In this segment of the lesson, I want to talk about the early Christian view of the role in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, why the Holy Spirit is important, how the Holy Spirit works together with the Father and the Son. And then also look at the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, how we can understand this, how the Church did in the beginning, and how we can clearly explain this to others as well. The Bible is the standard regarding the Holy Spirit and anything else.
It's not the early Christians. However, I find it interesting the insights of the early Christians to the extent to which they're consistent with the Scriptures. So I'll listen to the early Christian explanation, go back and look at the Scriptures, and say," Yes, that is, in fact, what the Scriptures teach, so we can be confident in that." But I think they gave some really good illustrations and examples. I think they're very helpful. They've helped me out. I hope they help you out as well.
One of the things that was very interesting to me was, I think I mentioned this earlier. It's a work called Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, and it's a work by Irenaeus. And it's translated fairly recently. And Irenaeus is of interest to me because as a boy, he was taught by Polycarp and Polycarp had been a disciple of the Apostle John. So Irenaeus, as I mentioned earlier, was Bishop of the Church in Lyon, France, modern-day France and Gaul, lived about 130 to 200.
So he's writing to a young disciple named Marcianus in this letter. And he's explaining the faith to a young Christian. And this is from the introduction of the book from chapter one. He says," Knowing my dear Marcianus, your inclinations to walk the path of God's service, which alone brings man to eternal life.
I both congratulate you and pray you may keep the faith in its purity and be so well pleasing to God, your maker." And he continues," For the road of all those who see is a single upward path lit by heavenly light, but the way of those who do not see are many and dark and divergent. The former road leads to the kingdom of heaven by uniting man with God. The others bring down to death by severing man from God." That's his introduction, beautiful introduction to the work.
And then in chapter six, he explains, Irenaeus explains what he calls the three foundational articles of the faith. I found this very interesting. And so I'll read a quote from that. He says," And this is the drawing up of our faith, the foundation of the building and the consolidation of the way of life. God, the Father, uncreated, beyond grasp, invisible, one God, the maker of all." This is the first and foremost article of our faith. So this is there are three foundational articles.
This is the first one is the Father. Continuing. But the second article is the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus, our Lord, who was shown forth by the prophets according to the design of their prophecy, and according to the manner in which the Father disposed. And through Him were made all things whatsoever.
He also, in the end times, for the recapitulation of all things, is become a man among men visible and tangible in order to abolish death and bring to light life and bring about the communion of God and man. So this is the second article of the three articles of the foundational articles of faith. And the third article is the Holy Spirit through whom the prophets prophesied in the patriarchs were taught about God and the just were led in the path of justice.
And who in the end of times has been poured forth in a new manner upon humanity over all the earth renewing man to God? He continues the discussion in chapter 7. He says," Therefore, the baptism of our rebirth comes through these three articles, granting us rebirth unto God the Father through His Son by the Holy Spirit. For those who are bearers of the Spirit of God are led to the Word, that is to the Son. But the Son takes them and presents them to the Father, and the Father confers incorruptibility.
So without the Spirit, there is no seeing the Word of God. And without the Son, there's no approaching the Father. For the Son is the knowledge of the Father, and knowledge of the Son is through the Holy Spirit. But the Son, according to the Father's good pleasure, administers the Spirit according to the gifts, as the Father wills and those to whom He will. That's from Proof of the Gospel, I'm sorry, proof of the apostolic preaching by Irenaeus.
So the things that I find fascinating in this passage here, Irenaeus says there are three foundational articles of the faith. The first one is the Father, the second one is the Son, the Word of God, and the third one is the Holy Spirit. Understanding these three, this is the foundation of our faith. He said that at baptism, our rebirth takes place in the name of all three, which is exactly what Jesus said in the Great Commission, Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20.
