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Historical St. James A. M. E. Church
The Rev. Noella Austin Buchanan, Pastor
Bible Lesson
Conference Year 2009-2010
Communion of Saints
The Holy Gospels Explained by Jesus
May 30, 2010 – Trinity Sunday (A Season of Spiritual Manifestation)
Topic: Working
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Unity: Three in One
Together!!! (Doctrine of Salvation)
Old Testament [Hebrew Text]: Proverbs 8:22-31
New Testament [The Epistles]: Romans 5:1-5
New Testament [The Gospels]: John 16:12-15
God’s Wisdom
Christ’s Peace
Holy Spirit’s Truth
"I [Jesus] have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13 But when He, the Spirit of Truth,
comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and
He will tell you what is yet to come. 14 He will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it
known to you. 15 All that belongs to the Father is Mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is
Mine and make it known to you. John 16:12-15 (NIV)
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This week is the first Sunday after Pentecost and is often referred to as “Trinity Sunday”. We
worship one God who is manifested in three persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit;
Also known as the Godhead. Because of the complexity of the term Trinity, it has been hard for
many to understand the concept of the term Trinity. Since God is not human, it becomes
frustrating trying to explain this existence. We cause we believe the Scripture we accept by
faith that our GOD. Today we have three-difference studies in order to bring as much
information as possible.
NAB
Definition:
1. THE TERM TRINITY
The term "Trinity" is not a Biblical term, and we are not using Biblical language when we define what is
expressed by it as the doctrine that there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are
three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in subsistence. A doctrine so defined can
be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the
definition of a Biblical doctrine in such un-Biblical language can be justified only on the principle that it is
better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words of Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity lies in Scripture
in solution; when it is crystallized from its solvent it does not cease to be Scriptural, but only comes into clearer
view.
2. PURELY A REVEALED DOCTRINE
In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a truth which
has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been
able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a
Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the divine being any
analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.
—International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
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The Lectionary:
JOHN 16:12-15. On this particular Sunday we usually concentrate on what traditional creeds have called “the
Holy Trinity” – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The authors of the New Testament, rooted primarily in the Hebrew
thought and written in Greek, did not give us a clear definition of what the later doctrines and creeds stated in
orderly propositions. Those were the product of long reflection by Greek and Latin scholars on what the New
Testament had said about the earliest Christian experience.
In Jesus’ final discourse to his disciples, John defined for his own community the purpose of the gift of the Holy
Spirit. This is the closest any New Testament author came to a statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, except
perhaps for the Trinitarian baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19. Here John gave a much more functional
definition of how the Trinity actually touched the life of the apostolic community.
The role of the Spirit was to guide the community into all truth. Obviously, John did not believe that “truth”
consists of what he has written or that it could be found only in the scriptures. He was speaking of spiritual
truth rather than the philosophical, historical or scientific truth which has so enthralled the modern world since
the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment three centuries ago. His understanding of truth was much more
dynamic. One might go so far as to say that it was inspirational in that it was – and is – always available.
John also gave us a means of determining what is spiritually true and what is not. The fundamental criterion of
truth for the church is that it must always witness to Christ and reveal God’s purpose that love shall reign in all
relationships throughout the whole of creation.
This does not provide us with an easy formula for discerning what is required of us as we seek to perform the
discipleship of love in the contemporary world. It requires much careful reflection before being expressed in the
ordinary affairs of daily life. Those who dream of travel to distant galaxies in search of other inhabitants of the
universe will quickly realize that dramatic presentations such as we revel in through television and movies still
do not remove us from the moral discipline of love.
Spiritual reflection and meditation, waiting for the Spirit to lead us into truth, are not habitual forms of religious
discipline for most of us in the Reformed tradition. As we are pushed more and more to the margins of current
events and realize that we are a dwindling minority in an almost entirely secular society, there are signs that the
contemplative life may indeed be a special gift of the Spirit for our time. Significant movements toward
renewed interest in basing our daily lives on meditation are to be found in most religious traditions. We should
not neglect, however, the long tradition of daily Bible readings, and prayer practiced for many years by
countless devoted Christians in several different Protestant traditions. More important than the source of our
contemplative practices, however, are the commitment and the daily dedication to pursue whatever method we
adopt. Only so can we sense the gradual change in our spiritual life and growth in grace as the Spirit leads us
into a greater of the truth that is in Christ Jesus.
