Is the Son Eternally Subordinate to the Father?

Is the Son eternally subordinate to the Father? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of Core Christianity. Well, hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day.

You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account. And you can always email us your question at questions at corechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to a question we received from one of our listeners named Mary. Like you wouldn't believe, but when you can't get out, now I can still walk a little bit, but nobody wants to be bothered with me.

What does a person like that do? I have a wonderful relationship with the Lord, but nobody wants to be involved with handicapped people or somebody that can't afford one of those big rigs if you put your chair or your mobile trailer in it. So, hello, San Diego! God bless. Bye-bye.

Hi, Mary. I am just so sorry to hear about the situation that you're in. It sounds like you're not able to get a ride to church. I would recommend contacting the churches in your area.

Several churches in your area that you know teach the Bible faithfully. And just reaching out, seeing if maybe they have a system of getting people to church. At our church, for example, when somebody is shut in, they can't get to church for one reason or another. And if the issue is transportation, a lot of times the deacons of our church will provide rides.

I'm just really sorry to hear about that. It is something that we're called to. We're called to fellowship with one another. The passage that I mentioned sounds like you were referring to a question that we received the other day from Hebrews chapter 10, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. It sounds like you want to gather with other believers, but you're not able to because of your handicap.

So I would just pray that the Lord opens doors and provides people who are going to love you and come alongside of you and help you get to church. So maybe we can pray for Mary right now to that end. Lord, thank you for Mary.

Thank you for the question that she called in. And I pray for her, Lord, that you would lead her to a church in her area, Lord, that she can get into contact with, that will be able to provide rides for her to church so that she can gather together with your people. I thank you, Lord, that she wants to gather with your people, that she wants to worship you. And so I ask, Lord, that you would just open those doors and surround her, Lord, with a community of saints that is going to love her and take care of her as one of your sheep, Lord.

So please be with her. I ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Wow, that is really a tragedy, Adriel, to hear her situation. I mean, what is the body of Christ all about? I'm sure as a pastor, it must break your heart to hear that.

Yeah, it absolutely does. And we're called to take care of one another within the body of Christ and the needs, to meet the needs that are there when somebody is struggling with sickness financially. I mean, that's one of the reasons why the church has deacons.

A lot of people don't understand the role of the diaconate, but the deacons throughout the history of the church, one of the things they did was help to care for the sick and provide rides to church, those kinds of things. And so I do hope that she's able to find a solid Bible-teaching church where the community there is going to come around her and encourage her in her faith. If you have a question for Pastor Adriel about the Bible or the Christian life, theology, doctrine, how your Christian walk intersects with our culture, you can give us a call right now. Here's the phone number. It's 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. Here's a call that came in from Julie. Hi, Pastor Adriel. Please can you answer a question about Owen Strawn and the Trinity, because he's saying that Jesus is submissive to the Father in eternity and not just in human flesh. So I wondered if you could give me your take on that.

Thank you. Yeah, so thank you for that question. We're talking about God, the Holy Trinity, and the life of the Trinity, if you will. Now, historically, the church has been willing to say that Jesus is subordinate to the Father in the economy of salvation, that is, in the Incarnation, the humiliation that Jesus underwent. You think of passages like Philippians 2 describing that humiliation that Jesus underwent and then his exaltation. So there is a sense in which we can talk about Jesus being submitted to the Father, and that's the way in which the church has historically understood this. There are some today who are saying, well, it's not just in the economy of salvation, but in the very life of the Trinity, God as he is in himself, if you will, that there is this hierarchy, there is this authority and submission that takes place, even subordination.

And that raises a lot of red flags in people's minds. It certainly raises red flags in my mind because when people in the past, you think of some of the Trinitarian controversies in the early church, when they would talk about the subordination of Jesus, there was heresy there. They would talk about it as Jesus being less than the Father, a created being.

Now, that's not what people are saying now, but I still think that there is quite a bit of confusion. When I say some people are not saying that now, I'm referring to the people that hold this view, this eternal subordination of the Son. They're saying that there's this subordination even within the very life of the Trinity, that in one sense, the Son, Jesus, is eternally subordinate to the Father.

