The Trinity, the Spirit, and the Old Testament

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today, Nate and I are going to be discussing what the Old Testament says about the Trinity. Questions about the Trinity are fairly common in Christian circles. The Trinity is a doctrine that is widely considered an orthodox doctrine. You need to believe in the Trinity. I believe that the Bible teaches the Trinity. And so the question is, what does the Old Testament really teach us about the Trinity? Does it teach us anything? How should we think about it? And that's what we're going to be discussing today. So welcome, Nate. I'm looking forward to this conversation, man. Yeah, definitely. Me too. I think this topic specifically, in the world, people that even don't know Christ, everyone knows Father, Son, Holy Spirit. You know, it's kind of a common gesture that even if you don't understand the different aspects of those three. So I think it'll be cool to give people some clarity and kind of dive into that and discuss it. Yeah, and I think, you know, before we dive into the Old Testament, maybe it'd be helpful just to give a concise description of what the doctrine of the Trinity is. And so I'm not going to go real deep because it doesn't need to be. I think the simplest way to describe the Trinity is just to say that there is one God in three persons. And so what we usually think of is that there is one essence or substance of God. And substance, we shouldn't think like material being, but one identity and three identities. Like these are somehow interconnected and yet distinguishable and separate. And so if nobody's ever watched it, there's a fantastic video that will teach you the heresies of Trinitarianism online. I'll link that in the show notes, but it's done by a Lutheran pastor who I believe was in the suburbs of Chicago. These two Irish gentlemen who are debating the Trinity and one is trying to describe what the Trinity is, how the Trinity works. And he keeps trying all these different analogies and falling into heresy. And so the doctrine of the Trinity is difficult. It's technical, but basically it is one essence in three persons. And that's what the doctrine of the Trinity is. We know that to be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And there are a lot of issues surrounding this. It's actually a big conversation of whether there is an eternal subordination of the Son, which we are not going to dive into very much today because that's not what this episode is about. But if you went online and looked up some of those things, you would find that there are still Trinitarian controversies in Christendom where people are having conversations about this doctrine, how to understand this doctrine, how to make sure they're aligned with this doctrine. And what do you think the biggest hang up is for them when they when they are still trying to figure out or decide if it's really one in three? Well, most people will say it's always one in three. I think the bigger controversies today, at least, are it's sort of twofold. Number one, how do the three relate to one another? So when we look at something like the Gospel of John, for instance, we see the Son submitting to the Father's will. And we see that in the other Gospels as well. But in John, it comes out a little bit more clearly. And so we see the Father or the Son submitting to the Father's will. And so then questions become, well, does the Son always submit to the Father's will? How would that work? What does that look like within the Trinitarian relationship? And you see something similar with the Holy Spirit being sent. You know that that understanding of being sent in our minds. Often that triggers a sense of subordination. But I think the reality is we have to sort of hold in tension, the fact that we don't exist as God exists. We simply reflect aspects of who he is. And so we have sort of a meager understanding of what this relationship actually is. Very similar to what you see with the analogy between— and this has nothing to do with Trinity. I'm just trying to use it as a comparative. But when we see Paul talk about the relationship between Christ and the church being mirrored in the relationship between a husband and a wife. Well, he's not saying that every aspect of our married life reflects back to this similar relationship to Christ and the church. He's saying that our marital relationships are to aim at and gesture toward the relationship that Christ has with the church. The relationship that Christ has with the church is the perfect relationship. And our marriages are supposed to continually seek to imitate that in greater and greater fashion. Right. So I would say that's one issue. It's this sort of relation between the Trinitarian persons. The one I actually find to be most problematic is when we try to use the Trinity to create downstream theology. So, for instance, we often see this with regard to male-female relationships. And they'll talk about those in terms of, well, because the Trinity is structured as such and such, then male-female relationships need to be structured in this way as well. And there's almost a grounding in the nature of Trinity that has been transferred over to a male-female relationship. Now, I'm not suggesting that that couldn't be the case, that that very well could be the case. What I would suggest, though, is that we know less about the Trinitarian relationship and the nature of that Trinitarian relationship than we would want to in order to mandate a particular relationship between male and female. Right. So, like Nate, I know you're married, right? But I've never met your wife, as far as I can remember. You know, we live in different towns and so we just haven't gotten that together yet. You haven't met my wife either, as far as I know. Right. And so it would be as if I said, well, you know, Nate and his wife interact like this. This is how their relationship works. And so everybody's relationships work that way. Well, I wouldn't say that that maybe that is the case, but the reality is I don't know well enough to really make that assertion. I don't have the depth of insight into your marital relationship and how you and your wife operate together and what you do on a day to day basis to really say that everyone should model their marriage after you. And that is how I kind of feel about the Trinitarian relationship being used to mandate certain relationships between male and female or other types of people, because it is a difficult doctrine to grasp. And again, we're sort of there is a not a fair amount of speculation with regard to there is a Trinity. I think the New Testament particularly teaches us that there is Trinity. But I would say that those Trinitarian relationships can be construed in a number of different ways. And because the Bible never explicitly says, look, here's how God relates. You know, the three persons of the Trinity relate exactly. We're always sort of at a deficit to understand that fully. And so we have to be more careful about applying some sense that we've gathered from reading Scripture about this is how the Trinity relates to one another to our human relationships. