~ A place to find answers to gnawing spiritual questions ~
Question: If people say that God and Jesus are the same person, why in John 3:16 does it say that God sent his son?Answer: You write that "people say" that God and Jesus are the same person. Who are the people that say this? The people saying this apparently are not aware of the Bible teaching on this subject.
The Bible, especially the New Testament, teaches there is one God, but that God, unlike us human beings, exists in three Persons; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus gave the "Great Commission," He commanded the disciples to baptize the converts in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) When the apostle Paul gave the benediction to the Corinthian Church, he mentioned all three persons in the Godhead, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2nd Corinthians 13:14). Both the baptismal formula and the benediction would logically require that the three persons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit would have to be of Divine nature, and not some lower creature.
We need only to take one passage of the New Testament to show that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are Persons, or as we would say, individual personalities. Otherwise the passage does not make any sense at all. I refer to John's Gospel, chapter 14, verses 16-18, and verse 26. Jesus knew that in a short time He would be crucified, and after rising again from the dead would be caught up to heaven. Therefore, He said to them that He would pray to the Father, that He would send someone like Himself to them. He called this Person the Comforter, who would from that time on abide with the disciples (and all believers) while they were here on earth. Since Jesus prayed to the Father, both must be persons, or it would be ridiculous for Him to pray to Himself, if the Father and the Son are the same person. Likewise, in the 26th verse, Jesus makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is also a Person of a Divine nature, who would in the present time dwell in every believer. He says that the Holy Spirit shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance. The Spirit is given the personal pronoun "He", and is described as being a teacher. Only a person could be a teacher or an instructor.
Summing up then, the Christian Church teaches that although there is but one God, that God exists in three persons. An analogy taken from nature would be the egg. An egg consists of three distinct parts; the shell, the white, and the yolk, yet there is but one egg. This is but a simplification to help us understand a great mystery. As you read the Scriptures, you will understand it only as you see that the Father sent the Son to die for our sins. The Son was sent as a man: otherwise He could not be our substitute to take our sins away. Jesus was God in the flesh. As God, He gave infinite power to the sacrifice that He made on the Cross, and as a sinless man, He became a substitute for sinful mankind, and bore the punishment for our sins. The Holy Spirit, Who is also God, came to dwell within each believer, giving that person the power to live in victory over sin.
Theologians use the term circumcession; that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are always in perfect unity of purpose and substance, in the relations of interexistence, intercommunication, and interaction. We cannot understand this Trinity in Unity, but the Bible teaches it. We take it by faith.
Are God and Jesus the same?
How can I understand the relations of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit?
How do you explain to someone who God really is?
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