God in Three Persons: Thinking About the Trinity--Attributes of God Series

The Trinity is easily one of the most confusing beliefs that Christians hold about God. Even those of us who believe in it feel like we don’t understand it very well. We will loudly and boldly proclaim our belief in the Trinity, then we will get quiet very quickly when someone asks us to explain it! No matter how you look at it, a full understanding of the unity between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is beyond our ability to comprehend, but this is really no reason to be uncomfortable with the doctrine or to reject it. When we consider who God is supposed to be and who we are, we should expect to bump up against ideas that we do not fully understand. Why does it seem like such a scandal to us when we can’t fully understand something about a being who is said to be eternal, all-powerful, and all-knowing? Nor should our lack of total understanding about the Trinity be a reason to reject the idea. I can’t give you a complete explanation of how a plane flies, but I’m not going to tell you that it can’t! In our modern scientific age, we like to tell ourselves that we understand so much, but in reality, each scientific discovery only uncovers greater mysteries. Today we’re going to discuss how to think about the Trinity and what we actually mean when we say that God is one being and three persons. I hope you’ll see that we can gain a decent understanding of this doctrine, and our reflection on it can lead us to stand in awe of God all the more. 1. Where do we get the idea that God is a Trinity (tri-unity)? In his book The DaVinci Code, author Dan Brown repeats the claim that Christians invited the idea of the Trinity around 325 AD in order to make a God out of an ordinary man named Jesus of Nazareth. In reality, the idea of the Trinity springs from the Bible itself, which was written much earlier than 325 AD! Let’s take a brief look at what the Bible has to say. First of all, the Bible repeatedly states that there is only one God: • Deut. 6:4--"Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” • Is. 43:10-11—“Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.” • Is. 44:6-8—“I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god…Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.” • 1 Timothy 2:5—“For there is one God…” We could list many more examples, but that will have to do for today. So we can see that the Bible wants us to understand that there is only one God, but at the same time, Scripture gives three distinct persons the status of being God, and they are addressed as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: • Matt. 28:19—“…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” • 2 Cor. 13:14—“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” We could also look at verses where the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are individually referred to as God. So the doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to explain the fact that there is only one God, yet three persons are given the status of being God. 2. What are we saying when we say that God is a Trinity? Many people have scoffed at and rejected this doctrine because they think we are saying that one somehow equals three, that God is somehow one thing and three of the same thing all at once. That’s like saying that my pulpit is one pulpit AND three pulpits, or that I am one human being AND three human beings. If that is what the doctrine says then we should reject it, because that kind of thinking is a contradiction. But the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one being and three persons. That claim is not a contradiction because a being and a person are not the same thing. Let’s make sure we understand these words. A being is simply an object that exists. My pulpit is a being; the pew that you’re sitting on is a being. That’s all that we mean by this word—an object that exists. A person is something that is living and thinking, something with a mind and a will—like you and me. So the doctrine of the Trinity states that God is one existing thing that possesses three different living and thinking personalities. One comparison that may be helpful here is to think of Siamese twins. Siamese twins are conjoined, which means they share one body. In that sense, they are one being—one existing thing. Yet Siamese twins are clearly two living, thinking people. They each have their own mind and will and they actually have a relationship with each other. This idea is the kind of idea that we have in mind when we say that God is one being and three persons, though this analogy is certainly not perfect. For one thing, God does not have a body, so we don’t want to think of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as living within one body, because God is a purely spiritual being, as we are told in John 4:24. Also, Siamese twins can sometimes be separated through surgery, and in that case they would become two separate beings. That is not possible with God because, again, God does not have a body. So the comparison is not perfect, but it points us in the right direction to think accurately about the Trinity. 3. What are we NOT saying when we say that God is a Trinity? For the sake of clarification, let’s look at what we are NOT saying when we say that God is a Trinity. A. God is one person with three different masks In theater, one person will sometimes play multiple characters simply by wearing different masks or costumes. Some people have applied that idea to the Trinity by saying that God sometimes acts as the Father, sometimes as the Son, and sometimes as the Holy Spirit. But we are not talking simply about alter egos, like Bruce Wayne and Batman. This idea is not a correct understanding of the Trinity because it leaves us with one being and only one person—not three persons. In Scripture, we see that the Trinity must be three persons because all three are capable of acting at the same time. A great example of this comes at the time of Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3 [READ Matt. 3:16-17]. This situation cannot describe one person playing three roles because we have three persons who are all on the stage (if you will) at the same time. B. The Trinity is three beings with one purpose This idea views the Trinity as a team of three beings who are all united in one purpose—like a three-man basketball team. The members of the team all share a common purpose, but the members of the team are clearly three beings and three persons—not one being and three persons. This teamwork idea is the explanation that cults like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses use to explain the unity between God the Father and the Lord Jesus, but it does not do justice to all of the biblical data. 4. Why does this doctrine matter? It is rather easy to think to yourself, “Why does this doctrine even matter? It’s kind of complicated, so why do I need to think about it? Pastor, I’ll believe that God is a Trinity if you say so, but why do I need to try and understand it?” You need to have a basic understanding of this doctrine because it tells us about who the real Jesus is. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that Jesus is fully divine. He is of one being with the Father and the Holy Spirit. They share one existence, which means that Jesus cannot be the offspring of God and one of his wives, as Mormonism teaches, and He cannot be a created being, as Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses claim. One of Satan’s favorite schemes is to offer counterfeit Christs to the world. What better way to make people resistant to the real Jesus than to convince them that they already believe in Him? Thus, Satan has twisted the truth about Jesus in many subtle ways, so if we do not understand the precise truth about Jesus, we are at risk of being deceived by a counterfeit Christ who looks oh-so-close to the real thing. There is a big difference between having a counterfeit Rolex and having the real thing. Likewise, there is a big difference between believing in the real Jesus and accepting an imposter. The doctrine of the Trinity protects us from the trap of believing that Jesus is anything less than fully divine.