Well, we all know that Jews, especially, and
Judaism, as the expression of the religious view,
is monotheistic.
So also is Islam.
In fact, it is only Christianity that holds
the view of a triune God, a God
in three persons.
And you wonder why that should be of
any importance or significance, but I believe that
it is.
In fact, Jews are very quick to denigrate
our faith as if we are worshipping three
gods.
And we know that there are even Christian
sects that hold a monotheistic view, a Jesus
name only, that think to correct our faith
and to save us from the lack of
embracing a doctrine that employs a word not
even found in Scripture.
Triune is not even found in Scripture.
But the early Church Fathers and the early
Church Councils had already to deal with the
issue of the concept of God and deduced
from the scriptural references that Jesus makes of
the Father and the operation of the Spirit,
not only found in his own statements and
in other writers of the New Testament, but
also in the Old, that there is a
basis to conceive of God as being triune
rather than monotheistic.
So I just want to say a few
words.
I tried to do some homework with the
materials available at Wynn's Place and jotted down
some of the things of an article on
the Trinitarian view in a dictionary.
God is one in his essential being and
three persons, yet so as not to form
separate and distinct individuals.
Person is an imperfect expression of the truth
as that term that denotes a separate and
rational and moral individual.
The word person has got us into trouble.
When we talk of God in three persons,
we lay ourselves wide open for some credibility
for the Jewish attack on the Triune view,
as if God is three distinct gods.
It sounds like a form of paganism rather
than the deeper and truer apprehension of God
himself.
The word person confuses us.
So this theologian who writes the article on
the Trinitarian view speaks about the word person
itself being an imperfect expression of the truth
that denotes or would suggest a separate and
rational individual rather than three modes or forms
in which the divine essence exists.
Three personal self-distinctions within the one divine
essence.
You kind of say, why bother?
Why does God clutter the scene and bring
a view of himself of an unnecessarily complicated
kind?
Because I believe that the glory of God
in the earth is altogether relative to expressing
here among ourselves what is the genius of
God in heaven.
There's a reason why he is.
That he himself is comprised of three entities
who have distinct callings and yet are related
one to another in a way of deference
and humility, so to speak, in the honoring
of the other that brings out the fullness
of what God is in himself.
And the fullness of the church will not
be obtained except by that same character and
that same pattern.
Personality in man implies an independence of will,
actions, and feelings leading to the behavior peculiar
to the person.
That's the way it is in the world.
You're an individual.
You're a person.
You've got your own will, your own mind,
your own actions, your own conduct.
And that, of course, is going to be
antagonistic to other persons and other individuals who
have their view and their will.
But this cannot be thought of in connection
with the Trinity.
Each person in the Trinity is self-directing
yet never acting independently or in opposition to
the other but rather deferring to and giving
honor to the other.
Are you following this?
We need to contemplate God himself because he
says that when we are one as he
is one, the world will know that the
Father has sent him.
The great prayer of Jesus in John 17
is crying for a statement in the earth
that will reveal God in heaven as he
in fact is.
And a monotheistic view of God does not
do him justice because it's not what he
is in himself as he in fact is.
He's a God who is comprised of three
forms and modes of the expression of his
deity.
All eternal, all sacred, all holy, yet having
distinctly different functions and yet supplementing and relating
to the other in a way through deference
and submittedness and humility that brings out the
fullness of what God is in himself.
Can you imagine a church like that?
That can only succeed in its diversity of
persons because of having the same character as
God himself, namely, humility, deference, and yieldedness to
the other to bring out the fullness of
all that appears in the body that relates
in the same way as the Godhead does
to himself.
That deserves a little water.
Okay, I'm not saying any of these things
to get fancy, look them on their hands,
and that I enjoy being complicated, maybe a
little bit, but I think we're stumbling on
something.
And if you'll patiently hear me out, I
want to bring this little abstract discussion of
the triune versus the monotheistic view of God
to the practical question of the very heart
of the church itself and its leadership.
