THE TRIUNE GOD …Three in One and One in Three!

The concept of the Trinity is one of the great mysteries of the Bible.

The Bible teaches that for all of eternity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have always been known to be in relationship and communication with one another, yet not as three “Gods” but one God.

This doctrine of a TRIUNE GOD, otherwise referred to as the Trinity is very foundational to the Christian faith, absolutely essential to New Testament Christianity and tangential to a proper understanding of what God really is, how He relates to us, and how we too, should relate to Him.  But that knowledge also raises many difficult questions, such as:

How can God be both one and three?  Is the Trinity a contradiction?  If Jesus is God, why do the Gospels record instances where he prayed to God?

Although sometimes, our finite minds may not fully understand everything about such concepts as the Trinity (or anything else), it is still possible to answer questions like these and come to a solid grasp of what it means for God to be three in one.  While we may not also fully understand or explain this mystery of God, which is nevertheless a fact, we are oftentimes compelled by the accepted truths of our religion, settled and coded in our professed creeds and confessions to accept the truths found in them, Word of God by faith even when we cannot fully comprehend them.  (Read Hebrews 11: 1, 3, 6 and I Corinthians 2: 5-10, 14; 13: 12).

It is really not surprising that the infinite God should be complex in His nature beyond the ability of finite humans to comprehend!

Every human being is believed to be living in a three-dimensional world, where one person can look like someone else, or behave like someone else, or even sound like someone else, but would never be the same as the other person; because they are distinct individuals.  God, however, lives without the limitations of that three-dimensional concept.  He is spirit; (NOT A SPIRIT) and is infinitely more complex than we are.

That is why Jesus the Son can be different from the Father or the Holy Spirit and yet be the same as both.

In Romans 11: 34, the Bible says, “Who among us can know the mind of the Lord?”  God’s character is so enormous that, some of us, with our limited minds, cannot comprehend all that He is.  The Bible clearly speaks of:  God the Son, God the Father, and God the Holy Spirit; but emphasizes that there is only ONE God.

As a way of acknowledging that mystery which the Bible reveals to us about God, we as Christians, have come to believe that, this God is one, but somewhat manifested in three “Persons” having the same essence of deity.

Were we to explain triune nature of God from the perspective of Science, we could give human illustrations for the Trinity, such as H20 being water, ice and steam (all different forms, but yet – light, heat and radiation.  (Three distinct aspects, but in only one Sun).  If viewed from the mathematical perspective, the Triune God would rather be interpreted as 1x1x1=1 instead of being 1+1+1 = 3.

Viewed from a linguistic, etymological perspective, the word TRINITY is made up of two root words connected by a third – “Tri” meaning three, and “Unity” meaning one; i.e. three uniting to become one, resulting in Tri+Unity + Trinity.

From the very beginning we see God as a Trinity.  In the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, God says, “Let us make man in our image … male and female he created them.”  We can see here a mixture of plural and singular pronouns.

The doctrine of a Triune or 3-in-1 God, nicknamed “the Trinity” means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Stated differently, God is one in essence and three in person.  These definitions express three crucial truths:  (1)  the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons,  (2)  each Person is fully God,  (3)  there is only one God.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct Persons.  The Bible speaks of the Father as God (Philippians 1: 2), Jesus as God (Titus 2: 13), and the Holy Spirit as God (Acts 5: 3-4).  The doctrine of the Trinity does not divide God into three parts.  The Bible is clear that all three Persons are each one-hundred-percent God.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God.  For example, Colossians 2: 9 says of Christ, “in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form”.  We should not think of God as a “pie” cut into three pieces, each piece representing a Person.  This would make each Person less than fully God and thus not God at all.  Rather, “the being of each Person is equal to the whole being of God”.

God the Father’s role is to generate things.  Things originate with him and flow from him.  God the Father is equal with the Son and the Holy Spirit, but things start with him.  The Father sent both the Son (John 3: 16-17) and Holy Spirit (John 14: 26) in to the world.  God the Son’s role is to pay for our sins with his blood, which he did on the cross (Romans 5: 9).  The Son also acts as a lawyer for us before God, acting as a “mediator” between us and God (1 Timothy 2: 5), and speaking “to the Father in our defence”  (I John 2: 1).  God the Holy Spirit has many roles.  The Spirit helps us pray (Romans 8: 26-27).  He gives us new life (John 3: 3-6).  He convicts us of sin (John 16: 7-11).  He helps us to live holy lives (Romans 15: 16).  He gives us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23).  He helps us share our faith (Acts 1: 8).  And he lives inside us (Romans 8: 11).

Whilst these things may remain mysterious, intriguing or even inexplicable, there is unanimity in the fact that the TRINITARIAN PHENOMENON revealed in diverse forms, to us in the Bible, presents the inextricably linked natures of the three persons of the Godhead:  The Father who chooses His people (Ephesians 1: 3-5), the Son, who redeems at the cost of His own sacrificial death (Ephesians 1: 7) and the Holy Spirit, who teaches, enlightens, spreads, entrenches and applies the work of the other two in the life of the Church; in order to make real, in human experience, the entire package and eternal purpose of the blessed Holy Trinity.

We can only pray in the spirit of today’s collect, that these revealed truths of the Trinity may hold us firm in the Faith, that we may get to know the benefits of the indivisible God, and forever delight in the glory that such experience brings, in the name of the Triune God –  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.