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This is the fourth post in a series of posts from the booklet How is God Love? To read the series introduction, click here. Or read Post 2, or Post 3.

Last post we saw that the reason the Bible calls God love is that He is (what Christians have traditionally called) the Trinity. That is, He exists as one God who is an eternal union of three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We continue…

So, what is love?

This leads us to be able to give a much needed definition. What is love? I mean, fundamentally, at the root of it—what is love?

Here is our answer: Love is the eternal bond of unity and affection between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love—united in harmony forever.

This not only tells us what love is, it tells us where love comes from, and what it’s doing in our universe at all, and what our human love is measured against, and why we just know, deep in our guts, that love is, like, the most important thing there is. It’s because love is at the center of what our universe is. We came from the overflow of this love.12 Any true love that we’ve ever experienced comes from, and finds its significance because of, this original love, the love of God.

What this means is that when we turn to examine our human love, we need to see that anything which goes by the name of “love” but is disconnected from, and unrelated to, this love, isn’t really love.

Because if this is what love is, how can anyone claim to have love but ignore this love? This is why Christians get all excited about telling people about Jesus—they realize that the most loving thing they could do is to talk about the love God displayed in Christ.

[If you want to download the entire booklet to read, without waiting for the posts, you can get it here.]

This is the third post in a series of posts from the booklet How is God Love? To read the series introduction, click here. To read Post 2, click here.

Last post we saw that when we say “God is love” we must mean more than that he simply has nice feelings towards us, or that he is some benevolent force in the
universe, because the book where we find the idea to begin with is the Bible, and the Bible means something very different than those ideas when it says “God is love.” We continue…

What Jesus has to do with it.

With that realization, we can start beginning to understand what the rest of the Bible says about how God is love. The New Testament tells us that when Jesus showed up, lived among us, and began to teach, he wasn’t just another prophet calling people back to God; he was also revealing new dimensions about who God is. One of the most shocking things he revealed was this new understanding of (get ready for a college word) plurality in God. What does that mean?

Well, as you read the gospel accounts, you see that Jesus was always talking about his “Father,” and it’s very clear that when he said that he meant “God.” But then he also referred to himself as “the Son” in a very unique way that showed that he thought of himself as much more than just another “child of God.” You really get this when you read the account of Jesus’ life that John wrote. He’s always pointing out how different Jesus was when he spoke. Here’s just one quote among many:

“As the Father raises the dead and gives life to whom he will, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment into the hand of the Son, that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” (John 5:21-23)

Then there was the time Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” That one almost got him killed on the spot. His enemies knew exactly what he was saying, and they accused him of blasphemy—of making himself God. (John 10:30-33)

So back to that word plurality. What Jesus was showing us with all of this “Father-Son-One” talk was that God is not simply a big ONE—a solitary, unitary mono-God.6 No, he has plurality in himself—specifically, Jesus shows us that God is Father and Son in perfect unity.

Maybe you’ve never thought about it like this before, but there’s just no other way to understand what Jesus was talking about, and who he was, without seeing what the first followers of Jesus saw. As they walked around with him, they came to this startling discovery: while they had long understood that there was only one God, they now realized they needed to include Jesus in their concept of God.

Amazingly, Jesus revealed that his relationship to his Father was one of intense personal love between the two of them. These statements Jesus made are very easy to miss, until you start noticing them, and seeing how frequently he spoke this way. “The Father loves the Son,” is a direct quote from Jesus, and he said things like this a lot.8 The night before he was crucified his disciples overheard him praying this to the Father: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24) In fact, earlier that same night, he said that he was going through with his arrest, his suffering, and his death on the cross, all so that the world would know that he loves the Father. (John 14:31)

Late in his life, Jesus revealed one more crucial thing about God’s nature when he spoke to his followers about another who he clearly equated with God, just like himself and his father. Jesus called him “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.”11 The Holy Spirit, as Jesus teaches about him, shares all the same attributes of God, and exists in the same kind of total unity with the Son and Father that they share with each other. In other words, the three are one.

What we can see from all this is what Christians have traditionally named “The Trinity.” This is the name for the idea in the Bible that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, loving each other in an eternal bond of perfect unity.

This is a big enough, world-shaking-enough truth to say it again from another angle. There is only one true God, and the only God that exists is Father, Son, and Spirit loving each other.

This is the way God is God.

And this is how God is love.

