Our Triune Salvation #1

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in The Truth Pulpit. I've given the title to this message, Our Triune Salvation, and what we find is that each person of the Blessed Trinity played a critical role in the outworking of our salvation.

We want to see this because it will help us understand the work of God in saving us better, and it will give us a greater sense of the glory and the majesty of our salvation, and also a greater sense of the security of our salvation that Christ purchased for us on the cross. When we defined the Trinity last night, we said this, we said there is one true God with only one essence, who eternally exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three persons are each fully and equally God, and equally deserve worship and obedience, yet these three persons are only one God.

Today we're going to build on what we talked about last night. We saw the deity of the Father, the deity of the Son, the deity of the Spirit. We saw something of the unified essence that they all share in, and today we go further to recognize that our salvation in Christ is a triune work of God. That passage that I read just a few moments ago from Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 14, in the original Greek it's one sentence.

It is a 202-word sentence of one unit of thought. Now it doesn't appear that way in our English translations because the English translators have broken it down so that it's easier to understand, but as you read it in the original language you see that it is one colossal unit of thought as the Apostle Paul ascribes praise to the triune God and speaks to the different aspects of the works that each person of the Trinity did to accomplish our salvation. All three members of the Godhead participate in our redemption, and here's what we want to understand as we look at these things separately here this morning, is that there was a unified purpose in the Godhead to save us from sin. There was a unified love in the Godhead that was at work. There was a complete unity of will which is in keeping with what you would expect of one God with one essence, all three persons sharing in the perfections of God and all of his attributes.

They acted in concert to achieve our salvation. And what a glorious passage that we have in front of us to be able to consider here this morning. And I would just say by way of preface, I guess, before we go into it, is that we are really approaching some of the holiest ground in all of Scripture. We're looking deeply into the nature of God.

We are looking deeply into the nature of our salvation. We are seeing how the eternal purposes of God were carried out in order to secure redemption for us. And through all of it you should see, through everything that we see in what's about to be said, you should see the love of God displayed for his people, his goodness toward his people, his mercy, his kindness, his patience toward his people, all of this being displayed and each member of the Trinity being actively involved in the working out of our salvation.

It's a glorious theme. And it's no wonder that the recurring refrain throughout this passage is to the praise of the glory of God. We're seeing things that cause our hearts to give praise and glory to God.

That's for the people of God. And let me just say briefly to those of you that are outside of Christ and you're still lost in your sin, this message functions as a great invitation from Christ to you to enter into these blessings. It's a call from Christ that you may be saved in the same way that you might enter into these things by faith in him. And so the gospel of Jesus Christ which says, Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world, who takes away the sin of the world, we see in this a scriptural mining out of the gems that are there for us to know in God's Word.

And so let's turn there, shall we? We're going to see in this text that the Father saves us, the Son saves us, and the Spirit saves us. All three working and playing their role in the outworking of our redemption. Point number one here this morning, God the Father saves us.

And you see that right from the start in this opening text. Look at verse three with me, Ephesians chapter one verse three, where the apostle Paul says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul starts out ascribing praise to God the Father, and then he goes on and expands on what the Father did that brings forth our praise.

God the Father did something that provokes the praise of his people, that causes them to render glory to his name, to ascribe honor to him, to give thanks to him is all built up and included in that sense of blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And let me just say one thing here for those of you that have read a bit in Reformed doctrine and studied these things. It is far too common for people to go to this text to find their arguments in support of the doctrines of grace. And surely the doctrines of grace are in full display here. But this should not be handled in an argumentative spirit.

This should not be handled in a contentious way. The spirit of this entire passage is one of humble praise to God, and that's the way that this text should be approached. Remember, it's one long sentence, 202 words in the Greek text, and the purpose of the text is to praise God. Blessed be the God and Father, verse three. Verse six, to the praise of the glory of his grace. Verse 12, to the praise of his glory. Verse 14, to the praise of his glory. And so for us to understand this text, we must enter into the spirit with which Paul is speaking to us here today, and more directly, more vertically, the way that God is speaking to us in this text is calling forth the worship of our hearts. We are responding to the triune God in this text with the praise and honor of the deepest aspects of our being.

And so he starts out, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The aspect that we focus on here this morning is that this praise at this point in the text is ascribed to the Father, to God the Father, the first member of the triune God. Why are we praising him? Well, he has blessed us. He has graced us. He has given good things to us that we did not deserve in ways that are far beyond anything that we could ask or think.

Look at verses three and four with me. It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who? This is what God the Father has done. This is a relative clause that is describing God the Father, and here's what he has done. God the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. How did he bless us? Verse four, he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.

Look at it there with me. Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him. And he goes on in verse five, in love he predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Well, that's a mouthful right there, and that's only a portion of this sentence.

But look at what it says there. God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. He elected us to salvation by his sovereign pleasure based on nothing that was in us or that would ever be in us, not based on a foreseen faith, but totally according to his own purpose and his own love and kindness. God chose us in Christ to receive the fullness of salvation that would reverberate to our benefit throughout all of the ages of eternity to come.

