why Trinity

I was watching a video with Tim Keller, John Piper, and D.A. Carson about the Trinity which is quite insightful and good: http://thegospelcoalition.org/videos/44935725

I remembered on a Sunday school, this question was asked "would you stand up and die defending the truth of the Trinity?". It's interesting because the bible does not explicitly state the term "Trinity", and perhaps not many people think that the Trinity is one of those fundamental truths that we should defend like the death and resurrection of Jesus, salvation by grace through faith, or the authority of Scripture. Also, it is really hard to comprehend the Trinity.

But I think the Trinity is on-par in importance.

First of all, we are to grow in learning more about the God who we worship. So the better we know of who God is, the more accurate our understanding of Him is, the more accurate our worship towards the true God is. For example, we all know God is love, but not many know that God is wrathful. So people who lack understanding in the latter, will worship God because He is loving but will not comprehend why the cross of Christ was necessarily for our salvation, and not comprehend that the consequence of our sins is death. Having knowledge of both aspects of God (love and wrath), we can understand that His grace is actually a couple of magnitude larger than we thought, and we will realize that there is nothing else that we can do but worship Him.

The point I want to emphasize is the relationship among the persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit). Tim Keller in his "Reasons for God" book has a chapter dedicated to the Trinity, and it conveys the beauty of the truth of the Trinity. Basically, he describes it as a "dance", where each person of the Trinity is submitting and glorifying the other members of the Trinity, non-stop. There are examples in John 16-18, where Jesus submits to the Father, or when talks about the Spirit will glorify Christ. Also the statement of  "God is love" is profound. Because if God was just one person, then when we said "God is love", he can only love Himself, since love requires more than one member. So the fact that our God is three persons, the statement of "God is love" makes sense because the constant selfless act of glorying one another for each person of the Trinity is the essence of God's love.

Since God loves us first, we can also love Him and love our brothers and sisters. And by understanding the love within the Trinity, we can learn how to love one another by being selfless, gracious, submitting towards one another. God is so good.

different roles

Here Pastor Mark speaks about  the three "offices" that Jesus has throughout the bible:

• Priest: offer sacrifices to God on behalf of people's sins
• Prophet: communicates to people truths about God
• King: with authority to reign over a group of people

As we are getting sanctified by the Spirit we are given gifts that would allow us to serve God effectively. Each of us are very different, given different gifts (1 Cor. 12), which will make you more suitable to specific leadership roles, and often the leadership roles are "categorized" into one of these offices. For example:

• Priest: serve others by caring for them, encouraging and support them (e.g. Caring Ministry, one-on-one encouragements)
• Prophet: serve others by speaking God's word to them, and rebuking them if necessary (e.g. Bible study leaders)
• King: serve others by being stewards of the resources to run the fellowship, and executing and planning events (e.g. Program/Event Coordinator)

There is one year when I was in committee, and there were three brothers (the more vocal ones), and the discussion of this came out because each of them were very different. One of them was really organized at planning and running events (so he was the king type). Whenever the other brother spoke about God, one was always inspired by his zeal for the Word of God, and it always brought conviction (so he was the prophet type). The other brother was the person who cares for the people of the fellowship and often made effort to talk as much people as possible and meet up on one-on-one with some of them to encourage them (so he was the priest type). I thought that was cool.

I just wanted to share this (not because I think this is like very important to know since it is kind of technical), but cause of two things:

1. We are sinners, so since we are different it is easy to come to disagreements and hurt one another. So it is important to know how to listen and understand where the other person is coming from. And also to forgive and offer grace when one is offended (just as God forgives and offers grace to us).
2. In the Old Testament, there are great servants of God that fulfills one of the offices of Christ, and I want to dedicate a great portion of my next blog posts to speak about it because it is a way that Christ was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, which is really neat because it gives us a better understanding of the overarching themes of the bible.

