“What is God the Father’s job description?”

Steve Brown:
What is God the Father’s job description? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
This is Key Life, dedicated to the message that the only people who get any better, are those who know that if they don’t get any better, God will still love them, anyway. That teaching raises a lot of questions. So here’s author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with answers to the Bible, that’ll make you free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hey Peter.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey. Happy Friday.

Steve Brown:
Happy Friday to you.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah man.

Steve Brown:
It is a happy Friday, if you don’t have to preach on Sunday. You know, my weekends have gone from being a dark, dismal, anxious, frightening time to I can hardly wait, T.G.I.F.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, that’s because you would fly in on Friday afternoon and still have a sermon to do.

Steve Brown:
Well, you did the same thing. It about killed both of us.

Pete Alwinson:
I know. Right.

Steve Brown:
Alright. That’s Pete Alwinson and be sure and go to ForgeTruth.com. There is really good stuff there. And has your audio book come out yet?

Pete Alwinson:
Not yet. Not yet.

Steve Brown:
But it’s recorded.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s recorded.

Steve Brown:
And it’s in process right now.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
I’ll let you know when Like Father, Like Son comes out and it’s audio version. Pete comes in as you know, on Fridays and he’s been doing that for years. And we answer questions together. It’s sort of a spread the guilt enterprise, that takes place here. If you’re mad at me, I say Pete did it. And if you’re mad at Pete, he said I did it. And it works for both of us. And we love getting your questions, seriously. You can ask you a question, 24 seven, by just dialing 1-800-KEY-LIFE and then record your question and we sometimes put those on the air, your own voice. You can write to

Key Life Network

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In Canada, it’s

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And you can always email us at [email protected] and those places, and you knew I was going to say this, are places where if the Spirit should move you, you could make a contribution to Key Life. And if that should happen, I promise you, that we will squeeze every dime for the glory of God. We’re a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And we are very careful and faithful with your gifts. So help us, if you can, if you can’t, we understand, say a prayer for us, Pete, why don’t you pray for us, and then we’ll get to some of these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
Alright. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for meeting us at the end of this week. Thank you, as we come into your presence, that you are the God who is, was, the God who is always in charge, the God who will come again. Lord Jesus in human flesh to judge the living and the dead. Thank you for the reality of who you are, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We worship you, we need you, we come into your presence and we ask that you would meet us even at a time right now, when we’re doing Q&A, Lord. It’s the end of the week. You’ve been in charge, but Lord, we need to know you’re in charge. We need to trust you more. And we need to worship. So, we pray for our pastors and teachers our priests our worship directors our leaders, all those that will stand before us and bring us into your presence. We pray that you would be honored and glorified, and that we would hear what you have to say. Teach us more about your grace and lead us to worship with our lives. So Father, now we commit this time to you, pray that you would be honored in it in this time of Q&A. In Jesus’ strong name we pray. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, this first question is an e-mail, and by the way, I was looking down, earlier, some of these questions, we have two or three that have to do with Trinitarian issues, theological insights. And pretty good questions too. We’ll do one today and maybe some of the others later on, maybe another one today. Anyway, this person writes, I know and believe that the persons of the Trinity are equal in their attributes. I also know that Jesus is the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit is given to believers to guide them through sanctification. What then is the function of God, the Father, that is not also a function or a role of either the two persons of the Trinity. How is the Father different from the other two persons? Well, he’s retired, you know, he’s letting his kids take over, and is that heresy of the first order,

Pete Alwinson:
Oh man.

Steve Brown:
or what?

Pete Alwinson:
But I can imagine someone saying it, Steve. So why not? You say it here.

Steve Brown:
That’s right. That in any, what I just said, erase, that is so unbiblical and so heretical that I can’t believe I even made a joke of it. But talk to us a little bit about that.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, you, and you can clean up the heresy here, right? So, so as we think of one God in three persons, they are all involved in all the same things.

Steve Brown:
Exactly.

Pete Alwinson:
And yet, there is, we tend to, as you read Scripture, you tend to see, sort of this idea that God is the, God the Father is the Creator. The Son is the Redeemer, the Spirit, the comforter and applier of redemption in our hearts. And yet, Jesus also creates, we thought, we see, and the Spirit is

Steve Brown:
John 1

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And then the Spirit of God is hovering right there over the surface of the deep in Genesis 1. So they’re all involved in the same thing. How are, what would John Frame say in his systematic theology? Wouldn’t he say something like? What was his word? Triver um, Well, he would, triperspectivalism.

Steve Brown:
That’s it. He did the, he applied that to everything.

