In this message we shall begin to consider God’s person. God’s person is simply God’s being. Many more particulars concerning God’s person are revealed in the New Testament than are unveiled in the Old Testament. As we consider the various aspects of God’s person, we shall see what kind of God intends to dispense Himself into us. You may realize that God desires to dispense Himself into you. But what kind of God is being dispensed into you? Actually it is very difficult to answer this question.
The different points related to God’s being are found here and there throughout the New Testament. God’s way of revealing this is to present a little in one place and a little more in another place. Hence, in Matthew, John, and all the other books of the New Testament we find the many points concerning God’s person. These points may be compared to the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that need to be put together in order to form a complete picture. We need to collect all the points concerning God’s person found in the New Testament and put them together in order to see a picture of the kind of God who is being dispensed into us.
In the New Testament God’s person is revealed both in plain words and in parables and signs.
In plain words, there are at least twenty-nine items as follows:
The God who is dispensing Himself into us is the Triune God-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit certainly are not three Gods. God is one, yet He is triune.
We see the Triune God in Matthew 28:19: “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” In this verse there is one name for the divine Trinity-the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The name is the sum total of the divine Being, equivalent to His person. To baptize anyone into the name of the Trinity is to immerse him into all that the Triune God is.
Matthew and John are two books in which the divine Trinity is more fully revealed, for the participation and enjoyment of God’s chosen people, than in all the other books of Scripture. John unveils the mystery of the Godhead in the Father, Son, and Spirit, especially in chapters fourteen through sixteen, for our experience of life. Matthew discloses the reality of the divine Trinity in the one name for all Three, for the constitution of the kingdom. In the opening chapter of Matthew, the Holy Spirit (v. 18), Christ the Son (v. 18), and God the Father (v. 23) are on the scene for the producing of the man Jesus (v. 21), who, as Jehovah the Savior and God with us, is the embodiment of the Triune God. In chapter three Matthew presents a picture of the Son standing in the water of baptism under the opened heaven, the Spirit as a dove descending upon the Son, and the Father out of the heavens speaking concerning the Son (vv. 16-17). In chapter twelve the Son, in the person of man, cast out demons by the Spirit to bring in the kingdom of God the Father (v. 28). In chapter sixteen the Son is revealed by the Father to the disciples for the building of the church (vv. 16-19). In chapter seventeen the Son entered into transfiguration (v. 2) and was confirmed by the Father’s word of delight (v. 5) for a miniature display of the manifestation of the kingdom (16:28). Eventually, in the closing chapter, after Christ, as the last Adam, had passed through the process of crucifixion, entered into the realm of resurrection, and become the life-giving Spirit, He came back to His disciples, in the atmosphere and reality of His resurrection, to charge them to make the heathen the kingdom people by baptizing them into the name, the person, the reality, of the Trinity. According to Matthew, such a baptism into the reality of the Father, Son, and Spirit is for the constitution of the kingdom of the heavens. The heavenly kingdom cannot be organized with human beings of flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15:50) as an earthly society; it can be constituted only of people who are immersed into union with the Triune God and who are established and built up with the Triune God who is wrought into them.
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