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Yeah. And when I when I hear you talking about that, I just think about how, you know, we're made in his image. So we're like a version of, but we're we don't have all the complexities and the parts. So, of course, we're not going to have the understanding because, you know, our brains can't even really comprehend or fathom. I know mine can't. Right. Yeah. I mean, that that is the tough part. Like I said, I'll link that video out in the in the show notes. It's actually funny and really helpful, I think. But, you know, throughout the years, I've tried to teach the Trinity. I know I've fallen into certain heresies trying to gesture towards something in this world that would give us a picture of a Trinity. And I mean, I honestly think the best one I've ever done is a pretzel, just a regular old pretzel. It's one pretzel, but it usually has three holes. The obvious problem with it is that there are three holes. There's nothing there. Right. And so the point is, there's no analogy for the Trinity that can really make sense of the Trinity. There are only analogies for the Trinity that can sort of help us gesture toward and understand what we're saying in the more technical doctrinal treatments of the Trinity. And so, you know, Voltron was always one of my favorites, right? Like the lions forming together to form one robot. But even that is just completely out of it. I mean, it's a heretical analogy, easily a heretical analogy, right? So, but what I think it does is it helps us understand plurality and unity, at least in some sense. But it can't be

Directly apply, like, oh, the animators of Voltron got this right. They didn't. Just like the creator of the pretzel didn't. That's right. Just like the creator of the pretzel didn't. Like there is no good analogy for the Trinity. And so we're kind of left with this interesting mystery where we know that there is one God in three persons. We know that. We're convicted about that, but we don't have to understand it. But it's the same that works all in all. I mean, when I think about it, Matthew seems to kind of lay it out and make me help me understand it a little more when I first went to school, first started reading the Gospels. But I think it's Matthew, is that 23? I believe so, yes. Yeah. So where else would you say, I know we talked before we started today, that the Old Testament doesn't give as much as the New Testament. Where else would you say for people to get understanding in the New Testament to kind of unpack and explain the different aspects of God in the one and the three? Yeah, I mean, I think there are a number of places in the Gospels. And this is what's sort of difficult about locating the Trinity. You have very few. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. When you see the Trinity all in one place, right? What we normally look at is, let's say, proofs of Christ's divinity. And so you can turn to like John 14, 7, for instance, right? And you can find definitely that Jesus is calling himself God, right? I think the difficult part is that you don't often see the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all together in one. It might be the best place, you know, for the Holy Spirit, I'd turn to something like 1 Corinthians 3.16. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? You know, you could turn to, obviously, sort of maybe 1 Peter 2. And 1 Peter 2 is speaking of the foreknowledge of God the Father, the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience in Jesus Christ. And so you have all three persons referenced there. And within the context, it becomes clear that these are all God, right? So that's a really good place to go. But, you know, there aren't like all of these references that we might love to see where, you know, all of them are mentioned altogether. And, you know, there's, you know, a specific clarity around this. But we do have a lot of those where we see Jesus claiming divinity and or described as divine. John 1.1, John 16.12-15. You know, you have that one as well. I think the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 3.5, we could go to, you know, there's all these different passages where you have each one called God. And so we come at the doctrine of the Trinity from this perspective that, yes, we're seeing that the Bible teaches us that there is one God. But as we look at the New Testament, we're also seeing that there are three persons in this one God. And so we come to the doctrine of the Trinity. But there isn't one section of Scripture that would say, hey, look, this is how God works. He's three in one. So, yeah, some of those types of where I would tend to go. Not to jump ahead, but again, in our human understanding, do you think someday when we are with God that we'll have more clarity and more understanding, like, just naturally? We'll just understand more than we can now? I think that sometimes, so let me clarify what I would say I think we'll understand. I'm not one that thinks that when we are in the new creation that we're going to be somehow omniscient, right? Like, we're not going to just all of a sudden develop all knowledge and have a full understanding of all things. So, you know, metaphysically, will we ever fully understand how God is one essence in three persons? I'm not sure. I don't know. Here's what I do know. I believe that through this process of sanctification that we're going through, what we will understand when we are fully sanctified, glorified, standing in the presence of God, you know, in the new heavens and the new earth, we're going to understand the Trinitarian relation. And what I mean by that is we're going to understand how to dismiss the advantages of our position that we would often use for our own advantage. We're going to understand that those things, that that grasping for that position that we see in Philippians 2, that that grasping for whatever position we have, that grasping for whatever authority or power we have, that grasping of whatever gifting God has given us, holding it tightly for ourselves is the wrong way of being. And that we will deeply understand that giving that up and being self-sacrificial and loving others is the correct way of being. That's what I think we'll fully understand when we're in the new heavens and the new earth. We won't know exactly the intricacies. We wouldn't be able to write a philosophical paper on, you know, God, Jesus, you know, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and really nail it and get it right necessarily. But I do know that we'll know that. We will be fully imitating the Trinitarian relation to the extent we are