Pete Alwinson:
He does. I know, but in the reality, this whole issue of the whole idea of the Godhead, I think he would say, speak of systematic theology being focusing upon God, the Father, as the Supreme King, the Sovereign King of Heaven and Earth. I think he might, he might say that would be one of the uniquenesses that we would say of God, the Father. What do you think of that?

Steve Brown:
No, that would work. And I think the confusion is because the Trinity is so right. And it rings so true, but it gets kind of funny, because it’s the Trinity. And it’s a brand new doctrine, that people haven’t understood until the Bible revealed it. And in that sense, God has all of those attributes. And so does the Spirit. And so does the Son. But as you described it, there is a difference. So we’re back to the original statement of what the Trinity is, three, one, one, three.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And if you go further than that, you get into heresy.

Pete Alwinson:
You do. You do. And, and, and fascinating, I find it fascinating that John Calvin, in some of these complexities, as much abuse as he is taken from people, he really was a humble student of God’s word. And he said, you know, we can’t go much further than what the Bible says on these doctrines, or we get into trouble.

Steve Brown:
And so wise, as he was in so many areas, he’s been so mis-characterized by so many people, that have never read Calvin.

Pete Alwinson:
Well, he wore a funny hat and he had a strange beard.

Steve Brown:
Well, let me go to this. There’s another question here, was Jesus both divine and human from all of eternity? If Jesus was both divine and fully human from all of eternity, does that mean that humanity in some sense, is eternal?

Pete Alwinson:
Alright, you’re, what do you think?

Steve Brown:
Well, I wouldn’t go exactly there, but I think man is eternal. I think there is well, eternal life is at least given, so Christians are eternal in that sense, and that goes in a different direction than I think the divinity of Christ goes. I think he was divine from all of eternity.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
Scripture teaches that over and over again from Revelation, from Genesis to Revelation. Jesus entered time and space,

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
from a place that was not time and space, eternity. And so, you didn’t have him leaving one place and going to another place and then praying to himself while he was in the other place. That’s crazy. And the Bible doesn’t teach it, but the lamb of God was slain from the foundation of the earth. And he was the Creator from the foundation of the earth. He is eternally the second person of the Trinity. But I don’t know if I’d go so far as the implications that are drawn from this.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, I think in some way, even though all of this was in the mind and plan of God, we can’t say that human beings are eternal in the same sense that God is eternal, but we will experience eternal life, because of Jesus, here on out, we will.

Steve Brown:
Okay. Not necessarily the implication of that, but a good thought.

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
Explain Hebrews 10:26 through 29. We get this a lot. That’s kind of the passage where it says you’re sunk. You know, if you’re saved and you sin after, you’re going to hell, man, and it’s used by a lot of legalists to beat people over the head. This person says I’m a Christian who struggles with sin. Go figure. Right. I sin, and even though I know God’s not mad at me, at times I want to ask him why he’s not, he should be. I’ve earned it.

Pete Alwinson:
I love that.

Steve Brown:
I do too.

Pete Alwinson:
That means, they understand grace.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. They get it. It really is crazy.

Pete Alwinson:
But they really still are struggling with the reality that we sin, and we do. And, the Hebrews text, really is for the person, I think that hears the Gospel, knows that Jesus is the Messiah, probably from a Jewish Christian perspective or, and he’s probably been around the Jewish Christians, but he’s not there, his heart, he hasn’t made a commitment.

Steve Brown:
Exactly.

Pete Alwinson:
And so he’s playing fast loose with this whole thing.

Steve Brown:
Well, and you have to interpret all Scripture, by all Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
Exactly.

Steve Brown:
You can’t take a verse out of context. That’s what very shallow people do and they use it to win their argument by bringing up one verse without referencing the whole counsel of God. John says in one of the letters that they went out from among us, because they were not a part of it.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
And that’s what you just described, and what you find in Hebrews, it’s not talking about a believer who sins, if that were true, it would contradict everything in Romans and Galatians.

Pete Alwinson:
Absolutely.

Steve Brown:
And so, we know it’s not saying that.

Pete Alwinson:
Preach it man. Hey, so what you’ve said is that of a pastor and here we’re kind of speaking to our brothers. If you’re a pastor and you use this to hammer somebody with, as a Christian, don’t do it.

Steve Brown:
Don’t do that, because that’s playing with the lambs that God has given you as a sub, under a shepherd. Gotta be careful about those sort of things. Well, we’re about out of time. We’ve got about 10 seconds. You want to sing for us?

Pete Alwinson:
No, that would end the program, permanently.

Steve Brown:
Hey, we love for you to be with us. We like these questions and answers. We like your questions and you. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.