This week begins the season of the Advent.  It is a celebration of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And in that spirit, each week I will have a special post for each week of Advent.  This week is the week of hope. 

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Romans 8:22-25).  In this time of year, perhaps more that other times, there is much that is hoped for in the world.  Whether it be children hoping to get everything on their Christmas list to those who hope to get anything at all.  In the world at large, there is the hope of peace in the world.  However, the hope that Christ came to bring is more than these things.  It is more than just peace on earth and the end of war.  It is the "adoption as sons" into God's household and "the redemption of our bodies" at Christ's return.  Those who believe in and follow Christ have that hope, because the genuine Christian is an heir with Jesus of the world to come.  In that world, in that kingdom, there will be no more war, no more death or pain.

Apart from submission to Christ, the Utopian dream is only that.  Those who belong to Christ now, have hope of a real utopia- the Kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the New Heavens and New Earth.  In fact, those who belong to Christ are the "firstfruits" of the new creation.  That is, they are a new creation in Christ.

The God of the Bible is eternal.  In fact, His name, Yahweh (I AM), reflects this truth.  One of the questions asked by skeptics is "who created God".  The answer is simply "no one".  No one made God, that is why He is God, because He depends on nobody.  He is altogether sufficient in Himself.  In contrast, everything that is created, has a dependency on other things for sustenance and survival.  A plant cannot grow without soil, sun, and water.  Humans and animals cannot live without food and water.  Yahweh needs none of these elements. 

"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8).  The whole of Scripture attests to the eternal nature of God.  So, I have selected this verse because it really captures the essential picture of this truth of the eternal God.  He is, He was, and will be.  He is God, has always been God, and will always be God.  He is the beginning, the first, and He is the end, the last.  Think on it, before there was a universe, before He spoke it into existence, He was.  And when this universe dissolves to give way the the new creation, He will be.         

The Trinity is an essential tenet of the Christian faith.  The Trinity is also a tenet that is misunderstood by many and ridiculed by others.  It might be called illogical.  After all, this doctrine teaches that the one God is in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Some would, then, accuse Christianity of tri-theism, i.e. that we believe in three gods.  Yet this is not what the Trinity is.  True Christianity holds firmly to monotheism, that there is only one true God, and that that God is Yahweh of the OT.  Yet, the doctrine of the Trinity teaches that Yahweh has revealed Himself in three distinct persons.  Yahweh has revealed Himself as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit; however, He is one God.  Now I imagine that few would argue against the deity of the Father, but what about the Son and the Spirit. 

            For the sake of space, I will only make one point about the divinity of both the Son (Christ) and the Spirit.  When you read the NT and see the title of Lord ascribed to Jesus Christ, and even to the Spirit, it means nothing less than that the Son and the Spirit are God, co-equal with the Father.  This is even clearer when we go to the Greek of the NT.  The word translated Lord in the English versions of the NT is Kurios.  Kurios is also the word used in the Greek OT (Septuagint) for the Hebrew word translated LORD in English versions of the OT, YHWH (Yahweh).  This connection is seen quite explicitly in Romans 10.  In Romans 10:13, Paul quotes from Joel 2:32, where it says “And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.”  Now Paul quoted this verse from the Septuagint where the Hebrew YHWH is transmitted into the Greek as Kurios.  What Paul teaches in this portion of Romans 10 is that anyone who confesses, “Jesus is Lord” will be saved.  So he says, “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord (Kurios/Yahweh) is Lord (Kurios/Yahweh) of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord (Kurios/Yahweh) will be saved’” (Romans 10:12-13 parentheses added).  So, when we confess Jesus as Lord, we are identifying Him as Yahweh.  In 2 Corinthians when Paul says the Lord is the Spirit, he is saying the Spirit is Yahweh.  Therefore, the Son is God and the Spirit is God. 

            There are some popular analogies drawn from the natural world to illustrate the Trinity.  Some like to use the egg with the yoke, the white of the egg and the shell.  I personally like water as an analogy with its three material phases—solid, liquid, gas.  Whether it is solid ice, refreshing liquid, or in the vaporous gas form, water remains to be water.  Now, like any analogy, this is hardly a perfect picture of the Trinity.  It is best to understand that Yahweh, the one true God, has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit; moreover, it is important to understand that these three are distinct persons, i.e., the Father is distinct from the Son, and the Son distinct from the Spirit.  Nonetheless, they are all Yahweh/Kurios.  The only reason this seems illogical is that it is so difficult for our finite understanding to comprehend.  This is why Scripture is so important.  God is so beyond our understanding.  So, we need Him to tell us about Himself, and we need His special revelation so that when someone claims to have a revelation about God, we can measure against what God has revealed about Himself in Scripture; and it is important to understand that Scripture is not a man-made revelation as it is often alleged today.  The OT and NT Scriptures are a consistent revelation of God and His redemptive purpose in Jesus Christ written by various authors over many centuries (about 4,000 years in fact).  The Scriptures reveal to us the nature and character of God, and this nature and character of God is consistent throughout the 66 books of the Bible.  The Trinity is no less part of that revelation, which is why it is considered an essential doctrine of Christianity.       

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).  This verse is known as the Shema, because it starts out “Hear” which in Hebrew is shema.  What is so important about the Shema is that it is a proclamation of the uniqueness of the God of Israel.  In the cultural context of Deuteronomy and of Israel’s history in Canaan, this stood in stark contrast to the polytheism that permeated the world.  And idol worship was nothing new in Moses’ time.  Even Abraham came out of an idolatrous culture.  It was out of that idolatry that the one true God called Abraham and made a covenant with him.  Abraham and his descendants in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures worshiped this one God.  This God was not like the idols of Abraham’s family and culture.  He is invisible, having no image or temple.  Yet He speaks.  He is the living God, not an idol of wood or stone. 