able and loving one another in an appropriate fashion, such that we are truly reflecting that glory of God as it is. Yeah, and we'll be, all the stuff, the human nature will be stripped away, so we'll be, it'll be easier and we'll be able to be more of a pure reflection of him. Yeah, there's no more flesh. And I think that the important part of that is, and we may have talked about this before on the podcast, but I would say that part of that is conditioned by the suffering and the testing that we go through now, is that by the time we get to the end, when God is instituting the new heavens and the new earth, you know, the new creation comes into full fruition, we are going to recognize that as such a gift because we've already gone through the agony of a fallen world, the agony of the testing, the agony of the struggle. And we're going to no longer question whether or not what God is giving us is the absolute best we could ever have. We're going to recognize that it is the best we could ever have and be eternally grateful for it and understand how to wield it, right? Understanding how to wield the gifts that God has given us is a crucial aspect, I think, of what we'll learn as we come to imitate Christ and as we come to understand what it means to love one another and to sort of mirror that relationship within the Trinity, whatever it is. And so in that, I think it's a fairly generic sort of statement. I understand that, but I do think that for right now, we don't have a lot of insight into how the Trinity relates to one another, how the different persons of the Trinity relate to one another, except on more of a very specific level. You know, like I said, the Holy Spirit is sent, right? All of the Son and the Spirit both sort of serve the will of the Father, right? So you have these sort of broad characterizations, but none that would particularly help us manage our relationships together in any specific way. That is not a universal opinion amongst theologians. Like I said, some people try to read back the Trinitarian relationship and draw out ethical principles, and I think some people do a better job of that than others. My approach is just to be more cautious with it because I think it's, there's a lot more speculation in what that Trinitarian relationship actually is than oftentimes we want to admit. Yeah. Now I certainly don't have the training, the teaching, the knowledge, or wisdom that you do, for sure. But I grew up a PK. My dad was an Assemblies of God pastor, so I definitely saw stuff that was, you know, the Holy Spirit, like people sometimes at church doing stuff that I was like, you know, even as a young kid, I would be like, ah, that doesn't feel right. You know, like you're, like.

He felt like sometimes it was flesh or not really that. And so I think I had this, I don't know the word to use. I had a very confusing perspective of that growing up because sometimes I'd seen people do stuff and I was like, that seems like a distraction. It doesn't seem like it, but then as I got older, I've experienced the Holy Spirit in my life and the promptings and the things that then you start backing that up with Scripture from teaching of other people that know more about it than you do. And, but I think it is a lot of people struggle with it. And I think even Christians today, either people believe in the Holy Spirit or they don't. Some churches say we believe in this or we don't. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that's such a topic of discussion where people kind of feel like they have to make a decision one way or the other when the Bible clearly says all three are there and they're valid? I think in part, it goes to our experience and our comfort level. I have, you know, you put me in any setting, right? You send me to a concert. I'm not the guy who's standing up whooping in the crowd, hands above his head, you know, dancing in the aisles. I am just not that guy. I'm always more reserved. I'll sing along if I want to, but I am never the guy that's like, you know, I want to see my favorite childhood band and I realize some people may disagree with this, but Aerosmith is my favorite childhood band. I was, I was singing along. Yeah. Did you see that? Yeah, they just, they just called it quits and I was so sad because I never got to see them. Yeah, I went to see them and, uh, you know, it was great and I sang along with the songs and I enjoyed watching it, but I was not, I would never be the guy up front in front of the stage, like jumping around doing crazy stuff. Like it's just not me. So I like the music. I like being there. I like the energy, but I'm, I don't really contribute to that energy. And so, you know, you, you transfer that over into sort of a church setting, right? Where people are, you know, asking you to be filled with the Holy Spirit or to, you know, really get excited in worship or whatever. And I'm just not that guy. I'm much more reserved. And so that's what I mean by, uh, our experience and our disposition. I think some of us are more, just more reserved. And oftentimes what we see is the experience of the Holy Spirit. We actually, the, the vivid portrayals of it are things that I would just not do in my ordinary life. I'm not prone to it anyway. Right. And so I think it's important, you know, when we say, you know, do congregations or individual believers believe in the Holy Spirit? Everybody's going to affirm that all evangelical Christians are going to affirm that. I would affirm that. But I think what we need to do is learn to recognize when the Holy Spirit is actually there. And that takes some time. You know, I, I will say, you know, it's difficult to discern for me. Um, I've been in some really great worship services and it's difficult for me to discern whether I'm in a great worship service and, you know, I'm getting carried away by the crowd or whether it's the Holy Spirit moving. I just don't know. But then if I, if I'm deep in study, if I'm sitting around and I'm reading a book and I'm getting all these different insights and, you know, I'm, I'm having these sort of light epiphanies, I would call them, right? about how one biblical passage might relate to this or how I've been misunderstanding one text my entire life. And just based on this one thing I'm reading in a very technical book, like now I've got something different figured out. It's taken me time to learn to attribute that to the Holy Spirit. Like that is the Holy Spirit prompting and illuminating and, you know, energizing. And so I think that all of us believe the Holy Spirit is there, but because the Holy Spirit is, uh, he acts in almost a covert manner in some ways. You know, he, he was never visibly present except in, you know, the dove incidents and those kinds of things. And so we see the Holy Spirit in power. We still, we see the Holy Spirit in illumination. We see the Holy Spirit almost through his acts. And I think part of