“Then comes the end, when He [Jesus] hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He [Jesus] has abolished all rule and all authority and power, for He [Jesus] must reign until He [Jesus] has put all His enemies under His [Father’s] feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death…But when He says, ‘All things are put in subjection,’ it is evident that He [Father] is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him [Jesus]. When all things are subjected to Him [Jesus], then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One [Father] who subjected all things to Him [Jesus], so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15:24-28)
I am admittedly about to enter into an area of some speculation here, but I feel as Paul did when he said, “This is my opinion…but I think that I also have the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 7). So, let the reader be advised to “examine all things and hold fast to the truth.” One of the earliest truths written in Scriptures refers to the Trinitarian nature of God, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” (Gen. 1). That “Us” is later described as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and they are three but at the same time one. I prefer to think it was a way for God to describe differing offices, positions, or functions of His triune nature rather than three separate entities or persons. At any rate we’re about to swim into the deep end, so put on your goggles.
The distinct functions are not, amongst them, cross-bred. I would propose these functions were made necessary due to one thing God knew was coming from the beginning: the sin of man. Sin made it necessary for a loving Father to send a sacrifice in the form of His Son to reconcile them, and then that Son sending an Agent to thereafter empower and guide them in righteousness through a sinful world: Holy Spirit. Think about it: without sin would these separate functions have been necessary? If Adam and Eve had not fallen from their perfect relationship with God in the Garden, would the offices of Savior and Counselor had been necessary? Someone would have to explain to me why because I would see no reason for it.
To my understanding, the Father could be seen as “the Overseer or Pastor” in a typical church structure. The definition of the word “Pastor” is shepherd, and that’s what the Father seems to do in relationship to the other Two. We’re told the Father sent the Son and when the Son walked this earth, He said He did only as He saw the Father [His Shepherd] doing and spoke only as He heard the Father speak. This seems to be the same relationship the Spirit has to Jesus, Whom the Father also sent and Who speaks as Jesus directs and discloses who Jesus is (John 16). It also seems the Father instigates all things and sets them in motion, much as an Overseer would do. Jesus is the Savior come to earth to pay for the sins of man, usher in the kingdom of heaven on earth, and thereafter guide the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s function is to enter the door opened by Jesus’ sacrifice, to indwell and guide God’s new temples until the day of judgment is passed when we will know Them all “face to face.”
I discussed in part I and II the Three staying in their own lanes, and Jesus being the pivot point of it all because He, according to Paul, uniquely emptied Himself of His rightful place on the throne to pay for sin and rebuild the bridge between man and God that had been all but destroyed thereby. Jesus became the One Who tied everything back together, the new bridge between God and man, and thus Jesus was granted the right by the Father to judge all creation because of His unique experience of both flesh and Spirit, heaven and earth.
But then comes a time I want to focus on here, a time after all has been judged Paul speaks of in 1st Corinthians 15 above, when a fascinating event that seems to signal the end of the Trinity as we know it unfolds. First, as Jesus returns to finally exert dominion and occupancy of the kingdom of man and the world, John tells us Satan’s lease (Matt. 4), granted at the fall, will be terminated, “Then the seventh angel sounded and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever’” (Rev. 11)!
Notice after what transpires in 1st Corinthians 15, there exists no more “Him, His,” or “One,” though those references have been employed many times up to that point in the Scriptures. Now it’s just “God” who becomes all in all. Paul seems to say at “the end” the Godhead will become, simply, “God” so He might be “all in all” throughout the remainder of eternity. How do we get from “Us” to just “God,” with no more need for “Us”? According to Paul, there will be a willing reversal of the granting of domain the Father gave the Son, as “the Son will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him.” In other words, the Father gave all power over man and earth to the Son for reconciling the creation back to Him, a creation He had, again, “stopped caring for” (Heb. 8) prior to the New Covenant being ushered in through Jesus bringing the kingdom to earth and paying the price of blood on the cross. Once that reconciliation is fully complete in heaven, and sin and death have been fully and finally dealt with, can anyone tell me what possible need will be left for the office of a Savior? Who would need to be saved who wasn’t already? I’m not saying there will be no more Jesus, for once again that concept of the Trinity no one understands would muddy the water, just that the office of Savior will no longer be needed. Wouldn’t the Son therefore willingly give all things He was given as a reward for accomplishing that salvation back to the One who initially gave them to Him? But more than that, wouldn’t He relinquish His office in total, there being no more need for it, and just be fully reunited into the oneness of God?
Furthermore, God has always been in the business of giving “new names” after He had touched people, as He did with Abram becoming Abraham and Simon becoming Peter. Another instance of this that is pertinent here happens again in Jesus’ Revelations message to the church of Philadelphia, where He says of Himself, “And I will write on [those who overcome] the name of My God…and My new name” (Rev. 3). What?! Jesus getting a new name?! This could be interpreted one of two ways: either Jesus is saying at the final judgment His saints will get both the name of “His God” [the Father], and also an additional new name Jesus gives them. This is certainly plausible. Or, it means He’s going to write on them the name of His God and also His new name! Given what Paul says in 1st Corinthians 15, would it be illogical to think His new name would be any different than “the name of My God?” Why would that be necessary or logical if at that time Jesus had “subjected Himself to the One who subjected all things to Him?” The answer could be Jesus would have a new name and it would be, simply, “God.”
What of the Spirit when that day comes? John 14 tells us the Spirit was sent from the Father and John 16 tells us the Spirit does not act or speak on His own behalf, but at the behest of Jesus. So, if Jesus subjects Himself to the Father and those two become “God,” would it not make sense the Spirit would undergo the same return, along with the One [the Father] who sent Him in the first place and the One [Jesus] who directed Him in all His affairs thereafter? What would the Spirit have to accomplish when all believers will be face to face with, and in the very presence of, God? What domain will He serve when there is no more need to convict sinners and guide believers, and no more kingdom of man for them to navigate or flesh to battle? Why would men need to be indwelt by the Spirit when they will be completely reunited, in resurrected body and spirit, with the Father and Son who have now become one? As with the office of Savior, what need will there be for the office of Indweller, Teacher, or Counsellor? Doesn’t it make perfect sense that God would be One instead of three, and be “all in all” with no more need for functions or offices for the Persons of the Godhead, when the seeming reason for the triune nature to begin with, sin, is no more and all has been accomplished to reconcile?
Paul said, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, but then we will know fully” (1 Cor. 13). When we come to know fully and are fully known by God—when the kingdom of heaven on earth is complete and “it is accomplished” because it has been reunited with it’s “father” in heaven and we live fully in His very presence, and the mess sin caused that may have been the reason for the triune Godhead to be necessary in the first place is forever dealt with, would it not make sense the Great I AM would become our all and our everything, and there would be no more need of “Us?” No one can say for sure this is how it will go down, but if not how else do you explain this passage? At the end of all things and the beginning of eternity for all the saints redeemed by the Three, Who will be Yo Daddy? It seems just One, the One perfect whole we will be fully reunited with, and in that “One” there will no longer be needed the “Us.”
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