Our third lesson here, really taking a little bit deeper dive into the doctrine of the Trinity, looking at the distinction this morning between being and person. So looking at the fact that God is one being, comprised of three persons. We're going to define that a little bit further this morning, and then close the lesson this morning looking at four of the major heresies that have existed through church history when it comes to understanding the doctrine of the Trinity, and why understanding the doctrine of the Trinity is important. So we start, Grudem in his systematic starts and he says, each person of the Trinity is fully God. That is, each person has the whole fullness of God's being in himself. We have difficulty with that because as we think about beings and personhood, we think that as a being we are a person, so we think it's a one-to-one, being to person, and we wonder how can you have three that equal one, but they're not three parts. It's three persons that are holy God in and of themselves, existing within the Godhead, within the Trinity. So each of the persons is fully God. So each person has the whole fullness of God's being in himself. So the Son is not just a part of the equation, it's not a ratio, it's not a fraction. The Son is not partly God or one-third of God, but the Son is holy and fully God, the Father is holy and fully God, and the Spirit is holy and fully God, but they are three distinct persons. See, I told you you needed more coffee this morning, right? So as we look at that, when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together, we are not speaking of any greater being than when we speak of the Father alone, the Son alone, or the Spirit alone. So whether we use the term God, whether we're talking about the Father, the Son, the Spirit, talking about the Trinity, the Godhead, whatever phrase we're using to talk about God, none of those is greater than the other. None of those is more divine or more God than the other. One of the heresies we'll look at is that the Arianism teaches that Jesus was a created being, not God from eternity past, but was in God saying He was the only begotten Son, He was created. So there was a time that Jesus was not. Now, we know, as you understand the doctrine of the Trinity and all the scriptures that we've read about who Christ is in His divinity, we know that's a heresy, we know that's not true. But what happens then is people try to put them in some kind of an order, and the Father is the highest order, and the Son is below Him, and the Spirit is below Him, and so there are almost rankings within the Trinity. But when we understand, we're not talking about thirds or ratios or parts. We're talking about one being, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and whatever term we are using to talk about Him or to describe Him, He is one being and none of the persons within that being are greater or lesser than another. So the Father is all of God's being, the Son is all of God's being, and the Spirit is all of God's being. Now, we'll just admit it right out from the start. We cannot understand that. Our brains, finite, created, we simply cannot... And the reason we can't understand that, by the way, is because God is a being unlike any other being we are familiar with. Because every other being that we come in contact with is a created being. And God is the one who created all of those beings, Himself being uncreated. So when He says, My ways are above your ways, My thoughts are above your thoughts, understand His being is above our being. He is God who inhabits eternity, who can stretch out all of known creation between His hands. We simply cannot put a quantity to that. We can't quantify God. We can't put Him in a box. We can't measure Him. We can't say God goes this far and no further. God inhabits eternity. We'll see in Isaiah this morning, He is God. There was none before Him. There will be none after Him. That's because there never was a time that He wasn't and there never will be a time that He won't be. So, we believe it. Don't understand it, but we have to believe the revelation that's given to us in Scripture. Now, when we look at the personal distinctions within the Trinity, These are not additions to the being of God. In other words, each person of the Trinity has all the attributes of God, and no one person has any attributes not possessed by the others. So if we're talking about the attributes, the perfections, the characteristics of God, again, we've said this before, that as you look at the attributes of God, each person of the Trinity possesses in full all of those attributes. So they're not attributes that the Spirit has that the Father doesn't, or that the Son has that the Spirit doesn't. There are distinctions, within their roles within the Godhead and what they do, but it is not that one has something that another does not. So personal distinctions are not just three distinct ways or three different ways to look at God either. Each person relates to the others. And this is where we get into defining persons. Within the being that is God, are these relationships between the persons. And that's why we use the term person to try to help understand the distinctions, because people have relationships. Well, there are relationships within the Trinity. Each of the persons relates to the other persons within the Trinity as I, the first person, as you, the second person, and as he, the third person. You didn't know we were doing impossible math and grammar this morning, did you? So, I, you, and he. And this is why then God, as singular God, as one being, can say, let us make man in our image. And use the plural. Not a plural in being. but a plural in