He said the role of the Spirit here, he said the Spirit leads people to the Son, to the Son of God. And I'm thinking about this. Going through the Book of Acts and seeing how people were led from the very beginning, we see that the Holy Spirit is poured out in Acts chapter 2 and leads people through to faith in Christ, to the Jews in Acts chapter 2, and the Gentiles in the household of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10. The Holy Spirit comes down, leads them to faith in Christ and to the water.
So the Spirit brings people to the Son, and the Son brings them then to the Father. So all three are working together, the Spirit, the Son, and the Father, leading to our salvation. All three are involved in our conversion and our sins being forgiven in baptism. I want to take a look a little more at this understanding the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, how they all are related to each other, how they work together.
Now, as I touched on this briefly, I grew up as a child in the Catholic Church, so I accepted the idea that there was one God consisting of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, I'd have a hard time expressing it to anybody. And when I went on a mission team to a Muslim country, to Albania, this was a question that came up all the time. Questions among the Muslims. One is, how can you believe in there's only one God, how do you believe in three? Or the three gods are one?
How can God have a son? And so what the Muslims would accuse the Christians, they said," Well, you people are polytheists. You believe in three gods. We just believe in one." And I find Muslims in North America, in Europe, in the Middle East that I run into, the same questions come up. And most of the time, Christians have a hard time explaining the Trinity, to be honest with you. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. I think if we want to explain the faith, we need to understand the whole world.
We want to explain the faith to those who will attack the belief in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all being God, yet there being one God. I found that the early explanations of the Trinity, the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are much better in the sense that they are both much truer to all the scriptures on the one hand, and also easier to understand and communicate to others on the other hand. So I'm going to give you some examples that they use.
Now, first, I want to start off by giving some examples I used in the past. Please don't ever use these. I've heard these used, and these are very poor examples. One of them that I used many years ago was, how can all three be one? And I'll use the example of water. Water, ice, and steam. I say, well, they're all water, but there's water, ice, and steam. And so I would try to explain the Trinity by using that analogy. Perhaps you've heard that before.
Or a triangle, a triangle is three points, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. There's one triangle, but then there are three parts to it. The problem with the ice water steam example is this is basically the heresy of modalism, which is that the Father turns into the Son and the Son turns into the Spirit, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are the same, but they're changing forms from one to the other.
Another example I heard someone use in the past once is," Imagine that there's a farmer who there's a colony of ants and he's trying to help the ants out. So the farmer, since he is too big to speak to the ants that he takes on the form of an ant, becomes an ant so he can relate to them." And this is the idea, same idea that the Father became the Son, which is not the case at all. The Father didn't become the Son. We see at the baptism of Jesus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all present.
Jesus prays to the Father. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the passage on head covering, it says that the head of Christ is God, meaning the Father. Jesus, when He prays in the garden, He prays to do His Father's will, not His own will. So the Father did not become the Son, okay? The Father, the Son, and the Spirit all coexist.
So the way the early Christians explain this, the relationship between the father, son, and always, but there's the idea of the headship or order, the idea of nature and substance or substance or essence, and the idea of distinct personal attributes. So if you understand these three different concepts help you to keep things straight. So headship or order. Okay. As I mentioned in 1 Corinthians 11:3, it says that the head of Christ is God referring to the Father.
It's not, you know, it's not saying that Christ is not divine, but there is referring to the Father. So Jesus said in John 14:28," The Father is greater than I am." In John 5:30, he said he came to do his Father's will. In John 16, Jesus said he came from the Father. The Father didn't come from Him. He came to do the Father's will. He was sent by the Father. The Father is the head over Him.
So when we say that Jesus is when Christians say that Jesus is the Son of God, we don't mean that God got together with a woman and produced a half breed, half human, half-god creature. And that the Son of God became the Son of God out of the conception of Mary. That's not what we mean. I think Muslims are confused by that. Jesus was the Son of God before all ages. He was the Son of God in that He came from the Father, the Father didn't come from Him.
