Lightenup/Jael Discussion

[Lightenup]

@Jael

Hello Jael,

I invite you to come here with all your questions for me to answer. Please give me one question at a time and wait for my answer before you give me another question. I will ask you one question at a time as well. This is a good place on the forum to have some sense of continuity as we discuss the very important relationship of the Heavenly Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

 

Does that interest you? If so, let me begin by stating my basic beliefs in the matter in the next post.

 

[Lightenup]

These are my beliefs:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[Lightenup]

@Jael

If you are willing to have a discussion with me here, would you please let me know your beliefs (briefly) regarding the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in your first post?

Thank you and may God bless our discussion and be glorified in it!

[Lightenup]

@jael

Hello Jael,

This is where I will answer your questions, one at a time. You may address those answers here or not but this is where I will answer them. You may even ask a question here but ask just one at a time because that is all I am going to answer, one at a time. I picked a question from your many questions in other threads to start with:

you asked:

Lu, moreover, if Jesus were ALREADY GOD as (incredibly impossible) SPIRIT PROCREATION of God, why would Father God say to him: ‘THIS DAY YOU HAVE …become… a son to me, and I a Father to you’.

My response:

Perhaps you are quoting from one of these verses which is technically not translated like you wrote it according to the original language.

Psalm 2:7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
Acts 13:33 that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.’
Hebrews 5:5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;

The Begetting which is referred to in the above verses is the event when the Father raised up the Son from the grave; a fulfillment of a promise made to the ancient Israelites. This made Him the Firstborn from the dead. This did not make Him the Firstborn over all creation…that was the begetting which took place before creation.

God the Father already had witnessed to the fact that Jesus/Yeshua was His Son during His ministry before He died. See here for example:

2 Peter 1:17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

 

 

[Lightenup]

@Jael

In another thread, you asked me about Hebrews 1:5 and suggested that the Son was adopted by the Father and you used the verse in Hebrews to support that belief.

Here is commentary from John Gill that is helpful:

Hebrews 1:5

For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son?

For unto which of the angels said he at any time,…. That is, he never said to any of the angels what he has said to Christ; namely, what follows,

thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee for though angels are called the sons of God, Job 1:6 yet are never said to be begotten by him; or, with this clause annexed to it, “this day have I begotten thee”; nor are they ever so called in a proper sense, or in such sense as Christ is: this is said to Christ, and of him, in Psalm 2:7 and that agreeably to the sense of the Jewish church at this time, or the apostle would never have produced it to the Hebrews in such a manner; and not only the whole psalm in general, but this verse in particular, is owned by Jewish writers (t), both ancient and modern, to belong to the Messiah. Christ is the Son of God, not by Creation, nor by adoption, nor by office, but by nature; he is the true, proper, natural, and eternal Son of God; and as such is owned and declared by Jehovah the Father, in these words; the foundation of which relation lies in the begetting of him; which refers not to his nature, either divine or human: not to his divine nature, which is common with the Father and Spirit; wherefore if his was begotten, theirs must be also, being the same undivided nature, common to all three; much less to his human nature, in which he is never said to be begotten, but always to be made, and with respect to which he is without Father; nor to his office, as Mediator, in which he is not a Son, but a servant; besides, he was a Son, previous to his being a prophet, priest, and King; and his office is not the foundation of his sonship, but his sonship is the foundation of his office; or by which that is supported, and which fits him for the performance of it: but it has respect to his divine person; for as, in human generation, person begets person, and like begets like, so it is in divine generation; though care must be taken to remove all imperfection from it, as divisibility and multiplication of essence, priority and posteriority, dependence, and the like; nor can the modus, or manner of it, be conceived, or explained by us: the date of it, today, designs eternity, as in Isaiah 43:13, which is one continued day, an everlasting now; and this may be applied to any time and case, in which Christ is declared to be the Son of God; as at his incarnation, his baptism, his transfiguration on the Mount, and his resurrection from the dead, as in Acts 13:33 and at his ascension to heaven, when he was made Lord and Christ, and his divine sonship more manifestly appeared; which seems to be the time, and case, more especially referred to here. And again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a Son: which words are taken from 2 Samuel 7:14 and the sense is, not that he should be his son by adoption; or that he would be instead of a father to him; or that he should be as dear to him as a son is to a father; but that he was really and properly so; and he would make it manifest, and own him as such, as he did at Jordan’s river, upon the Mount, and at his resurrection and ascension; though the words are spoken of Solomon, as a type of Christ, they properly belong to the antitype, who is greater than Solomon.

From: http://biblehub.com/commentaries/gill/hebrews/1.htm

[Lightenup]

Hi Jael,

Hebrews 1:5

For to which of the angels did He ever say, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”? And again, “I WILL BE A FATHER TO HIM AND HE SHALL BE A SON TO ME”?

Hebrews is partially about the Son whom all things were made through and has also inherited all things, is also the exact representation of the Father and who was made for a little while lower than the angels. After the Son made propitiation for our sins, He was exalted above the angels. Hebrews 1:5 is comparing the Messiah to the angels to imply that they are not the promised one to sit on the throne of David, eternally but instead it is Jesus.

When the verse says “today I have begotten you” it refers to being brought forth (begotten) from the dead. We already know that God the Father and Jesus/Yeshua had a father/son relationship before He died. The Father testified to that a few times while He existed in the flesh. See the Mt. of Transfiguration, for example, or Yeshua’s baptism.

You can respond to my post here or not. I will pick another question from you for my next post when I am able. God bless!

[Lightenup]

@jael

You asked me:

You say that you BELIEVE that the son was always existent in The Father. Yet when I ask you to show where you get this inappropriate idea from you fail to respond.

1 John 1

1What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— 2and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

Here we see that Jesus is referred to as the “eternal life, which was with the Father” and that was from the beginning.

John 17:8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
Here we see that Jesus is saying that He came out of the Father.

God bless!

[Lightenup]

Hello Jael,

From your most recent group of questions, I seem to remember that you had a problem with the Holy Spirit being referred to as a He or a Him. I believe that the Holy Spirit is the united spirits of both the Father and the Son. Their spirits are their inner persons. The inner person of someone is referred to as ‘it’ or ‘he’ or ‘she’ depending on the gender of the person. For example:

When you find yourself looking at a person in a casket at their funeral before the cover is closed, you might think that “he/she is no longer in his/her body” and then you will deduct that, regarding their spirit, well,  it is absent from the body and together with the Lord. Do you see how I used the pronouns ‘it’ and ‘he/she?’ They all can be used correctly.

In the Bible, there is proof that the Holy Spirit is referred to with the pronoun ‘He’ and ‘Himself.’ Look at this verse for example:

John 16:13 “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. The pronoun is in the masculine form in the Greek according to the interlinear found here:

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/john/16-13.htm

At other times, the pronoun is in the neuter form as in this verse:

Romans 8:26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;

The translator took the liberty to put in a masculine pronoun in that translation where the pronoun was actually neuter according to what I found in the interlinear here:

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/romans/8-26.htm

So then, now you can no longer say that it is not Biblical to use the masculine pronoun for the Holy Spirit. That should be the end of your problem with that. That is if you take the time to read this explanation slowly and comprehend it.

Take care.

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