personhood. In human terms, a person is a being, a one-to-one relationship. In fact, in human psychology, if you have more than one personality, something has gone wrong. There is either a physiological or a mental disorder that then needs to be addressed and to be treated. Now, God being so much greater than we are in his being, It's not a mental issue, it's not that God's psycho, okay? It's not like multiple personality disorder. He, as three persons in one God, in divine terms, He is so much greater than our being that within His one undivided being there can be an unfolding into interpersonal relationships between three distinct persons, a one in three and a three in one. So trinity and unity, unity and trinity. How do you get three in one and one to be three? You have to be a being that is beyond what we are and beyond what we can understand because of our experience. So what are the differences between the persons? As we look at the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the weeks to come, we're going to look at the distinct roles for the Father, what the Father does, what the Son does, what the Spirit does, how they operate within creation as God, but there is no difference in attributes at all. There is a difference in the way that each person relates to each other and to creation. So there is a difference in the way we relate to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is unique as He relates to the Son and Spirit and creation as the Father. The Son is also unique as He, in His incarnation, subjected Himself to the Father to do the Father's will. You understand He is co-equal and co-eternal with God, so there is no ranking within the Trinity, but Christ willingly set aside part of that distinction when He took on humanity, so that He then could be subject to the Father and pray, not my will but Yours be done. Within the Trinity, within their existence from eternity past, there is no subservience. There is no the Father's will, the Son's will, the Spirit's will. It is God's will. But what Christ did in humbling Himself to become a man, limited Himself in His being for a time. Because we know that while He was divine and while there were still things that He could do that are absolutely supernatural and miraculous, He did not know everything and He was not everywhere all at one time. There was a limit, a physical limit because of His humanity, and that's what Paul addresses in Philippians 2. That He humbled Himself and became a man and became obedient, whereas before this was not the case. Louis Burkhoff says, it is especially when we reflect on the relation of the three persons to the divine essence that all analogies fail us and we become deeply conscious of the fact that the Trinity is a mystery far beyond our comprehension. It is the incomprehensible glory of the Godhead. Now when we don't understand something, Usually, that either leads us to become confused, or to just not want to think about it because it's hard to think about, or we doubt it and we don't believe it. But when we look at the incomprehensible glory of the Godhead, when we look at these things that are a mystery to us, that will never fully be uncovered by our created minds, what should our response be? Well, our response to that revelation of God as who He is should be worship. It should be belief. It should be that we are trusting Him because He is so much more than we are. If we could explain God and make it all nice and tidy and understandable without the help of the Spirit giving us faith so that we might believe His revelation of Himself, then He wouldn't be God. And that's the truth of this. He is so much and we are so little. The Bible says we're like grasshoppers in His sight. I hate to tell you, but it's even worse than that. All of the nations combined in front of Him are as nothing because He is great and we are created. So as we learn these things and as they are difficult, even to get into philosophically and mathematically, we have to understand this is describing God who is the greatest of all beings, who alone is worthy of worship and praise and honor and adoration. It really should motivate us to worship. So I said I've shared with several of you James White's book, the forgotten Trinity. And I thought when I got the book, because of James White, because of his apologetic ministry, because of his debates, I thought it was going to be a very cut and dried, here's the facts, here's the arguments that prove the doctrine of the Trinity against the heresies that are out there. Because he's famous for debating Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and others about the truths of Scripture. And what I found as I read and learned more and more and more from what he was writing about who God is, the more that book moved me to worship. So whereas I tackled it as a theological experience, I'm going to learn, study, and apply myself to knowing and understanding better who God is, the result of that naturally has to be either worship or disbelief. So knowing who He is drives us to worship. What we do see is that there are pictures and ways that God reveals himself to us even outside of the scripture. He tells us about it in the scripture. And we can look and see in marriage and in the church, we see good examples of diversity within unity. God created us in his image, Genesis 2, 24 says, male and female. God created us in His image, male and female. As male and female, we remain distinctly individual, and yet God tells us that in marriage, He takes two and makes them one flesh. Do you ever wonder why old married couples look like each other? Have you ever noticed that they do? Not all do, but have you ever noticed? Now, of