God is Spirit - Protestant Caucus/Devotional

“‘God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth’” (John 4:24).

As we begin our study of God, we must understand first of all that He is a person, not some unknowable cosmic force. In His Word, God is called Father, Shepherd, Friend, Counselor, and many other personal names. God is always referred to as “He,” not “it.” He also has personal characteristics: He thinks, acts, feels, and speaks.

We will learn three aspects of God’s person in the next several days: God is spirit, God is one, and God is three. First, God has no physical body as we have: “God is spirit” (John 4:24), and “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). Paul says He is “invisible” (1 Tim. 1:17). God represented Himself as light, fire, and cloud in the Old Testament and in the human form of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. But such visible revelations did not reveal the totality or fullness of God’s nature.

You may wonder about verses like Psalm 98:1, “His right hand and His holy arm have gained the victory for Him,” and Proverbs 15:3, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place.” These descriptions are called anthropomorphisms, from the Greek words for “man” and “form.” They picture God as though He were a man because God has chosen to describe Himself in a way we can comprehend. If He did not accommodate His revelation to our finite level, we would have no hope of understanding Him. You should not take anthropomorphisms literally, however. Otherwise you will have a false view of God that robs Him of His real nature and His true power. Look at Psalm 91:4: “Under His wings you may seek refuge.” God is certainly not a bird, and “God is not a man” (Num. 23:19). He is spirit.

Even though God is invisible, “since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made” (Rom. 1:20).

In the 24th Chapter of Luke Christ Jesus after being resurrected from the dead assures His Apostles that He is not a sprit but is flesh and bone and proves it by eating broiled fish with them.

Christ who had previously explained while in mortality that He was The “I AM” or “Jehovah” of the Old Testament was handled by many people after His resurrection. He had people put their fingers in the nail prints of His hands and feet and feel the scar of the sword in His side.

There are three entities of “The Godhead”, The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. In Luke 24 Christ reminds The Apostles that He would do as His Father had promised (sending the Holy Ghost) Christ told us He would send The Comforter, or The Holy Ghost to us after He left.

Prior to the first universal Christian council of The Church which the Emperor Constantine convened in 325AD the Trinity that we preach now was nowhere near universal but originated in Greece and migrated west slowly. Constantine liked the Doctrine the eastern church had of the Trinity, it was a perfect way to meld the beliefs of multiple gods with the doctrine of one god. Constantine was the defacto leader of a different religion by virtue of being Emperor so he had to walk a fine line concerning religion. I don’t envy Constantine for trying to keep a large nation together while in religious flux. He had his hands full.

Constantine in that council made the confession of the Trinity doctrine something that all Christians must confess and made the bishops in attendance of the council agree to it. Many bishops would not adhere and left the council under severe threats of punishment. Later Constantine relented and did not “force” bishops to teach the doctrine of the Trinity but later in 385 another council was convened where the doctrine be came mandatory under threat of death or banishment. There were minor differences in the Trinity doctrine of the eastern churches and the Roman churches for a few hundred years but now most if not all of the churches who call themselves catholic, including protestant churches have the same profession of faith including the same doctrine of The Holy Trinity.

First century believers would find the current popular Christian teaching on “The Holy Trinity” very confusing and would likely be repulsed by it.

There are many confusing verses in The Bible that make the current teaching of The Holy Trinity plausible or possible but there are also others that completely discredit that doctrine.

There are 3 distinct entities in The Godhead. We know for certain that at least one of the entities, Christ, has a physical body.

I believe that in order to communicate with God our spirit communicates with The Holy Ghost who is a being of spirit who communicates with God and we do that in the name of Jesus Christ.

I know my views are not considered kosher by the vast majority of Christians, certainly my views don’t adhere to what the Catholic Church (being the universal church not a particular church) describes when defining God. I read The Holy Bible for the first time cover to cover when I was 15 years old and have read it many times since. When I speak to priests and ministers of different churches (being a singer I used to sing in many churches) they tell me that I can’t possibly understand The Holy Bible because I haven’t been to Seminary. Perhaps, but the early Apostles didn’t go to seminary either.

Does any of this make a difference. I don’t know how important it is to know the mechanics of the being of God. I know it is important that Christ took upon Himself a physical body and came to earth to suffer for my sin and be punished to death to atone for my sins. I know that if I confess that and confess that Jesus Christ is The Son of God and is My and the worlds Savior then I can qualify for His Grace and spend eternity with Him. I know that we prove that we follow Him by our actions in this life of mortality.

