1 The First Person in the Trinity

1.     The First Person in the Trinity

①    The Existing One predetermined to bring the creation world into existence.

Ex.3:14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM," and he said, "You shall tell the children of Israel this: "I AM has sent me to you."

Ex.3:15 God said moreover to Moses, "You shall tell the children of Israel this, 'Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations.

†   God is the Existing One. The One who exists has determined to bring into existence a creation world that did not exist. The creation world will be in the One who exists. The One who exists is greater than the creation world.[1] The One who is the greatest cannot enter into the creation world. So He predetermined to put a name in it. It does not mean[2] that it is impossible for the Creator[3] to be in the creation world[4], but that He is not limited by creatures.[5]

②    The Existing One predetermined to reveal Himself to creatures by a name.

Ex.6:3 and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them.

Ex.6:4 I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their travels, in which they lived as aliens.

Ex.6:5 Moreover I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant.

†   The name ‘Yahweh’ (Jehovah) is the name given with the covenant. The covenant is God's promise, that is, the word. God predetermined to send His word to creatures in this name when He gives His word to creatures.

 

③    The Existing One predetermined to rule the creation world by His word.

Ex.24:7 He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, "All that Yahweh has spoken will we do, and be obedient."

Ex.24:8 Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, "Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has made with you concerning all these words."

†   The covenant will be made with blood. The sin of breaking the covenant can only be washed away with the blood of those who break the covenant.

Num.35:33 So you shall not pollute the land in which you are: for blood, it pollutes the land; and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him who shed it.

†   Breaking God's law is bloodshed. The criminal who shed blood must cleanse his/her crime of breaking the law with his/her own blood. A criminal who shed his/her neighbor's blood must pay the price for his/her crime with his/her own blood. The land where blood is shed for breaking the law is defiled. The land must be cleansed with the blood of those who have shed blood for breaking the law. The Creator predetermined to give creatures a law so that they would always abide in God who is the source of their life, and that they would not harm other creatures recklessly.

2Kin.11:17 Jehoiada made a covenant between Yahweh and the king and the people, that they should be Yahweh's people; between the king also and the people.

2Chr.23:16 Jehoiada made a covenant between himself, and all the people, and the king, that they should be Yahweh's people.

†   God predetermined to give His word to creatures and reveal the consequences of obedience and disobedience. God predetermined that He would allow creatures would be able to choose whether to obey or disobey the rule of His word. He will let creatures receive the results according to the decisions they make themselves.

④    The Existing One knows everything.

Jer.23:23 Am I a God at hand, says Yahweh, and not a God afar off?

Jer.23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? says Yahweh. Don't I fill heaven and earth? says Yahweh.

†   God who knows everything will judge righteously. If God does not know everything, it might be possible that He judges unjustly, but because God knows everything[6], He can always judge justly. If God judges only by knowing Himself, creatures may misunderstand as God judges unjustly. Therefore, God predetermined to judge publicly[7], so that creatures might understand that God is just. God will not impose unreasonable laws. God will give us only the laws that we can obey, and He will also give us the strength to keep them. Otherwise, God may be misunderstood as being unjust to creatures. That is why God can never let injustice go unnoticed. It is because if God let injustice pass without judgment, God's justice will be broken in the creation world. When God's justice is broken, there is no standard for creatures to act, and there is no basis for judging even if creatures die and kill each other. If that happens, the creation world will be ruined. However, God will not begin creation to create a creation world that will eventually be ruined anyway.[8]

⑤    The Existing One rules with love and justice.

Ex.34:6 Yahweh passed by before him, and proclaimed, "Yahweh! Yahweh, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth,

Ex.34:7 keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children's children, on the third and on the fourth generation."

†   God the Father will love creatures He will make in the Son, for the Son[9] and by the Son. God will be patient and give ample opportunity to turn from sin even to those who will have rebelled against God. But no matter how much God loves them, God will not force the free will of each creature.[10] Creatures will receive consequences according to their choices.[11] God will let them know the consequences before they choose how to act.[12] But God will not be involved in their making choices. Instead, God will show them God's love and justice enough to choose God and give them ample opportunity to choose.[13] Still, God will acknowledge the consequences for creatures that will not choose God. And according to the result they will choose, God will punish them as much as their own sins[14] and will let them depart from God's rule.[15]

†   The Creator will create creatures to be happy only when they are in the Creator. Therefore, creatures that refuse to obey the Creator's rule of love and refuse to enter into the Creator, even though they themselves do not realize it[16], are bound to suffer in the sight of their Creator.[17] There cannot be a creature that is happy with the life of dying and killing each other. The Creator who is love will not make one creature happy by trampling its neighbors, nor will He create a creation world as such a propensity to trample one another by force and yet be happy with one another. If the Creator would make such a creation world, the Creator could not be love. But because He is love, the Creator will give commandments of love to creatures[18], and creatures will abide by the love of God through the commandments of love.

†   Because the Creator who made them is love, the sin of killing and oppressing neighboring creatures by force is therefore inevitably painful for creatures. Therefore, although criminals will suffer burning pain according to the sins they have committed[19], ultimately, it can be love that sets them free from their own sins by burning and annihilating them in the lake of fire. For otherwise these sinful creatures would forever be tormented in every moment of their existence by forever rejecting the life of the Creator. Therefore, perhaps this pain of being burned in the lake of fire is not the wrath of the Creator, but rather the pain of its sin that the creature itself bears in it. The judgment that annihilates sinners that paid for their sins and frees them from eternal pain is also the Creator's love.  

