Theological term
Eternal Subordination of the Son
7 sermons · All terms
CTF 2025: What Are the Modern Day Issues With the Trinity?
Two ministers survey the modern doctrinal errors threatening a right understanding of the Trinity, contrasting them with the robust trinitarianism of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689 LBCF) Chapter 2. The discussion identifies the eternal subordination of the Son controversy, Arianism, Sabellianism, and social trinitarianism as recurring and contemporary departures from orthodox Trinitarian confession. Particular attention is given to the Confession's insistence on the one will and one operation of God, against models that fracture the divine unity by assigning separate wills or discrete percentages of action to each person.
CTF 2025 - What Are the Modern Day Issues With the Trinity?
This preview conversation addresses two recurring categories of Trinitarian error — subordinationism and social Trinitarianism — that the Classical Theism and the Faith 2025 conference will treat. The speakers ground their discussion in 1689 LBCF Chapter 2, particularly paragraph 3, arguing that the eternal Son is fully equal with the Father (contra eternal subordination of the Son), and that the divine persons share one will and one operation (contra social Trinitarianism and tritheism). The practical stakes are high: errors in Trinitarian theology distort both worship and social ethics, and confessional churches must arm their people with the historic biblical formulation.
2LCF Chapter 2 - Of God and of the Holy Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is the capstone of the confession's treatment of God, asserting that the one divine and infinite being eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — three subsistences of one substance, power, and eternity, each possessing the whole divine essence undivided. This session works through six confessional affirmations: that Trinitarian monotheism excludes tritheism; that confessing one God in three persons is no contradiction; that the persons do not collectively comprise God in fractional parts; that the persons are distinguished solely by their eternal relations of origin; that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are fully co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial; and that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a cold academic exercise but the very foundation of all communion with God and comfortable dependence on Him.
The Incarnation of the Word
John 1:14 declares that the eternal Word — the second person of the Trinity, who was in the beginning with God and was God — became flesh and dwelt among men. This sermon expounds the incarnation under two heads: first, the identity and reality of the Word taking on true humanity (the hypostatic union of two complete natures in one person), and second, the glory of that Word as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The incarnation is shown to be the indispensable ground of redemption — whatever is not assumed is not redeemed — and sinners are urged to flee to a mediator who is full, not miserly, in grace and truth.
The Great Commission, Part 3
Matthew 28:19 commands that disciples be baptized into the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — a text that stands as one of Scripture's clearest witnesses to the doctrine of the Trinity. This sermon works through the baptismal formula to establish what the one name and three persons require the Christian to confess: one divine essence, three distinct subsistences, free from the errors of tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism. The active obedience of Christ is exposited as the ground of the righteousness imputed to sinners in justification, showing that the gospel itself is inseparable from a right doctrine of God. The congregation is urged to study the confession's chapters on theology proper and Christology, and to hold the doctrine of the Trinity as a white-knuckle conviction worth dying for.
Free Grace Baptist Church - November 20, 2016 AM
Philippians 2:6–11 contains one of the richest Christological confessions in all of Scripture, composed within two decades of the resurrection and already rehearsing Christ's pre-incarnate divine majesty, his voluntary humiliation, and his subsequent exaltation. This sermon opens the 'anatomy' of Paul's hymn to Christ as to God, establishing two foundational realities: the structural movement of the text from loftiness to lowliness to supreme exaltation, and the full, unqualified deity and equality of the Son with the Father. The church is called to hide these truths in their hearts against every heresy that diminishes Christ, and to find in his condescension the very ground and pattern of Christian humility and unity.
2LCF Chapter 27 - Of the Communion of Saints
What does it mean for believers to share communion with one another, and on what foundation does that communion rest? Working through 2LCF Chapter 27, paragraphs 1 and 2, this study establishes that the communion of the saints flows necessarily from the believer's union with Christ: because every saint is vitally joined to the same head, they are thereby joined to one another. The chapter's two qualifications — that union with Christ does not divinize the believer, and that spiritual communion does not abolish private property — guard the doctrine against historic errors ranging from pantheism to Anabaptist collectivism. The practical weight falls on concrete duties: faithful attendance at corporate worship, private mutual edification, material relief of the needy, and a willingness to extend fellowship beyond one's own congregation to all who call on the name of Christ.