And the language there seems very unhelpful. It sort of sounds like some of those ancient Trinitarian heresies that the church addressed long ago, and so I think that we need to not speak in that way. I don't think it's faithful to what the Bible teaches pertaining to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

And the way in which I think we can talk about subordination, and that has to do with the economy of salvation, with the Father sending His Son into the world to take human flesh for us so that we might be redeemed. Now, let me just take a step back here and say, when we're talking about the Trinity, we have to be so careful. This is the great mystery of the faith, who God is, and so we stick to what the Bible says and to what the church has affirmed throughout her history for the last 2,000 years. Places like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, and you have these great articulations of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the relationship between the persons of the Holy Trinity.

I think we have to stick to that language, and I realize there are some people that are beginning to criticize that and say, well, we don't need that. We'll just go to the Bible. But even during the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Protestant Reformers who were sticking to the Scriptures, who wanted to recover faithful Bible teaching, they didn't jettison the early creeds of the church like the Nicene Creed. No, they actually bolstered them, if you will, with this biblical teaching. They helped people to understand how essentially what you had there was the teaching of the Scriptures. So I think we should be skeptical of people, of teachers who want to do away with church history, want to sort of redefine all the terms, and are saying, well, we're just doing it on the basis of the Bible.

I think there's a huge problem there because oftentimes it's actually not really on the basis of Scripture, and it's not incorporating the wisdom of the Catholic Church that is the universal Christian Church throughout all time. And so I would just recommend avoiding that kind of teaching and teachers who hold those views. So thank you for your question all the way from the UK and for listening to Core Christianity.

Great advice. Thanks for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Our phone lines are open right now. We'll be taking calls for the next 15 minutes or so. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, pick up your phone right now. Give us a call. 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. And, you know, if you have some doubts about the Christian faith, we're open to hearing that as well.

Adriel is always willing to engage with folks who may have a different perspective. So give us a call at 833-THE-CORE. Thanksgiving coming up just a little over a week away and beyond that, Christmas. And we actually have a brand new free resource to help you get ready for the Christmas season. It's a 25-day Christmas devotional called The Promise Seed. On December 1st, the devotional starts off with the fall in Genesis 3 and God's promise to put enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. Through short daily readings, the devotional traces how God's promise of the seed of the woman would one day come and crush the serpent once and for all. And of course, in the birth of Jesus, the promised seed has come to fulfill or been fulfilled.

And this is what Christmas is all about. Our new devotional highlights God's faithfulness in the Bible and his faithfulness to us now in times of uncertainty. And so get a hold of this resource. It's really an excellent devotional put together by our very own Director of Content, Kendra Dahl, here at CORE Christianity.

And she's done an excellent job. To get this free download of our new Christmas devotional, just head over to corechristianity.com forward slash christmas. You can also call us at 833-843-2673 for help getting that or any one of our offers.

Well, Adriel, here's an email that came in from one of our listeners. This is from Millie, and she says, My son will be turning 18 in a few months. What advice can you give to parents like me letting their child go while still having some say in their lives? Thank you. Yeah, my oldest is nine, so I would just encourage you.

I mean, I can only imagine, of course, how difficult this must be. But I would just encourage you to say, Lord, I'm entrusting my son to you. I've prayed for my son. I've sought to teach my son about you.

But at the end of the day, he's in your hands. So I would say continuing to pray for your son and to commit him to the Lord. I love, if you listen to CORE Christianity, you probably have heard me bring this story up before, but I love the story of St. Augustine and his mother, Monica, who prayed for him for years and years and years. And for many years, he wasn't faithful to Jesus. He wasn't walking with the Lord. And it wasn't until I think it was his early 30s that he actually came to Christ. It was converted, but he says, My mom watered the ground with her prayers for me. And her heart was just torn for so long because she wanted him to love the Lord, to walk with the Lord, and he was making decisions, life choices that were not pleasing to God, not honoring to God. And so what did she do?

She didn't try to strangle him. She prayed for him, and she continued to cry out to the Lord on his behalf. And that's what we should be doing for our children. And so as your son gets ready to go, I would just continue to be committed to praying for him.