our challenge is that it's difficult to interpret and distinguish what is a human act versus what is a Holy Spirit acting through a human. I would say, you know, just sort of my off-the-cuff answer, Nate, that's, that's where I think a big portion of the challenge is. I think the other side of it is that, um, and this is definitely something I believe, I don't think there's a way for us to box God in. And I think oftentimes, even when we're seeing the more ecstatic and charismatic movements of the Holy Spirit in certain congregations, there's a sense in which the feeling is, that is something that has to happen. In other words, this is how Holy Spirits work. This is how the Holy Spirit works. As opposed to, this is how the Holy Spirit is working. Those are two different statements, right? And, and the, you know, the first one sort of box the Holy Spirit in as if you, if you haven't had this charismatic experience, you don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not experiencing fully or something like that. And I do think there are some different sects within Christianity that have reacted against that. Yeah, totally. I like that you gave that analogy because to me, when I hear you say, like the revelation or the prompting that the Holy Spirit's given you when you're reading something and it's like, things are falling into place and they're clicking. There's no emotions. There's nothing that is like, you know, feeding into your human nature. Like, whereas sometimes, especially when we're young, I see it with youth ministry all the time. And when I was a kid, it's like, oh, I feel, you know, you feel something and you feel like you need to respond, but it's kind of generated a little bit. And I think it's a little harder to discern in sometimes those situations than it is maybe by yourself. And the times that I feel like the Holy Spirit has really like spoken to my heart and like prompted me in something, it's been not validated, but what's the word? Like, man, I can't think. I'm having a hard time with words today. It probably is validated. Yeah. Or validated or it's like authenticated. Yeah, later you'll see something happen that you, that ties to what, and you're like, okay, that, but it does, like you said, just like a muscle, like it takes a lot of time and effort and I'm still probably nowhere near you or other people, but I think it's easier when you're doing something by yourself if you're spending time. And maybe that's why God tells us to go to our prayer closet, you know, our prayer place in private and not make it known, you know, don't do it out in public for people to see. I think there's definitely a place for that. And I enjoy that and appreciate that. And I felt it in both for sure. But I will say when I was a kid, there's times where people have been praying for me at an altar call with like somebody coming into the church and it's like people are trying to push you down to be slain in the spirit, you know, like, I don't know if you've ever experienced anything like that, but it, it just didn't sit well with me. And it's like, I look around and people are falling left and right, but I felt like they, it was a person trying to make it happen. And I'm like, we can't, we can't get in the way of what God, if God wants to do something like that through the Holy Spirit, he's going to, you know what I mean? Like I've just experienced that. Maybe that's partly growing up in a assemblies of God or Pentecostal environments, but. I don't think so. Nate. I mean, I think I went to a conference at one point when I was in college and a gentleman got up and was really trying to rile up the crowd. And it was a mixed crowd of men and women. And, uh, he was really talking to the men in the crowd. And I was a young man in college, you know, so he's getting to the point where, you know, he's just celebrating the men in the crowd and the crowd are going nuts and everybody's, yeah, you know, the primal roars and all that kind of crap. And, uh, I just remember out of the corner of my eye, seeing this girl, college age girl, just standing silently and almost in tears and heard her say to a friend, you know, this makes me feel like I'm nothing because the girls were being completely ignored. They were obviously part of the, of the conference. They were there to worship. They were there to hear the word of God. And this man on stage was just rallying, you know, rallying up the boys, celebrating manhood. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that. But I, at that moment, you kind of look at it and you go, it's questionable whether this is the Holy Spirit moving or whether this guy just knows how to get a bunch of testosterone fueled, uh, young college students hyped up from up on stage. And so I think there is, it isn't just charismatic circles that do this. I think there is a power that comes when anybody's up on stage, whether it's a musician or a speaker or what have

If we are reading the scriptures, if we are diligent in prayer, if we are, you know, setting aside things that we would otherwise prefer to be participating in in order to spend time with God, you know, like all of these different things, if we're doing those, we are going to experience God in different ways. And I would say experience the Holy Spirit in different ways. And the text that I would go to for that is odd, probably, for most people, but it's in Malachi 3. And we talked about Malachi 3. Yeah, Malachi 3 a number of different times. I mean, this is where God challenges Israel, who has not been bringing their tithes to the temple. And he says, you know, You're trying to deal with the shortages you're experiencing by hoarding your food. That is the wrong way to deal with it. You're not going to experience me in my abundance until or unless you bring your tithes to the temple. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. And once you begin honoring me, honoring me is the strategy you need to employ. As you honor me, these things will be taken away. That is not a health and wealth promise. I think that's a very contextual, specific promise in that moment to the nation of Israel. But I do think the principle stands. If we want to experience God, if we want to understand who he is better, if we want to understand how the Holy Spirit is working in our lives, we have to test God to trust God. We have to test God by trusting God. That's really the way it should be phrased. We have to test God by trusting God. And so as we lean in with some of these practices, this constellation of practices that we can do, what we're really doing when we do those is we're opting out of other things and we're starting to test God by trusting God. Okay, God, if you tell me reading this ancient book is good for me, you're telling me that this is the way to wisdom. You're telling me I need to know these things. Okay, I'll test you by trusting you. Right? If you're telling me I need