 

⑥    If we reject the rule of the Existing One, we cannot be in the rule of the Existing One.

Rev.20:13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. They were judged, each one according to his works.

Rev.20:14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

Rev.20:15 If anyone was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.

†   The only way out of God's rule is to go back to before God called it. Since the creation world is being upheld by the life of the Creator[20], there is no place where God is not.[21] Even if creatures are non-existent, they become beings when God calls them.[22] Therefore, to God, the distinction between existence and non-existence is probably meaningless. God is everything and all is in God. God is the source, the beginning, the end[23], and the existence. When the One who is everything calls, non-beings become existence, and when the One who is everything does not call, non-beings are simply non-existence. For God who upholds infinity as ever-existing, only God is existing.

†   Creatures cannot know non-beings unless God calls them into the creation world.[24] Creatures can know[25] only what God makes them know.[26] For creatures, non-beings do not exist. Creatures cannot see, cannot feel, cannot even imagine non-beings.[27] The only way for creatures that have been called into existence to depart from God's rule is to return to non-existence. Since God is the life that makes creatures endure, apart from God, there is no life.[28] To be precise, creatures cannot leave God. They simply become non-existent.[29] Strictly speaking, the domain of non-existence is also ruled by God, so it cannot be said that returning to non-existence is becoming free from God's rule, but isn't it different from when they are placed in the domain of existence?

†   For creatures, returning to non-existence is to become annihilated from the domain of existence. Life is the power that makes us exist. Without life there can be no existence.[30] To become non-existent is to return to non-existence. It is annihilation. It means being disappeared.[31] When God completely removes His life from creatures, creatures become annihilated.[32] But before that, the penalty for the sins they have committed against God and their neighbors by breaking God's commandments will have to be paid in full in the lake of fire.

⑦    With the life of the Existing One, creatures exist.

Acts17:24 The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands,

Acts17:25 neither is he served by men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things.

Acts17:28 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'

Job12:10 In whose hand is the life of every living thing, The breath of all mankind?

Job33:4 The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Job34:14 If he set his heart on himself, If he gathered to himself his spirit and his breath;

Job34:15 All flesh would perish together, And man would turn again to dust.

Is.42:5 Thus says God Yahweh, he who created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he who spread abroad the earth and that which comes out of it; he who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk therein:

Heb.1:3 His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself made purification for our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;

Col.1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. 

Col.3:11 where there can't be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.

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[1] John10:29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

[2] Ps.139:7 Where could I go from your Spirit? Or where could I flee from your presence? If I ascend up into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there! If I take the wings of the dawn, And settle in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there your hand will lead me, And your right hand will hold me.

[3] Acts17:27 that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'

[4] Jer.23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? says Yahweh. Don't I fill heaven and earth? says Yahweh.

[5] Ps.139:16 Your eyes saw my body. In your book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there were none of them.

[6] 1John3:20 because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

[7] 1Cor.4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each man will get his praise from God.

[8] Gen.2:1 The heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. On the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

[9] Col.1:16 For by him were all things created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him.

[10] Rom.1:28 Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;

[11] Rev.20:13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. They were judged, each one according to his works.

[12] 2Chr.36:15 Yahweh, the God of their fathers, sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending, because he had compassion on his people, and on his dwelling-place: but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of Yahweh arose against his people, until there was no remedy.

[13] Is.55:7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

[14] Luke12:47 That servant, who knew his lord's will, and didn't prepare, nor do what he wanted, will be beaten with many stripes, but he who didn't know, and did things worthy of stripes, will be beaten with few stripes. To whoever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom they deposit much, of him will they ask more.

[15] Rev.20:14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.

[16] Jer.5:25 Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withheld good from you. For among my people are found wicked men: they watch, as fowlers lie in wait; they set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and grew rich. They are grew fat, they shine: yes, they overpass in deeds of wickedness; they don't plead the cause, the cause of the fatherless, that they may prosper; and the right of the needy they don't judge.

[17] Rev.3:17 Because you say, 'I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing;' and don't know that you are the wretched one, miserable, poor, blind, and naked;

[18] 1Cor.13:13 But now faith, hope, and love remain -- these three. The greatest of these is love.

[19] Rev.14:10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. They have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.

[20] Acts17:28 'For in him we live, and move, and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.'

[21] Jer.23:24 Can any hide himself in secret places so that I shall not see him? says Yahweh. Don't I fill heaven and earth? says Yahweh.

[22] Is.40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these, who brings out their host by number; he calls them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power, not one is lacking.

[23] Rev.22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

[24] Rom.11:33 Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?"

[25] John15:15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.

[26] Is.45:15 Most assuredly you are a God who hid yourself, God of Israel, the Savior.'

[27] 1John3:20 because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.

[28] 1John1:2 (and the life was revealed, and we have seen, and testify, and declare to you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was revealed to us);

[29] Luke20:38 Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him."

  Matt.22:31 But concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven't you read that which was spoken to you by God, saying, 'I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."

[30] Jer.10:10 But Yahweh is the true God; he is the living God, and an everlasting King: at his wrath the earth trembles, and the nations are not able to abide his indignation.

[31] Ps.37:10 For yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more. Yes, though you look for his place, he isn't there.

[32] Ps.73:18 Surely you set them in slippery places. You throw them down to destruction. How they are suddenly destroyed! They are completely swept away with terrors. As a dream when one wakes up, So, Lord, when you awake, you will despise their fantasies.https://youtu.be/AupisuARmgQ?feature=shared