Tag Archives: father

Nov 13 2012

Which Person of the Trinity Should We Pray to?

Christian believers are required to have a continuous life of prayer, and we pray to God and address Him as Lord in our prayer.  If we are to understand the way God is revealed in Scripture, we must realize that God is revealed in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, each being fully God and all three one God.

A logical question then follows, does it matter which person of the Godhead we pray to?  Or should we mainly pray to God as Lord?

Pastor and theologian John Piper answer as follows:  “the pattern that you find almost uniformly – I say almost uniformly – throughout the New Testament is to pray to the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Reformed believers pray almost exclusively to the Father because the other persons of the Trinity facilitate our access to the Father.  The Holy Spirit glorifies the Son, and the Son, thru His sacrifice brings us to the Father.  Jesus also prays to the Father and this serves as the ultimate example for us.

But I also believe it is biblical to pray to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit.  Consider the following verses about praying to Jesus:

John 14:13-14 “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do… If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”

1 Cor 1:2 “in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

1 Tim 1:12 “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord…”

With respect to the Holy Spirit, we must understand that the Holy Spirit facilitates our worship and prayer.  He points to the Son as the only way to the Father.  But since the Holy Spirit is fully God, we may address the Holy Spirit directly in prayer, for example: “come, Holy Spirit.”

Prayer is essentially communication, and when we have fellowship with someone, we communicate with that person.  Paul tells us in 2 Cor 13:14 that we partake in “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.”  Therefore it is not wrong to communicate in prayer with the Holy Spirit.

Piper, concludes: “So my bottom line answer – and I’ve been asked this a lot – is to follow in general the pattern of the Bible, namely, pray to the Father in the name of Jesus by the power of the Spirit, that is, in reliance upon the help of the Spirit.”

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/does-it-matter-which-person-of-the-trinity-we-pray-to-84697/#XryEmI7Sd0EpxOXq.99

Nov 10 2012

The Triune God Revealed in the Old Testament (part 1)

Other than the teaching of salvation by grace thru faith, the doctrine of the Trinity may be the most important doctrine of the Christian faith.  Some theologians would say that it is the primordial doctrine of Christianity.  Wayne Grudem defines it in his Systematic Theology as follows:  “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.”

Well known passages in the Old Testament (OT) as well as obscure ones reveal the plurality of the Trinity.

Psalm 110:1 is the most frequently quoted passage from the OT in the New Testament (NT).  Here David receives a tremendous revelation from God to be able to write a glimpse of this amazing intra-Trinitarian conversation:  “The Lord says to my Lord:  “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”  Jesus challenges the Pharisees in Matthew 22:41-46 to understand that David is referring to two separate persons as “Lord” in Psalm 110.  God the Father says to God the Son, “sit at my right hand.”

David’s revelation continues when he writes in Psalm 45:7 “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”  Jesus is the anointed One by the Father when David again reveals the Father and the Son Jesus as God.

The Trinity is also revealed in a less known passage found in Hosea 1:7 “But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God.”  God (Elohim) here is speaking about the Lord (Yahweh) who will save Judah.  The Scripture clearly indicates here that two separate persons can be called God and Lord, that is Father and Son.

In the context of God’s plan of redemption, Isaiah 48:16 has amazing trinitarian implications: “And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.”  In NT perspective Jesus is the Messiah the One send by the Father.  It follows that in the redemption context of Isaiah 48, the person “me” in verse 16 send by God is Jesus.  If this verse is spoken by Jesus, and I believe it is given its context, we now have all three persons of the Trinity, the Father, the Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit mentioned in this verse.   Amazing!

The doctrine of the Trinity is a blessing for us because by understanding it we understand God’s plan of redemption and how each person of the Trinity is involved in each aspect of salvation.  We will never grasp how God can co-exist in three persons and be One God, but if we are to believe the Bible, we must accept this doctrine.  CS Lewis attested its validity when he said that such a doctrine could never be made up by a human mind.  No one could have come up with this type of idea if it wasn’t for the revelation given in the Bible.

to be continued…