God is not love because he has good feelings towards us, or smiles when he sees us coming his way, or wants to date us, or approves of us just the way we are. All of those ideas might be nice from a fellow human, but they fall far short of what John meant all those years ago when he wrote “God is love.” They’re small and weak compared to what Jesus revealed about himself, the Father, and the Spirit as God.

No, God is love because he exists forever in a bond of love so strong, that the Three bonded by that love are totally and fully One.

No other god people believe in shares this characteristic—this three-in-oneness—so this sets the God of the Bible completely apart from any other contenders. He’s totally unique. And since this is the only way that God could be love, by existing as God in this bond of love, then we can see that no other god who’s ever been promoted can truly be called “Love.” Unless you’re the Trinity, you’re not love.

 [If you want to download the entire booklet to read, without waiting for the next posts, you can get it here.]

This is the second post in a series of posts from the booklet How is God Love? To read the series introduction, click here.

When we say that God is love, what are we saying? Where does this idea come from?

What are we really saying by saying that God is love?

There’s a lot to think about here, but here’s a way in: Have you ever stopped to think about the different ways we define love, and wondered how they apply to God? If God is love, does that mean he is…

• …a feeling of romantic attraction?
• …an affirming stance towards who we are?
• …help for what we need help with?
• …a big smile and a thumbs up?
• …all of the above?

See the problems here? Which one should we pick? Are they all true? And in the end, how could we know if we were right or not?

Christians have a quick answer to this question: The Bible says that God is love. (It’s in a letter known as 1 John, chapter 4, verse 8). And certainly, in our culture, that is where this idea has come from. In fact, it’s debatable whether or not any culture ever comes to the idea that God is love apart from exposure to the Christian scriptures. Research it for yourself.

That’s not to say that no other belief system has the idea of some sort of god with some sort of love; it’s just to affirm that the idea “God is love” is a specifically Christian idea, and comes exclusively from the Christian scriptures. And of course, it’s not just one verse or one book of the Bible that affirms that God is love. It’s the constant message of the entire scriptures, and it is brought to light and explained in the New Testament.

In other words, this idea that God is love is not simply incidentally related to Christian thought—it’s right at the heart of what Christians have to say to the world.

And so, the Christian thinking goes, if this idea of God came from the Bible, we will look to the rest of the Bible to tell us what it means that God is love.

What does the bible mean by saying “God is love”?

First, let’s have a fresh look at the actual wording of our sentence by looking at it in its original context:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:7-8)

The author, the Apostle John, is intent on saying that true knowledge of God will lead people to be loving. He commands us to love, because love “comes from” God, and then he says that if someone doesn’t love, it shows they don’t know God. Why? Now at this point he could have said, “because God is loving,” or he could have repeated “because love comes from God,” but instead, he goes deeper. It’s not just that God has love coming out of him, or that he is loving, but, he is love. That is, love is something central to the essence of who he is. God is, in the very center of his being, love. And evidently, to know this God is to be transformed into being like him. Since he is love, clearly a person who doesn’t love doesn’t know Love himself.

But wait—what does this mean? God is love? We could stop here and say that it must mean that the most ultimate thing there is this energy, this positive will, this good force that lifts everything up…but then we’d be back outside of Bible territory. We’d be moving away from the very writings that told us that God is love in the first place. And we’d be totally misrepresenting what John meant when he wrote “God is love.”

We know this because we know who John was. He could never have meant that God was some impersonal force or energy. We can say this with confidence, because John himself wrote all kinds of things about who God was. In fact, in the very next sentence in his letter he writes: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” John’s story is that he met God, in human flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. So he knew that God is intensely personal, and could never be reduced down to a force or energy, even one as great as the force of love.

[If you want to download the entire booklet to read, without waiting for the posts, you can get it here.]

This year we began a new campus outreach we’re calling the Philadelphia Christian Student Initiative. So far it’s still very much in “seed” stage, with some free resources being our first offerings. Over the break, I’m going to post a series of entries from one of them, a booklet entitled How is God Love? It’s a discussion of the fundamental questions we need to answer before we can really have the discussions so many are trying to have today.

Whenever anyone asks something like, “How could God be against this, if it’s about two people in love?” or “Why would God care what someone believes if He’s a God of love?” or “Shouldn’t we stop judging and just be like God, and just, like, love each other?”—they are assuming answers to the questions this booklet addresses, usually without even knowing it.

So before we really start thinking about these things, we’ve got to start here. What do we mean when we say God is love?

How is God love?

Here’s how the booklet begins:

“God is love.”

Really?

Why is everyone saying this?

And if we do say it, what do we really mean?