What is the model of God?
We know that in modern times, as my
brother has so ably described, churches traditionally prefer
a single pastor.
There's a reason for that, an instinctive security
that comes by believers of a certain kind
that like to see the responsibility upheld by
a single man rather than shared through a
plurality of elders.
Though the word pastor is elder, as my
brother has described in the New Testament scriptures.
So, the substance and the operation of the
three persons are marked by a certain order
involving a certain subordination in relationship, though different
in function and in nature.
You know that we might just as well
be speaking about the church as God by
using those same words.
The father originates, the son reveals, the spirit
executes.
While this does not suggest priority in time
or dignity, you don't say that the one
who executes has a lesser office than the
one who originates.
Each person of the Godhead has a function
peculiar to himself, but it's not less nor
other than the other person who has another
function.
And in fact, there's no fullness of God
except that each is faithful to fulfill the
function for which that person is constituted.
Unless there's a spirit that executes, no matter
what the father originates and what the son
reveals, it remains in the realm of abstraction
and does not become immediate and palpable and
existential except through the power of that person
of the Godhead called the spirit of God.
Is the spirit of God less than the
son of God?
It's called the spirit of the Lord.
So we need to revive and to restore,
talk about restoration, our very understanding of God
himself.
For the genius of the way in which
he has constituted himself is not for some
idle reason, but it has a profound practical
implication for the church itself and for the
fullness of what we are in our own
diversities and callings that need to be fulfilled
and expressed only by the same character and
mode of yieldedness, humility, and self-deference to
the other.
We're having a little example of that with
two men before you at the same time
and place, deferring one to another, not knowing
what the other is bringing, respecting the calling
of the other that you might have the
fullness of the whole mind and counsel of
God in this appointed time.
I can probably say with some confidence that
if I had been called to this maybe
as short as three to five years ago,
there would have been a competitive edge, a
little rivalry, and now Katz is going to
come up and clear the bases by knocking
one out of the park.
That brother was okay to get a man
on first and second, but Katz is the
cleaner pitter.
There's something of that spirit in the immature
church that is contrary to the composition and
character and genius of the Godhead himself.
And when we will resemble him in our
own deferring one to another in the spirit
of humility, in the desire to see the
fullness of the glory of God expressed, we
will have a church that is a glory
unto him and the world will know that
the Father has sent him for we will
be one as he is one.
When you have a jealousy for this saint,
you will, like me, be a watchdog fiercely
against anything that purports to be working toward
the unity of the body of Christ that
is only an ecumenical fraud.
A politicizing, a religious sleight of hand through
Catholic and other auspices, working with denominations by
thinking that if they give one another a
hug or something like that, that has affected
the genius of the unity of the body
of Christ.
I just came from England and I was
invited to a conference on my last day,
delighting to hear other men having heard myself
too much for six weeks.
And the brother was speaking about the unity
of the body of Christ and the young
Scottish brother with me turned and said, what
do you think is the unity of the
body of Christ, Art?
And I looked at him and I said
without thinking, when the church will have attained
the same quality and character of relationship as
the persons of the Godhead, we will be
in the unity of the body.
That's not going to be obtained by a
bear hug.
It's going to be obtained by sacrifice, death
to our own egotisms and insecurities for which
reason we assert ourselves instead of deferring to
another.
That God is after something profoundly deep in
a word, nothing less than what he is
in himself.
When there will be a conjunction in earth
with the reality of God in heaven to
be found in the church, his kingdom will
have come and his glory will be revealed.
There's a reason why God has constituted himself
in the way that he has and we
need to know it, we need to restore
that truth, to be jealous over that doctrine
and to see the practical outworking of it
in the church.
The article said that the implications of the
doctrine of Trinity, the Trinitarian view, are vitally
important not only for theology but for Christian
experience in life.
God in Trinity is fullness of life, living
in eternal relationships and in never ceasing fellowship.
Whoever wrote that article, I praise God for
him.
