvation. We'll see that it's not a matter of just one person who takes on different roles, but that the scripture clearly identifies three persons that need to be distinguished. And then we'll look at how scripture talks about these persons in eternity. That's where we'll see these personal relations. And we'll see that the father eternally begets his son.

the Holy Spirit is eternally from the Father and the Son. It's these relations of origin that constitute the distinction of the persons in eternity. So I want to start with what I hope is easiest to follow and understand, and that is how the scripture distinguishes the persons in their external works and their manifestations in history. So I'm thinking about things like the incarnation of the sun and his life here on earth, about the sending of the Holy Spirit and his coming upon the apostles. Manifestations of the Father with a voice from heaven and things like that that occur in time and are recorded for us in the narratives of scripture.

At this point, all I'm trying to do is demonstrate the distinction of the three, that the father is not the son, the son is not the spirit, and so forth. So where do we see this? Well, a key example is the baptism of Jesus, which we've just read. The narrative clearly distinguishes the son who is baptized from the spirit who descends as a dove and from the father who speaks and calls Jesus his own beloved son in whom he is well pleased. If one were to deny the distinction of the persons, this event would be extremely puzzling.

You would have to say that one person was performing all these different roles all at the same time. That's a weird kind of charade. It would all just be an act, a performance that reflects nothing in the actual being of God. But that's not a good reading of the text. We're not to understand that the one who descends as a dove is identical with the one upon whom he descends.

The one who speaks is not to be understood as his own son. That would simply be absurd. Indeed, in the teachings of Jesus, he speaks about the Father in ways that sound very much like he is to be understood as a distinct person. He speaks of being sent the Father. He speaks of being loved by the Father and of loving the Father.

He speaks of being with the Father and going to the Father. And indeed, the sending of the Son is very important for understanding how we distinguish the Father and the Son. In John 1, it is the Word who is with God and who is in the bosom of the Father who becomes flesh. This is called the incarnation, the enfleshment of the Son. The incarnation is specifically the incarnation of the Son and the Son only.

We never read that the Father becomes flesh. We never read that the Holy Spirit becomes flesh. It is only the Son who is united to a human nature and lives as man. Only the Son dies and rises again, and only he ascends to the right hand of his Father. So again, the whole biblical narrative of our salvation, of the incarnation of our Lord, it tells us that we need to distinguish the Father from the Son.

We also see this distinction in the prayers of Jesus. The way he speaks to his Father and prays to his Father is very telling. He calls himself I and addresses his father as you. And a key example of this is in the high priestly prayer in John 17. I'll read some of this for you, but you can turn there if you want to read along.

So this is in John 17 and we'll start with verse one. Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son. that the Son may glorify you, even as you gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given Him, He may give eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I glorified you on the earth, having finished the work which you have given me to do. Now, Father, glorify me together with yourself with the glory that I had with you before the world was." So that's in John 17. So I hope you notice all the pronouns, which I was very diligently emphasizing. You and me and I.

This is language of personal distinction. Jesus talks about himself as the son of his father. He prays that he would be glorified by his father so that he can glorify his father. He says that he has been given authority and he's given a people by his father. He talks about the glory that he had with his father and in eternity.

And it would make absolute nonsense of this text to say that Jesus was simply praying to himself. Rather, we have to say that he was addressing a different divine person, whom he calls his father. The same kind of distinctions are made between the Son and the Holy Spirit as well. In John 16, Jesus speaks about sending the Holy Spirit, whom he calls the advocate or the comforter, depending on your translation. The idea is that when Jesus goes, the comforter will be sent, which again indicates the distinction between the two.

No one ever sends himself. You can't just say that Jesus goes away and comes back in a different form. The Spirit and the Son are distinct. The Spirit is sent by the Son, just as the Son is sent by the Father. And Jesus calls the Spirit, He, while calling Himself, Me.

He says, So again, this is language that indicates personal distinction. The Spirit is also active in various places in the earthly life of Jesus in ways that indicate distinction. After descending upon him in his baptism, the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. It is by the Spirit of God, Jesus says, that he casts out demons. So again, the Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Son.

