Sabellians, Scripture, and joy in the Spirit
As you’ll hear more of in my imminent prayer letter, one of my recent endeavours has been to meet up with the CF executive in pairs or triplets to talk through their 1-1 partnerships, read the Bible with them, and cover some basic doctrine. Today (Thursday at time of writing) I met up with the pair that included our treasurer who attends a church that openly preaches Unitarianism (the understanding of God being exclusively one with no distinct persons of Father, Son, and Spirit) – and if my surmising is correct, unitarianism of a Sabellian bent (where God plays different ‘roles’ or displays different ‘faces’ when the Bible speaks of distinct persons).
Confused yet? Anyway, I met up with her and another on our exec to look at the doctrine of the trinity (the first of our basic doctrine studies). I was expecting trouble …and was instead surprised with delighted looks on both their faces as they grasped the beauty of our adoption into God’s family through the Spirit of the Son at work in us (Romans 8). As has happened so many times in the short time I’ve been here, these girls submitted themselves to the plain truth of Scripture without hesitation and were visibly overjoyed when they understood more of who God is and what He has done. My spirit cannot but leap for joy whenever I see the wonder in their eyes as God reveals something new from His Word…
Posted: May 18, 04:55 AM Category: USP
Tags for this article: bible, cf, discipleship, doctrine
J · May 18, 06:40 PM
Ooops, sorry guys…i’ve just been corrected over my use of terms. Apparently ‘unitarianism’ and ‘modalism’ are two separate streams of thought and it’s incorrect to lump one under the other. Ignore the fancy terms…she understand God better =)
jimi · May 19, 08:23 AM
Booh yah! (i.e. Praise be to the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit!)
Michael · Jun 17, 09:56 PM
Nice…
katty · Jul 24, 08:05 AM
oh joel
sorry to be sappy, but seriously that almost made me tear up
thats just so beautiful