And Bill, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this one as well. I think it's a great answer, Adriel, and our role really does change as our children enter young adulthood and we become really more of a coach. You know, earlier on in life, we have to set firm boundaries with our kids and a lot of our parenting is really instructional. But then as they as we release them, as they head off into the working world or into college, we need to take more of a coach mindset where we encourage and we still give advice. But we need to hold on rather loosely to any, you know, sense of control over them because they're adults now, especially, you know, given the age of adulthood in our country being 18, which was changed a few years ago. But man, it's it's a tough, tough road to home. My son is 18.

He went off to college in August. And and so we are navigating that in our family ourselves. And so far, so good. Yeah, yeah, we're still in the we're still in in the boundaries stage.

So, yeah, exactly. But that's that's great advice, Bill. Thanks. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Here's the number if you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life.

It's 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to Michael calling in from Kansas. Michael, what's your question for Adriel?

Hey, Adriel. So my question, hopefully I don't lose you because I'm driving, is it's kind of weird. So every time I talk to Christians and I ask questions and they don't have an answer, they always say they either have faith or that you're not supposed to question God. So my question is, if if Christians believe that God has a divine plan and that he knows your life before you even live it, then how is praying for somebody's health or somebody's wealth, you know?

How is that not questioning God's divine plan? Michael, thank you for that question. So two things. One, I just want to say, man, I'm sorry that that's the response that you've that you've received when you ask questions.

I think that's that's unfortunate. One thing I happen to appreciate about the Christian faith and the people that I've been around, at least, is I've had a lot of questions over my 20 years as a Christian walking with Jesus. I've had difficult questions that I've that I've struggled with and thought answers and had people around me who are willing to wrestle through those questions with me. And there are, I think, really good answers to the questions that people are asking. The problem is a lot of times we aren't, people aren't, Christians aren't willing to dig in to do the research.

I think it's one. I think there's nothing wrong with asking questions. Frankly, you see that in the Bible itself. I think of the Psalms of Lament, for example, where people are praying, the psalmist is praying, asking God why. Why is my life the way that it is?

Why am I struggling with the things that I'm struggling with? Why are circumstances as they are in light of your promises, God? There are a lot of questions that the people of God ask even in scripture, and so I think questions are a good thing and we should be encouraged to ask them and we should search the scriptures in order to find those answers.

Now, praying, you're totally right. I believe, according to the Bible, that God does know all things and that everything happens according to his decree. You read about this in places like Ephesians chapter 1. The question is, well, does that mean that when I'm praying for something, maybe that's health or to get a job or something like that, am I questioning God?

Am I going against his will? Well, typically the way in which Christians have talked about this is we think of God's will in two ways. One, we have what God has revealed in his word, his law ultimately, his revealed will. Some people refer to this as his prescriptive will, and it's what God calls us to in scripture. You also have God's will of decree, if you will, what God has determined from eternity past.

Now, we don't know that. We can't, I can't, you can't climb into heaven and look at what God is thinking, that kind of thing. All we know is what God has revealed in his word, and so we pray according to his word. We seek him in light of what he's revealed to us. When I pray, dear God, please sanctify me, I can pray that prayer confidently because I know that God's will is for me to grow in him, to know him more, to be holy. It's understanding, I think, the distinction in how we talk about the will of God.

There's nothing wrong with praying for things, and even if those prayers don't get answered the way that we were hoping that they would be answered, one of the ways that God is accomplishing his sovereign purposes in the world today is through the prayers of his people. He doesn't just sort of zap things into existence oftentimes. I mean, he did call the world into existence from nothing, but ordinarily as he oversees the world, this is the doctrine of providence, he uses means. He uses people. He uses preachers to go out and preach the gospel so that other people might hear about the grace of God. He uses mothers to pray for their sons so that their hearts might be open.

God uses us, and he wants to use us. He wants to hear our prayers, and so we should be encouraged to pray. Michael, let me just also encourage you, man, when you have those questions, please give us a call. We really want to welcome those questions and wrestle through some of the difficult questions that are out there to help people out, so God bless. You know, I'm thinking we should send Michael a copy of our book, Core Christianity, just to help him maybe get acquainted with some of the core doctrines of the faith.