So even just from a surface reading, I think, of the Gospels, I think the distinction of the persons is extremely clear. These descriptions simply do not allow us to collapse the Father, Son, and Spirit together as a single person. They have to be distinguished. So I think it's very clear that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit. But is there anything more that we can say about this?

What in God himself actually grounds this distinction of persons? Again, it can't be on a level of being, In what way are they not each other if they're to be understood as the one and only God? So now I want to consider how the scripture speaks about the relations between the persons. The relations in eternity within the divine being and not just in the history of redemption. And I think this is where we'll find these distinctions we see in eternity and what grounds the distinctions that we see in history.

There's a reason it's the son who takes on flesh and not the father. There's a reason it's the Spirit who's sent by the Father and the Son. The order and structure in the Trinity, as revealed in the history of redemption, reflects an eternal order within God himself. So I want to see how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinguished apart from creation, in eternity, in the eternal being of God. So let's first consider the distinction between the Father and the Son.

First clue we have here is just in the names. One person is called father, the other person is called son. These are terms that we know from the created world. We know about human fathers and we know about human sons. We know that human sons come from human fathers.

In the perfect wisdom of God, this is how he has chosen to reveal himself. The first person of the Trinity is like a father. The second person is like a son. Scripture is here making an analogy. There is something that we know about human fathers and sons, that somehow, that in some way, describes something true about the eternal relation between the divine father and his son.

But like any analogy, of course, it's not a one-to-one comparison. That's why we have to be very careful about this kind of language. So we have to guard our thoughts. Not everything true of human fathers and human sons will be true of the divine father and his son. So let's not take this too far and let's allow the scriptures themselves to describe for us what this means.

First of all, I think it's important to acknowledge that Jesus is called the son of God in scripture for several different reasons. It's not always speaking of his status as the second person of the Trinity, but often refers to aspects of his humanity and his mission for our salvation. For example, Jesus is called the son of God by virtue of the virgin birth. He has no biological father, so it says in Luke's gospel, for that reason, the holy child shall be called the son of God. You can also notice that Jesus fulfills various Old Testament types and shadows that are associated with the title, son of God.

For example, Adam is called the son of God in Luke's genealogy. And we can see that Jesus is the second Adam who was head of a new humanity, bringing righteousness and life where Adam brought only death and sin. The nation of Israel is also called God's son in several places, but Jesus is the fulfillment and the representative of Israel. He stands in Israel's place, representing his people before God and succeeds where they failed. Jesus is also the fulfillment of the Old Testament kings.

He is the Messiah, the Christ. But in several places in Messianic Psalms and prophecies, the Messiah is called God's son. So there are different ways. These are different facets to what makes Jesus the son of God. He's born of a virgin.

He's the second Adam. He's true Israel. He's the Messiah. But notice all of these things refer to Christ in his incarnation. and his mission on earth for the redemption of humanity.

In all these ways, he is the human son of God. But we also need to be clear that this is not the only way that Christ is the son of God. What we also need to see is that Jesus is the son of God eternally, apart from creation and indeed before his incarnation. We need to see that Jesus is the divine son of God. That's all we need to see if this is going to have any bearing on our understanding of the Trinity.

So I want to show you that this is indeed what is taught in several places in scripture. Here's one example. In Galatians 4, we read, So here you get this idea that the one whom God sent forth to be born of a woman was already his son in eternity. He didn't become the son in the incarnation, was indeed already God's son when he was sent forth. We also get this idea in John chapter one.

I want you to come back with me there to John chapter one. We spent a little while last time considering this wonderful chapter because there's so much here that speaks about the son and the father, but we'll have a few more things to highlight here that'll be relevant for our current discussion. So John opens his gospel talking about God and his word. In verse 1, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But if we go down to verse 14, John switches from this language of God and his Word to language of a father and his son.

