Life of Christ in Five Phases 2

For the past few years I have been working on a new book, “The Life of Christ in Five Phases.” It is in narrative form and it draws its information from the four Gospel books in the Bible with a big assist from various commentaries on the Bible. There is also a teaching aid I have compiled to assist anyone who wants it. The textbook “The Life of Christ in Five Phases” and the companion book “The Life of Christ in Five Phases Teaching Aid,” are both nearing completion. I thought it would be good to give my readers a FREE short preview of the book up to the impending birth of Jesus in Lesson Four.  It will be a series of 3 or 4 posts. This is post #2. Regrettably we cannot include the Teaching Aid in this preview because of technological difficulties.            AJS

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Who Is Jesus?

Any attempt to get an intellectual knowledge of Jesus Christ is bound to produce a certain amount of frustration. We can never in this life fully know who and what He is; we do not have the mental capacity. Trying to get a full concept of the Eternal God dwelling in finite man makes one’s mind tremble like a 2?liter engine attempting to operate on 120?octane gasoline. The fuel is richer than the mind can possibly handle. But this should not keep us from trying to comprehend Him. It has never stopped mankind in trying to know more about any other subject. And there is always the grace of God to help us — if our motivation is pure.

We want to learn more of Jesus in a scholarly way, but that by no means is the end of our quest. What we should want above all is to know Him better as our Savior and to experience the vital spiritual life that He gives us. Intellectual knowledge of the Christ without an accompanying heart acceptance of Him is sheer futility. But to know Him more than casually, by intellect and by heart (the inner person), is our goal.

Three Aspects of God

Text Ref. 5

To know Jesus of course we must have at least a relatively good knowledge of God. We know that there are these three divine expressions: God the Father; God the Logos or Word (John 1.1); God the Holy Spirit. The three, we are told, constitute the Holy Trinity. It would serve no good purpose to contend that there is no such word in the Bible as “trinity.” That is not pertinent because there still remain undeniably a Father, a Logos or Word and a Holy Spirit, whatever one chooses to name the overall concept.

Of course we who comprise the “Oneness” movement are supposedly completely at odds with the Trinitarians. This writer cannot agree with this stance. When one studies the writings of the Trinitarian theologians (as opposed to the man who voices his unlearned opinion at the local barber shop) one can see that, although the words may be different, they are saying in essence what we are saying. After they go to great lengths to tell us there are three Persons in the Godhead, they then insist that the three are not actually three since the three are of one essence and think and agree as one. The main point here is that they are firm in their assertion there is only one God.

Is there, then, such a wide gulf between them and us? While we stoutly and correctly maintain, as they do, that there is one God, do we not admit there are three distinct manifestations of the one God? We carefully avoid saying there are three persons as if fearful that will proliferate the one God. But one of the definitions of “person” is this: “Any of the three modes of being (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) in the Trinity [Godhead].” (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia © 1999).) That should not ruffle our Pentecostal feathers too much.

There are different spheres of operations for the three respective manifestations of God although there is a blurring of the boundaries at times. This is because whether one refers to the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit, they are all one God. Each expression or manifestation of God is fully God, therefore each one shares the responsibility and/or credit for all the actions taken by the other two facets of God.

For example, Christ created all things (Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:16, 17) but we would not presume to say that the Father and the Holy Spirit were completely shut out of this activity. There is another example to buttress the premise that one manifestation of God does not operate independently of the other two: The Holy Ghost dwells in the hearts and directs the activities of the saints of God according to John 14:26 and 16:13. But in Acts 16:7 we read that the “Spirit of Jesus” (ASV, RSV, NIV) was He who directed the journeys of Paul and Silas. This Spirit of Jesus 0of course is the same One we call the Holy Ghost. The scripture’s apparently chance reference to Him as the Spirit of Jesus helps to confirm our contention that the three are all one God and what one does is in effect done by all three. At the same time we must remember that God chooses to differentiate between the respective works of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and that is the way we should view their operations.

To state it again, there are without argument a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, and each one is a strong and distinct manifestation/expression/person — but of only one God. Yet we cannot deny that Jesus, while standing here on earth, prayed many times to the Father who, Jesus said, was in heaven. This would seem to indicate there is more than one Person in the Godhead. Perhaps we can resolve this dilemma before we are through with this quest as to who Jesus is.