to pray, and I need to pray like this, you know, if we take the Lord's prayer sort of pattern model, right? If you're telling me that, okay, I'll test you by trusting you. We don't often think of it that way, but that's what we're doing. These are not just random patterns or random acts that we're doing in Christian life. These are moments where we are opting out of one thing and opting into something that God is telling us, no, no, no, trust me, do this. This is the way of life, right? It's not the way of wealth. It's not the way of prosperity. It's not the way of success necessarily. It's the way of life. Yeah. Yeah, 100%, man. Go ahead. Yeah, so I just think, you know, that's what we need, you know, if we want to experience the Holy Spirit, you know, those may, I'm not opposed to charismatic experiences. I don't want to put that vibe out there, right? Like I think people can experience the Holy Spirit in a number of different ways. But if we want to be sure that we're actually experiencing the Holy Spirit, we better be darn sure that we're also testing God by trusting God in a number of different ways in the rest of our life. Yeah, I want to clarify too. It wasn't just that one experience. I remember that and a few like it, but I also have had the other side where it was like, oh, man, that was clearly, there's no way that a person could do that. Like what I experienced, what I felt, like, and I remember the first time it happened, it was like, wow. So like I know without of a shadow of doubt in my mind that it's real and that it happens. My only point was sometimes man can kind of get in the way of that, like you said, the flesh. And I think it's important for us to have that discernment. But also if the Bible says anywhere to trust and do something, like it's not gonna necessarily be easy, but it's worth it because, you know, especially when I first got married, man, like this, my house was a stretch. Like I wasn't making very much money. Neither was my wife. Like we were, you know, it was tough times, just like a lot of people. And I remember thinking, ah, I really could use that 10% this month, but like I just didn't wanna dishonor God. And also I didn't wanna separate myself from him and be disobedient because he had come through for me so many times, sometimes in the 11th hour where it's like, I don't know how I'm gonna make this bill. I don't know how we're gonna eat today, you know, whatever. Like in different, especially like even in 2008 when the economy totally tanked and I was without work for many months, like I don't know. And it's not, you don't look at it like insurance, right? Like some people say, I can't afford to tithe 10%. And I've always said like, well, I can't afford not to, because it's all God's anyway. And that's not a holier than thou statement. It's just, I've seen time and time again in my life, even when I've been in sin, when I've not really been aligning my life with Christ, I've seen over and over again that he takes care of us and that's the least we could do is be obedient in that way. But all of his commands, I think people can kind of get hung up on that one because money's a little different. It's a little tighter. But then on the other end of the thing, you know, I think people take Deuteronomy and the whole prosperity gospel. Like you can kind of go different. It's just, all these things we're talking about, I think it's when humans take it and they take it too far or they don't take it, you know, as far as they should. I think at the end of the day, what we need to avoid is thinking that any of the things that we do, any of the practices we do, any of the obedience we do, we're not in a quid pro quo relationship with God, right? We're not bartering for blessing. What we're trying to do is we are trying to obey because God has told us that in obeying him, we live along the grain or with the grain of the universe is the way I kind of like to think of it. You know, think about a wood, you know, a piece of wood, right? If you rub your hand against the grain, right, you're more likely to get a splinter. But if you're rubbing it with the grain, like it's smoother, even if it's a rough piece of wood, it's smoother. It's easier to deal with. And so what we wanna do is we want to align ourselves to move with the grain of the universe. And we do that by obeying God. And in that, there is still struggle. There's also blessing. But what we recognize is that any other way we do this is worse. Like any other way is a foolish way. It's in a fool's errand. And so the wisdom comes through the fear of the Lord, which the fear of the Lord speaks to the attention that we give to the triune God. It's a constant reminder for us, a constant orientation that we are redirecting our attention back to God and recognizing him as the most relevant actor and factor in any situation that we face. That is the fear of the Lord. You know, as bad as this situation may be, you know what's worse? Dishonoring God. You know, as pragmatic as this choice may be, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how pragmatic it seems because if I'm going against God, it's the wrong decision. And so now I need to redirect my attention to God. It's that constant thing that pulls us back to giving our attention over to the Lord. And so, you know, we're straying a little off topic, which I think is fine, but as we're thinking about the Trinity, one of the things I would just say is that people tend to have a misperception about laws, commandments, obedience. We think of it in terms, I think a lot of the time, we think of it in terms of legal frameworks. If I'm speeding on the highway and I get caught, I'm likely to get a ticket. And so we try to avoid the ticket. God's law functions slightly differently. And what I would say is many of the laws, and you see this in various, like the Jubilee legislation, let's say, probably even the command to keep Sabbath, they are divinely empowered practices. The, you know, allowing the land to rest fallow for a year is not an agricultural innovation. And the text makes that clear. God is going to