So if we look at verse 14, it reads, So the word who was with God and was God is called begotten of his father. Verse 18 calls him the only begotten God. This is language that's also reflected in the famous Golden Verse, as Brother Richard has been taking us through recently. John 3.16 says, for God to love the world, that he gave his only begotten son.

John 3.18 also mentions the only begotten son of God. John again uses this language in 1 John chapter four, where he writes this, by this, the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through him. So again, we have this idea that God is sending his Son into the world. The Son was already the Son of God before the incarnation, indeed before all creation.

This is very significant, because now we know that this Father-Son language applies to a reality within God himself, an eternal reality. It's not just about Jesus taking on flesh and becoming a Son for our salvation, but that he is eternally the Son of his Father. Now, associated with this language of father and son is what we've already heard, and that's this idea of begetting. Son is the only begotten son of the father. The word beget is just an old-fashioned way of speaking about how a parent, and especially a father, produces offspring.

Fathers beget their children. A father has a son by begetting. This has been the traditional way of speaking about the relation between the father and his son in eternity. begets his son. The son is begotten of his father.

And one reason we use this language is simply because the Apostle John does in these passages that we've just read. But it's true that this translation is a little bit controversial these days. The Greek word is monoghanes and the traditional translation was only begotten. But you might have noticed that in many of our modern translations they just say only or one and only or maybe sometimes unique rather than only begotten. The traditional translation was on the basis of the understanding that the word monogenes comes from two Greek words, mono meaning only, and then geneo meaning begotten or generated.

Scholars in the last hundred years or so started arguing for a different understanding. Rather than geneo meaning begotten, they argue that the word comes from genos meaning kind. And so the argument went that only begotten was a mistranslation, and that the word really just means unique or one of a kind. understanding is reflected in most of our modern versions like the ESV and the NIV. One exception actually is the LSB I'm using today.

Now in these debates I'm certainly no expert, but it does seem to me that there are at least some good reasons to continue using the traditional translation. For example, many of our Greek-speaking early church fathers clearly understood the word monogamies imply begetting. You would think they would understand given that that was their native language. Early Latin translations understood the word also to mean only begotten. The Latin equivalent was unigenitus and that was used from very early on in the church.

There's also been some good recent scholarship that is starting to come around back to this idea of only begotten son. Looking at the use of the Greek word monogenes in secular writings long before the New Testament, we find that in the earliest uses it had always a biological context. It always referred to an only child, an only begotten son or daughter. What happened though later on in the history of the Greek language is that this word began also to have a secondary meaning where it was applied metaphorically to other things. So not merely children, but also other things that were unique or one of a kind.

And so it was a metaphorical application of what was originally a biological use. So by the time of the New Testament, we have these different uses existing for the one word. So in some contexts, it does indeed refer to something simply unique. But in other contexts, especially in the context of a father and a son, I think it is still very appropriate to use this idea of only begotten as the proper translation. But this is a very complex debate.

I won't go any deeper. You can look further into it if you're very interested. You can read lots on both sides, and actually there's multiple sides of this issue. There's lots of different views. But I think there is some good reason to go with only begotten son.

But ultimately, I don't think our understanding of the Trinity rests upon the translation of just this one Greek word. Even if the Bible never says explicitly that the son is begotten, that's still directly implied by all the other father-son language that we have in the scriptures. So I think we should say that the son is begotten. He is the son of his father. So let's think about this.

What does it mean that God the Father begets a son? Well, let's be careful. Once again, let's not press this analogy too far. Let's not assume that things that are true of human fathers and sons applies directly to God. In fact, I think we can say there are several things we can identify about human fathers and sons that are not the case with God.

So let's consider some of these things first. These are things that we can rule out straight away based on what we understand already about God from the scriptures. First, and very obviously, I think we can say that this is not a biological begetting. God is spirit, as Jesus says. So remove from your mind all fleshly notions of what it means to beget a child.

For instance, no heavenly mother is involved. Secondly, this is not a begetting in time. Human fathers come before their sons. A son, before being begotten, has to come into existence. And this cannot be true within the being of God.

