Part 11 of 11 in the Doctrine of God series

1. Knowing the Simple, Triune, Saving God

1. The Study God: We study God because our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We study God with humility and awe as His creatures with the church (remembering the limitations of our language). We study God’s attributes and the Trinity (and Anthropology and Christology)
2. God’s Spirituality: God is spirit (no body, invisible but personal and alive and active)
3. God’s Simplicity: God is not made up of parts, whether physical or metaphysical. Therefore, all that is in God is God, God’s essence and existence are identical, and God’s attributes are not additions to his being but identical with his essence and each other.
4. God’s Aseity: God exists from himself and is self sufficient
5. God’s Immutability: God does not change
6. God’s Impassibility: (i) Classical: God does not have emotions (ii) novel: God does have emotions but not like ours
7. God’s Moral Excellence: Holiness, Goodness, Love, Truth, Faithfulness, Righteousness, Justice, Jealousy, Joy, and Wrath
8. God’s Infinity: Incomprehensibility, Eternity, Immensity, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnisapience
9. Trinity: God’s oneness (nature) and God’s threeness (persons), eternal relations of origin, inseparable operations, doctrine of appropriation, perichoresis
10. Anthropology & Christology: human nature (body & soul), states of man & Christ, the incarnation, the early Church Councils, doctrine of the hypostatic union, communication of idioms

Summary: Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), Chapter 2: God and the Holy Trinity (see Appendix A)

2. The Triune Gospel: Redeeming Descent

• Ryan McGraw: “The greatest proof of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the authors of the New Testament could hardly explain the Gospel without it”.
• Pattern: From the Father, through the Son, by and in the Holy Spirit 
• The Father is the initiator of salvation and the sender of the Son and the Spirit. Christ did not come of his own accord, but to do the will of the Father (Gal. 1: 4). Likewise, the Spirit directs our hearts toward “Abba, Father.” Sent by the Father, the Son and the Spirit’s united work aims at the Father’s glory (Phil. 2: 11).
• The Son to accomplish our redemption and adoption objectively. And because the Son alone is incarnate, He alone does certain actions according to His human nature. 
• The Holy Spirit effectually applies the redemption accomplished by the Son and purposed by the Father, regenerating the elect, granting faith and repentance, uniting them to Christ, and indwelling them as the seal and guarantee of their salvation.
• We rightly emphasize the Son in our gospel message because the Son’s incarnate mediatorial work is the link between the gospel and the Trinity. Thus the Trinitarian gospel is Christ-centered.

3. Communion with the Triune God: Our Humble Ascent

Pattern: We commune with the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and back again: 

• Ascent (our communion): In and by the Spirit, through the Son, we commune with the Father.

“In and by the Spirit” (Indwelling and Experience)

• The Spirit is given through faith in Christ (Gal 3:2, 14)
• He dwells in us and makes us God’s temple (Eph 2:22)
• He strengthens the inner man, reveals the love of Christ, produces worship, thanksgiving and holiness (Eph 3:16-19; 5:18-21)
• Therefore, communion is not merely positional, but experiential and transformative

“Through the Son” (Mediatorial Access)

• Christ is the exclusive way to the Father (John 14:6)
• The one mediator who reconciles us by His blood (1 Tim 2:5-6)
• Therefore, all communion with God is grounded in union with Christ and by faith in Christ’s person and finished work

“With the Father” (Adoption and Love)

• The Father is the source of redemption. 
• The Son reveals, not creates, the Father’s love (John 14:9; Rom 5:5-8)
• The Spirit leads us in holiness, assures us of adoption, and teaches us to cry “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:13-16)

Question: Do we commune, and can we pray, to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Answer: Yes.

4. Conclusion: Precision and Piety, Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy

Orthodoxy (right doctrine) → Orthopraxy (right practice/lived obedience/orthopathy, right affections)

• Danger #1: Precision without piety → dead orthodoxy
• You can articulate Nicene and Reformed orthodoxy and yet lack communion with God.
• Danger #2: Piety without precision → misguided devotion
• If you don’t know who you are communing with, you cannot commune rightly
• Precision: One simple essence of God, three distinct persons, ordered relations (Father, Son, Spirit)
• Piety: To the Father in love and trust, through the Son in faith in mediation, by the Spirit in dependence and power
• The prevents: (1) collapsing the persons (modalism in practice), (2)neglecting the Spirit (functional deism) and (3) bypassing the Son (moralism or legalism)

Summary: Henry Scougal - The Life of God in the Soul of Man

Appendix A

Baptist Confession of Faith Chapter 2: God and the Holy Trinity (Updated Language)

2:1 The Lord our God is one, the only living and true God. He is self-existent and infinite in being and perfection. His essence cannot be understood by anyone but Him. He is a perfectly pure spirit. He is invisible and has no body, parts, or changeable emotions. He alone has immortality, dwelling in light that no one can approach. He is unchangeable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, in every way infinite, absolutely holy, perfectly wise, wholly free, completely absolute. He works all things according to the counsel of His own unchangeable and completely righteous will for His own glory. He is most loving, gracious, merciful, and patient. He overflows with goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. He rewards those who seek Him diligently. At the same time, He is perfectly just and terrifying in His judgments. He hates all sin and will certainly not clear the guilty.

2:2 God has all life, glory, goodness, and blessedness in and of Himself; He alone is all-sufficient in Himself. He does not need any creature He has made nor does He derive any glory from them. Instead, He demonstrates His own glory in them, by them, to them and upon them. He alone is the source of all being, and everything is from Him, through Him and to Him. He has absolute sovereign rule over all creatures, to act through them, for them, or upon them as He pleases. In His sight everything is open and visible. His knowledge is infinite and infallible. It does not depend upon any creature, so for Him nothing is contingent or uncertain. He is absolutely holy in all His plans, in all His works, and in all His commands. Angels and human beings owe to Him all the worship, service, or obedience that creatures owe to the Creator and whatever else He is pleased to require of them. 

2:3 This divine and infinite Being consists of three real persons, the Father, the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three have the same substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence without this essence being divided. The Father is not derived from anyone, neither begotten nor proceeding. The Son is eternally begotten of the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. All three are infinite and without beginning and are therefore only one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being. Yet these three are distinguished by several distinctive characteristics and personal relations. This truth of the Trinity is the foundation of all of our fellowship with God and of our comforting dependence on Him.