More reference for the three offices: http://carm.org/prophet-priest-king

Another reference for Christian leadership: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12913395/Christian_leadership.pdf

Warren speaking about influence

From the Resurgence Conference recap (http://theresurgence.com/2012/10/09/day-1-at-r12-a-recap), Rick Warren spoke about influence, and I like the main points from the recap because it resonates from what I have learned in the past years about leadership from a Christian context. These are his main points and I added my comments regarding each of them:


“The purpose of influence is to speak up for those who don’t have influence.”

• Leadership is about doing something for the people you're leading (Nehemiah 5)
• It is not about over-lording them, but to serve them

“The pathway to influence is service.”

• Jesus, the Lord we follow showed us that to lead is to serve (Matthew 20:26)
• To impact others, it not just about words, but also deeds of love (1 John 3:18)

“Forgiveness is instant. Trust is earned over time.”

• Leaders are humans and will make mistake, so need to be repentant and transparent about our shortcomings
• To earn trust from others, leaders need show a character of integrity and proven track of record from past experiences 

“The price of influence is criticism.”

• Never can get approval from everyone, even Jesus was not approved by His own people (Luke 15:1-2)
• There is a cost of leading, besides time and energy spent, there will be people who will oppose (Nehemiah 4)

“The leader’s role is to help others use their influence wisely.”

• Leading is not about doing everything yourself, so that you end up all exhausted (Exodus 18)
• Leading is also about developing new leaders (John 21:15-19)

importance of the Trinity

Recently, the ministry I am part of (SWORD) led a discussion about the Trinity, why should Christians defend this doctrine?

I made a brief comment about the Trinity a while back. The doctrine of the Trinity is basically:

• God is one in essence
• God exists in three persons (Father, Son, Spirit)
• Each of these persons is fully and equally God.

There are many reasons why this doctrine is important, such as the divinity of Christ and to know that the God we worship is different from the "god" of other religions and cults. I want to shift gear, and share about how understanding the Trinity affect our lives as Christians. 

"And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." - 1 John 4:16

We know that God is love, but what does this statement really means? Does it mean that God is the source of love, or that God has been loving since ever (since God is unchanging), or that God is that standard of what love is? If God is not Trinitarian, meaning that if God is only one person, then any of these statements won't make any sense because love is relational. Love requires more than one person, it is not just feeling but an act of the will. How can God be love if He is only one person in the very beginning? Did God created all angels and men so that He can be loving? If that is true then love is not an essential attribute of God.

The text of 1 John focus on love as one of the main attributes of God. Therefore, "God is love" only makes sense with the Trinity because each of the Persons in the Trinity is in constant love for one another. Tim Keller in his book "Reasons for God" says:

"The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two... Each voluntarily circles the other two, pouring love, delight, and adoration into them."

God made us so that He can share this love to us. And since God lives in us, we ought to love our fellow brothers and sisters to exemplify the Trinitarian love.

Here are more notes about the importance of the Trinity.

the Gospel in the postmodern world

I recently watched a Tim Keller's sermon on the Desiring God's conference about the "Supremacy of Jesus Christ and the Gospel in the Postmodern World". It is very academic and heavily packed, but I enjoy how Tim Keller uses the book of Jonah to teach us some important points about sharing the gospel.

He mentions that now is much more difficult than a few hundred years ago to share the message of Christ because in the past most people did believe in the existence of God and in the bible. So a lot of the outreach events consisted of reminders and encouragements to pursue Christ. But in the postmodern world is more difficult because people don't trust in the bible and the concept of absolute truth is debatable. Tim Keller went even further to say that some evangelistical techniques such as the four spiritual laws might not suffice in today's challenges.

Definitely sharing the gospel is a difficult task, sometime scary. I tremble at times. But God commanded us and empowered us to do it. We know that it is not with human wisdom, but with the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 1:17, 1 Cor. 2:13) that the gospel is preached. This is a partnership that God uses us to make His message known to others, so let's pray for opportunities and also prepare ourselves so that we can be ready to share about the hope we have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15).

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." - Matthew 28:18-20

This is an example of a challenge that Christians can face in sharing the gospel in the postmodern world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfsljDzUuD0#t=7m00s .
(video is timestamped at 7m00s, watch till the end, but you can skip some parts when the elevator scene is interrupted)

I definitely enjoy the priest's use of words =).