course, the only really scary one is you meet the couples that look like each other and their dog looks like them too. That's the scary one. But when you see, God takes two and makes one flesh. What does He mean by making one flesh? One in body, mind, and spirit. You know this if you've been married for any length of time, because husbands, you know that your wives can finish your sentences and will. And you know that when you tell a story, you're not going to get all the facts and she's going to have to come back and fill in the blanks. Right? This is part of one flesh. We fill in for each other. There are times then in that intimacy and in that knowledge and in that experience of marriage that you really are one. You're still distinct, still got your personalities, you're still male and female, but God has joined you together to be one flesh, one in body, one in mind. Just as the father and son are equal in deity and importance and personhood, so the husband and wife are equal in humanity and importance and in personhood. And again, while there are not distinctions to where one would be ranked higher than the other, there are distinctions within the roles within marriage. We look at the husband as leader, the wife as being submissive, as a helpmate. And you know why husbands need wives. I mean, the first thing that was not good in all of creation. Perfect creation. The first thing God said wasn't good, it wasn't good for that man to be alone. Because you've all seen what happens when men are alone. We need help. Unless you've been given the gift of singleness, and you really have to prove that, I'll tell you. But as you see how God has designed it, There is not a distinction in rank, there is a distinction in role. Just as the husband and wife are equal before Christ, so the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are co-equal with each other in their deity, importance, and personhood. We also see, by the way, when we look at the church, many members but one body. So there are many members that make up one church. So there is a diversity and a multiplicity that makes one. The one body, the one church on a local level, we represent the universal church, all of the elect and saved from all time, Old and New Testament, from the creation till the culmination. That is the church universal, and all who are elect and saved are part of that. And we are many members, but we are one body, and Christ is the head of that body. As we look at the text for marriage and for the church in Ephesians 5, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For you are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This is a great mystery, just like we talk about the Trinity being a mystery. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. And then in 1 Corinthians 12, For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I am not of the body, is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? And if the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them in the body, just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? But now indeed there are many members, yet one body, and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. No, much rather those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary, and those members of the body which we think to be less honorable. On these we bestow greater honor, and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it. that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ and members individually. Even as we look at family and at the church, many members one body, Husband and wife, one flesh. We see that out of the many there is one, but notice the distinction there, especially 1 Corinthians 12, 27 where we finished. Now you are the body of Christ and members individually. There is still that individuality. We don't lose that when we become part of the church. And this helps us then attempt to understand three persons in one being that is God, fully possessing all that God is, and yet they maintain their distinctions. One God, but three persons with their distinctions. As we look at the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we see that the works of the persons of the Trinity are inseparable. Often when one person is said to do something, we see elsewhere in Scripture that each person does the same thing. So none of the persons of the Trinity does any work exclusive of the other two persons. Whatever the Father, the Son, or the Spirit does, we can say that God does. That's why we can say, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and then we get to Colossians and we see that Christ spoke the world into existence. Well, who was it? Well, it was God. You see? So, in the Scripture, we will use the term God or even Father, Son, or Spirit to explain things, but we see that by saying that, we are saying that God has done it. When we look at creation and preservation, the verses listed here show us that the Son created and preserves, but we're also told that the Spirit creates and preserves. So, who is it? Yes, it's God. When we look at redemption, we have redemption through the Father, And we have redemption through the Spirit. When we look at sanctification, we are sanctified. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them by truth. Your word is truth. And we also see sanctification through the Son, that He sanctifies us by the washing of the water of regeneration. So when we look at the persons, we cannot think that one acts outside of the other two. There's no division in purpose, will, determination, or in action between the Father and the Son. When it comes then to heresies, and these are easier for us to understand because the heresies are when people came along, couldn't figure it out, didn't believe it, and tried to explain it away. They wanted to make it understandable. That's why we say you come and you accept God's self-revelation of Himself, even if you can't fully comprehend or understand it, because otherwise you change who He is. So we affirm God is three persons, each person is fully God, and there is one God. The heresy that we've talked about, modalism, claims that there is one person who appears to us in three different forms or modes. The term also is used, manifestations. That God manifests himself as the Father in the Old Testament, as the Son in the New Testament period, and then as the Holy Spirit in the Church Age. Well, no, God doesn't just manifest Himself that way. He is three persons. Modalism claims that the personal relationships within the Trinity are actually just illusions. That when the Bible talks about the Father speaking while the dove is descending, while the Son is being baptized in the water, that that's actually not real. That's just an illusion. It's imaginary to help us understand that there is one God. And so they will explain away, One of the most ridiculous to me, somebody actually asked a modalist, and yes, there are modern-day modalists. Somebody asked a modalist, we're told that the Son intercedes for us without ceasing, and that the Spirit intercedes for us, and that they pray to the Father. So if the Son is praying to the Father on our behalf, and there's no distinction, it's just one God, that either means that God is talking to Himself, literally just talking to himself. Or, as it was defined, the modalist said, again, that's just an illusion. That's just something to give you hope to understand that God cares for you. But it's not actually that Jesus is interceding for you. I don't know about you, but I've been in some places in my life where the hope that I grasped a hold of was that if there wasn't anybody else on the world praying for me, Jesus was praying for me before the throne of the Father. that He is making intercession for me, and that the Spirit is interceding for me. The Immortalism loses the heart of the atonement even, wherein the Father sent the Son to serve as the substitute for us and to bear the wrath of God in our place. If there is no distinction between Father and Son, then who poured out wrath on Christ on the cross? Well, the Immortalist answer is, Christ poured out wrath upon Himself. Well, then why did He say, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the answer again, that's just an illusion to help you understand. No, I'm sorry. The revelation of God is a mystery, it is not an illusion. An illusion means something is not real or not as it appears. Mystery means we can't comprehend it. It is a mystery, it is not an illusion. An example of modern-day modalists include Oneness Pentecostal churches. These are mostly known in the denomination of the United Pentecostal Church. There are other groups as well. And as you look and as you read, they will, in their confessions of faith and in their statements of belief, they will use the term that God either appears in different modes or in different manifestations. throughout the history of creation. Now, what they will do is they will argue that they believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but they don't believe three distinct persons in one being. And they will say, there is only one God, and you can't have one God if you have three persons. Because what the modalist will say is, if you have three persons and they're all equally God, then you have three gods. And so they absolutely reject that idea of the personhood of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Arianism, followers of the teachings of Arius, denies the full deity of the Son and of the Spirit. Arius was condemned at the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, as he taught that the Father created the Son and that the Father existed at a time when the Son and Spirit did not, making them then lesser than God and not the same essence as God. So God, in unfolding His plan, decided to create the Son and then decided to create the Spirit as needed to accomplish His purposes. They were condemned. This is one of the first heresies condemned universally by the church in the Council of Nicaea. An example of modern-day Arians include Jehovah's Witnesses. They believe that Jesus is not fully God. He is a created being who was chosen to be the Messiah, but he himself was not divine. That's why, by the way, that's why they go and they change the translation in their Bible of several verses, including John 1. In the beginning, we know it, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And they play around with the Greek text there, and their translation says, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God. And they define that as a created being that's greater than us, so He can be considered a God, but lesser than God who created Him. Well, at that point, you've changed who He is. You've changed His ability even to take our sin upon Himself. Because who can bear the full wrath of God but God? He had to stand in our place. The heresy of subordinationism teaches that the Son is eternal and divine, but not equal with God the Father in attributes or in being. And adoptionism is the view that Jesus lived as an ordinary man until His baptism, but then God adopted Him as His Son and conferred on Him supernatural powers so that He could be the Messiah. There are several teachings there. Some say that Jesus was just a man, but when the Spirit came upon Him at baptism, then He became part of the Godhead so that He could fulfill the role of Messiah. But