Today, we are going to be talking about an essential doctrine of our belief as Christians and one that many have struggled to understand. This is the doctrine of the Trinity. This is the idea that God has revealed himself in a unity of 3 distinct persons, each fully divine, that we call The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The early church put it this way in what is now called the Athanasian Creed:
“that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence.”
Over the years, there’s been a lot of discussion about what the Trinity is and is not, and some, in an attempt to simplify things, have created versions of it that actually devalue God as a whole. Before we get deep into this, I need us all to be comfortable with the fact that God is what people call “ineffable,” or not something that can’t be truly described. This is because who and what God is are different from who and what we are.
Illustration: We live in what we know to be 3D Space. We understand reality as up, down, forward, and backwards. Science refers to it as the X, Y, and Z axes. In 2d space, you have only left, right, up, and down. This is called the X and Y axes.
If I hold up a Rubik’s Cube and shine a light on it onto a piece of paper, you’ll see the 3D shape displayed as a 2D object. But as we observe the 2D shape, we notice differences. First, we don’t see the shapes and distinctions of the Rubik’s Cube. the 90 degree sharp angles are suddenly not so sharp and are a bit off. We can see that this is the reflection of the Rubik’s Cube, but it seems off.
Now imagine you’re a being living in 2D. If this is all you saw, you could draw assumptions about what the rubix cube, but you could not fully comprehend the 3D object because you’ve never actually beheld a 3D object.
When we discuss what God is, we see shadows of it in the scriptures and in the evidence we see in the natural world. But we can’t fully understand because we don’t exist in the same realm or plane as God.
So now let’s break down what we mean by the trinity and how the scriptures express it.
First, we are a monotheistic faith that fully affirms that there is only ONE God. We affirm what is said in Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
So then what is God? What can we discover as we look at this subject as 2D creatures? First, there are 3 parts of the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
These 3 are distinct persons with distinct personalities and jobs or roles. Keep in mind i’m not saying they are 3 different people, but 3 centers of consciousness. This is an odd thing to say, but remember we are looking at a 3D object in a 2D space.
The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Holy Spirit or the Father. The Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
What they are, however, is God. Meaning The Father is God, Jesus is God, and Holy Spirit is God.
This is where we say that they are 3 distinct persons, but one essence. They are coequal (having the same power and importance) and coeternal (having existed the exact same amount of time). Some, trying to condense God into human terms, have suggested that God is one being who wears 3 different hats. A father hat at times, a son hat at times, and then the spirit hat at others. This is an ancient heresy called sabelliansim which some modern groups have adopted in part. They may call it the “oneness” doctrine.
Why can we confidently say that all 3 are separate persons that exist at the same time? Because the trinity is displayed throughout the scriptures. In Matthew 3:13-17, we see Jesus getting baptized. Here we see the Father affirming Jesus (the Son) as the Holy Spirit descends like a dove. In this one place alone, we see all 3 persons of God in one scene. Separate and active.
So we can affirm that there are 3 distinct persons, but how can we say that they are all 3 God? After all there are several cults and groups that fall into what we call “arianism” that teach that sure, there’s God, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God themselves.
First, let’s make it clear that the Father is God. In the earlier passage (Matthew 16), we discussed Jesus’ Baptism, and we see God speaking, “This is my son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased.” In 1 Peter 1:2, we see this language, “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,”
Now what about Jesus? In Colossians 2:8-9, Paul is dealing with a group who are questioning the authority of Jesus, saying that you need Jesus plus something else. Here, he says this.
See to it that there is no one who takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception in accordance with human tradition, in accordance with the elementary principles of the world, rather than in accordance with Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
In Titus 2:13, we see Jesus described as “…our great God and Savior…”
Still, some would argue that they are ok with the idea that Jesus may be divine, but they argue that He’s a created being, which would suggest he’s more like an angel than God Himself. Let’s look at John 1.
V1-2: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Here we see the Word being separate from God but also Being God. Now, to be clear, in verse 14, John reveals that the Word is Jesus. But here we see both the aspects of Personhood (the son and the father), yet they are one essence as God.
So what about the Holy Spirit? Some believe the Holy Spirit to be some sort of “force” or “a thing” rather than a person. But in Acts 5, we see a couple lie about what they are giving in an attempt to look more Holy. In verse 3, Peter tells them that they lied “to the Holy Spirit,” and then in verse 4 he says, “you have not lied to man but to God.” Peter clearly believed the Holy Spirit and God were one and the same.
In Genesis, we see the Spirit of God actively involved in the creation of the world.
So we’ve established that there are 3 distinct persons, and the scriptures show that each person is, in fact, God.
So why does this affect us?
First off, we need to have a proper understanding of the Trinity because if someone comes and says they believe in Jesus, but claims that Jesus is a created being who was just a prophet or was just another angel, then they aren’t worshiping the true Jesus.
Second, the trinity tells us that God is, at his very core, relational. Scriptures tell us that God is love, and in the Trinity, we see that selfless love has existed since the beginning of time. That love created each of us individually, that love sacrificed greatly so that you could be part of this relationship with God as his children.
Third, understanding who God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is can greatly affect our worship and our we enteract with the Lord in our day to day. To close out, we sang a song called “Doxology.” This is a song that affected me greatly years ago when I was in college. the song is simple. It beigns by proclaiming praise for God above all. The the verse ends by declaring praise for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In college I found myself in a place where i felt alone. But as I listened to this song with a recent understanding fo the Trinity, I began to realize i was not alone. When I sing praise, when I worship God; I am enteracting with the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost at all times.
This is the song we sang together:
Adventures in Student Ministry 