For a long time I have thought, “I need to preach on the Trinity.” The trigger for that was when I was in a church conference and heard a pastor, in his prayer, thank the Father for “coming to earth to die for our sins”. I thought, “The Father did not die. The Son did. Jesus did. This man is a pastor! He should know better.” Since that time I have noticed how frequently that sort of thing happens. We address the Father in prayer, but we don’t really have a consciousness of speaking to the Father in particular, in distinction from the Son. Just recently, as a group of friends was gathered for lunch, I mentioned to someone that I was planning to address this doctrine of the Trinity, and I told him what I have just told you, about praying to the Father but speaking to him as to Jesus. This friend said, “Oh, I’ve never noticed that people do that.” Just a few moments later the host prayed, “Father, thank you for your resurrection.” I opened my eyes, and the fellow I had just talked to was smiling. Now he knew what I meant.
I do not fault us for praying in such a fashion, after all, God is gracious. What it reveals, however, is that this doctrine of the Trinity, which Christians have for centuries affirmed, a doctrine which most of us would also affirm, is nevertheless a doctrine we do not consider, understand, or incorporate into our faith in a real way. Thoughtful consideration of this doctrine will deepen our worship, our prayer, and our love for each other.
Let me say at the outset that the doctrine of the Trinity can be taught, but not explained. That is, I can tell you what the doctrine is, and why we know it is a true doctrine. What I cannot do is explain it in such a way as to have us wrap our minds around it and fully understand it. The Trinity is a mystery. That should not bother us too much. The very nature of God is such that we would expect certain things about him to remain beyond our ability to understand. Deuteronomy 29:29 says The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones calls the doctrine of the trinity “the most mysterious and most difficult of all Biblical doctrines.” Some things are – and will remain – a mystery, received by faith. The Trinity belongs to that category.
We encounter the doctrine when people ask questions like, “How could Jesus be God and the Son of God at the same time?” or, “So when Jesus prayed, did he pray to himself?” We have tried to understand the Trinity by means of analogy: that
the Trinity is like water, ice and steam, which are different forms of the same substance, H20. Another analogy is the egg, in which three parts – yolk, egg white, and shell – make up the one egg. Both of these analogies, however, are not only not helpful, but misleading.
The word Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible. But the church came to understand that Scripture witnesses to a God who is Tri-Une, that is, a God who is One, and who is Three. The Creeds and confessions of the Churches affirm this.
The Athanasian Creed, composed in the fifth century, states:
This is our faith: That we worship one God in trinity, and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit is another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal.
Later it goes on to say:
Just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually as both Lord and God, so our religion forbids us to say that there are three gods or lords.
Similarly, the Belgic Confession of the sixteenth century affirms:
In keeping with this truth and Word of God, we believe in one God, who is one single essence, in whom there are three persons, really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties – namely, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This is the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Again, the word ‘Trinity’ does not appear in Scripture, but Christians were led to this doctrine as they sought to understand several strands of Biblical truth, which we will now briefly explore.
The first of these strands is the Biblical teaching concerning the One-ness of God.
This means not only that there is only One God, but that God is himself, One.
The emphasis in the Old Testament especially, is that there is only one God. Every other religion of the ancient world postulated many gods: gods of war, gods of fertility, gods of rain and storm, sun-gods, moon-gods, and animal gods.
The constant danger for God’s people Israel was the danger of poly-theism, that is, many gods. They were always embracing the so-called “gods” of their neighbouring nations, engaging in idol worship, and so on. God’s prophets continually came to the people and said, “No! There is only one God, one God who created all things, one LORD over all that exists.”
“You shall have no other gods before me” is the first of the Ten Commandments, and the Old Testament witness is not that there are many gods and God wants to be on top, but that other “gods” , are false gods, or better: non-gods, not gods at all. There is only one God and therefore no other ‘god’ is to be worshipped.
Deuteronomy 4:35 says, The LORD is God; besides Him there is no other.
Also in verse 39, The LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.
Psalm 86:10, You alone are God.
Isaiah 44:6, This is what the LORD says, ‘Apart from me there is no God’.
The Old Testament is riddled with such statements and is adamant that there is only one God. There is one God.