It seems like those are some great questions that could be answered by that book. So, Michael, if you hang on the line, we'll send that off to you, a complimentary copy of Core Christianity by Dr. Michael Horton. This is Core Christianity, and let's go to Daniel, who's calling in from Tracy, California. Daniel, what's your question for Adriel? Hello, Adriel. How you doing? I'm doing well. Daniel, how you doing? Yeah, everything all right.

So let me make this as quick as possible. So basically my question was, when people dabble in like spirits and stuff like that, you know, like they go on Ouija boards or like just anything to try to call a spirit. And especially in these paranormal activity shows where they like try to summon a spirit or something of that nature, the spirits summon right away. Evil spirit comes in, even if it's evil or not, it just seems to show, and the pararation seems to show quick, you know, real quick. But when we pray to the Holy Spirit or we pray to God to show us a sign, to show us an angel going through a hard time, it takes 10, 15, you know, even if we're lucky to see in this lifetime, just any drop of the holy nature of God or an pararation in the good force instead of the evil force. So my question is basically, why when we pray to the evil spirits, they show up right away, but when we pray to God and his angels, we never get any sign or anything of that nature. Well, Daniel, it sounds like you do know that there are supernatural forces at work in the world, good forces and also evil forces, and the Bible is very clear about that, and that the evil forces that are at work in the world, satanic, demonic forces at work in the world, can manifest signs.

I've heard about things, it sounds like you've heard about things as well, whether it's, you know, you see stuff on TV or you just hear people who are coming out of the occult, witchcraft, and they can tell you, they will tell you. Yeah, there's something there, something sinister, there is a supernatural power there, but it's not the power of God, it's something else. Think of the scene that we have in Acts chapter 16, it says in verse 16, as we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners much gain by fortune telling. In other words, she was able to tell people's fortune, she had this insight, this demonic insight, because she was possessed by a spirit of divination, and as the text continues, essentially, the apostle Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, I command you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her, and it came out that very hour. But it sounds like you're saying, well, how come when we pray to the Lord, how come when we ask the Holy Spirit to manifest his presence in our lives in a powerful way?

Why doesn't he just do it? Well, God is not like a genie in a bottle, that we can just, you know, sort of rub the bottle and God is going to show up and do whatever it is that we want. Often, Jesus even rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees because they would say, you know, show us a sign, do a trick for us, Jesus. And Jesus says, you guys are missing it. Daniel, God has already given us, he's already given you the ultimate sign. It was in sending his son, in the death of his son on the cross, and the resurrection of his son from the dead.

That's a historical reality. That's what God did, and frankly, that's what Jesus said to the Pharisees, no sign is going to be given to them except for the sign of Jonah, right? This idea of being in the belly of the earth for three days, you know, the death of Christ, being in the tomb for three days, and then his resurrection, that's the ultimate sign. And I think a lot of people, even Christians today, Daniel, are looking for something else. We want God to do something cool, to do something powerful, to show up, you know, show me an angel, that kind of a thing. And can God extraordinarily do those things?

Does he? Are there instances where we might have a magnificent experience because of just the grace of the Lord and his providence? Yeah, that can happen, but the main thing God wants from you, from us, is to fix our eyes on what he's accomplished for our salvation in the gospel, in Jesus, is to go to the word, to search the scriptures, to know him as he's revealed himself to us in his word. Jesus, you know, again, he rebuked the Pharisees because he said to them, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and these are the very scriptures that testify of me, but you're not willing to come to me that you may have life. We go to Jesus so that we might have life, the forgiveness of our sins, salvation, so that we might walk with him and grow in holiness. We don't go to Jesus so that he might just give us things, and a lot of people have this confused. They're searching for some supernatural experience.

They want some kind of a sign. God, if you would just do that, this, that, and the other, then I'll follow you. But God has already revealed himself to us in so many ways that the psalmist said that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. That is to say, the world around you, Daniel, is a sign of the creator God, his power, his glory. And he doesn't just give you that sign that he's real, that he's over all things, but he sent his son into the world so that our sins might be forgiven. That's where we need to go. We need to go back to the gospel, back to the scriptures, and when we do, that's where we see the Spirit of God at work in the world today. God bless. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program, and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.