Adoptionism - God Granted Jesus Powers and Then Adopted Him As a Son

Adoptionism - God Granted Jesus Powers and Then Adopted Him As a Son

1Trinity SundayMay 25, 26, 2013

One Sunday morning, the priest noticed little Alex standing in the narthex of the church staring up at a large plaque. It was covered with names and small American flags mounted on either side of it. The six-year old had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the priest walked up, stood beside the little boy, and said quietly, “Good morning Alex.” “Good morning, Father,” he replied, still focused on the plaque. “Father, what is this?” The priest said, “Well my son, it's a memorial to all the young men and women who died in the service.” Soberly, they just stood together, staring at the large plaque and looking at all the names. Finally, little Alex's voice, just a whisper asked, “Which service, the 8 o’clock or the 10:30?”

Today is Memorial Day weekend. We want to honor our veterans and remember the costs of the wars that our country has paid for our freedoms and rights and privileges. They came at a cost and many, many people paid these costs with their blood. So we have a day, a weekend, to thank them. Any veterans here please rise.

Not only Memorial Day but it is also Trinity Sunday. Today we celebrate and perhaps that is too strong a word, we acknowledge today one of the most profound mysteries of the Christian Church, the concept of the Trinity. This concept is that God is composed of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, yet we do not worship three Gods, but one God with three individual persons. If that does not confuse you, then you do not understand the problem. Did you know that the word Trinity is not even found in the Bible? In fact, it was not used as a Christian concept until 180 AD by a fellow named Theophilus of Antioch. A couple of years later Tertullian one of our church fathers picked up the expression and used it as well. As time went on, the Church tried to define the relationship more specifically between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Obviously each member was referred to specifically in the writings of the New Testament. Each of them in different references are referred to as God. We have sections like the end of Matthew where Jesus tells the disciples to baptize those who will believe in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And later on in different sections of the New Testaments phrases like, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” And there were all kinds of other places where the three persons are referred to distinctly as in our reading from the letter to the Romans. Each person of the Trinity is given worship and since we are supposed to only worship God, the church had to figure out how this all worked. There were a number of proposals over the years. Let me list several of the ones that were rejected.

Adoptionism - God granted Jesus powers and then adopted him as a Son.

Arianism - Jesus was a lesser, created being.

Modalism - God is one person in three modes.

Monarchianism - God is one person.

Socinianism - Denial of the Trinity. Jesus is a deified man. Holy Spirit is the power of God

Subordinationism - The Son is lesser than the Father in essence and or attributes.

Tritheism - the Trinity is really three separate gods.

The Church rejected all these ideas and they are all known now as heresies. And even we have had many years to figure it out, the concept of the Trinity is still almost impossible to explain. And does it matter really? Isn’t it something that only scholars and clergy are concerned about?

On the one hand, no, it does not ultimately matter; a person can still be a Christian, can still love and follow Jesus and not be able to describe or really understand the Trinity. But on the other hand, it is important in many ways because through it we understand who Jesus is and his relationship to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, are modern day Arians—they believe Jesus was a lesser created being. Unitarians are Monarchianists; they believe that there is one God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not deity. So it is through the lens of the doctrine of the Trinity that we really understand God. Today let us look at what Paul wrote to the Romans and through it I think we will better be able to understand how the trinity works and why it is important.

Paul said, that since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace with God. That should first raise the question, “What, when was I at war with God? What happened to my relationship with God to begin with?” Why does Jesus need to make peace with God for us?

It does not take much reading through the Bible for us to realize that mankind is at odds with God. It started off with mankind moving in rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden and we have kept on rebelling ever since. We as humans may not think we are angry with God or not at peace with God, but when we are confronted with God telling us that what we are doing is wrong we do get angry. God is OK as long as we hear that he loves us unconditionally. Then we can be happy with him. But if we hear that God has standards and that we do not meet them or even cannot meet them, well then, then we are not so happy with God. And it is not a one way street. God is not so happy with us either. God has been so upset with our behavior that he has flooded the whole world in order to wipe us out because we were being so bad. It says that right before the flood in Genesis that when God saw that the wickedness of mankind was great upon the earth that the intentions of people’s hearts were of evil continually, God was sorry he had ever made human beings to begin with. So God sent the flood, but Noah, Noah was a guy who really was trying to be good. Noah tried to serve God and God spared Noah and his family. Anyway, all that to say, mankind is angry at God for putting limits on their behavior and God is angry at mankind because people are so bad and we do not behave like he has shown us we should behave.

Our reading from Romans tells us that Jesus brought peace between us and God. Jesus took the wrath, the anger, the punishment of God on himself when he was on the cross. We should never minimize God’s anger at sin and our bad behavior. But then we see that when we by faith turn to God, we repent, that is we feel bad for how we have been behaving, and put our trust in Jesus as the one who is our Savior; God puts a new life in us and so then we are able to begin to behave like we are supposed to behave. We will begin to want to behave like God wants us to behave. So we have peace with God!

And then we see from our passage that through Jesus we receive this Grace, grace is a supernatural or spiritual strength that God gives us so that we can live for him like we ought to do. So we receive this grace and because of this grace, this new strength and power that helps us live for God we can rejoice, we can be happy even when we are going through bad times because we know that those bad times help us have endurance, the toughness to keep on trying to improve. And having that endurance helps us to develop into the type of character that we need to have and be. And as we see these things developing in us and in our behavior that gives us hope. Hey, we are going to make it after all! God is changing me! And then we feel God’s love for us in our hearts. It says the Holy Spirit pours God’s love for us into our hearts. He doesn’t sprinkle it, He doesn’t do a little splash, no, He pours it! God wants us to know that He loves us! He cares and is so happy as we change and become more like we are supposed to become.

So, we see the Trinity here. God the Father, our one time enemy, is now on our side, He is on our side because of Jesus died for us in our place. God gives us through Jesus spiritual strength, grace, to begin to change, to begin to want to change, and then as we change, God through the Holy Spirit confirms his love for us by pouring it out into our hearts. The Trinity: God, God, God, God is angry at us, God dies for us, God comes to us and strengthen us to change as we turn to him and trust him, and God loves us and shows us his love. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is this still confusing? You bet! But through it we see God reaching out to us his people in love.