Deuteronomy 6:4 is known as the ‘shema’ and was recited daily by the Jews. It reads, Hear oh Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is One.
God is one, and even as we affirm the Trinity, we speak of God as “he”, not “they”. The one-ness of God – that there is one God, and that God is One – is the fundamental truth of Scripture and the unquestioned core belief of Israel’s faith and it was accepted as such by Christians.
The second strand of Biblical truth that Christians sought to understand was that in the Bible, there are three distinct persons who are called “God”.
There is the Father. Usually when we read in Scripture about “God” or “the LORD”, in the Old Testament particularly, it is God the Father who is in view. So, when Jesus came, speaking of God as His Father, everyone understood Him to be referring to the God of Israel and the God who is above all. In fact, our language of addressing God as “Father” comes to us primarily because of Jesus.
We pray, “Our Father is heaven”, for example. He is our Father. He is also the “Father of Lord Jesus Christ”, in Ephesians 1:3.
But there is also God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus claimed that he and the Father were one. A number of His miracles were clearly intended to demonstrate His divinity and again. Jesus spoke of His pre-existence with God. He spoke of his angels. He claimed for Himself that which was God’s prerogative, including the right to forgive sins and judge all humanity.
The apostles witnessed to Jesus as God. “My LORD and my God”, Thomas said to Him. “All things were created by him” says John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1. Jesus is “Our great God and Saviour”, says Titus 2;13. The unmistakable testimony of the New Testament is that Jesus Christ, is God.
Then, also, there is God the Holy Spirit. He is the real and personal reality of God active in God’s people. The Holy Spirit is the divine personality, distinct from both the Father and the Son. He is the “SPIRIT OF GOD’ in the Old Testament, for example in Genesis 1, the creation account, where the Spirit of God “hovered” or “brooded” over the primordial waters.
In Acts 5, when Ananias and Sapphira in their greed, try to deceive the apostles for their own financial gain, Peter says, “How is that Satan has so filled your hear that you have lied to the Holy Spirit“, and then he immediately says, “You have not lied to men but to God”.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit. . . all are God.
Yet they are distinct from each other. So the third strand of Biblical truth the early Christians wrestled with is that concerning the three-ness of God.
For though the three are one, the three are not identical with each other. Jesus spoke of both the Father and the Spirit as distinct from Himself. Jesus prayed to the Father. The Spirit would testify in our hearts concerning Christ, and so on.
Then there are the numerous Scriptures that link the three persons. For example, of Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit descends on Him, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved son”, in Luke 3:22. We have the baptismal formula of Matthew 28, where the disciples are instructed to baptize in the name (not names) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In John 14:26, Jesus tells His followers that the Father will send the Holy Spirit, in the name of Jesus. Paul’s benediction in 2 Corinthians 13 – “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
All three were at work in creation: God the Creator, as His spirit hovered over the waters, created all things by and through Jesus Christ.
All three work together in salvation: the Father elects and decrees salvation, Jesus effects it, the Holy Spirit applies it or makes it real in and to us.
So, we have the three, distinct from each other, three persons, yet one God.
In our efforts to understand this, Christians have tended to drift into one of two errors. So, let me mention quickly what the Doctrine of the Trinity is not.
As we have said already in different words, the Doctrine of the Trinity is not Tri-theism. That is, there are not three gods. Though we affirm the deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Christians are none the less firmly mono-theistic. The central affirmation of Judaism, out of which Christianity arose, is our affirmation as well:
There is one God, and God is one. God is not “they”, but “he”. There are not three gods, but one.
Related to this is the truth that there are not three parts to God. This is why the analogy of one egg being made up of yolk, white, and shell is misleading. The Father is not 1/3 of God, Jesus another 1/3, and the Holy Spirit another 1/3, and together they make up God. Somehow, and this is mystery, all that is God is Jesus, all that is God is the Father, and so with the Spirit.
There are not three gods, nor is each person of the Trinity a mere fraction of the whole. We fall into these errors when we emphasize the three-ness of God over the one-ness of God.