Does God love us like we love each other?

Or is his love…different?

If there’s one thing everyone seems to be able to agree on these days, it’s that God is a loving God.

In fact, just saying “God is love” can pretty much win you friends in any environment. Even people that don’t really give much thought to God will probably nod their heads in approval. If you’re a Christian, you’re on board with this, because you know that it’s right at the heart of the Christian message.

But if we can all agree that God is love (that is, Christians and others), then why do we disagree on other things at the same time? Why can’t we agree on what things God loves, or on how God loves us? A little discussion with people of different persuasions will probably reveal that we humans don’t really fundamentally agree on what this loving God is like at all.

This booklet [in the form of these blog posts] is to help you start thinking through what it means that God is love. Specifically, it’s to help Christians be able to know and discuss this awesome fact, and to understand where the confusion in the larger culture comes from. If you’re not a believer in Christ, this booklet may provide you with some food for thought to help clarify your own thinking about God and who He is. Read on and discover a bigger God than you might have thought possible…

[If you want to download the entire booklet to read, without waiting for the posts, you can get it here.]

We are updating our “what we believe” section on the church website. Since most likely none of you check that page regularly, it seemed like a good idea to post it here for you to read and think through. If you have any questions about any of these things, or would like to discuss them, come talk to me at church.

Calvary Chapel has been formed as a fellowship of believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our supreme desire is to know Christ and be conformed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not a denominational church, nor are we opposed to denominations as such, only their over-emphasis of the doctrinal differences that have led to the division of the Body of Christ.

We believe the only true basis of Christian fellowship is Christ’s (agape) love, which is greater than any difference we possess, and without which we have no right to claim ourselves Christians.

We believe in one personal, transcendent, Triune God, the creator of all, who is eternal, and who manifests Himself in three separate persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We believe that Jesus Christ, though fully God, became a man for the suffering of death. We believe that He is the promised Messiah, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, provided for the atonement of our sins by His vicarious death on the Cross, was bodily resurrected, ascended back to the right hand of God the Father, and ever lives to make intercession for us. After Jesus ascended to Heaven, He poured out His Holy Spirit on the believers in Jerusalem, enabling them to fulfill His command to preach the Gospel to the entire world, an obligation shared by all believers today.

We believe in the person and work of the Holy Spirit who indwells, seals, and empowers every believer, baptizing them into the Body of Christ. We further believe that the Holy Spirit will come upon any believer who asks in faith, enabling him/her to preach the Gospel in power. We also believe all of the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned in the Scriptures are valid for today, and that they are to be exercised within the scriptural guidelines set forth by the Spirit. We believe that love is more important than all the gifts, and without this love all exercise of spiritual gifts is worthless.

We believe that all people are by nature separated from God and responsible for their own sin, but that salvation, redemption, and forgiveness are freely offered to all by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. When a person repents of sin and accepts Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord, trusting Him to save, that person is immediately born again and sealed by the Holy Spirit, all his/her sins are forgiven, and that person becomes a child of God.

We believe Jesus Christ is the head of the Body, His church, and that church government should be simplistic rather than complex and bureaucratic. We desire to be under the authority of the word of God and led by the Holy Spirit in all the ministry of the church.

We believe in the inerrancy of Scripture: That the Bible, Old and New Testaments, in the original autographs, is the inspired, infallible Word of God, a complete and final written revelation of God. We reject doctrinal viewpoints or spiritual phenomena which are based solely on experience. We look to the Word of God for the basis of all our faith and practice.

We await the pre-tribulational rapture of the church, and we believe that at the Second Coming of Christ He will visibly set up his throne on earth and personally rule with His saints for 1000 years. This motivates us to holy living, heartfelt worship, committed service, diligent study of God’s Word, regular fellowship, and participation in baptism by immersion and in Holy Communion. We believe that the nation of Israel still has a special place in God’s plan and that all the promises of the God of Israel will be fulfilled.

We believe in a personal devil called Satan, and fallen angels who are destined to spend eternity in hell. We believe they now seek to deceive people and defeat the work of God. However, they can be resisted by believers, as they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, protected by God, and interceded for by the Lord Jesus.

We believe worship of God should be spiritual. Therefore, we remain flexible and yielded to the leading of the Holy Spirit to direct our worship.

We believe worship of God should be musical. Therefore, music is an important part of our worship. Our worship is contemporary, with the emphasis on “worship” rather than “contemporary.”