Not sure what it is your stating you think is controversial.

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In a conversation with a Roman Catholic last week we talked about this very issue, that is the doctrine of the Trinity. He Explained that the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah was one form of God, that the Being of Christ Jesus was another form of the same God and that now in Heaven is Elohim which again is the same God in another form, that is spirit. That there are three names but one God. To me that is controversial. To most Christians I suspect it is not.

I would of course wonder, what happened to the body, the physical body that people touched after over 500 people watched it ascend into Heaven? I would also ask who it was that the martyr Stephen saw as he was being stoned sitting on the right hand of God. I would be curious whose voice it was from Heaven as Jesus Christ was being baptized in the river Jordan by John proclaiming that this was His Son in whom He was well pleased. I would of course wonder who was it that Jesus often prayed to but in particular in the Garden of Gethsemane begging to have the bitter cup removed from Him but that He would not do His(Jesus’) but instead His Fathers will.

I know there are places that support the Catholic view such as Christ explaining that when they see Him they have seen The Father and while I have a view of that I’m not sure it is a good explanation. There are others that are used to support the Catholic view but to me do not really such as John explaining; In the beginning was The Word and the Word was with God and The Word was God. To me that one is easy. Christ has been since the beginning. He was with The Father from the beginning and He like His Father is God. People say that would mean that there is more than one God. I say of course it does. In Genesis it says “let Us go down”. Not everyone sees things the way I do, controversy.

It is from the “first century believers” that we have the divinely inspired New Testament Scriptures they wrote which teach the Triunity of God both as Jesus taught as well as that revealed by the Holy Spirit. Where else would the later theologians gather the proofs in order to describe/define it? Many, many places in the Old Testament also teach it. Though it may have taken a few centuries for the religious leaders to get around to defining the doctrine in precise theological terms, it was taught and accepted by the Apostles, their disciples and passed down to other Christians. That’s not to say there weren’t controversies and disagreements but there is more than enough in Scripture that God has provided us to prove the truth of the doctrine.

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Actually the first written Gospel was not written until about 40 years after the Death of Christ. First century Christians for the most part had no written Gospels for a number of reasons. While it is true that the Gospels started to be written some 40 years after Christ it took time for them to be copied and shared with other congregations. Most proselyting was done by believers who either heard Christ or His associates or those who heard personally from those same people.

While Mark likely wrote his Gospel in 70AD or so Matthew and Luke likely both wrote their Gospels in approximately 80AD with John writing his in about 95AD.

Mark was a very young man or shall we say teenager when Christ died. While it is possible that he heard Jesus speak we have no record of that. Mark was however a traveling companion of Paul. Paul while not being an associate of Jesus while Jesus was in Mortality did personally meet Him on the road to Damascus. Paul’s writing more than any other Apostle was likely heavily influenced by the Old Testament since he was an educated Jew who was also a Roman Citizen. Paul and Mark traveled extensively and likely heard stories in the congregations they traveled to of the others who had come to those congregations telling what they knew of the Christian stories, the stories of Jesus.

My point being that early Christians did NOT have the New Testament Scriptures to base their theology on, mostly they had oral tradition and occasionally perhaps a partial copy of one of the Gospels or letters of one of the Apostles late in the century. There are many letters however that we don’t have written by associates of the Apostles that were burned at about the same time as the Nicaean Council of 325AD.

During the first two centuries The Church was often in hiding and enduring much persecution so that promulgating copies of the Gospels was next to impossible. Brave souls having acquired a piece or a copy of one of the Gospels would travel from city to city and read what they had to congregations they could get to.

Much of what we have of the first and second century writings are beautiful but theologically some of them are woefully uninformed.

The Canonization of the scriptures in 393 while not the earliest compilation of the New Testament (likely about 350AD) is when intellectual study of the theology of Christianity really took off and came into it’s own. With canonized scripture priests and scribes started copying the “New Testament” in earnest so that many congregations could have part or all of the New Testament.

We don’t now know what was rejected when the books we have now were officially accepted by “The Church” we do know that Canonization of the scriptures stopped much of the confusion and infighting of which doctrine was correct.