That He was sent by the Father, the Father was not sent from Him. So He was the idea of headship or order is that Jesus proceeded from the Father. The Father did not proceed from Him. So the Father is truly greater than the Son in that regard. So there's the idea of headship or order to the Trinity, which we can understand from those statements of Jesus. Now the nature or substance or essence, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all share the same divine nature. I am a created being.
You know It was a time point in time when I didn't exist and God created me. The same thing with the angels. We, all the animals, the people, the world around us, all the physical things that we see, all of the created nature, these are things that are created apart from God. We don't believe in pantheism that God is in everything and God is everything. God is apart from His creation and God created all things, spoke them into existence from nothing. So the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are uncreated.
The Son and the Spirit are begotten of the Father. They proceeded from the Father, but the Father didn't create them from nothing. So the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all eternal. They have no beginning or end in time. And they were all involved in the creation of all things. And they were all none of them were created. So in that sense, they are all divine. They share the same nature, substance, or essence, although there is an order or hierarchy there.
And then the third thing to consider here is that each has distinct personal attributes. 1 Timothy 6:16 says," The Father dwells in unapproachable light who no man has seen or can see." So the Father is unbegotten. The Son and the Spirit are begotten from the Father. The Son can take on human form. He did that in Jesus and the incarnation and he can be seen by others unlike the Father. And the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, the Holy Spirit can dwell inside of us.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit was with you and will be in you. So the Holy Spirit dwells inside of us, imparts life to us, and raises even the dead. So they each have distinct attributes, personal attributes. Now, some examples that early Christians use to explain the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit to take into account the order and the nature and the distinct attributes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
One of the most popular ones is if you think of the sun up in the sky, the sun up in the sky, and then you think of a ray of light proceeding from the sun. And then you think of the apex or the very point or tip of the ray. And so the picture was that the sun up in the sky would be like the father. The ray which has its origin in the sun that's in the sky would be like the Son and the apex or the point, the tip of the ray would be like the Holy Spirit. So this is, I think of the Nicene Creed.
It says, talking about Jesus, it says God from light. God from God, light from light, very God from very God. So you can say the ray is sun, that's all it is. But you can say the ray has its origin in the sun and the ray comes from the sun just as the Son proceeds, the Word of God proceeds from the Father. So that's one illustration that they use.
Another one is, imagine a hill and on the hill there is a spring, a little fountain of water that comes up that bubbles up from below and then out of that spring proceeds a stream or a river that comes from it. And so they say the spring would be like the Father and the stream or river that proceeded would be like the Son or like the Spirit. So the idea is that one is the head or the source of the other which proceeds from it.
And you think about it, you could throw dirt into the stream, but you wouldn't affect the source. So in the same way, they are united, they are unified, they are one, they are both water, and yet one proceeds from the other, one comes from the other. So that would be another good, good illustration, the stream proceeding from the river. And another one was the root of a tree and the root of a tree. So out of the root it's in the ground comes the tree and off of the tree comes the fruit of the tree.
So this would be like the root would be the father and out of that come the Son and the Spirit, the tree itself, the trunk of the tree, and the fruit. Another example that I heard earlier Christians use was that of a flower. So there will be a flower and then there's the perfume, the scent that emanates from the flower. So this is the idea that the flower and the scent that comes from it are one, but one proceeds from the other. So you get this idea of the Father as the source of the Son and the Spirit.
So I hope that these examples are helpful for you to understand the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all divine. They are all uncreated. They are all eternal. They have no beginning and they have no end. On the other hand, the Father is the source of the Son and the Spirit. The Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father. In the West, some would say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Others would say that the Spirit and the Son both proceed equally from the Father. But I think you get the idea. So think about that and I encourage you to use those illustrations that the early Christians effectively used to more accurately transmit the idea of the unity and also the different roles of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as you explain this to others as well. So in the next segment, I want to talk about the Holy Spirit as revealed in the Exodus story in the Old Testament.
So this is a beautiful picture that really helps me to understand the mission of the Holy Spirit and the importance of the Holy Spirit for us today in a story that we can all remember easily and relate to.