We believe worship of God should be intelligent. Therefore, our services are designed with great emphasis upon the teaching of the Word of God that He might instruct us how He should be worshiped. We seek to teach the Word of God in such a way that its message can be applied to an individual’s life, leading that person to greater maturity in Christ.

We believe worship of God should be fruitful. Therefore, we look for His love in our lives as the supreme manifestation that we have been truly worshiping Him.

A few weeks ago on Monday nights we took a couple weeks to look at how to think about gender from a biblical viewpoint. Here’s a few more helpful thoughts on the matter from John Frame. This comes from a chapter in the larger of the two books I recommended last week:

Is sexual differentiation an aspect of the image [of God]?

Yes, for everything we are images God. The point is not that God is male, female, or both. To say that our eyes image God, remember, is not to say that God has eyes; it is rather to say that our eyes picture something divine. Similarly, our sexuality pictures God’s attributes and capacities:

(a) It mirrors God’s creativity, by which He brings forth sons and daughters (John 1:12; Romans 8:14ff.; etc.).

(b) The love of a husband for his wife pictures God’s love for His people (Ezekiel 16; Hosea 1-3; Ephesians 5:25-33).

(c) Scripture describes God both in male and in female terms, though the overwhelming preponderance of imagery is male. The reason, I think, is basically that Scripture wants us to think of God as Lord (Exodus 3:14; 6:3, 7; 33:19; 34:5ff.; Deuteronomy 6:4ff.; cf. Romans 10:9f; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Philippians 2:11), and lordship, in Scripture, always connotes authority. Since in the Biblical view women are subject to male authority in the home and the church, there is some awkwardness in speaking of God in female terms. Our need today, in my opinion, is for a far greater appreciation of the Lordship of God and of Christ. Therefore, in my view, the movement to use unisex or female language in referring to God is fundamentally wrongheaded from a Biblical perspective.

(d) Nevertheless, the very submission of the woman also images God. God the Lord is not too proud to be our “helper.” Christ the Lord is not unwilling to be a servant. Godly women stand as models, often as rebukes, to all who would be leaders (Matthew 20:20-28).

And here’s his summary and conclusion:

Women and men equally image God, even in their sexual differences, even in their differences with regard to authority and submission.

The reason is that the image of God embraces everything that is human.

Both men and women, therefore, resemble God and are called to represent Him throughout the creation, exercising control, authority, and presence in His name. This doctrine is not at all inconsistent with the subordination of women to men in the home and in the church. All human beings are under authority, both divine and human. Their submission to authority, as well as their authority itself, images God.

“Do you think finite sins deserve eternal punishment? How can that be fair?”

It’s a common question we may hear when we’re seeking to understand or discuss the nature of God’s wrath as it’s described in the Bible. And on the surface, it presents a difficult problem. After all, if you commit sin for a period of, say, eighty years, does it seem fair to be sentenced to an eternity of punishment? When stated this way, we might feel there is some sort of disparity. It’s hard to image a just God making this sort of mistake. In fact, it might seem to get worse when we think of each sin individually…maybe the sin lasted a year, or a day, or just a few minutes. How could it merit punishment forever?

And yet, that’s what the Bible does teach about the nature of God’s wrath on those who die in their sins. It’s a tragic, horrifying truth to try to contemplate, but it is the case.

So, what gives? Is God unfair?

Two things help when trying to think this through. First, it helps to ask questions about how we determine what a “fair” punishment is in the first place. Second, it helps to think about the assumptions we might be making about the “eternal” or “temporary” nature of both humans and their sins.

So, when we ask, “Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should realize that we first need to answer the question of how someone would assign punishment to a crime at all. Even on a purely human level, do we assign length of punishment to a crime based on how long it took to commit the crime? The answer is generally no. If a murder took 5 minutes to commit, the time factor does not weigh in to the length of punishment. Imagine the trial of someone who spent 5 years masterminding a plot to steal $100,000, and someone who killed several people in 10 minutes of rage. Which one would receive a more severe punishment?

So we see that the length of time it takes to commit a crime, or a sin, is not really something that is taken into account when we think of punishment.

How should we weigh evil acts, then? The answer typically has to do with a mix of the amount of evil committed (money stolen, property damaged, lives disrupted or taken, pain caused), the amount of deliberateness behind the evil (time spent planning, amount of intent to do harm), and some other factors, like the future danger to a society the individual presents. The crucial idea to see here is that even our court systems understand that human acts have consequences beyond the actual committing of the crime. The evil caused does not stop when the criminal stops committing the evil.

