Divine Equality
For the Lord’s Day:  the 28^th of November 2004

John 5: 18

“This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”

Introduction:  There is ever so much contained in this short passage, that we as mere humans can scarce take it all in!  As we understand the Gospel reports, the disciples did not completely understand this equality with God until after the resurrection.  Even the collective councils of the Church took several hundred years to pound out from the scriptural revelation just exactly what this equality actually and fully meant doctrinally.  One thing that we can say of the Old Covenant Sanhedrin is that they were astute theologians enough to pick up on what Jesus was actually saying, long before those who believed in and followed Jesus.

And in John’s arrangement of the history of the life of Jesus Christ, he uses the luxury of knowing the end of the matter and pointing out carefully in his arrangement of the records:  the obstructive attitude and convenient self-serving politics of the Old Covenant leaders towards the Son of God, whom they refused to recognize on principle.  They believed firmly, in spite of the biblical evidence to the contrary, that the claims of Christ to equality with the Father were heretical and ultimately dangerous to their contemporary religious understandings.

Certainly, there was more than enough evidence to demonstrate the “equality” of Christ with the Father, to those who would believe on Him.  However, the eighty-some specific prophecies concerning the Messiah were not systematically studied and attributed to Jesus of Nazareth until after His resurrection.  In addition, the signs and miracles were steadfastly ignored and discounted.  And like the worldly in our day and time, those who opposed the revealed Messiah were faced with three or four hard intellectual choices as to how Christ must be regarded.

In the classic definitive argument about the person of Christ, either Jesus was:

        1.        exactly who He said He was – the Son of God incarnate
2.        or a madman – ranting and raving from some mental or emotional disorder
3.        or finally a charlatan – a false Messiah claiming the divinity to which He falsely assumed

To those common three, there must be added a fourth possibility by those who would rather defer to the minimal realities of the scriptural revelation without admitting the most obvious equation:

4.        a prophet or a man of power and wisdom beyond the ordinary – but not divine

And yet, it was statements of Jesus affirming definition number one – that drove the intellectuals and theologians to extreme distraction.  For a short while, they may have allowed the fourth possibility, then considered the second, but in the end, being unwilling to understand or admit the first – they settled on the charges of blasphemy which the third option mandated through an inordinate hatred that defies the ordinary logic of their day and place.  The unreasonable hatred of the Jewish leaders got in the way of any ordinary theological evaluation on anything like fair and equitable terms.  The triunity (as RC Sproul emphasizes it) of the Godhead in the Old Covenant was necessarily beyond their immediate ability to process. 

Development:  As we pursue the intricacies of the revelation of “equality” in this text, let us first examine the Old Covenant background.  To be fair in this regard, we should allow that because of the constant conflict with idolatry and polytheism during most of the Old Covenant history, it should not be surprising that monotheism was emphasized so strongly.  Gordon Clark admits “the needed emphasis on the unity of God precluded any understanding of the Godhead as a Trinity.  There were hints however [that should not have been ignored]:

        1.        the plural “Elohim” [in so many passages] might have suggested some sort of plurality.
2.        the use of the name Jehovah three times and three times only in Numbers 6: 24-25, Daniel 9: 19 and Isaiah 33: 22 is something more than a rhetorical or liturgical flourish
3.        Psalm 107 indeed suggests some sort of plurality” in verse twenty with “the sending of His Word”

Further, Clark allows that the “Old Testament anticipations of the Trinity seem to divide into three groups:

        1.        passages which so clearly anticipate the Trinity that not only will all Christians agree, but which could have initiated some puzzlement among the Old Testament Jews
2.        passages which the Jews could hardly have suspected, but which Christians today can with some show of plausibility argue that God intended the anticipation
3.        passages into which too confident Christians read back Trinitarian ideas, though it is highly unlikely that God so intended them”

The Jews of Jesus’ time, with the exception of informing the Wise Men where the Christ should be born, by and large allowed the “rage of the age” in their theological world to blind them to the most obvious claims made by our Lord Jesus Christ.  At least, in the aftermath of the recent election – we of all people should understand the phenomenon “rage of the age,” which I have just coined.  They did not and could not see the obvious implications of the whole Old Covenant Scriptures because they did not want to consider the claims of Christ in any way, shape or form.  Their confusion in this regard has continued to plague the heretics and the atheists of every day since the time of Christ. 

Our second point of examination concerns the emerging beliefs of the New Covenant Church.  The early Christian Church by necessity spent several hundred years understanding and defining this “equality” with God revealed in our text.  According to Gordon Clark’s assessment:

“The Jewish failure to see more than one Person as God carried over into the Christian churches – with this all-important difference:  They had to say something about Christ.”  The four possible views on triunity outlined by Clark are these:

        1.        there are three independent gods;                                                                                Tritheism
2.        there is only one God who appears and operates in three ways;                          Sabellian Modalism
3.        there is but one Person who is God and Christ was his first creation;                   Arianism
4.        there is one Godhead existing in three Persons.”                                                      Nicene Orthodoxy

Because of the early arguments from the time of the Church Fathers until the definitive language of the Nicene Creed was firmly established in the follow-up Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, there was much confusion and danger that the Church of the Living God might dissolve into spiritual cults and clubs of many divergent views (like the present diversity within the contemporary churches).