And so, as we think about law-keeping and obedience and experiencing God and understanding who he is and experiencing the Holy Spirit and really truly understanding that, I think obedience is key to that, not because God will only reveal himself to us when we obey, but because when we obey, we are leaning in to reality. And so, we're now experiencing reality. And in acknowledging who God is and obeying him, we are leaning into reality in a way that allows us to understand that reality even better. Mm-hmm. No, that's really a good way to put that. Yeah, it's just a slightly different way of viewing it. I mean, yeah, you can see pictures of a weight room, but you really never know how it feels to have a heavy weight above your chest until you do it. It's one of those experiences you can't explain to someone, right? You just have to have them do it, and then they understand it. And I think that's what we're looking at when we look at understanding the Trinity, going back to the original question, will we understand the Trinity and the new heavens and new earth? And I said, yeah, I think we'll understand a piece of this. I think we'll understand how to relate one to another and how to love one another differently, how to sacrifice for one another. I think we'll understand all of that because we have been trained to walk through struggles, to be tested, to be faithful in the midst of a fallen world. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I kind of took us on off topic there, but it's such a big thing to unpack. But yeah, I think legalism does play a factor in it. Like people think, you know, if you look at the different portions of Christianity, like you have to do this, this, and this to be a Catholic. And I don't think God is necessarily as concerned about that. Like you're saying, I think we miss it. We miss it a lot as humans. We focus on the wrong thing or we, you know, hyper-focus in on something that we should be focusing over here more. Like, so I always think about that. And I mean, that's a great way of putting it. I like what you said with the ticket and, you know, just kind of having that analogy. And I look forward to that someday and, you know, and as I get older and, you know, the people I work with and talk with, I am getting more understanding, more knowledge. And, you know, I grew up in this and my dad was a pastor. So I've seen both sides of, you know, when it's flesh and when it's not. But at the end of the day, that like you said with the weight room, you cannot tell somebody when they experience this for the first time for themselves. Like you can't explain that to somebody. They just have to experience it. Yeah. And that's what's so amazing and so challenging, maybe talking about this or explaining the Holy Spirit, because unless you've experienced it, it's kind of hard to explain or put your finger on. Yeah. No, and I do think this goes to kind of steers back to the Trinitarian conversation. I will say that this goes to the way I think about how the Old Testament presents the Trinity. I think the Old Testament saints had a true experience of God. I think they really knew God. It's clear that the Holy Spirit was alive and active in the Old Testament. We see it, you know, empowering judges and coming upon great military leaders, anointing kings, you know, all these different things, right? We see the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. What I don't think that you see in the Old Testament is the clarification that God is three in one. I think it's very difficult to come to that in the Old Testament. Now, are there, does it allow for it? Absolutely. It absolutely allows for it. And when you read back from the perspective that we are in now, you can begin to see the patterns begin to emerge in the Old Testament. You know, I love Luke 24, 27, where Jesus tells the disciples, you retell the story of the Old Testament up to that point and shows how it all points to him. And I think some people take that reference and they say, well, then every Old Testament narrative really needs to be about Christ. And there's part of me that gets what they're saying there, but there's a part of me that says, it's all pointing to him. It doesn't have to be about him. And so when we read something like, for instance, you know, the personification of wisdom in Proverbs, some people have argued that that is a, possibly a proof for the Trinity in the Old Testament. What I would say is, no, it's not a proof for the Trinity in the Old Testament. What it's doing is it is a way for the Old Testament to convey the significance of wisdom, wisdom's role in creation, the juxtaposition between wise living and folly. It highlights all of these different things, you know, it paints the black and white picture between the right way and the wrong way, we could say. Like this personification of wisdom versus the personification of the lady of folly, right? In Proverbs. You know, we have this deep contrast and that deep contrast and everything that's said about Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is gesturing towards Christ, pointing toward him. It's not him. We find out later that wisdom is embodied in Christ, that he is the, you know, in him, the fullness of God's wisdom and deity dwell. We find that out later, but I don't think that Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is Christ. I think it's a portrait, a deeply insightful revelatory portrait of what wisdom is, why wisdom is important and how deeply wisdom plays in the creation of the cosmos, the ordering of the cosmos and ultimately the ordering of human life. And so, as we come to appreciate that, when we see now that in Christ, all full, all God's fullness of wisdom dwell, we now look at that and say, wow, all of this in Proverbs, all of this is talking about all of this wisdom is personification of Lady Wisdom. This was pointing toward that fullness that we see in Christ. And it adds that detail, it adds that color, but I just, I would stop short of saying that Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is a deified entity. Part of that, quite frankly, is the presence of Lady Folly. You don't see a substantive difference between Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? 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As opposed to, right, as opposed to, you know, two rival deities battling it out or one deity battling it out with some sort of substandard deity. I just don't see it that way. We have a number of other passages that we could talk about like that, but I think the important aspect for people to grasp is that the Old Testament creates a pattern, a grid, a way of seeing the world that makes Christ make sense. Christ now fits the final version of that pattern, but without all of the previous iterations of that pattern, right, this one last puzzle piece makes less sense to it. And so it's not that I don't believe in, there are certain prophecies to Christ, I absolutely believe that. And like, yeah, I'm not suggesting that there's nothing in the Old Testament that specifically relates to Christ or that would predict him or what have you. But I do think that many times we're searching for the Trinity where maybe we should just be looking for texts that allow it, that are open to it and that maybe gesture toward the Trinity in some way, but aren't actually specifically Trinitarian passages. I find very few of those in the Old Testament. Right. Yeah, typically every time I've ever had discussions or heard sermons or Bible studies talking about the Holy Spirit, it's in the New Testament. And like you said, not to say that it's not in there, but it's almost like you have to have a base understanding. I like the way you put it as a grid.