The opposite error is to emphasize the one-ness over the three-ness. In this error we say, “Well, at times God revealed Himself as Father, at other times He was revealed as a Son, and then later as the Holy Spirit.” This heresy, or error, is called “modalism”, and suggests that God has three hats, and he wears one hat at a time, depending on his purpose. This is the error of the water analogy, with its’ three modes of water, ice, and steam. It can only be one at a time.
But as we’ve seen, God did not merely wear three different hats, one at a time. For Jesus prayed to His Father as distinct from Himself, and so on.
The Doctrine of the Trinity is not Tri-theism (three gods). Nor is it Modalism (God appearing in three ways). Rather there is one God, in three persons. The one-ness of God and the three-ness of God exist in our minds in tension, but we affirm their truth as revealed in Scripture, acknowledge the mystery and receive it by faith.
This truth the fathers of the early church were led to as they considered what the Scriptures revealed. They arrived at it by considering the three strands of Biblical truth, concerning the one-ness of God, the deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the three-ness of God.
It is mystery. We cannot understand it, and cannot, therefore, explain it. But we believe it, and teach it as Biblical truth.
You may ask: “If it’s mystery, why bother with it? Why not stick to what we can grasp?”
The answer is that this doctrine has specific implications for us. We want to mention two.
First, it has implications regarding the nature of community.
As Christians, the Bible tells us that we are bound together in relationship with each other. That though we are many, yet we are one. In this we reflect the very
nature of God, and as we reflect on the Trinity, we know the nature of community as we are called to it with each other.
The nature of community is, for example, love. God is love, says 1 John 4, and love by nature has an object. That is, love is lavished upon someone or something. God did not create us because He needed someone to love. God is Himself a community of love: the Father loves the Son and glorifies Him, the Son loves the Father and delights to serve Him, and the Spirit seeks to glorify the Father and the Son. Love is by nature self-sacrificial, and in the Trinity we see the three persons delighting in one another, in a perfectly eternally fulfilling love.
The nature of community is also unity, one-ness. In fact, the word com-munity means “to be one with”. God is one. There is an essential one-ness in the Trinity, a unity of essence.
Christians are one, not just metaphorically, but truly. We are one because the one Spirit of God lives in us. We have been made one “in Christ”. More than that, the Bible says we are partakers of the divine nature. We do not become God, but God has drawn us into the unity enjoyed by the Father, Son, and Spirit. That unity we are to experience and foster in our relationships with each other. Jesus prayed for us in John 17, “May they be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you.”
Just as there is one God, so we are to be one. Thus, our shallowness of relationship, our petty conflicts, our lack of care for one another reflect badly on God’s own character, which we are called to reflect.
Then also, the nature of community is diversity. There is diversity within the Trinity, and there is within the church. We are distinct from one another, and we work together. Our gifts and natures complement one another. We celebrate our uniqueness even as we are one with each other. God celebrates our uniqueness, too, and it is a reflection on the Trinity, namely that, though each of us is made in God’s image, none of us are the same.
Diversity and unity are not exclusive of each other.
With all our differences, we can still love one another and grow into an even greater and deeper one-ness, and taste the deep community that we long for, were made for, and see expressed in the community of three persons that is God Himself. Contemplation of the Trinity calls to understand and experience the nature of community. Our community is the first implication of this doctrine.
The second has to do with prayer.
Contemplating the Trinity helps us cultivate a deeper and more thoughtful prayer life. We avoid the errors of thanking the Father for dying on the cross. We stop praying to generic “God” and enter into conversation with a person.
If the one to whom we pray is indistinct, then our very praying becomes a vague exercise.
It is, of course, appropriate to pray to each person of the Trinity, but the Biblical pattern is that we pray to the Father, enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit, because of the redeeming work of Christ..
Knowledge of the Trinity can deepen our experience of God in prayer.
That then, is an overview of the doctrine of the Trinity, and what it means for us. Though it is a mystery, beyond our human ability to understand fully, it can nevertheless move us to a deeper experience of God and a richer life of faith, lived in community with each other.
Martin-Lloyd-Jones, a British pastor and preacher of half a century ago, said, “May I beg of you, do not try to understand all this with your minds. It is for us humbly and as little children to receive the truth as it is revealed; to stand in worship, in adoration and amazement. It is beyond us, but it is true.”
Amen.