Those four possible views represent the heretical dangers, but even today – these problems are little understood within the vast majority of the churches.  The definitive arguments of Chalcedon are little appreciated, indeed – I was unfortunate to work with a liberal pastor who demanded that Chalcedon was a severe setback in the history of the Church.  Since I could not in good conscience work with him or admit that he should have good standing within any church, I was in a lot of trouble in my old denomination of the seventies.  Eventually, I was forced out and providentially came over to the PCA.

At least here amongst more honest brethren, we can honestly and publicly affirm not only the historic creeds of the church, but also the triunity of the Godhead which mandates some formulization of “equality” between the three persons.  In summary, the New Covenant understanding of this essential triunity, let us hear how Charles Hodge defines this definitive biblical doctrine:

        1.        There is one only living and true God, or divine Being.
2.        In the Bible all divine titles and attributes are ascribed equally to the Father, Son, and Spirit.
3.        The terms Father, Son, and Spirit do not express different relations of God to his creatures.  They are not analogous to the terms Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor, which do express such relations.
4.        The Father, Son, and Spirit are the same in substance, and equal in power and glory
5.        The Father, Son and Spirit concur in all acts, Nevertheless there are some acts which are predominantly referred to the Father, others to the Son, and others to the Sprit.

Please understand, this is nothing more than a brief outline of all the arguments carried forward in the history of the Church and nailed down in the statements of Chalcedon.  RC Sproul concludes his definition of the triunity of the Godhead in these words:  “The doctrine of the Trinity does not fully explain the mysterious character of God.  Rather, it sets the boundaries outside of which we must not step.  It defines the limits of our finite reflection.  It demands that we be faithful to the biblical revelation that in one sense God is one and in a different sense He is three.”

Application:  Before we close for the day, there is one more issue that needs to be considered.  And that is the subordination of Christ to the perfect and final will of the Father.  Paul writes to the Philippians this thoughtful admonishment:

Philippians 2: 5-6  “Have this in mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Charles Hodge describes the Nicene doctrine of Subordination carefully.  “The creeds are nothing more than a well-ordered arrangement of the facts of Scripture which concern the doctrine of the Trinity.  They assert the distinct personality of the Father, Son, and Spirit; their mutual relation as expressed by those terms; their absolute unity as to substance or essence, and their consequent perfect equality; and the subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, as to the mode of subsistence and operation.  These are Scriptural facts, to which the creeds in question add nothing; and it is in this sense they have been accepted by the Church universal.”

Michael Bently also helps us with the text in Philippians.  “The English word ‘form’ usually refers to the outward shape of an object; Paul uses it in that way when he speaks of those who have ‘a form of godliness’ but deny the power of it.  But we can also use the word in a much more comprehensive way.”  We can speak of a dancer, or sports player as “being in good form” - this use means “much more than that of [a person’s] outward appearance … we are referring to [their] whole person and the way this affects [their] actions.”  In specific regard to Christ, James Montgomery Boice instructs us in these words: “we mean that his mental, physical and emotional abilities are all working together in perfect harmony and are achieving the very best results possible.”

This brings us to our last point this morning, and the real challenge of the scriptures to put on the mind of Christ in everything we believe and do.  The whole purpose of Paul’s argument as well as John’s definitive revelation is to encourage us to imitate the servant attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Even though He had put His glory by and descended to earth in the form of a servant – He did not count His high estate as something to be catered too.  No indeed, He had come as a suffering servant, and He followed through on God’s intended plan.  So in the same way, everyone within the Church should be seen in a similar servant attitude.  Sometimes, strangers to the Presbyterian government ask me about my role as Stated Clerk for the Presbytery.  “Is that something like a Bishop?” they often ask.  No matter how much I might be flattered with such a question – I am charged by our Presbyterian traditions to advise them that the title is one of service and that the Presbytery retains the collective rights related to the office of bishop.  And if the leaders of the church must humbly submit in this ongoing imitation of the calling of Christ, so too ought all of God’s people realize the humility of their calling.  May the Lord of life bring us all to appreciate not only the grand doctrine of the Trinity, but also admonish us to imitate His own calling in the way we live daily before His face!  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES 

Bentley, Michael.  Welwyn Commentary Series:  Shining in the Darkness: Philippians simply explained.
Boice, James Montgomery.  Foundations of the Christian Faith.
Calvin, John:  Commentary on the Gospel of John.
Clark. Gordon.  The Trinity.
Hodge, Charles.  Systiematic Theology. Volume I
Sproul, R.C.  Essential Truths of the Christian Faith.
Tasker, R.V.G.  Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: The Gospel According to St John.
The Holy Bible:  English Standard Version.

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