The whole genius of the Godhead is relationship.
There's nothing static about it.
It's an eternally active and dynamic thing between
Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a quality
of relationship that is pulsating and mutual and
deferring one to another in its continual activity.
The genius of God is relationship.
But a monotheistic view is a static view
as against a dynamic view that places the
whole genius on the word relationship.
I think going back to what was said
by one of the most precious things I've
ever heard, he said, God himself is a
precious company.
Have you ever thought about that?
You know what, you want to know something?
We're sitting here subscribing technically to the doctrine
of the Trinitarian view but we are effectually
monotheistic in our mentality and in our conduct
because the world has done a number on
us to make the thing that is individual
and static more the mode of our thinking
and being.
We do not have a corporate company mentality.
We are ourselves a conglomerate of individualities.
We've brought a monotheistic view into the practicalities
of the church.
And so we've got to consciously break the
power of that which is the spirit of
the world, individualistic, me, mine, as against the
view of God as a company, a corporate
entity in himself, yet one.
Profoundly one through relationship of a self-effacing
and self-deferring kind, which is to say
sacrificial, the one elevating the other.
If there is in God a diversity of
life, may it not be reflected in the
widely diversified forms in which life manifests itself?
Moreover, that fellowship that constitutes the Trinity is
the basis of fellowship within the human family,
husband and wife, father and mother, children, within
the home society and more especially within the
church.
The model that God gives of himself is
intended not just for our casual contemplation, but
as the very basis for the genius of
what church is intended by God to be
in its corporate character expressed also and especially
in its leadership through a plurality of elders.
So his sonship was the basis of our
sonship, implying that we should live from him
as we live from the Father.
Now I'm reading from my second sheet of
scribblings called Implications of the Trinitarian View of
God.
And somewhere before going to bed last night,
Jim will remember, he came into my room
and I said something like, believers do not
really have the faith to believe that they
are to live from the Lord, from the
life of the Son as the Son lives
from the Father.
But the unconscious tendency of many believers is
to see Christ-likeness as unattainable.
Remember when Ron said, well be God-like
tomorrow or Godly, we all kind of laughed
up our sleeves.
What are you asking, the impossible?
No, he's asking the practical, he's asking what
God himself intends.
But we have a sense that this is
unattainable and therefore we do not strive for
it, and we're satisfied with a lesser moral
and ethical life based upon principles, kind of
a Judaistic Christian life, which when it's brought
to an ultimate extreme degenerates into legalism and
a false basis for life and distinction over
others by superiority of our performance.
I'm glad this is getting on tape, I
need to hear it myself.
What am I saying, and if somehow this
is related to the Triune View of God,
that we ourselves do not believe nor apprehend
the great dimensions that are available to us
in the Atonement.
We've only understood it as redemption from sin,
but there's much more implied, namely a death
to ourselves and an appropriation of a life
that was risen and ascended and that that
should be the basis for our overcoming in
the world.
And because we don't believe it, many of
us, as we have monotheistic views in actuality,
have also Judaistic views in practice.
We live by a kind of a moral
code and by principles, and I think that
this is the basis for which we move
into legalism, because when you live by principles
and by performance, then invariably you're going to
find yourself better than another, and looking down
with contempt on those who are not as
principled as yourself, and it introduces into the
Church the kind of leaven that brings control.
It's a false basis for life and distinction,
because it rests on performance.
This kind of Christian is most partial to
Jews and Judaism, are secret admirers of those
who are more adept at a system based
upon works and merit than themselves.
That's a little observation from me that might
not make sense to you.
But I would suspect that any believer whose
life was not predicated upon the risen and
ascended life of Christ, but rather on the
basis of his own human merit and works,
has a kind of fascination and respect for
Judaism and for Jews and admires their accomplishments
based on that very thing.
And loves to see them even to succeed
on that basis, because it's the basis by
which they themselves hope to succeed.
And I'm moving toward that that mentality is
very conducive to looking up to the platform
and admiring and preferring a single man of
faith and power.