We know God is eternal and unchanging. Both the Father and the Son are the one true and only eternal God. We know even at the beginning of time, the Father was with his Son. The Word was with God and the Word was God. In eternity, the Father always had his Son.

This is why theologians talk about the Son being eternally begotten of his Father. He didn't come into being at a point in time. He has just always eternally been the Son of his Father. So the Father begetting his Son is not biological. It's not in time.

And third, This begetting is without multiplication or division. When a human father has a son, we get a multiplication of beings. We end up from one human being and we have two human beings. That's begetting by multiplication. We can also imagine a single-celled organism, like a bacterium.

When it has a sun, if that's the correct word for it, if a bacteria has a sun, it divides in two. We end up with two beings from one. That's begetting by division. But neither case, neither multiplication nor division applies to God. We've already seen that there is one and one only eternal God, one divine So whatever begetting has to mean when it comes to God, we have to understand that to be consistent with the fact that there is only one and only one God.

It's not as though the son is a new being that the father generates. as though we now have two gods, nor is it a matter of the father being divided into two and assigning one half of what used to be one god as the father half and the second half being the son half. No, neither of those are true. Whatever begetting entails a god must retain the oneness of God's being. So theologians have often learned to speak of the divine begetting as the father communicating his essence to the son, such that the son's being is the father's being.

The father and son eternally share the one divine essence. So once again, let's consider what we've denied. We have deep biblical reasons for saying all of these things. First, the beginning of the sun is not biological. Second, it's not in time.

And third, it doesn't involve multiplication or division. This beginning involves the father and son sharing the one divine essence from eternity. And you might be thinking, well, that's not very much like a human father and son at all in that case. And that's true. We should not expect that an analogy from creation should apply directly or in all ways to God himself.

He is entirely other than creation. And yet for this metaphor, this analogy to be meaningful at all, there has to be some point of connection. There has to be something that resembles what is represented by the analogy. So there has to be something true about human fathers and sons that is true in some sense about God the father and his And I think there are two main things that we can point to. First, something we can observe, is that this idea of origin or derivation.

That is, sons are from their fathers. They are of their fathers. This is true of human sons. This is true of the divine son. The son's person is in some mysterious way of or from his father.

The second thing we can observe is that when fathers beget sons, what they beget is of the same kind as themselves. The human father has a human son. What is forgotten of God, the father is indeed God. And this is one reason that begetting is different from creating. When you create something, you make something of a different kind as yourself.

A man might make a chair or a watch or a pulpit, but he can't create a son. He only begets a son. This is what stands behind the famous line in the Nicene Creed, where it says that the son is begotten and not made. This means that what the son is, is what the father is. He's not a creation, but a son.

So again, we have to be careful and remember that when it comes to human begetting, it results in two different human beings, whereas in God, his being remains one. but there is still a similarity in that all fathers and sons share a likeness of essence. In this case, both the father and the son are God and therefore equal. So I'm saying that Jesus being God's son means first that he is from the father, and second, that he shares in the essence of the father. This is explicit in the language of begetting.

It's implied in the language of father and son. The Bible also gives us other analogies that teach us the very same truth. These other analogies also convey this idea of origin, The Son is of the Father and also a unity of essence. So let's have a quick look at some of these. Once again, I remind you of how we begin John's gospel.

He begins with God and his word. We understand that a word is spoken. It originates from the one who speaks. So we have this idea of the word being from God and spoken by God. And by affirming that the word is God, John also makes very clear that this word is not just a created being or a power of God, but is indeed God himself in his fullness.

So in this language of God and his word, we have this idea of origin as well as shared essence. The author of Hebrews has some different language that communicates the same idea. Let's go there to Hebrews chapter one. I'll give you a few moments to find it. Let's go to Hebrews chapter one.