Do you know what that means? It means that before God created the world, your salvation was secure. It was certain to come to pass if you are a Christian. We look back now at having been saved, and Scripture explains to us how we entered into this marvelous position that is ours in Christ. We did not achieve this position by our own good works. It's not because we were wiser or better than someone else. If that were the case, the praise and the credit would go to us.

But that's not the nature of Christian salvation, of biblical salvation. The praise, the blessing goes to God because God had done something and has done something for us. He elected us. He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Not only that, the text tells us that he adopted us into his family. He adopted us as sons. Whereas before we were in the family of Satan, we belonged to our father, the father of lies, and we were children of Adam, having fallen in the garden and sharing in the guilt of Adam's first sin like that.

How miserable was our position? And yet what God did was he chose us and he adopted us into his family. Though we were strangers and though we were separate from Christ and we were under his wrath and under the dominion of Satan and dead in our trespasses and sins, what this text tells us is that God graciously adopted us. He reached beyond his family, so to speak, and reached to us and brought us into his family and adopted us and made us a child of God. 1 John chapter 3 speaks of that reality, doesn't it? When it says, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God, and we are.

To be a child of the Father, to belong to his family with the full benefits and being a full heir of all of his blessings, that's what we have in Christ. And what this text tells us is that the first member of the Trinity, God the Father, did that for us. And what you should see as you look at the text is the attributes of God that were active in bringing this to pass on our behalf. Look at it there at the end of verse 4 when it says that in love, he predestined us to adoption as sons.

It's according to the kind intention of his will. And in verse 6, it's to the praise of the glory of his grace. We see his love, we see his kindness, we see his grace operating toward us, God having eternally appointed this outcome for us, that we might enter into the blessings of being a part of his family and knowing him and being on the receiving end of such immeasurable, exalted, kindness not only for this life but for all of the ages to come. This is what God the Father has done. God the Father saved us before, you could say in a sense, before time began.

Oh, the salvation needed to be applied to our hearts in real time during our earthly lives, but the point here is that God had appointed this and determined all of this to take place before the foundation of time. And what this means for us is that God the Father loves us. Jesus said to his disciples in John 16, verse 27, he said the Father himself loves you. The Father himself has your good in mind.

The Father himself is securing what is in your best interests. And so we marvel at the fact that God the Father has loved us like this, that he has blessed us like this, and we see as we peer back, as it were, into the pre-temporal aspects of God's existence, we realize that there was this abiding, eternal purpose of God to bestow blessing on us in Christ, and that's what he has done. And we pause to let that sink in just a bit, to let that truth reverberate in our hearts, and we look at that and we say, well, that's true, then all I can do is give praise and honor to him.

He was good to me when I had no claim on him. Do you understand that, my Christian friend? Do you understand that we had no claim on God, that the creature had no claim on the Creator, that the sinner had no claim on the Holy One, that the one under judgment had no claim on the judge for pardon? And yet God graciously did this for us. He chose us, he adopted us, and this coming from the hand of God the Father, securing our good when we were undeserving.

And I want you to understand, and I want to emphasize a point here, that what Scripture teaches here in this passage and in many other places as well is that the electing work of God did something. It did not simply make salvation possible for us. It guaranteed our salvation. When the world history was unfolding, when you were born into the world having been chosen by God before the foundation of the world, there was no possibility that the outcome of your spiritual situation would have been anything other than the complete salvation of God that he had chosen you for before the beginning of time. And so when God elected us before the foundation of the world, he made our salvation certain to occur.

And now we, having been on the receiving end of the saving work of the Holy Spirit, we are now secure in him. The purpose of God has been carried out in our lives, and there are greater purposes yet to unfold. But God's love for us, the Father's love for us, was so great that he chose us before time began. He made certain our salvation for those of us that are in Christ so that there was no possibility that we would ever be anything other than saved in the end, that the only possible destination for our soul would be the eternal glories of heaven.

That depends not on us, but it is the outworking of the purpose of God who causes all things to work according to the counsel of his will. And it was God's will, my Christian friend, it was God's will, God the Father's will to save you because he loved you and had kindness upon you and showed grace to you even before the beginning of time. Those are magnificent truths, aren't they? And what we see here is that we see this first member of the Trinity, God the Father, having exercised that saving purpose toward us so that we can rightly say God the Father saves us, and our salvation is an outworking of his purpose for us. One thing maybe that I should just draw out one implication of it, sometimes people will think about, well, Christ loves us, but the Father was reluctant for our salvation, and so there's a greater love from Christ for us than there was from the Father.

No, that's not true. The love of the Father is equal to the love of the Son. They're operating in perfect harmony of purpose. God the Father himself loves you. That should quiet your soul. That should give you confidence in the intentions of God and the attitude of God toward you as a believer in Jesus Christ to enter into this sense where you heave a sigh of relief and say, Oh, God the Father himself loves me. Christ himself said so, and God the Father chose me and adopted me into his family. And then there is this pervasive sense of peace and rest that comes to us as we realize the goodness of God toward us expressed in God the Father. Now, you see this also expressed, the fullness of this expressed over in Romans 8, if you want to turn there. Romans 8, beginning in verse 28, we often quote that verse in isolation, and it's okay that we do, but that verse goes on and explains things that are pertinent for us here today. In Romans 8, verse 28, we see this.