you know, so that we are starting to align ourselves to go with the grain, like you were saying, so that we are, you know, almost putting blinders on and protecting ourselves so that we're going the right direction, and then once we have more wisdom, knowledge, discernment, growth, you know, it's just like where it says in the scripture, you know, when you're a baby, you eat like a baby, and then when you become a man, you start thinking like a man. When I first got saved, I didn't understand all this stuff. I mean, and to a degree, even into my adult life, like, I didn't fully understand, just because people weren't really unpacking it. It wasn't a topic as much as it is today, at least in my circles when I was growing up, so. Yeah, but I think just to lay out a couple of other passages that I think sort of can become problematic for people, right? Deuteronomy 6.4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord alone, is the way I would translate that. There are some people that would translate alone as one and suggest some sort of a unity within God, which then implies a plurality within God, which is solidified into a unity. In my mind, though, if you read that passage contextually, and this has been argued by a number of different authors, but, you know, the next part of that passage really does speak to the loyalty that God is calling the Israelites to have toward him. You are to love the Lord your God, and the context of Deuteronomy, love is essentially loyalty, right? You show your love through that loyalty. That's almost the way we could think about it. So love the Lord your God, give him the full and complete obedience of all you are and have. That's the love of the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Only in Hebrew, it's love the Lord your God with all your heart, which is probably the seat of the emotions, the visceral aspects of all who you are. Soul, which we normally translate soul, is actually the Hebrew word nefesh. Nefesh is often used for the whole of a person, not just their, what we would think of as a soul, you know, sort of a disembodied presence, but it's often used to translate corpse. You know, it can refer to a corpse, and so the corporal body, the fullness of who we are, not just our soul, but our everything, the whole of who we are as people. And then our strength in that passage is actually the Hebrew word meod. And meod is what we see in Genesis 2, where it talks about, and the Lord looked at all that he had made and it was very good. The very there is meod. And so meod is sort of the muchness, the exceedingly the best of this thing. Yeah. And so when I read that in that text, what I see is that we are to give our oomph, right? When we translate it strength, right? We shouldn't just think, how much do I bench? We should be thinking about how much can I muster? What are all the resources that I have at my disposal? Can I give my everything at this point, right? And I think it would include not only our physical strength, but our, you know, our economic resources, you know, our families, our everything, everything that is under my power to give, I'm giving. All of that is falling under my allegiance to the Lord. There's nothing like that. And so for Deuteronomy 6.4, when I read it, I think the Lord alone is a stronger translation, which means that that text probably isn't simply pointing to God, a plurality and unity. It's really pointing to a soul devotion, that this is the only God Israel is to serve. So you've got Deuteronomy 6.4, which is a little bit problematic. And then the last passage I'd just throw out there is Genesis 1.26. This is where God says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Those are plural terms. Let us make man in our image after our likeness. And so it does suggest some sort of a plurality in God. And many interpreters take it that way. I think that there is, that is a viable way of understanding that text. And if I were pressed, I would say that's probably one of the better texts to suggest a plurality in God. I have a little bit of a difficulty with it because I don't understand how the ancient Hebrews would have really understood that. I don't get that they would have really understood that there was this plurality in God, especially since we don't see a lot of that in the Old Testament afterwards. Now, I would just stress, this is just one line of interpretation. I don't pretend that this would be authoritative in any sense. So this is more me giving options. And if I were weighing them, I'd say I'm, you know, 49% on that one and 51% on this one, right? So the 51% that I'm on, my tendency is to see that text as referring to the divine assembly. We see this in Job where the angels are coming in. God is having conversations with them. We see it in Isaiah, I believe it's Isaiah 6, when God is calling Isaiah and he says, who will go for us? Who shall I send? Who will go for us? In that context, he's obviously talking to the seraphim. He's talking to the angels around him. So he's including them in this decision that it feels like they are a part of him when they're really not a part of him. Right? They're just with him in sort of a unique way. And so that gives you this sense of a divine council idea. It's not that all the people involved in the, or all the entities involved in the council are divine. Not at all. So maybe it's better called the heavenly council, but the idea there is that he's talking with these heavenly beings that are around him and he's sort of deliberating with them and having this conversation with them. Now there are issues with that interpretation that I gave for Genesis 1.26. I think primary among them is how is it that then, you know, can you really distinguish being made in our image, meaning the image of God, from our image, meaning the image of the divine council? And there are ways around that. The way I would tend to reconcile it is just to say that, you know, the divine council is given authority to reign. They are, they have a dominion that they exercise. And I would argue that that is largely what the image of God is about. The image of God is about, you