It prefers someone who will perform a function
for them, because they do not expect to
be capable of performing it for themselves.
They actually relish a justification by which they
will be absolved of the responsibility themselves to
be men of faith and power, and are
willing to pay the bill for someone who
can be it as an impressive chief executive
officer who has flair and ability, so that
they can rest in the pew in a
kind of a laxity and passivity that no
one's fault, for it is the mode and
the norm of traditional church behavior.
But to see four elders, or how ever
so many, relating one to another in deference
and in the expression of their gifts, invites
you also to be participants in the genius
of what the body is in its diversity
and its working by one deferring to another,
each having unique gifts and callings as do
the persons of the Godhead.
One originates, one reveals, the other executes.
Well you also have a like function, but
if you have been lulled into a kind
of passivity in which you are not expected
to function, and that you can get off
the hook by paying the bill of one
who will, and function strenuously because he has
admirable and visible qualities that relieve you of
your responsibility, that's the mode that you will
choose and prefer.
Are you following me?
But such a church can never eventuate in
the glory of God.
It might be impressive.
It might be numerical.
It might be large.
The person himself might be quite impressive.
But the people are robbed of the prospect
of growth and of maturity and of the
revelation, the revealing of God's glory through the
genius of the corporate body itself.
The issue of government is much more than
just whether we're going to have a single
pastor or plurality.
It's the whole mode of being.
And the question is, does it reflect itself
to Godhead, given as a model for our
emulation on earth, or is it a model
that more reflects the world in its penchant
for chief executive officers who will do the
job and get it done and command impressive
salaries and benefits.
They live luxuriously, and we see to it
that they do because we believe that they
deserve that lifestyle, seeing how they bear the
responsibility that ought rightly to be ours.
This kind of Christian who has this penchant
for Judaism and is impressed with a works
merit kind of thing that distinguishes Jews and
even a nation Israel is also partial to
celebrating souls.
Men who look like kings, who look heads
and shoulders above the rest.
Eminent models of religious success.
The man of faith and power that they
themselves cannot hope to attain, nor are they
expected to attain.
But to admire at a distance and to
give him the greater responsibility as is expected
so that he might maintain and continue the
church or the movement over which he is
the singular head.
I'm describing the normative model of church in
Western society, completely antithetical and opposite to what
it was in the beginning and needs again
to be.
We've got to recognize that we ourselves have
acceded to this kind of worldly model because
it absolves us from the responsibility of bearing
the ark of God ourselves.
We like to let George do it, particularly
if George is impressive and he can perpetuate
our establishment, our church and our movement and
we're willing to pay him handsomely for doing
so.
And he's only too quick to receive that
remuneration as being just and right.
Thus, that Christian is absolved from any true
personal responsibility of a spiritually demanding kind which
is also a spiritually transforming kind.
And expects to live a reasonably clean life
morally, be faithful in attendance and especially in
giving by which the usually more luxurious and
deserved lifestyle of the senior pastor of men
of faith and power is maintained.
In a word, such a Christian and they
are legion would rather pay than pray.
And praying means the whole panoply of spiritual
obligation.
It's the way of convenience that we rob
ourselves of the very causative factors that would
have to do not only with growth and
maturity in this life but eternal and distinction
and reward in the next.
If I don't speak about this tomorrow sometime,
you're going to have to invite me back.
That's how important the issue of eternal reward
is.
And I want you to know now, just
off the shoulder, we're not all going to
be in the same place in heaven.
We're not all going to ascend to heaven
at the same time.
Some of us will not even attain to
heaven.
And those of us that do will be
in respective and different places based exactly and
totally on our accomplishments and our works in
this life.
Those works, that is, that pass through the
fire of God's judgment and are not burned
up as hay within stubble.
But if you have submitted to a system
that encourages your passivity and mere peace-sitting
and the absolving of your responsibility by putting
into the collection plate, you have not the
prospect whatever of eternal distinction nor reward.