It says, We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, those that he loved before the beginning of time, it's a relational term. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom he predestined he also called, and these whom he called he also justified, and these whom he justified he also glorified. God loved us and exercised this saving purpose toward us, and it was a comprehensive purpose that we would be called by the Holy Spirit to salvation in Christ. God predestined us for that. He called us, and he justified us, and one day he will glorify us, and these things are all so certain that even the future aspect of our salvation can be spoken of as though it were a past tense reality.

He glorified us in the sense that he made certain that we would receive the heavenly glory, the heavenly inheritance in the end. This is the purpose of God toward those who love us, and this means, beloved, that he causes all things to work together for good to those who love him, to those that belong to Christ. It is the purpose of God that everything that you go through in this life will work toward your final salvation, will work to shape and conform you to the image of Jesus Christ. It was his purpose before time began. It is the purpose that he is working out now. It is the purpose that will certainly be climaxed in the end when we are in heaven around the throne of Jesus Christ. These things are revealed certainties. This is the purpose of God the Father toward you, and nothing can hinder his purpose.

Nothing can cause it to fail. In fact, that's what Paul goes on to say in this text. As you look at verse 31, he says, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? If God has determined to give this blessing to us, he chose us for it before the beginning of time, he's working it out now, and it's certain to occur in the future, then what does it matter that earthly circumstances sometimes work against us from one perspective?

What does it matter that there is a devil accusing us and trying to mislead us? What does it matter that the forces of hell are arrayed against us? What does it matter if all of those subordinate things are against us if the greater purpose of the highest God and the only God is at work to secure your salvation? If God is for us, everything else falls to the wayside as he works out his purpose for you in Christ.

It can have no other outcome, beloved. And so these things are designed to draw us into a great sense of security, a great sense of love and honor to God, and a recognition that the purposes of God will most certainly be carried out in your life no matter how faint it may seem at the time, no matter how wavering your own experience of faith is and how it is intermingled with doubt and intermingled with sin, understand that there is a greater purpose of God at work in you, my Christian brother, my Christian sister. Understand that the purpose of God is at work and his power is what determines the outcome for us. So that Paul could say at the end of Romans chapter 8 and verse 38, he said, I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Not much left to be said after that, is there? God the Father has set his love upon us in Christ. He chose us for that. This is an aspect of the outworking of the triune God to secure blessing for the people that God the Father gave to his son to redeem. The glorious purpose of God the Father was that you would most certainly be saved, my Christian friend. And to that end, he gave us as a people to Christ before time began. That's what Jesus himself said in John 17. John 17 verse 24, listen as I read that verse. John 17 verse 24, Jesus is praying to the Father and he says, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am so that they may see my glory which you have given me for you loved me before the foundation of the world. Jesus, as he's praying to the Father, reminds the Father that you have given me this people.

And so the Father gave the elect to Christ before the foundation of the world. The loving desire of the Father would be carried out and Christ says that it is his desire as he's praying, he wants us, he wants his people, he wants the elect to see him glorified, to see his glory manifested. And the splendor of that, the majesty of that is what is going to be the ultimate destination for all that believe in Christ. It's going to be the outcome of all of our salvation. I start to lose the vocabulary to give adequate description of what this means, but the outcome of our salvation which God the Father appointed us for is to be in heaven and to see the unveiled majesty and glory of our Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you think God the Father answers the prayers of God the Son?

I do. And God the Son, Jesus Christ said, Father, I want them to see me in glory in heaven and the glory which I shared with you before the foundation of the world. Well, that's going to happen. And it was a loving, kind, gracious purpose of God that you would enter into that kind of immeasurable blessing for all of eternity. God the Father chose you for that before the beginning of time. And here, as we close this first point here, Scripture also teaches us that God the Father is keeping us for that even as we speak. In John chapter 10, verse 29, John 10, verse 29, Jesus said this. He said, my Father who has given them to me, speaking of the people that Christ would save, my Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. Jesus says the Father is holding the elect.

He is keeping them so that they will certainly enter into the inheritance that he had appointed for them before the beginning of time. God the Father is keeping us in his hand. He is holding us in his omnipotence to make sure that there would be that final outcome, there would be the final culmination of the purpose that he intended for us in eternity past. And then Jesus goes on to say, he says, my Father is greater than all. And then he immediately says, I and the Father are one. Jesus putting himself on the same level, expressing that he and the Father have the same essence, the same purpose, Jesus making the statement, therefore, that he and the Father are greater than all and that no one can contradict their purpose. Your salvation is secure because of the work of God the Father.

It's a marvelous aspect of the triune nature of our salvation. Well, my friend, before we go after today's broadcast, I just want to invite you to look me up on Facebook, Don Green on Facebook. I often make original posts. I make comments about ministry and other matters of biblical importance there that do not make their way into this broadcast. And so if you are on Facebook, I invite you to join me, look for Don Green and join us on Facebook for another way to connect with our ministry. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.