This was the background to God’s disclosure of Himself to Moses before sending him back to Egypt.  “Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God…  God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: “I AM has sent me to you.”’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say to the Israelites, “The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.” This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation’” (Exodus 3:6, 14-15 emphasis added).  Man-made idols and gods are given names by those who worship them.  Yet, God has told us what His name is—Yahweh.

            In the New Testament, Paul writes something similar to the Shema (understand, however, that his intent in this passage is not to write the “Christian” Shema).  “So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one.  For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6).  It may appear that Paul is being relativistic, saying that only for Christians there is “one God and one Lord”.  This is not the case.  He is acknowledging that in the Greco-Roman culture, many gods were worshiped.  Nonetheless, he calls them “nothing at all” because “there is no God but one.”  This reference also brings up the Trinity.  If there is one God, the how can the Father, Christ, and Spirit all be God?  That shall be the topic of the next posting, which also brings us into a discussion about the nature of the one true God.

Sing to the LORD a new song;
       sing to the LORD, all the earth.

  Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
       proclaim his salvation day after day.

 Declare his glory among the nations,
       his marvelous deeds among all peoples.

 For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
       he is to be feared above all gods.

 For all the gods of the nations are idols,
       but the LORD made the heavens.

 Splendor and majesty are before him;
       strength and glory are in his sanctuary

Psalm 96:1-6

In the next series of postings, I will be discussing God.  There are many perspectives on God across Western culture.  This is because of the diversity of cultures that make up Western culture.  In my 23 years of life so far, I have heard several of those different perspectives.  Although I understand that I cannot force my perspective on anyone else, I must at the same time be forthright in rejecting many of those perspectives.  In this introduction, I may come over as negative or intolerant.  First, let me say that though I firmly disagree with many non-Christian perspectives on God, I am not intolerant of those views.  If you do not agree with what I write in the next series of posts, I will not think you any less a person than myself.  I do not harbor hatred for anyone, not even my "enemies".  Second, I wish to get the negative out of the way because I wish my arguments to focus on the positive.  In other words, I do not want to spend a lot of time attacking someone else's point of view.  I would rather show the weakness of those views by exalting the view that God Himself wants us to have of Himself.  This leads me to my third point in this introduction, that the point of view I will defend is not about Christians being right and everyone else is wrong and on their way to hell.  It is about what God says about Himself, and part of that message is what God did for all humanity through Jesus Christ so that we don't have to go to hell.  

I could not possibly cover every point of view on God that exists throughout the world.  So, I am going to make some general categories.  Again, I do not want to exhaustively argue in the negative.  In the first category, are points of view that say God is some vague, impersonal higher force or power.  Some who resemble this theology may not believe in God, but in so "higher power" or who might say that the universe itself is that power.  Some may believe in God, but don't believe that He is a personal God; rather He is watching us "from a distance".  This view is probably quite common.  Again, I have not covered every variation of this view.  Yet I would argue that God is not just some higher power or force, He is not equal with the universe (or vise versa).  He is an infinite living Spirit who has personality, He is in fact a person.  God is not impersonal or merely watching from afar.  Indeed, in a sense He is far off, but He is also very near; those who believe in Jesus Christ, His Son, know how near He is.  When we believe in Christ, He sends His Spirit to live in us.  

Now while God lives inside of believers in Christ, He is not in everyone or everything.  This is our second category.  We might this the naturalistic view of God.  Again, some may believe in God; yet they believe that God is a part of everything and or that everything is a part of Him.  Then there are those who do not necessarily believe in God, but who believe that nature itself (of herself) is divine (hence the idea of Mother Earth or Mother Nature).  Some even take this to the extreme of saying that we ourselves are God or divine (even some popular television preachers teach something similar).  Yet, even though God is omnipresent, He is not in everything, nor is He everything.  He was before there was anything.  In fact, He made everything; He created the natural world.  A potter may have intimate contact with his pottery, but that does not make the pottery equal in nature with the potter any more that the potter becomes equal in nature to the pottery.  God wants to be intimately involved in our lives (which He gave us), but our relationship with Him does not make us equal in nature to Him.  We do not become God, nor does He become us.  

The third category is what we might call the philosophical view.  This includes everything from agnosticism and atheism.  These are people who have genuine philosophical questions about God, but are unwilling to accept the finality of God's revelation of Himself in the person of Christ.  Or these are those who philosophically or intellectually deny that God exists.  God is reduced to a concept or a metaphor.  Anything beyond the natural world is myth or superstition, so this naturally includes the invisible God of the Bible.

The God of the Bible.  You see, the reason that each of these categories "miss the mark" in theology is because they all ignore, deny, or distort what God has disclosed about Himself in the Scriptures.  Of course, many within these categories may deny the truthfulness of those Scriptures.  Regardless of how one views the Scripture (perhaps after this series, I will do a series on the reliability and authority of the Bible), God has disclosed certain information about Himself in the Jewish/Christian Scripture.  We will explore this disclosure in the days and perhaps weeks to come.  Let me again say that I am not out to offend anyone or force anyone to believe anything.  I, as one who has experienced God in a personal way because of what Jesus Christ did on my behalf, am obligated (and privileged) to share with others the good news that you can know the God who created the universe.  Another misunderstanding about God is that you have to do certain things to be accepted by God or to go to heaven.  No one is going to heaven on account of how many times they go to church, how often they tithe, or how good a life he or she lived.  The only reason anyone is going to heaven is on account of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Because of what Jesus did, everyone is accepted by God when they believe in His Son.