The Apostle Paul was as Orthodox a Jew as you could find among the Pharisees, who were the most Orthodox of the Jewish parties. During his trial he cried out “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead I am on trial” (Acts 23:6). Later he filled us in on his credentials and his zeal for the Jewish faith,
“I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamali-el, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day. I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women” (Acts 22:3-4)
He lived his life fully unto the law.
“If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless” (Phil 3:4-6).
Paul was converted from his zealous but ignorant persecution of the church when he met Jesus on his fateful trip to Damascus. Paul had much to wrestle with to understand that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Now all those Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah fell into place and this highly educated Pharisee finally understood who Christ truly was. The book of Acts records for us the wonderful missionary journeys he went on to spread the gospel message. His zeal in proclaiming the Truth and his willingness to endure hardships for his Lord humbles us all.
Paul did have much to learn in accepting Jesus as the Messiah. As a Pharisee he believed in a coming Messiah, an earthly kingdom, a resurrection and life after death. Paul needed to sort through the Old Testament prophecies to differentiate between the first coming of the suffering Messiah, and the second coming of the King. Paul required a better understanding of the Scriptures about the Messiah, and we see this change in his letters. What we do not see is him undergoing a complete change in his understanding of God. There is no record, documentation or explanation of Paul converting from the Jewish understanding of Yahweh to the concept of the Trinity. The transformation Paul did experience was to better interpret prophecy. The conversion to the Trinity that we don’t see is more than interpretation of prophecy: it is doctrine. Paul affirmed that he only believed in one God as he writes: “Now an intermediary implies more than one; but God is one” (Gal 3:20).
But if the Trinity were true, Jesus was not just the Messiah but God. There was no greater doctrinal transformation for Paul to experience than to revamp his Jewish understanding of God. Yet the pages of the New Testament are silent about this epic conversion. The Acts of the Apostles contains many public discourses by Paul, yet in none of them does he propose a change in the doctrine of God. In his final defense before King Agrippa Paul recounts his conversion. He was a strict and zealous Pharisee, but now he was on trial for his life. What was it he proclaimed? A new understanding of God? No, he was on trial for the hope of the promises made to the fathers, that God would raise us from the dead.
“My manner of life from my youth, spent from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time, if they are willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:4-8).
Again, this silence concerning the Apostle Paul is a damning rebuttal of the Trinity. The Biblical language
The Scriptural record in both the Old and New Testaments describes the relationship of God and Jesus in terms we can understand in our own experience. Terms such as Father, Son, firstborn, Son of Man, begotten, etc. Verses such as:
“I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam 7:14) “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” (Psa 2:7).
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17).
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:31-32)
His conception through the power of the Holy Spirit was the cause of his Sonship, not that he already was God the Son.
“And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34).
“God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
“..I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 10:17).
“God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4).
“… but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world” (Heb 1:2).
“He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before His angels” (Rev 3:5).
Trinitarian ideas force us to change the meanings of words beyond how they are used in every other context. Why would God’s word to mankind give us terms we directly experience but then have them lose their meaning when applied to Himself? We are all someone’s son or daughter. We understand what it means to beget someone, to be an heir, to be born, etc. But, the Trinitarian would have us take all these words that God uses to describe Himself to us, and twist their common meaning into something else.
The genealogy
If Jesus is indeed the embodiment of God who lived as a man for 33 years on the earth, then his ancestors were sorely deceived. They were all promised that Jesus would be a child born in their family. Under the Trinity, the body he inhabited was just a shell and the lineage served no purpose.
No serious Bible student can miss the stress placed upon the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Matthew begins his gospel with: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1). The genealogy in Luke goes all the way back to Adam. The importance on his lineage begins in Genesis 3, where Jesus was the seed promised to Eve. Later in Genesis, Abraham was promised a seed who would inherit the land, possess the gates of his enemies, and by this seed all the nations of the earth would bless themselves. These promises were repeated to Isaac and Jacob. In Galatians, Paul declares that this promised seed was Christ.
When blessing his son Judah, Jacob prophesied about the ruler who would come through that tribe “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen 49:10). Moses told the people that God would raise up from among their brethren a prophet like unto him: “And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him’ ” (Deut 18:17-18). Christ gives us good advice that we should believe what Moses had to say “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:45-47). What Moses understood about God and the Messiah should certainly provide an excellent instruction for us.
God declared to David, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom” (2Sam 7:12). And David knew this promise related to Christ (Acts 2:29-36). Peter declared on Pentecost that this was a promise about Jesus, showing how God has sworn to David with an oath that He would set one of his descendants upon his throne.
The list of verses dealing with the descent of Jesus is long and clearly meant to tell us how important his lineage was:
“The LORD swore to David a sure oath..One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne” (Psa 132:11).
“..and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David” (Luke 1:69).
“Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that He would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ” (Acts 2:30-31).
“…I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will. Of this man’s posterity God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as He promised” (Acts 13:22-23).
“They are Israelite, and to them belong the son ship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ” (Rom 9:4-5).
“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David” (2 Tim 2:8).
“For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah” (Heb 7:14). “lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (Rev 5:5). “I am the root and the offspring of David” (Rev 22: 16).
Just to be clear, Jesus was not just a good man that God chose to be the Messiah. He is both Son of God and Son of man. His lineage from man goes all the way back to Adam. But he is also Son of God, as the LORD told David: “I will be His father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam 7:14).
This royal son ship from both David and God was taught by Jesus:
“And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord [this would be God] said to my Lord [David’s Lord = Christ], Sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet.’ David himself calls him Lord; so how is he his son?” (Mark 12: 35-37:
Even though he was the son of David, he is also David’s Lord and will sit upon David’s throne in Jerusalem when he establishes the Kingdom. How? Because God elevated him — “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36).
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit has few “Trinitarian” references in the Scriptures.
In studying the development of the Trinity, the addition of the Holy Spirit into the Godhead was the last segment added to the doctrine. There are a number of verses which, if misunderstood, seem to support Trinitarian ideas about the relationship between God and His Son. But verses addressing the Holy Spirit in this manner are rare. If indeed the Holy Spirit is one third of the Godhead, he gets very little proclamation in the Scriptures. In the seventeen epistles opening with an invocation of grace and peace, in only one is the Holy Spirit referred to, and then as the means of sanctification, and not the source of grace. Why the invocation to God and Christ, and not to the Holy Spirit, if the latter were a Personage within the Godhead? Similarly, in the eleven occurrences of thanksgiving or blessing which follow the invocations in the epistles, not one contains any mention of the Holy Spirit.
The reality of the scriptural record is that the Holy Spirit is the power of God. This is clearly defined for us when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary:
“The angel said unto her [Mary],The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
Luke gives us, in this verse, one of those algebraic formulas that help us in our Bible study. Mary was told that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and in the second phrase it is equated to the power of the Most High.
Another problem here for the Trinity is that if the Holy Spirit is indeed a person; he is the Father of Christ rather than God the Father. They should have a problem with the angel’s message to Joseph, which also ascribed the conception to the Holy Spirit.
“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:20).
The Holy Spirit can be shown to be a power by a careful comparison of the following passages:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1,2).
Other references to creation attribute the work to God’s power
“It is I who by my great power and my outstretched arm have made the earth” (Jer 27:5).
“It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens” (Jer 10:12).
“By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath [Heb. “ruach”, spirit] of his mouth” (Psa 33:6).
“Also, Jesus breathed on the disciples and they received the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). (This language is understandable if a power were conveyed, but inappropriate if the Holy Spirit were a divine Person.)
Similarly, the Holy Spirit was transmitted by the laying on of hands:
“Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit’ ” Acts 8:17-19).
Was this the transmission of a divine Personage within the Godhead?
The Holy Spirit was given “without measure” to Jesus (John 3:34). “Without measure” is an appropriate description of Holy Spirit power, but it is not the kind of language ordinarily associated with a person. The Holy Spirit is also described as a gift and these “gifts” are itemized for us by Paul:
“To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues” (1 Cor 12:8-10).
The divine order is set out for us, again by Paul through inspiration: in “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). Why is there no mention of the Holy Spirit in this hierarchy if he were a person and one-third of the Godhead? And why is God the head of Christ if they are co-equal parts of the same being?
The Holy Spirit today
God gave His Holy Spirit to the apostles. They needed special help to establish Christianity, for it would not be easy. The Romans, who ruled Israel, had their own gods. The Jewish leaders hated Jesus so much that they crucified him. The fact that the apostles could perform miracles added weight to their words. God must have sent them to preach about Jesus, and the results were impressive. Thousands believed and were baptized, so much so that within thirty years, Christians were living in well-organized groups in many towns and cities, including Rome. By then, the special gift of the Holy Spirit had served its purpose. Only the apostles had been able to pass on the power of the Spirit to others by the laying on of hands. And so, after they died, and those to whom they gave it died, this special gift ceased.
From the first century until today, nobody else has had personal control of God’s Holy Spirit. We now have written down for us to read for ourselves, the complete, inspired Bible; these scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15).We need nothing more.
God is still working through His Spirit by directing world affairs. Daniel told a king, “the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives it to whom he will” (Dan 4:32). God is still doing that today. The end of it all will be “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed” (Dan 2:44). God is still working through His word the Bible. Paul said the gospel of Christ “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom 1:16). We can be influenced by God’s word. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom 10:17 NKJV).
In the next article, God willing, we will continue by considering facts about Christ, that cannot be about God.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One