know, exercising reign in a dependent relationship with God so that we are co-regents of the earth with him. And that is what's being talked about with the image. But there are a lot of, like I said, I'm 51, 49% on that one. And so I would just encourage people to take a look at that. I do think it could be very well strong text to demonstrate plurality in the Old Testament, but it is one of the very few and far between. Now that doesn't discount any of the ones that we might see about the Holy Spirit or anything like that, but the Holy Spirit does appear as a person and is referred to as a person in the Old Testament. But I do think that much of what we see in the Old Testament is a pattern way of sort of leading us to greater and greater revelation. And part of our job is to put those pieces together, gather them, understand what we've got, you know, just like you put together a jigsaw puzzle, right? You kind of want to make sure you got all the pieces in one place. You're not scattering about all over the place, right? But you also recognize that until all the pieces are together, the puzzle is going to be incomplete. And so the Old Testament is beginning, you know, we're beginning to put all these different pieces of the puzzle together and we're starting to get some general pictures and patterns of who God is. We're starting to see what the Trinity looks like. We don't really fully grasp it, not fully, until Christ comes, until we see it in the New Testament, until we're experiencing the Holy Spirit. Like we have all these other areas where the Old Testament is crucial, but it's not complete. It has to be there, but it's not the end-all, be-all. And so you've got all these other things that we need to keep into account and kind of hold together. They don't all have to say the same thing. They can contribute in different ways, just like puzzle pieces would, right? They have different pictures on them. And as you put them together, they form together to form a bigger picture. And that's how I tend to see the Old Testament witnessing to the Trinity as opposed to sort of what we see in the New Testament, which leans back on the Old Testament, but is a bit more explicit in its teachings about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each being God. Yeah, I think the first time I experienced that, like as a parent, it was a few years after Passion of the Christ came out and we were watching it around Easter time and my son was old enough to watch it and, you know, kids especially at that age, I know me personally, when I was little, I wasn't like really diving into these tough topics in the scripture and trying to, you know, get discernment and clarity, just like he wasn't. But I think it met him where he's at. He's watching a film. He's trying to understand it. And when Jesus is on the cross and he starts talking to God and when he starts talking to

regard, but we see it in many other places. And so you can't believe one and not the other either. So, but yeah, that was the first time I realized as a young parent, I was like, I need to get some clarity on this myself. How am I going to explain it to my 12-year-old? So. Well, we'll probably dig a little further into the New Testament on the next episode of the New Testament and the Trinity. We want to do kind of the Old Testament, which I think we covered that fairly well. I think just the general trajectory and not going into all the different texts, which are many. But we did, you know, the Old Testament provides that initial patterning and a lot of the pieces that we need to make sense of the New Testament and to really understand what gaps Christ is filling in. He comes in and fills in a lot of the holes and sheds light on a lot of what's said in the Old Testament, but I don't think we need to be overriding the Old Testament just with Jesus. You know, there are two discrete witnesses there and we need to recognize that all of it is inspired scripture and that while it may all point to Jesus, it may all point to a triune God, it's not all always about just that doctrine, you know, just Christology or just Trinitarianism. It's not all about that. And so we've got to allow it to breathe a little bit is the way I've always thought of it without obviously allowing that contradiction to come in and thinking that somehow, you know, the Old Testament teaches something radically different than the New. It doesn't. There are, there certainly, there's more of the Old Testament. And so we can expect to see some additional color commentary that we'll find in the New Testament, but they're consistent and coherent throughout. And so I would say that particularly when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, I think I see that developing through the Old Testament into the New Testament. There's no contradiction there. There's a clear coherence. And that's where I think we need to focus on. Yep. I agree. So, yeah, so good combo. We'll come back next time and talk a little bit about the Trinity in the New Testament and where we really develop this doctrine. Maybe some of the areas where we see this doctrine sort of playing itself out in the New Testament and how we should begin thinking about the Trinity as the God that we worship. You know, this is the crucial doctrine. This is in many ways what separates Christianity from every other religion. It is the Trinitarian God that we believe in and worship. And so that'll be on the next episode. But yeah, thanks for this conversation, Nate. I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next one, man. Yeah, definitely. Thanks. Me too. All right. We'll catch everybody on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. This is Chris Christensen, and back in 2006, I started a simple project, a project to try and introduce more people to the Bible through Bible study called The Bible Study Podcast. It's a simple name and a simple idea. Each week, every week, we study one chapter of the Bible, talk about what it says and what that might mean for us today. To listen now, go to lifeaudio.com or search for The Bible Study Podcast on your favorite podcast app.