You're being denuded and robbed.
And Jesus had the most severe words for
that steward who, when he came, had not
brought any increase in the talents that he
was given to oversee.
And dear saints, every single one of you
is given at least a talent.
And are we in a system that is
man-centered, that frees us from the necessity
of the nurturing and the cultivating and the
bringing forth of an increase of that talent,
or are we in an apostolic context that
encourages it?
It has everything to do with our choosing.
So I'm just wanting to say that both
our character as the Church in this life
is affected by that decision as well as
the eternal issue itself.
And as I said earlier today for those
who are not here, if we do not
take eternity into our present consideration, how are
we then the Church?
And take it into our consideration in such
a way as that it has practical consequence
in this present life.
I'm persuaded that rivalry, contention, strife, ambition, splitting,
divisions in the Church has everything to do
with men whose locus is in the earth
rather than in heaven.
Something happens of a freeing and ennobling kind
that comes into the spirit of the believer
for whom the issue of eternity and heaven
has been made real.
We're somehow freed from pettiness.
We're freed from competition.
We can then defer one to another.
There's no jealousy.
There's no necessity to assert ourselves or to
establish ourselves.
Somehow the awareness of heaven and its reward
and its magnitude frees us from the kind
of petty striving that has made the Church
a battlefield and a place for division and
strife.
I cannot reconcile how a Church that has
a single pastor as the man of faith
and power can also at the same time
truly embrace the issue of eternity and heavenly
reward.
They are incompatible.
That kind of embrace of eternity can only
function and be valid and viable in the
context of an apostolic setting that has forsaken
the traditional single pastor model and sees itself
as participating in the genius of what the
body is that can only function as the
Godhead himself to a self-deferring humility of
the one toward the other in relationship.
As participating in the genius of what the
body is that can only function as the
Godhead himself to a self-deferring humility of
the one toward the other in relationship.
So this system based on convenience and it
is a system that allows the privilege and
ease of mediocrity and late Saturday night TV
viewing assures that one that what he is
paying for will produce the next morning an
acceptable and hopefully interesting biblically sound message called
a sermon which he is not expected to
heed but only to enjoy or to approve.
It's not in calculated for his challenge but
only to fill ceremonially a slot provided for
a biblical presentation and we're willing to pay
a man who can do that and do
that ably.
But dear God, dear saints, sermonizing and inserting
the word in a ceremonial way that we
can have some sense of having attended church,
can you understand as a mock and a
travesty against the genius and the sublime divine
intention of God for the church that unto
him should be a glory forever not only
in this age but in the ages to
come?
How do we ascend to such a denigration
of the church because it is convenient and
all that it requires is that we pay
for it?
This satisfies the religious requirement that does not
make any personal demand.
The whole mode of religious life does violence
to the mystery of incarnation, robs the world
of the demonstration of the Godhead, the vital
relationship of the persons especially of the spirit
reduces the whole level of the church to
a pedestrian achievement, essentially the perpetuation of itself
as a religious system providing predictable and minimal
services.
As a schedule that does not distract from
the more vital and predominant worldly interest of
its parishioners.
Not bad for scribbling.
I've never heard an indictment of the church
system with more surgical precision than what I'm
now reading.
It's no testimony to me but him who
gave it.
The believer as a passive pew sitter, as
a dollar in the collection plate giver, and
it doesn't matter whether it's one, ten or
a hundred based on your ability, it's still
the way of convenience, is robbed of all
prospects for growth and the attainment of spiritual
maturity through significant participation in which he is
also obliged to express the particular will of
God through his own uniqueness and giftedness and
call as each joint supplies.
Remember what Paul said?
And when you come together, each one has
a telling interpretation, a revelation, a prophecy.
Paul fully expected that when the church assembled,
every member would be functioning and providing the
thing for which it was essentially gifted and
called of God to perform that the whole
body could receive the enrichment and the life
-giving quality as to produce its growth.