We'll read the first four verses of Hebrews. Let's go to Hebrews chapter one and we'll start with verse one. God having spoken long ago to the fathers, and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds, who is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, and upholds all things by the word of his power, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much greater than the angels, as he has inherited a more excellent name than they." So the author of Hebrews starts with father-son language. God has spoken to us in his son, who is the creator and heir of all things.

And then consider the language of verse three. It says, who is the radiance of his glory. So the relation between the Father and the Son is compared to the relation between glory and the radiance of that glory. Something is glorious because it's bright. It's radiating light.

And the radiance of that glory is therefore the light that is emitted. So again, we have this idea of origin. Light from light. The radiance is of God's glory. It comes from God's glory.

It also indicates sameness of essence because what is radiated from God's glory just is God's glory. Let's look down to verse 3 as well, again, in Hebrews, continuing verse 3. So now the Son is called the representation of God's nature, or perhaps person. Again, a representation has its origin in what it represents, but being an exact representation means equality and sameness of being. The only way the Son can perfectly and exactly represent the nature of God is by actually sharing in the one and only divine nature with the Father.

This is very similar language to what we find in some of Paul's epistles. In 2 Corinthians, Paul talks about Christ, who is the image of God. And in Colossians 1, he says the Son is the image of the invisible God. So once again, notice these two ideas that I've been emphasizing. First, the son is of the father.

An image takes its origin from what it images. There's also an indication, once again, of sameness, because the very idea of an image is that it resembles its subject. So these are all different biblical ways of describing the same phenomena, the same reality of the relation between the son and the father. We have this language of father and son. First of all, the son is begotten of his father.

We have language of a speaker and his word. We have language of glory and the radiance of that glory. We have language of a subject and its representation or its image. These are all metaphors or analogies that take something that we understand from creation to help us understand just a little bit about what's true in God. Now, it's important, of course, as we've been emphasizing, not to press these analogies too far.

or apply them in ways that the scriptures certainly don't, but they do communicate this glorious truth about the eternal relation between the father and his son. He is begotten of his father. And this is the fact that eternally distinguishes the father from his son. This is why we must regard them as distinct persons. To be clear, we'll reiterate also what we said, that this relation is not biological.

He's not in time, but eternal. There's no multiplication or division of the divine nature. And that's important because we have to safeguard the full divinity of the Son. He's not some lesser derivative God. He's not created.

He's not subordinate to his Father. But in being from his Father, he shares fully in the divine essence, the same essence as the Father. He and the Father are one, fully, equally, and eternally God. So I hope that's clear, at least to some extent. It's very difficult to get your mind around these things.

But what I've tried to show you from scripture is simply what the Nicene Creed summarizes so concisely and clearly. Speaking of the son, it says that he was begotten of his father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the father by whom all things were made. So this is our Lord Jesus Christ. In eternity, begotten of his father and therefore a distinct person, the eternal son. Before we finish, we also need to speak of the Holy Spirit.

and how he is eternally distinguished from the Father and the Son. Now, we don't have a lot of time to do him justice today, but we're going to touch on some of the main points. First, remember how the Spirit was distinguished from the Father and Son in the economy of salvation, as it were. Just like how the Son is sent by the Father, so too the Holy Spirit is sent. His mission is to apply to the elect the redemption accomplished by the Son.

But as with the Son, the deeper question is, How is the Holy Spirit distinguished from the Father and the Son in eternity, within the Trinity? And like with the Son, this distinction is grounded in his unique relation to the other persons. We say that the son is distinguished from the father and that he is eternally begotten of his father. And likewise, we can say that the spirit is distinguished in that he proceeds from the father and the son. Once again, the procession of the spirit is like the beginning of the son in that it is extremely mysterious.

Scripture simply does not see fit to give us much of an explanation as to what these things mean. No doubt simply because of the very limited nature of our very limited and finite minds. But the basic idea is that the spirit is from or of the father and the son, but in a way that somehow is different from the way that the son is of or from his father. We never say that the spirit is begotten, that is unique to the son. What is unique to the spirit is that he proceeds.

