Thursday, December 30, 2010

Covenant and the Trinity

The following is an excerpt of a booklet that I am working on dealing with the nature of covenant.

In order to understand the concept of covenant, we must begin at the proper starting place. We can not begin with Man. We must begin with God Himself. For it is in the relationship and structure of the Trinity that we find covenant in its purest form. Men are to follow the pattern shown them in the Triune Godhead. Man; even at his best, will “miss the mark” to some degree. Therefore, we must begin with God.

The Trinity exists as three related persons. God is one in His being or essence, but He is also one because the three persons are in covenant together. They form one ultimate society. Each lives in a “selfless” manner toward the others. They glorify each other, rather than glorify themselves (John 8:54; 12:28; 13:32; 16:14; 17:1,5). There is no competition within this relationship. All that belongs to one, belongs to the others (John 16:15). There is within the covenant of the Trinity equality. The Son is not “less” than the Father. The Spirit is not “less” than the Son, nor is He “less” than the Father. In their essence, or being, they are equal. This is sometimes referred to theologically as “ontological equality.”

But we also find within the relationship of the Trinity a structure. This structure is functional. There is a “distribution of labor.” The theologian James B. Jordan views the distribution of labor in this way: “Within the relationship of the Trinity the Father serves as the Source of personality in some sense. These persons live in a living bond with one another, with the Spirit who moves between Father and Son as the Source of life-bonding in some sense. They also exist in a structure, with the Father as Father to the Son, and the Spirit as sent by the Father to the Son, and by the Son back to the Father. The Son is the Source of this structure in some sense, as He is the Word ‘in whom all things are linked together’ (Col. 1:16-17).”

This structure requires a functional “chain of command.” The Son and the Spirit covenantally function in submission to the Father. This is sometimes referred to theologically as “economic subordination.” They do this, without losing their equality with God the Father. This shows us that in covenant, submission does not mean a loss of equality. For example, within the marriage covenant the wife submits to her husband, yet maintains an “equality” with her husband in “being.” In other words, she is not inferior to her husband, though she submits to his functional authority. Jesus submitted to the Father, yet remained equal with the Father (Phil 2:5-8).

On the basis of this covenantal relationship, God is a family. Notice I am not saying He is like a family. He is a family. From eternity, God alone possesses the essential attributes of family, and the Trinity alone possesses them in their perfection. Earthly households have these attributes, but only by analogy and imperfectly (Ephes. 3:14-15).

Friday, December 10, 2010

Paul Harvey Christmas Story

[I heard this many years ago on Paul Harvey's radio program. It is a powerful illustration of the Incarnation.]

Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized, that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safety ... to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."
At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.

 Author Unknown –

 (Shared by Paul Harvey on his radio show)