Can a Christian explain this?

Question

22Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:

Jesus(pbuh) was a MAN approved by God. If Jesus is God, did God approve of God? Now don't get mad at me for asking this question because this is confusing.
Take a look:
Numbers 23:19
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

I thought the Trinity was 3 personalities in 1 not 3 entities in 1.

Water cannot be solid, liquid, and gas at the same time.

So why is he worshipped?

Then the Master Jesus, after briefing them, was taken up to heaven, and he sat down beside God in the place of honor.
This is in Mark 16, the last verses.
God is clearly in a different position then Jesus(pbuh).

Answer 1

I think that some people have it wrong, to say that Jesus is god. Jesus never said He was God, but God's son.

Answer 2

Jesus was a man, but He was also God in the flesh.

Consider what Philippians 2 teaches:
" 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
6 Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God
as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form,
8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor
and gave him the name above all other names,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father."

Verse 11 shows that there is a person of the Godhead who is God the Father. Jesus is God, the Son and there is also God, the Holy Spirit. One God in three persons. God the Father and the Spirit do not have physical bodies, God, the Son took on a human body at His birth in order to become the sacrifice for man's sins.

You are right about using water, ice and steam being a poor analogy of the Trinity, it incorrectly teaches a heresy about the nature of God that was condemned many centuries ago called modalism. God is three persons, not three parts or three modes. The Father is not the Son who is not the Spirit. They are co-equal and co-eternal, of the same substance. All three have existed forever together in loving relationship, however the relationship names of Father and Son did not have their full significance until the First Person of the Godhead "begot" the Second Person when He became flesh.

I use the di-unity (2 in 1) nature of marriage to describe. There is 2 persons that make up one marriage -the wife is not the husband, the husband is not the wife. Without both, you'd cease to have a married couple. Even this analogy has its limitations.

I have tried to make it as simple as I can though no human on earth understands it perfectly. It's one of those truths that just is.

Answer 3

The Trinity is a hard concept to understand and a hard concept to explain.

Jesus accepted worship because He is God. It is right to worship Him because it is right to worship God.

When Jesus lived as a man (He was fully God AND fully man), the Bible usually refers to God the Father simply as "God." Yes, God the Father did approve of God the Son. He sent God the Holy Spirit to Jesus when Jesus was baptized, and God the Father spoke His approval over Jesus: "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

The verse in Numbers is an Old Testament verse. At that time Jesus had not been born as a man, although He does show up throughout the Old Testament. Many scholars believe that He was the fourth man in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, for example (Daniel 3:23-25).

The Old Testament verse you quote is making the point that God is not a mere created being, subject to our faults and failures. He does not have our sin nature that we inherited from Adam. He is completely holy and without sin.

As for entities versus personalities, I don't think either of those descriptions quite gets it. God is always all 3; He does not morph from 1 part of the Trinity at a time to another. But He is not 3 separate gods; He is one. It's hard to explain because it's just very different.

The ice, water, steam analogy is imperfect. It's meant to give you an idea of how three things can be different but all the same. God is three, but He is one.

I'm sorry I can't explain it better. It's one of those things where God is too big for us to completely fathom.

But He loves us!!

Answer 4

That is because the (trinity) is a man made idea, because they did not understand the word of the lord. It is very clear that Gods plan was to have Jesus come down from earth in the beginning. Jesus was also the one who under Gods direction created the earth. After he died on the cross he went to sit upon the right hand of God. I suppose those who believe in the trinity also believe God sits on his own right hand. God the Father is one person Jesus is another and the holy Ghost has not yet received a body but is the third in the God head. All of them think alike. How and why is that they are all three perfect and have all knowledge. But that does not mean that they are one entity.

Answer 5

As I said Earlier PBUH Is Not Enough.
Seek To Be Saved By The Blood Of Jesus, Then You Will Understand All.

Answer 6

Yep, the passage is referring to God the Father. It does not deny that Jesus is God or that Jesus is just a man. Other verses make clear that Jesus is creator of all things, savior, judge, and a whole host of other attributes that God alone possess.

Answer 7

Like it or not... Jesus is God.
He came down here to save and give the message that God... is not some far-off immortal that hardly cares for the needs of man and only intervenes when he is displeased.
What better way than to identify himself as one of us than to come down as a man? Think: if he had come down as God, the people would have feared him, yes, but is that all he wants?
No. The people would never understand his message of love if he came down as God.
He is... fully man, and yet fully God.
God approved of his obedience as a man, for men, after all, are rather prone to feelings of rebellion, and he was fully man.
Then what prove do I have that Jesus is God?
The tomb was empty. He had risen, and this I believe without doubt. No one else has power over death. No one else has the power to forgive.

Answer 8

Well as a child it was explained to me like this: an egg has three parts. The shell, the white, and the yolk yet all of it is one. The Trinity is the same way.
However as far as how each part of the trinity of God thinks and acts seemingly separately they really don't. But we are but mere mortals without divine comprehension so to try to understand exactly how it works is simply futile. We are humans we must believe with faith.

Answer 9

Paul was writting a letter he was not God he is just trying in that letter to show Jesus was working out God's purpose on earth. H2O may not be water ice and steam all at one time but it can be each in different places.. Jesus was a man on earth but filled with the holy spirit and their for the son of God while in human form.

Answer 10

The Trinity consists of three separate parts:
God the Father, Jesus Christ who is the Word of the Father, and the Holy Spirit.
Of course the Word of God is separate of the Father, but it is of the Father, which is why he is called "the SON of God".

Answer 11

John Chapter 1 verses 1 & 2 explains who Jesus was and where He came from.