Chapter 5

THE TRINITY

Genesis 1:25-27

God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Matthew 28:18-20

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always , even to the end of the age."

One of the most difficult subjects that most people (specifically Christians) struggle with both theologically and doctrinally is that of the Trinity. This is because the Scriptures never teach us in an articulate and diagnostic style on the Godhead we refer as the Trinity. On the other hand, Scripture is not totally silent on this theological foundational fact either. God has revealed some of His complexity to us in the doctrine of the Trinity. What we do know about the Trinity we know only because of God’s revelation of it in the Bible.[1]  

The Trinity is even literally named just as we read in the Great Commission which Jesus gave to His Apostles in Matthew 28:19 & 20; Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always , even to the end of the age."  

This core understanding is blatantly obvious and presented implicatively throughout the entirety of the Bible – not just in the New Testament. Without making it a complicated unpacking of dynamics and various positions regarding the Trinity, let’s simply break the subject down into some bite size pieces we can wrap our mortal finite minds around.

We often sing songs about God our Father, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and even about the movement and guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But distinguishing between the three persons of the Trinity is often blurred in our everyday language. They are God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirt.

They are three persons of deity that make up the one God. They are not three Gods that make up a super spiritual “holy team” that fights Satan and the forces of evil on our behalf. God defeats Satan on our behalf. But it is not a team of “Gods” – it is one God. The Trinity – God in three persons – but still one can best be framed in the words “compound unity”. We as Christians simply accept this existence by faith.     

CREATOR

There is a unique parallel set of terms that is very applicable for our understanding of the Trinity in a day to day basis. First we can identify God the Father as our Creator. It is an easy concept to grasp as we read the first two chapters of the Bible’s opening book of Genesis. Yet, even as we read the account of creation in those chapters, we can make an amazing discovery about the Trinity. When God was about to create the first human (Adam), He said, “let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis1:26) The interesting observation is found in the two words “Us” and “Our”. These two words in the original Hebrew text refer to deity (God) and they are in the plural tense.

To some theologians God is simply speaking to the angels in heaven as He is creating mankind. Yet other liberal and new age styled historians and commentators would try to insinuate that there are many “gods” involved in the creation or evolutionary scenarios. This form of thought often is found in the theories surrounding ancient aliens or visitors from other planets that they claim arrived here thousands of years ago. 

To the Christian with a proper Biblical understanding, this text when placed in proper relationship to the entirety of Christian Scripture is actually identifying the Trinity as “Us” and “Our”. This is not at all impossible. The Bible clearly states that God is timeless, and therefore the Trinitarian Godhead (Father-Son-Holy Spirit) cannot be confined to an explanatory existence of just the time frame of the New Testament or the Old Testament. (John 1:1-4, Revelation 1:8 & 22:13.

With this in mind, we can know God created us “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). What “image” is that? To answer that question we must know “what” and “who” God is. In John 4;24 Jesus Himself tells us explicitly that "God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” We are made in God’s image as a spiritually existing being. Our mortal bodies are simply containers for our tangible presence here on Earth. So we acknowledge God the Father as our “Creator” and that we are made in His image spiritually speaking. .

REDEEMER

God the Son is in reality Jesus Christ our Savior. Jesus Christ is the One who redeemed us from our sin by paying the price for our sins when we could not do so. The Apostle Paul says that the price we have to pay for our sin is death – spiritual; and bodily. He states it so eloquently in the phrase “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). This spiritual and theological fact can be traced back to man’s fall in the Garden of Eden (Genesis3) It was there that God slew an animal to provide clothing - a covering for Adam and Eve’s fleshly nakedness, which they recognized immediately after their own disobedience to God’s previous commands.

As we previously discussed, the Apostle Paul also shows us the deity of Jesus Christ who redeemed us in His death on the cross. “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

In Galatians 3: 12-14 we read; “However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, "He who practices them shall live by them." Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” - in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.”

Jesus Christ was the perfect sacrifice for our sins, because He never committed any sin. The New Testament texts are not shy about proclaiming this fact. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15) For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth. (1 Peter

2:21, 22) You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. (1 John 3:5)

By the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ we who believe are redeemed from the price we must pay for our sins – which is eternal death (John 3:16). Because of that belief we receive the Spirit of Jesus Christ to live within us and we can experience His great love.  Truly we can acknowledge Jesus Christ as our “Redeemer”.

SUSTAINER

God the Holy Spirit is the giver of life to our bodies, minds and spirits, thus He is our sustainer. Romans 8:11- 14 tells us; “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh - for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

These verses make it very clear that the Holy Spirit of God dwells in all who have accepted God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ by faith. Paul tells the Church at Ephesus; “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  (Ephesians 2:8-10)

If the Holy Spirit is living in us we actually have access to the very God who created all that is and redeemed us from our former sinful estate. Because the Holy Spirit is in us this redeeming love of God is in our hearts and should be displayed in all we do and say. This is how we are sustained by God to do the work of His Kingdom as He has called us to do.

God draws us to Himself through His Holy Spirit revealing God’s plan for our lives as we read and study the Bible. The Holy Spirit must take the truths of Scripture and make them real in the heart.[2] Since the Holy Spirit of God inspired God’s Word through its human authors, He (the Holy Spirit) is the best source of its illumination to us. Most importantly, the Spirit teaches us about Jesus, helping us to grasp the meaning of His life, death, and resurrection (John 15:26) [3] 

This amazing love is what God is all about. It is a love that is not only sacrificial, but it is also unconditional and without measure. Paul tells us this in Romans 5;5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. This sustaining love of God that is in our lives surely acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is indeed our “Sustainer” .

There is so much more that we could unpack about the theology of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. But most importantly we must realize that the Trinity we acknowledge inhabits our lives as Christian believers. We know this because we acknowledge God asour Creator; Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit as our Sustainer.

When this spiritual application is obvious, those around us will experience Jesus Christ in us through the Holy Spirit by the way our lives are being lived out. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22 & 23) Amen.