We use this word proceeds simply because this is the word that scripture uses. Come and see this in John 15. This is where the Lord Jesus speaks about the sending of the Holy Spirit, whom he calls the advocate or the comforter. This is what he says in verse 26 of John 15. John 15, and we'll read verse 26 and 27.

When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me, and you will bear witness also, because you have been with me from the beginning. So the Holy Spirit, according to the Lord Jesus, proceeds from the Father. This is His unique personal property. He is God, as we proved last time. This describes the way in which He is God, or the way in which He has the one divine essence in relation to the other persons.

The Father is God of none. The Son is God forgotten of His Father. The Spirit is God proceeding. And this idea that the spirit proceeds is also implied by other language that scripture uses. For instance, he's called the spirit of God.

In many places, he's said to be given by God. He's called the spirit from God. You can also notice that the word spirit itself is also strongly associated with the idea of breath that comes forth. In Greek, the word pneuma is often literally applied to things like breath or wind. And Jesus even plays on this idea in John 3 where he compares the work of the Spirit to a wind that blows where it wishes.

And that's why we say that the Holy Spirit proceeds or is even breathed forth from the Father. But why do we say that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son? The passage in John 15 only says that he proceeds from the Father. Well, there are a few reasons that we should include the Son as well. One is just that we see that the Son sends the Spirit.

We look at John 15 verse 26 again. We read this. So the son sends the spirit from the father. And it's similar in the next chapter. So if we go to chapter 16 and we read verse 7, this is what it says there.

Something else here that's really interesting is that Jesus breathes out the Spirit. If we jump over to John 20, we'll read this in verse 22. So let's go over a few pages to John chapter 20. And we'll look at verse 22, John 20, verse 22. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit.

So this again suggests that it's not the father only who breathes out the Holy Spirit and or from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds, but is indeed the son also. Further evidence that the spirit proceeds from the son is just that the spirit is sometimes called the spirit of the son or the spirit of Christ. I'll read you just a few examples. This is Galatians four, verse six. And because you are sons, God sent forth the spirit of his son.

into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. And this is 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 10 and 11. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating. as he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. This one's profound, because it tells us that the Spirit was of Christ, even in the time of the Old Testament prophets.

Long before the incarnation, this supports the idea that the Holy Spirit is eternally of the Son. Finally, I'll read you verse nine of Romans eight. It says this, however, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. This one's important because it shows us that the Holy Spirit is at the same time both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.

Thus, we can say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. And just like the Son, it's important to clarify this doesn't make the Spirit a different God or a lesser God than the Father and the Son. The Spirit is fully and equally and eternally God. His procession from the Father and the Son just describes, once again, the way in which he shares in the divine essence. is the very same one single divine nature that belongs to each person.

So my task now is to sum up what we've covered and conclude our series now on the Trinity. Today we've considered the distinction between the three persons of the Trinity. We saw first how the persons are distinguished in the gospel narratives. The baptism of Jesus was our key example The son is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends while the father speaks. We then discussed how it was the son only who was sent and took on flesh.

We saw how the son prays to his father using language of I and me and you. And this kind of distinctions are also made between the son and the Holy Spirit. So we can certainly say that we are dealing with three distinct persons. But we didn't stop there because we wanted to see how this was grounded in eternity and not just in the economy of salvation. We wanted to see what grounds and undergirds these distinctions in the Trinity itself.

And that's where we saw that these three persons are distinguished by their personal relations to one another. The first relation was that of the father and the son. Description uses several different kinds of language to describe this relation. First image was a speaker and his word, a father and a son, glory and the radiance of that glory, and an image and its subject. All of these illustrate how the son is from his father, while also sharing in the father's essence.

Therefore scripture leads us to say that the son is eternally begotten of his father. We also wanted to be clear that this begetting, unlike in human beings, is not biological, it's not in time, it doesn't involve multiplication or division of the divine nature. Rather, the father eternally begets his son, such that the son shares in the one divine being. It's a similar situation with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit stands in special relation to the other persons, which scripture calls procession.