The Trinity as we now accept it mostly universally was not anywhere near universal at any time in the first century. As I said earlier, the Council in 325AD made it mandatory but even then it took several more decades for it to be universally accepted.

And my point is that the truth of the Trinity was there all along in the writings of the OT, the teachings of Jesus which were passed down long before there was a "formal" canon and then reinforced by the written revelation given to the ecclesia BY Almighty God and preserved BY Him to this day. God used humans to communicate the truth about His invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature - it is even there in creation. What makes anyone think He could be defeated by heretics? Mere humans didn't invent the doctrine of the Trinity.

What is it about the Trinity that you reject? Is it because our finite minds cannot begin to grasp the infinite? I'll give you that, but there are MANY things we believers accept by faith and without faith, it is impossible to please God.

Hope you have a great week.

What is it about the Trinity that you reject? Is it because our finite minds cannot begin to grasp the infinite? I’ll give you that, but there are MANY things we believers accept by faith and without faith, it is impossible to please God.

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I don’t reject the Trinity, I reject the way it is defined by most of Christianity today. I rather have much respect for first century believers.

I certainly believe in The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. I pray to The Father in the name of The Savior Jesus Christ and when I receive what I think is inspiration I believe it is through The Holy Ghost, but; I believe that there are three individuals in The Godhead. Christ certainly didn’t pray to Himself, He prayed to His Father which was in Heaven even while The Savior was on the earth. I believe Jesus when He said that after He left them He would send The Comforter or The Holy Ghost. Christ didn’t say He would send Himself. Not only did He say He would send The Comforter but that He would send Him from The Father.

When the prophet John the Baptist baptized Jesus it was not Jesus that came up out of the water declaring that He was proud of Himself, it was His Father from Heaven declaring to John and any who heard that He was well pleased with His son.

To me the most vivid proof of the error of the current belief or definition of The Holy Trinity is that Christ did not want to drink the bitter cup His Father had given but decided He would do His Fathers will instead of His own. Christ does what His Father sent Him to do. Christ has a will but He conforms His will to His Fathers will. It is the same thing He has asked us to do.

Christ makes it clear that He and His Father are distinct individuals when He tells Mary at the tomb on Easter morning that He had not ascended to His father. He makes it clear by saying that He is ascending to “My Father and your Father, to My God and your God”. I don’t see any other way to interpret these words.

In John 17:17 Jesus prays to His Father to give Him the Glory that He had when He was with Him. I will quote, “Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

I realize I have not studied these things in seminary but I believe that there are some things that are plain.

I hold no malice to those believers who hold to the popular belief of The Trinity. I don’t know if it matters.

I am in my 8th decade on this earth. While I am not a seminarian I do have some life experiences that form what I truly believe and understand. I do not believe The Emperor Constantine was inspired by God to organize The Church the way his government was organized. Until Constantine each local church was independent. While Apostles walked the earth they could settle disputes after they and those they ordained left life on earth I think The Church wandered.

This is not to say I have anything against Constantine, I think he likely did more good than harm to The Church certainly he stopped much of the persecution but he was not a Christian. There is a tradition that says he was baptized before he died but it is a doubtful tradition.

I have spoken to many priests and pastors of various religious beliefs. Most of these people are trying to serve The Lord. This is important, splitting hairs perhaps not so much. I’m not sure that the definition of the Holy Trinity is splitting hairs but what ever it is my belief is sincere.

Further Christ explains in John 17 what it means when He says He and His Father are one when He says that He and His apostles are one. I hope to be considered one with Him just as He and His apostles are one and just as He and His Father are one.

I don’t reject the Trinity, I reject the way it is defined by most of Christianity today. I rather have much respect for first century believers.

This is a "Devotional" thread which discourages debate and I'm not trying to argue with you or be confrontational. I only wanted to know what definition of the Trinity accepted by most of Christianity today that you rejected. It sounds to me like you actually DO believe in the orthodox view and may only be stumbling at semantics. What it boils down to is that there is ONLY ONE GOD. Revealed to us BY God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - three persons yet ONE God. Jesus is not "a" god as some cults say nor is the Holy Spirit the spirit of the Father. They are different manifestations, so to speak, of the ONE God. They have different roles and natures, yet remain as ONE. Like I said, I don't think our finite minds are capable of truly grasping the infinite and that is why we walk by faith.

Metmom is posting the studies by MacArthur and I think they will delve further into the doctrine of the Triune nature of our God.

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