Jesus Himself was not eternal and was not divine. Now, you ask, do people still believe that today? The Pope believes this. This was the shocking article I read this week. The Vatican is in an uproar. because someone who has been meeting with, it's a journalist who actually is an atheist, who's a very close friend of the current Pope, and who interviews him, follows him around and writes down what he says. And he says that over the course of many years of interviewing and talking to him, that Pope Francis has said that there was a time that Jesus was not God. that God came upon him in this life so that he could accomplish the purposes of being the Messiah, and then departed from him at the crucifixion before he died. Now, why is the Catholic Church freaking out? Because the Catholic Church does hold to an orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. And their catechisms and their teachings and their counsels all defend what we believe about the personhood of God. And so they're saying that the Pope is saying Jesus wasn't fully God, but became a god in order to... That's absolute heresy and has been condemned since before the Catholic Church ever existed. Now, the difficulties there though, by the way, with the Catholic Church is that then they add to this, and they will tell you that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons, one being who is God, but that the work that they've done in saving us is not enough. That we have to add our good work, sacraments, giving, and indulgences to add to the work of Christ so that we then can be fit for heaven. And even then, by the way, you're not going to be fit for heaven, so when you die you have to go to purgatory for millions and millions of years and pay off the debt of your sin And once you have finally garnered enough good works and indulgences from the people who are still on earth here paying your indulgences, finally you are accepted when your work is combined with the work of Christ and you can go to heaven. Now, part of this article in the discussion with the Pope that was released this week, it would be better, according to what he says, just to be lost. Because he said that lost souls, when they die, disappear. So if you're lost and you die, poof, you're gone. I'll tell you what, if my choices are, save millions of years of purgatory, adding my work to Christ and paying it off, or poof, I'm gone, thank you, I'm gone. Right? Why preach the gospel? Now the other problems that we get into then is that the Catholic Church then will add prayers and worship for Mary and the saints. And they will tell you, officially, that Mary is co-mediatrix, co-redeemer with Christ, that she joins with Him. This Pope, by the way, has taken that one step further. This Pope has said that Mary can save you without the work of Christ. That Mary herself has the grace to bestow salvation upon you regardless of what your relationship is to her Son. It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse because the foundation is faulty. There's a denial of the truth of the gospel. So you can see that whether it is a heresy that denies the aspects of the personhood, or if it's a heresy that denies aspects of the work of God in saving sinners, to change who He is or what He has done is fundamentally, in our beliefs, to change who He is. That's why we ask the question, is the doctrine of the Trinity essential? This doctrine goes to the very definition of who God is and who He has revealed Himself to be. If Jesus is just a created being, how could He bear the full wrath of God for our sin? And this is just looking at Jesus and His divinity. If Jesus is not fully God, how can we worship Him or place our faith in Him? Because we're told that we're only supposed to worship God. And in fact, what the Catholics will say is that you can pray to and give adoration to Mary and the saints, but that's not actual worship, that's just veneration. Because they will say, you're only supposed to worship God. Well, then we need to define what worship is. Doing all these other things is worship. I think they just don't realize it. But if Jesus is not fully God, then how can we worship Him? How can we place our faith in Him? In fact, then the doctrine of justification by faith alone is destroyed. Because we cannot believe Him, we cannot worship Him, and if you can't believe Christ as God, then you cannot be saved. There's no doctrine of justification. If Jesus is not fully God, then we are trusting creation instead of the Creator. How often in the New Testament are we warned not to substitute the creation for the Creator? This is Romans chapter 1 and 2. Don't worship the creation over the Creator. Well, if Jesus is a created being, but we're commanded to worship Him and believe Him, then we are trusting in the creation, not the Creator. Because if Jesus isn't God, Jesus didn't create. He's not the creator. We've created a lesser God. This, by the way, opens the floodgates to the doctrines of Gnosticism. That what is spiritual is good, what is physical is bad, and there's no mixing of the two. And so the heresy that Paul came against when he wrote Galatians and when he dealt with the Gnostic heresies in the New Testament, what they were saying and what they had believed was that God is so absolutely holy and perfect and above us. To protect that, they said, then for God to interject Himself into our world as a human being, He had to create a lesser divinity. But then what they began to teach was, if God created a lesser divinity, it still wasn't enough because there was still too much God and too little man. And so what we find out is that Jesus is not the only begotten Son of God, as they believe created, but