That's why he could establish such a fellowship,
leave it, and come back two years later
and it's not only just functioning but also
prospering even before the appointment of Elvis.
Because each one, when they come together, is
giving a tongue, an interpretation, a prophecy, a
revelation, or whatever it is that the Spirit
of God is expressing through the distinctiveness and
the uniqueness of that vessel.
Each one has.
And if that was our understanding, do we
dare spend Saturday night before the TV set
to the late, late night, late, late hours,
dulling our spirits, corrupting our inner men, nullifying
any prospect of being sensitive to God's Spirit
because we don't expect the next morning to
have or to give a prophecy, an interpretation,
a revelation, or a psalm or that which
would enrich others.
We want to stay up late night watching
the gaudy crut, feeling that we can come
in any sleazy condition the next morning and
look up to George and trust that he
can do it.
After all, he's getting paid for it.
So to follow Paul's model of each one
has and each one gives requires the maintenance
of a clean vessel.
You cannot twiddle TV dials and be the
instrument of God's use the next morning.
And being in a continual communion with God,
because it's out of that communion that comes
the revelation, the psalm, the prophecy, or whatever
it is that God would have you to
communicate.
And that kind of communion, that kind of
relationship requires time and inconvenience, in a word,
sacrifice.
So the believer who has forfeited that kind
of requirement and prefers a single man model
who will do it is assured that this
minimum requirement is sufficient to assure him of
heaven rather than hell, oblivious to the whole
realm of eternal rank, reward, and distinction determined
by the works performed by the grace freely
given that passes the fire of judgment, as
I've already mentioned.
Simplistic Christians like that who are willing to
pay for the man of faith and power
and be absolved from participation and responsibility are
assured that they're getting to heaven.
And that's all they know.
They have no notion of what heaven means,
that they have not understood that if there's
an outer darkness, that there are inner places
of light and affinity to God, and that
that place of where you will stand is
eternally fixed, altogether proportionate to what has been
the quality of your conduct, service, and works
in this life.
You're paying an unbelievable price eternally for a
passivity that is the consequence of a system
that lets George do it, because you think
that you're being saved from hell and you're
going to heaven.
You may be surprised that if God cast
a steward into outer darkness where there's a
wailing and gnashing of teeth, and that that
steward is not a statement of one in
the world, but one already called to the
service of the master, we need not be
too sure of what our eternal destiny is
if we, like him, choose a life that
is slovenly, casual, careless, and lazy and prefers
to let George do it, that we might
be absolved from the responsibility that would have
earned us an eternal reward.
And there'll be a wailing and gnashing of
teeth in outer darkness eternally, and that without
remedy.
Thus, while giving outward credo of affirmation to
the doctrine of a Trinitarian God, the believer
effectually lives, in fact, monotheistically, separate, singular, individual,
detached from others in the congregation, not able
to recognize or participate in the mystery and
the glory of the body of Christ.
The same quality of deference and relationship between
each member as characterizes the persons of the
Godhead.
Denying the Lord the glory due him, and
unto him be glory in the church, in
this world, without end, and throughout all ages.
The glory due him who gave his life
for the church, and unwilling like him to
give himself by the same eternal spirit.
So he loses an abundant entry into the
eternal kingdom.
The present life is made barren and unfruitful.
The election and calling is not made sure.
The divine nature is not made a partaker
of.
He remains in the corruptions of the world,
has not escaped lust.
And the world remains unbelieving that the Father
has sent Jesus.
Those are the consequences of a church system
that chooses to give its entire confidence to
a single man who will perform the things
necessary for its religious functioning, the perpetuation of
its church, its movement, or its system, and
absolves it from the apostolic participation that has
everything to do with character, life, and eternal
reward.
I want to end with a benediction from
2 Corinthians chapter 13, the last verse, because
this benediction itself reflects the genius of the
triune Godhead.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, you can almost imply
the Father, and the communion of the Holy
Ghost.
Amen.