We saw how he proceeds from the Father and that he is called the Spirit of God and is sent by the Father. We also saw how he is called the Spirit of the Son and is sent and breathed out by the Son. Thus we can say that he eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. To sum this up, I want to turn once again to the Athanasian Creed. This is another portion that will explain this distinction of the persons very clearly.

It begins like this. We worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person. The person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one.

They glory equal, their majesty co-eternal. And I'll skip down a little bit and read this. The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten from anyone. The Son was neither made nor created. He was begotten from the Father alone.

The Holy Spirit was neither made nor created nor begotten. He proceeds from the Father and the Son. Accordingly, there is one Father, not three Fathers. There is one Son, not three Sons. There is one Holy Spirit, and not three Holy Spirits.

Nothing in this Trinity is before or after. Nothing is greater or smaller. In their entirety, the three persons are co-eternal and co-equal with each other. So in everything, as we said earlier, we must worship their Trinity in their unity, and their unity in their Trinity. I think that sums up what we've heard very nicely, and indeed what we've heard in this whole series.

I started this series by saying that to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity, we need to be robustly and thoroughly biblical. We need to affirm everything that scripture says about God and hold it all together at once. If even on the surface, these things might look difficult or contradictory. So we've seen that the scripture teaches that there is only one God. We've seen that the scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.

And now today we've seen that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons. These truths stand together as the three core foundations of our doctrine of the Trinity. This is why scripture compels us to believe in the Trinity. No other teaching that denies any of these points can be faithful to what scripture teaches. If you deny the oneness of God, for example, you end up in polytheism, but that goes against scripture.

If you deny the deity of any of the persons, you'll end up in a doctrine like Arianism, which says that the sun is just an exalted created being, but this goes against scripture. And if you deny the distinction of the persons, you'll end up with a view like modalism. That's this idea that God is just one person and that the father, son, and spirit are just different roles or manifestations that he might adopt. But from what we've seen today, this clearly goes against scripture. Modalism makes a complete mockery of the incarnation, makes nonsense of Jesus's prayers, how he speaks of the father and the spirit.

Modalism certainly can't account for scripture's teaching of the eternal relations between these persons. So in the end, scripture forces us and it compels us to believe in the Holy Trinity. This should be a wonder and a delight to us. This is my final point. These three sermons have been very doctrinal.

They've been more like lectures perhaps than actual sermons, but the end goal isn't just academics. The goal is worship. I don't want to just puff you up with knowledge, although I think knowledge is a good thing intrinsically. But what I really want to do is help you to grow closer to your God. I want you to know him better.

I want you to love him better and to be devoted to him, to praise him and glorify him with truth in your heart and in your mind. In my experience, contemplating the Trinity leads to awe and wonder, devotion and worship. I want to encourage you to continue to reflect on the Trinity. This is the God of the Bible. So be good Bereans, go back to scripture and see that these things are so.

I trust that you'll be encouraged when you see how much scripture opens up and you have clarity on some of these distinctions and doctrines that we've covered. So that is our God, the Holy Trinity. Let's pray, shall we? Lord God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thank you for sustaining us and bringing us to the end of this series, considering you Our holy, triune God. Lord, you are great and glorious.

You're so high and far above us. It has indeed been a great privilege to reflect on these things together. I trust, Lord, that you have been with us, that you will continue to be with us as we each continue to grow in the knowledge of who you are. May this time that we've had together be truly a catalyst for each one of us to grow deeper, to love you, to be devoted to you, and have our thoughts of you be ever more faithful to what you've revealed about yourself in your holy word. Lord, I ask that you would continue to form us, to lead us into deeper contemplation of these true things.

And I ask, Lord, that you would indeed forgive all my shortcomings, my failings in explaining these sacred things. May only, Lord, that which is true and good and right remain in our hearts. Lord, our wisdom is not sufficient for these things, but Lord, we trust in your wisdom alone. Thank you, Lord. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.