that there were multitudes of levels of creation of all of these layers of God that finally ended and culminated in Jesus, who was just low enough to be a man, but still high enough to be a God. Sometimes they... Was it R.C. Sproul that said it takes more faith to be an atheist? Sometimes it takes more faith to believe the heresy because it gets so contorted in what they're trying to explain. Herman Vink said Athanasius understood better than any of his contemporaries that Christianity stands or falls with the confession of the deity of Christ and of the Trinity. In the confession of the Trinity throbs the heart of the Christian religion every error, Every heresy that you can find out there results from or upon deeper reflection may be traced to a wrong view of the doctrine of who God is. All of the cults have this in common. They fundamentally change who God is as He has revealed Himself. So to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, is then to preach another Christ. We're told that there is salvation that can be found in no other name, no other person, no other place. Jesus is the only way. And Jesus is warning, Matthew 24, Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. These are the teachings of the cults. They change the essence of who God is. Because they cannot comprehend and understand it, and they refuse to accept it by faith, then they choose to try to explain it away, to try to make God relatable and understandable. And let me tell you, let me give you a hint. Everybody wants God to be relatable. Do you know how we relate to God? On our faces, before Him, through His Son. We can't relate to God without the work of Christ. And if we change who He is, if He is not fully and holy God and fully and holy man at the same time, then He could not pay man's sins and He could not satisfy the wrath of God. So if we remove the doctrine of the Trinity, if we change who God is in any way, our whole faith falls apart. There's nothing to believe, there's no salvation. because we've changed who God is. By the way, if we do that also, because this is how God has revealed Himself to us, as we've looked at all of the list of verses in the last two lessons about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all being God, if we change that, then we're calling God a liar. We're saying that how God has revealed Himself to us is not true. And that's why the modalist will say, it's an illusion to try to help you understand. Well, God does not need illusions to help us understand. Presenting something that's not real to believe something that is, that's a really poor way to present yourself. God has not presented Himself in illusions. He has told us plainly who He is. He's warned us that there will be distortions, and the church has been fighting these heresies from the very beginning. Do you understand? You can read in the New Testament, in 1 John, those who deny that Christ has come in the flesh. are of antichrist, against Christ. Actually, anti does not mean against. Antichrist doesn't mean against Christ, it means another Christ. Presenting another Jesus, another variation, another person, another being, another way. So even as early as the writings of the apostles, they were dealing with those in the church who could not understand the doctrine of the Trinity, and so then were already distorting it, denying that Jesus actually was God in human flesh. That, for Paul and for John, was rooted in Gnosticism. And it took the Church then 300 years to come to the point with Athanasius and the Council of Nicaea to finally nail it down and say, this is the truth that we've believed all along. And by the way, Nicaea didn't settle it or establish the doctrine of the Trinity. Nicaea said, this is what the Bible has taught all along and we just want to be plain. Anything that doesn't line up with this confession according to Scripture is not the truth. It's a misrepresentation of who God is. Now when you've got the church at that point, in that early stage, coming together in that kind of a unity, debating it out and formulating it in a confession, in the confession there that was given there and in Constantinople, what we see then is the church had to defend the truth because the cults and the false apostles and the false teachers that were trying to infiltrate were changing the very being of who God is. So it is important, because as we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, we are talking about an essential doctrine. If you do not believe the doctrine of the Trinity, you are not trusting in the God of the Bible for your salvation. You are believing a lie, a false version of God, a false God. So I would consider that to be an essential doctrine, right? If you change who God is, you're presenting another Christ, and you're preaching another gospel, and there is no salvation any other way. Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your word this morning, for your revelation of yourself, for giving us the faith to believe you, to trust you, to see what you tell us about yourself so that we might know that it is true, We thank you that salvation is in fact coming to know you, walking with you, having your life lived through us. And we look forward to that day when our faith shall be sight, when all of these analogies will be fulfilled and we will see exactly what all of these things point to as we see Christ returning for us. Father, we thank you for who you are. And again, for what you've done to stoop down, to condescend, to come to our level so that you might explain who you are so that we might see and believe and trust you. We thank you for who you are this morning and praise you alone in Jesus name. Amen.