Magyar Egyház, 1955 (34. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)

1955-06-01 / 6. szám

MAGYAR EGYHÁZ

11

But it is to the New Testament that we turn for our ultimate evidence. There, right in the beginning, the angel Gabriel comes to the Virgin Mary and says to her (Luke 1:35), “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” Here are mentioned the Spirit, the Most High (i.e., the Father), and the Son of God.

Or again, at the baptism of Jesus by John in the river Jordan, we see the Divine Son, and the Father, who speaks, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and the “Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.” (Matthew 3).

So also in the gospel according to John, Jesus, who said, “I and the Father are one,” (John 10:30), also promises (John 14:26), “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

Add to these the baptismal formula and the apostolic benediction, which I cited at the outset, and you will see the truth of the statement that the New Testament is a Trinitarian book throughout. Who denies the Trinity, denies the New Testament. And without the Testament, where is our faith?

One thing more remains to be said, and it is an application to our personal faith. The doctrine of the Trinity is the guarantee that the offer of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ is genuine, and that our religious experience is valid.

The doctrine of the Trinity assures us that Jesus Christ is true God, as well as true man. It is only as true God that He could be the sinless One, the pure and unspotted Lamb, who takes away the sin of the world. As true God, as well as true man, He could wrestle with death and hell and conquer them, so that we need fear them no longer. And it is the doctrine of the Trinity that enables us to believe in Jesus as true God as well as true man, and therefore able to save man to the uttermost.

The doctrine of the Trinity further assures us that the Holy Spirit is true God. Thus the repentance and faith in Christ which He arouses in our hearts are not strange emotions of unknown origin, but the evidences of a true and reliable calling of God to us, feeble human beings.

George A. Buttrick, in the book, “So We Believe, So We Pray” writes, “The doctrine of the Trinity . . . answers human need. We worship God in His creation as our Father; we worship God in His incarnation in Christ, and claim His pardon; we worship God in the Holy Spirit, rejoicing that, instead of our being bereaved by the exaltation of Christ, we are indwelt by His presence. . . . Why not launch out into the mighty deep of faith? There is life in the adoring ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ of the doctrine of the Trinity.”

CHARLES W. KRAHE, JR.

Reformed minister, Perth Amboy, N. J.

MAN IN HIS FALLEN STATE . . .

Adam and Eve had, by their eating of the fruit of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, against the will of God and by the temptation of Satan, lost their original state in the Garden of Eden. In our previous article we tried to describe the holy, righteous, sinless and perfectly happy life of man. In this article we try to draw a picture of the man in his fallen, sinful state.

The loss of the original state of man meant, first of all, that the mind of man became dark. Although he remained a reasoning creature, but concerning his understanding God and His sacred things, man’s mind had been infected with disbelief, doubts, fear and ignorance.

The freedom of his will had been lost, also, in the respect that under the influence of Satan, man had desire and inclination to commit more and more sins.

His thoughts, words and actions became impure and abominal by the measurement of the perfectly holy God.

The total sinfulness and corruptness of the fallen man is described by Apostle Paul in His Roman letter, in the 3rd chapter, as follows: There is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that does good, no, not one.

Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness . . . destruction and misery are in their ways . . . there is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Of course, since God is perfectly just His justice demanded the punishment of the sinful man. There appears, therefore, the suffering in the body and soul of man as the punishment of the righteous God. Physical sicknesses, various miseries, sorrow, fear and anxiety destroyed the perfect happiness of man. He had to die. But death did not mean a final escape from the justice of God for after death there waited for the sinful man the eternal torments of hell. In other words, man, who put himself under the rule of Satan, made himself worthy of the same kind of punishment that Satan received from the just God, i.e. hell.

This is what became of the original blessed life of Adam and Eve when they voluntarily accepted Satan instead of God as the master and ruler of their lives.

Since Adam and Eve were created to be the first parents of the whole human race, their children and their children’s children, that is, the whole human race inherited from them a corrupt, sinful human nature. This inherited sinful human nature with which we are all born is called our original sin. We are corrupt fruits of a corrupt tree. The proof of our sinfulness (are our daily sins we commit against God and one another. For our own personal sins we have to suffer the same consequences that Adam and Eve suffered for their own sin. In other words, all men, without exception, justly deserve all the sufferings, death and damnation in hell.

However, God is not only perfectly just, but also, He is perfectly merciful. Therefore, He toook pity on the fallen human race and decided its salvation.

In our next article we shall write about this gracious decision of God. —Stephen Kovács