— John Shearman's Lectionary
The Lesson:
To Jesus the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, whose great work is to bring God's truth to men. We have a
special name for this bringing of God's truth to men; we call it revelation, and no passage in the New Testament
shows us what we might call the principles of revelation better than this one.
(i) Revelation is bound to be a progressive process. Many things Jesus knew he could not at that moment tell
his disciples, because they were not yet able to receive them. It is only possible to tell a man as much as he can
understand. We do not start with the binomial theorem when we wish to teach a boy algebra; we work up to it.
We do not start with advanced theorems when we wish to teach a child geometry; we approach them gradually.
We do not start with difficult passages when we teach a lad Latin or Greek; we start with the easy and the
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simple things. God's revelation to men is like that. He teaches men what they are able and fit to learn. This most
important fact has certain consequences.
(a) It is the explanation of the parts of the Old Testament which sometimes worry and distress us. AT that
stage they were all of God's truth that men could grasp. Take an actual illustration--in the Old Testament there
are many passages which call for the wiping out of men and women and children when an enemy city is taken.
At the back of these passages there is the great thought that Israel must not risk the taint of any heathen and
lower religion. To avoid that risk, those who do not worship the true God must be destroyed. That is to say, the
Jews had at that stage grasped the fact that the purity of religion must be safeguarded; but they wished to
preserve that purity by destroying the heathen. When Jesus came, men came to see that the way to preserve that
purity is to convert the heathen. The people of the Old Testament times had grasped a great truth, but only one
side of it. Revelation has to be that way; God can reveal only as much as a man can understand.
(b) It is the proof that there is no end to God's revelation. One of the mistakes men sometimes make is to
identify God's revelation solely with the Bible. That would be to say that since about A.D. 120, when the latest
book in the New Testament was written, God has ceased to speak. But God's Spirit is always active; he is
always revealing himself. It is true that his supreme and unsurpassable revelation came in Jesus; but Jesus is not
just a figure in a book, he is a living person and in him God's revelation goes on. God is still leading us into
greater realization of what Jesus means. He is not a God who spoke up to A.D. 120 and is now silent. He is still
revealing his truth to men.
(ii) God's revelation to men is a revelation of all truth. It is quite wrong to think of it as confined to what we
might call theological truth. The theologians and the preachers are not the only people who are inspired. When a
poet delivers to men a great message in words which defy time, he is inspired. When H. F. Lyte wrote the words
of Abide with me he had no feeling of composing them; he wrote them as to dictation. A great musician is
inspired. Handel, telling of how he wrote The Hallelujah Chorus, said: "I saw the heavens opened, and the Great
White God sitting on the Throne." When a scientist discovers something which will help the world's toil and
make life better for men, when a surgeon discovers a new technique which will save men's lives and ease their
pain, when someone discovers a new treatment which will bring life and hope to suffering humanity, that is a
revelation from God. All truth is God's truth, and the revelation of all truth is the work of the Holy Spirit.
(iii) That which is revealed comes from God. He is alike the possessor and the giver of all truth. Truth is not
men's discovery; it is God's gift. It is not something which we create; it is something already waiting to be
discovered. At the back of all truth there is God.
(iv) Revelation is the taking of the things of Jesus and revealing their significance to us. Part of the greatness
of Jesus is his inexhaustibleness. No man has ever grasped all that he came to say. No man has fully worked out
all the significance of his teaching for life and for belief, for the individual and for the world, for society and for
the nation. Revelation is a continual opening out of the meaning of Jesus.
There we have the crux of the matter. Revelation comes to us, not from any book or creed, but from a living
person. The nearer we live to Jesus, the better we will know him. The more we become like him, the more he
will be able to tell us. To enjoy his revelation we must accept his mastery.
—Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)
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