A Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity: Difference between revisions

This passage not only clearly differentiates between the Father and the Son, but it warns us how important God considers the truth about His nature.

The scriptural truth that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Spirit, is rather easily demonstrated. We begin with the fact that the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father — actions incomprehensible outside of recognizing that the Father is a separate divine person from the Son... unless you see as the Father hugging himself:

:''For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jn 5:20.</ref>

This is the context of Jesus’ statement, “I and the Father are one.” They are one in giving eternal life, they are one in protecting the sheep, they are one in the covenant of redemption. All this must be said simply to be honest with the passage. And once we see what Jesus is speaking about, we can understand how this passage does, in fact, teach the deity of Christ, for no creature could claim this kind of oneness in redemption with the Father. Eternal life is divine life, and Jesus gives it to His own. God’s people are in the Son’s hand and are likewise in the Father’s hand (cf. Colossians 3:3), and hence are safe and secure in their almighty grip. The Father has given a people to the Son and will not suffer any of them to be lost (see John 6:37–39). Here is the oneness that exists between the Father and the Son — a oneness in redemption. Yet since redemption is a divine act, here we have the testimony to the deity of Christ, for no apostle, no prophet, can be said to be “one” with the Father in saving believers in the way announced here. No mere creature can have this kind of perfect unity of purpose and action. No, Jesus Christ must be perfect deity to be able to say of himself in reference to redemption, “I and the Father are one.”

If Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, we are tempted to begin asking all sorts of questions concerning just how the “God-man” could exist. Thankfully, the Scriptures safeguard this unique and special act of the Incarnation and do not bow to our inordinate desire to know things God has not chosen to reveal. Instead, we are only given certain guidelines, certain truths that help us to avoid wandering off into error. We can say that the early church was correct in coming to the conclusion (at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451) that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human. He is not two persons, nor are His natures somehow mixed together so that He is not truly divine or truly man. He is both, concurrently, because He has both natures.

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