So we have a compounding effect of evil to take into account when we assess punishment to criminals. If someone hurt several people badly enough to disable them, we have on our hands effects of evil which will last for the rest of their lives. Would it be unfair to add together the remaining years of each injured person’s life to come up with a “fair” number of years the criminal should be punished? (We should see that we will quickly run out of years left for the criminal, so that he or she wouldn’t even be able to serve the “full” sentence, thinking this way.)

And it gets worse. How would we calculate the “fair” amount of punishment for someone like Adolph Hitler? The amount of evil he committed would need to be assessed over the scale of every life he affected, his amount of malice and conscious intent, and how lasting the effects of his sin were. It boggles the mind. Could he receive a sentence that was “fair” which he could serve in his lifetime?

Secondly, when we ask the question, “”Do finite sins deserve infinite punishment?”–we should notice the underlying assumptions about humans, and our relationship to eternity, that we may need to reexamine. Specifically, we need to contemplate three issues of our own interaction with eternity:

1. The eternal nature of humans.
2. The eternal significance of the things humans do.
3. The eternal authority humans are under.

Let’s look at each one individually.

1. The eternal nature of humans: We’re finite in terms of size, but in terms of time, are we finite, or eternal? The answer the Bible gives is that we are eternal. Humans, by nature, are made in the image of the eternal God, which means that once we come into existence, we never pass out of existence. To exist forever is in the very fabric of what it means to be human. In other words, and this is very helpful to say when we discuss these kinds of things, we are eternal beings.

So when a human commits a sin, it is a sin committed by an eternal being. A new question emerges: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin?

2. The eternal significance of the things human do: Do our acts have temporary, or eternal significance? This returns to an idea discussed above–how long do the effects of our sin last? Now, I may break someone’s arm, and it may heal in six weeks. We could say the effects of my sin lasted six weeks. In one sense that’s true. But in another sense it’s not true at all. How long do the memories of that sin last? How long does the animosity between me and the injured person last? And to get more to the point: once I’ve broken the arm, can I ever undo that action? Is there a way I can make it so I didn’t do it at all? This is why the idea of “significance” is so helpful. I may commit an act whose effects go away after some time, but I can never change the universe so that the act didn’t happen. The fact that I broke the arm is an eternal fact. There will never be a time when I did not break that arm.

Further, think about things we do whose effects don’t go away. What if I hurt someone and it cost them their arm? They will live for the rest of their life maimed by what I did. And since we each only live one life, they will never get to live a full life with both arms. In other words, what I did effects them eternally. There will never be a reality in which they lived a full life with two arms.

Let’s keep going. If I murder someone, think of the eternal results of what I’ve done. For all eternity, the length of their earthly life will have been shortened, by me. They will never get to relive an earthly life which lasts its full course.

These may seem like extreme cases, but once you realize the connection between the fact that we only have one life to live, and that we can not change the past once we’ve lived it, you realize that literally everything we do has eternal significance. Once I say, think, or do something, it, and all its effects, can never be undone. they are just there, forever. I think we’ve answered the next pertinent question: Can an eternal being commit any act that is not eternal in significance?

3. The eternal authority humans are under: Against whom do we sin, when we sin? This is probably the most common way of connecting eternity to our sins. We don’t simply sin against each other–we sin against an infinite, eternal God, who gave us existence and has absolute right to rule over us. Not only that, but He’s shown Himself to be infinitely, eternally loving as well, so when we sin, we sin again someone with both infinite authority and infinite love. We offend infinite majesty. Here’s another question: Can an eternal being commit a finite sin against infinite love and authority?

I think adding the rest of what we’ve seen to this helps even further: Here we are, eternal creatures, given the gift of true existence with eternal significance, so that all we are and all we do has meaning forever. We’re under the infinitely loving authority of our creator as well, and given the ability to act out, in truly significant ways, our desires and intentions. Everything we do, then, has eternity all over it. There’s nothing about us that doesn’t matter, forever.

And when we sin, we sin eternally. We’re eternal beings committing eternally significant sins against an eternal authority.

When seen in this light, I’m not sure how we could see anything other than eternal consequences as appropriate. Eternal punishment speaks to the high calling and intention of God for Man, and the amazing level of significance he has gifted to us. To whom much is given, much is required.

