LBCF 1689 Reflections (Part 50)

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Reflections on the Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. 23 Aug 14 began a perhaps unbroken, orderly, and personal journey through my favorite written confession of faith. This will be my personal reflections on this beloved written codification of the Christian Faith which is according to a Baptist flavor.

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Chapter 4, paragraph 1a: “In the beginning it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…”

That all three members of the Godhead were present in creation is important. It was not any one of the members acting independently of the others that produced material. It was God. It was God, the triune God. We see indications of plurality even in the Hebrew Old Covenant many times.

For instance consider the start of Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” To whom is he speaking? He, a Spirit only at that time, and not fleshly, yet says to these others of “our” “…Let us make man in Our image…” This is the triune God referring to that image of which all of man is created? What are we said to be made in the image of? Of God. There is only one God, and he had this conversation with himself (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in the beginning of us all. We are not made in the image of angels. Angels are not man, though it is sure that several do look as we do (Gabriel, Michael, several at Jesus’ tomb and present after his Ascension, etc.).

Looking back we know that God’s full revelation in the Son would make all things plain to the church reference God’s three-ness. He revealed God in un-paralleled ways.

Jesus, the one whose hands were nailed to a tree, formed the first tree. He is fully God. He was present at creation. Jesus is the Word. And so we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made”. John 1:1-3.