Matthew 28:19 Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: I. Let me remind you that the scriptural Trinity implies THAT GOD IS ONE. The trinity of our faith means a distinction of persons within one common indivisible Divine nature. It implies, therefore, at its base, that the Divine nature is one and indivisible. For this reason God revealed the essential oneness of His being first; and it was only after many centuries that Jesus could disclose to His disciples the "name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." On polytheistic soil no such revelation could have been intelligible; it was to monotheistic Israel that it was made. The new revelation of a Trinity in God left quite unaltered the faith of the apostles that God is one. What is the chief spiritual benefit which we derive from the knowledge of the unity of God? It is the only religious basis for a moral law of perfect and unwavering righteousness. Rival gods, who care each for his own separate interests, and for no other, must neglect moral law in pursuit of their partial ends. You have no central power raised above the contention of inconsistent passions, whose only care is to make for righteousness and the common weal. Throughout the Old Testament there runs a stern denial of all secondary divinities, stern insistence upon one only true God, to whose single will all the wide fields of creation lie subject, and all the nations of men. The single will is righteous. It is the sole source of law; religion becomes the basis of virtue. Thus the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has preserved to us in undiminished power all the moral advantages which Hebrew religion drew from its revelation of the one God. II. WHAT RELIGIOUS ADVANTAGE DO WE REAP FROM THE FRESH CHRISTIAN DISCOVERY OF A TRINITY WITHIN THIS UNITY OF THE DIVINE NATURE? 1. The doctrine of the Trinity has heightened and enriched our conception of the nature of God. Such a Trinity as this leaves room in the Divine nature for the play of such moral affections as would be quite impossible to a mere single or solitary divinity. The lonely Deity whom human intellect, untaught by revelation, is able to fabricate for itself, is one utterly without passion or love till He has externalized Himself m a created world. The outcome of this is pantheism. 2. It affords a basis for those gracious relations which it has pleased God to sustain towards us in the economy of our salvation. These are facts of experience. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: |
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