In the four Gospels the ministry of the New Testament began with John the Baptist. That was only a beginning, and the beginning of such a ministry was the termination of all the old things. That initial part of the ministry brought in the main section of the New Testament ministry, the ministry of Christ Himself.
We all have seen that Christ was One who was born of God and born with God to be a God-man. Even with Him there was a part that needed to be baptized, to be buried, to be terminated. That part was His humanity, and it was terminated and then resurrected. Therefore, He was a God-man with a humanity that had been terminated and resurrected. After His baptism, He was qualified and equipped to carry out the ministry of the New Testament; nevertheless, He needed the Spirit to come to descend upon Him. He was proper in every way, and He was properly anointed. Then He began the ministry.
As we have seen in the four Gospels, His part of the ministry was to bring people into the gospel, into the truth, into the liberation, into the healing, and into the cleansing. In addition, that part of the ministry healed people’s deafness, dumbness, and blindness. Eventually, that part of the ministry brought all the saved ones into the terminating death of Christ and brought them into His germinating resurrection.
After all His accomplishments in His earthly ministry, the Lord Himself went to the cross to carry out the terminating death so that He could enter into the germinating resurrection. Here in this germinating resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. This life-giving Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God in His relationship with us. All of us need to see this crucial point. The Triune God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Until Christ entered into His resurrection and came back to the disciples in that germinating resurrection, there was no clear word in the Scriptures to reveal such a completed divine title, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Such a divine title is not found in the Old Testament. There are some hints in the Old Testament that indicate the Trinity of the Godhead with types, with figures, and with plain words, but it is not until Matthew 28:19 that the completed title, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, is used for the first time.
We need to consider why it was that such a divine title was never revealed before the resurrection of Christ. The Trinity was not completely revealed because the Son with the Father had not completed the long process from incarnation, passing through His human life and His all-inclusive death, into the germinating resurrection. This long and very meaningful process needs much definition, according to a number of messages we have already given. Until the Lord Jesus had passed through death into resurrection, this long process was not completed.
We need to be deeply impressed that the Son never did anything apart from the Father (John 5:19). Therefore, when He became something, He did that with the Father. This is a crucial point, and it is an intrinsic part of the meaning of Triune. The Son came in the Father’s name (John 5:43), the Son came with the Father (John 6:46 and note 461—Recovery Version), and the Son told us that the Father never left Him alone (John 8:29; 16:32). All the time the Father was with the Son, even in the Son’s earthly life. The Son even told us while He was on this earth that He was in the Father and that the Father was in Him (John 10:38; 14:11; 17:21). This is the basis of what is called coinherence, which means living together in one another. You cannot separate the Son from the Father at all, and you should not try to make such a separation. The Father, Son, and Spirit are one God, not three Gods. Even to say three persons is not quite correct. Griffith Thomas said that the word “Persons” may be borrowed because of the inadequacy of human language, but that it should not be pressed too far because it will lead to tritheism, the belief in three Gods.
We should be on guard concerning the inaccurate teaching of the so-called Trinity that stresses the matter of three separate persons. It is permissible to use the word distinct in reference to the three of the Trinity, but it is altogether inaccurate to use the word separate. This inaccurate teaching concerning three separate persons of the Trinity has affected many Christians. This teaching is a part of the leaven in the prophecy of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 13:33. A woman took leaven and put it into the fine flour until the whole was leavened. According to the principles of chemistry, once leaven has been put into fine flour and mingled with it, the fine flour cannot be purified. This inaccurate teaching concerning the Trinity was the major part of the leaven that the Catholic Church put into the fine flour concerning Christ’s person. The truth of the Trinity has been leavened, but according to God Himself, one can never destroy or damage the truth. Nevertheless, according to our mentality, something has been damaged in relation to this truth. For over twenty-two years in this country I have been speaking again and again on this matter of the Trinity, and I am still very much burdened on this point. I fully realize that this thought concerning three persons remains in all of you and even in me, unconsciously and subconsciously. A number of times I could not get through in certain passages of Scripture concerning the Trinity simply because these concepts still remain in me and work within me unconsciously and subconsciously. All of us were leavened in this matter of the Trinity.