And doesn’t this bring one more thing into glorious light? The grace of God in Jesus Christ is the kind of grace that comes to us–these eternally guilty beings–and actually has the power to change what we never could. Yes, there will never be a time when I did not sin, but by the death and resurrection of Christ I can be given the status of One who never did. When I am united to Him by faith, I find my past covered and atoned for, and what’s left is for me to live out an eternally significant life of righteousness. This is staggering.  If anything, contemplating the reality of what Hell teaches us should make us be more in awe of what Jesus truly accomplished. What a massive, unimaginable salvation is offered to us. God is that good.

(Note: For more discussion of how the love of God impacts these things, see this post.)

I’m enjoying our study through the book of Ruth, and I’m also looking forward to where I think we’re going next in our Monday night studies. As I’ve mentioned before, for a couple months now I’ve been excited about revisiting the scriptures to simply study about who God is and how He’s revealed Himself. While non-believers regularly talk as if God must be this far-away, unknowable being, we worship the only God Who has actually shown Himself–He wants us to know Him! All of this means that I’ve been studying the Christian teaching known as the Trinity. And so, after Ruth, it’s to the Trinity I hope to turn on our Monday nights. It will dovetail nicely with where Pastor Joe’s been on Sunday mornings as we think about the Holy Spirit, and it will give us a few weeks to sink our minds into God’s word as a declaration of Himself to us.

I’ll post more about these studies as we get closer to beginning, but for now, I thought I’d share some stuff I’ve found to be helpful in thinking about the Bible’s teaching on all this. First, here are the links to download four messages on the Trinity which I have to say are excellent: This guy is speaking to a college christian fellowship, so he’s very easy to listen to (he’s a British guy with a good accent and a good British sense of humor). They will get you pumped to dig into the word to see these things for yourself:

Messages by Mike Reeves on the Trinity (Mp3 downloads)

• Why we have problems with Trinity
• Trinity is the Answer
• Trinity in Revelation and Creation
• Trinity in Salvation

And for a little more, here’s an article by the same guy called “Three is the Loveliest Number.” Here’s a section from the beginning of it: 

…there is the God we know and love—and then, in some mental ivory tower far, far away, there is that Trinity stuff.

That mathematical mystery.

That mind-bending oddity.

That strange, even embarrassing idea.

Yes, deep within the Christian psyche today seems to be the notion that the Trinity is an awkward and odd irrelevance, an unsightly wart on our knowledge of the true God. And so, when it comes to sharing our faith, we speak of God’s offer of salvation, we speak of God’s free grace, but we try not to let on that the God we are speaking of is a Trinity. We wax lyrical about the beauty of the gospel, but not so much about the beauty of the God whose gospel it is.

It is time to stand up and say, “No!” to such nonsense, to turn our backs on the absurd notion that our beautiful gospel could ever come from a God who is not the very perfection and essence of beauty. For the health of the church and our faith, we must be proud of who our God is. And since the Trinity is no mere theological icing resting atop our God—since the living God is Trinity—we must be resolutely and thoroughly Trinitarian in all our ways and thoughts.

Only then will we truly enjoy what sets the living God apart from the gods of human imagination. Only then will we know a God good enough to offer truly good news. And this, in fact, is the nature of the very eternal life for which we have been saved: knowing God. As Jesus prayed, “[T]his is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). 

Ever hear someone say, “The word ‘Rapture’ is not in the Bible.”–? Ever get confused trying to think about it?

Here’s a shot at helping you work through the issues regarding the timing of the Lord’s coming for His people.  Click on the title below to download a worksheet I give out to my Bible classes. It takes you through the relevant scripture passages and concepts which lead someone to believe that the Church is caught up to be with Christ before a time of trouble on the earth and as a first part of His final coming.

What is the Rapture, and why should we believe in it? (pdf)

Here’s the outline of the worksheet:

Why should we believe in a Rapture?

There are several important themes in scripture that lead to the concept of the Rapture happening separate from the 2^nd coming in Revelation 19. (Or, as a first part of a two-part coming, part before the Tribulation (to receive the church) and part at the end of the Tribulation (to judge the earth)).

Here are the reasons to believe in a rapture, and to believe that it happens before a seven-year period known as “The Tribulation.” 

1. Old Testament Prophesies that haven’t been fulfilled.
A. Old Testament Prophesies about God’s future dealing with the nation of Israel
B. Prophesies about future dealing with the gentile nations
C. Possible OT references to the Rapture
D. Types and Symbols that seem to point to the Rapture in the Old Testament

2. New Testament Passages that describe the Church and its future.
A. The Church will be received to Christ in the Air
B. The Church will not be subjected to God’s divine Wrath on sin
C. The Coming of Christ for His church is Imminent (it could happen at any time)