The Trinity, Part 1

Thoughts From a Bible Reader

As Christians, a fundamental belief for us is that there is only one God. And yet we say that the Father is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. Does this confuse you? You’re not alone.

In the early church Satan was very actively trying to derail the believers, getting people to teach false teachings to the church, such as that all Gentile Christians had to follow the Jewish laws (the book of Galatians) or that Jesus had not come to earth in a physical body (Gnostic beliefs, addressed by John in 1 John 4:3). The early church didn’t have the New Testament in a complete fashion as we have it today. What they did have were copies of letters that they shared with each other, like Peter’s and Paul’s, and the gospel accounts that went back in use and acceptance to the first generation of believers, the things that would become our New Testament, and the church used these to fight the ideas that Satan was trying to introduce. When later generations brought out other sources, like the Gospel of Thomas, what church leaders did was to look to see if any accepted leader in the church before them had ever referenced these works in the letters that they had written. Why don’t we use the Gospel of Thomas today? Because no one among the early church leaders referenced it or accepted its use. The early church worked hard to keep the gospel from being contaminated by the myriad of ideas that Satan was directing towards believers, working to make certain that every belief could be traced back to the teachings of the apostles and the early undisputed leaders of the church. And when the church finally decided that it needed to create a definite list of trusted sources, what we call the New Testament today, they only used those documents that the early church had used and trusted.

Around the time that the Roman Emperor Constantine declared that Christians would be tolerated, a church leader in Egypt, Arius, began teaching that Jesus was created, and not equal to the Father nor co-eternal with Him. This led to a major debate within the church in the eastern Mediterranean, as many were swayed by Arius’ arguments. In the year 325 Constantine, wanting peace within the church to help with peace in his empire, asked all of the church bishops to come to Nicea to settle the question. The result of this conference was what we today call the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth, who for us humans and for our salvation descended and became incarnate, becoming human, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascending to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say that there was when He was not, and that before being He was not, or that He came from that which is not, or that the Son of God is of a different substance or essence, or that He is created, or mutable, these the catholic (whole) church anathematizes.” The church leaders went to the only sources that they trusted, those that became the New Testament, and this creed was the result. Jesus, they said, is most definitely God.

But coming up with things like the Nicene Creed didn’t end the disbelief of some in the trinity. No, “Unitarians” have hung around in the church ever since, who say that only the Father is God. Jehovah’s Witnesses also deny that Jesus is God. Others, like Muslims, deny that Jesus is God as well. The problem, it seems, is that the word trinity never occurs in the Bible. Not once. And, because of this, people have said that the idea of the trinity is not biblical. And so what we are left with is this: Even though the word trinity does not appear in the Bible, does it still accurately describe the relationship of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that the Bible gives us?

Before we go any farther, I want to share an illustration with you. Look at the following picture. What do you see?

Did your mind tell you that you were seeing three different strands of leather, braided into what we could call a single piece? That is pretty much what the Unitarians, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Muslims accuse Christians of doing – taking three things, braiding them together, and calling them a “single” thing. But lets zoom out a little bit and see exactly what it is that you were looking at.

We weren’t looking at three different pieces of leather after all. We were looking at a single piece of leather that had been separated into three strands in the middle, but which, from beginning to end, is still only a single piece of leather. And that is the clearest picture of the Trinity that I can think of to share with you. There is only one God. But for now, here in the middle where we can’t see the beginning or the end, God has decided to separate Himself into three parts, and we will see that each part has its own role. But, from beginning to end, He is only one. So now, with that in mind, let’s see how the Bible describes the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A good place to start is in the beginning of John’s gospel. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind. And the light shines on in the darkness, but the darkness has not mastered it…. Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us. We saw his glory—the glory of the one and only, full of grace and truth, who came from the Father. John testified about him and shouted out, ‘This one was the one about whom I said, “He who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me."' For we have all received from his fullness one gracious gift after another. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only one, himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known” (John 1:1-5, 14-18). John starts his gospel with this strange paradox that Jesus, the Word of God, was with God, in closest fellowship with God, and is also fully God and has made Him who we have not seen known to us. But when we think of the picture of the leather braid, this is no longer such a paradox. The strands lay alongside each other in closest fellowship, as John tells us that Jesus was with God. But they are still fully a single piece of leather, as Jesus is God. And seeing one of the strands makes known to you what the other ones look like in essence, since they are all the exact same material.

John told us that Jesus, the Word, was involved in creating every single thing that was created. When we go back to the creation account in Genesis, we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.’ God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:26-27). Isn’t that odd, that God says, “Let us … our image ...our likeness” and then we are told that God made us in “his own image, in the image of God”? We see God referring to Himself first in the plural, and then He’s referred to in the singular in the very next sentence. Yes, God has separated Himself for now into three roles, and so we can think of Him in the plural. And yet the parts playing those three roles are not un-joined from each other, and so God is also still singular.

Right now God the Father is seated upon His throne in heaven, reigning over creation (Is. 6:1). And, as we just read in John 1, God the Father sent God the Son to us, a light, full of grace and truth, and God the Son has made God the Father known to us. But where does the Holy Spirit come into all of this? We’re first introduced to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, in the second verse of the Bible, as God began creating the heavens and the earth. So from the moment that creation started God was there, the Word of God (Jesus the Son) was there, and so was the Holy Spirit. Throughout the Old Testament we see the Holy Spirit come upon men and women, causing them to prophesy, such as when Ezekiel told us, “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon me and said to me, ‘Say: “This is what the Lord says: This is what you are thinking, O house of Israel; I know what goes through your minds”’” (Ez. 11:5). It gave power to Othniel, Caleb’s nephew, helping him to deliver Israel (Judges 3:7-11), and it took control of Gideon, guiding him to deliver Israel as well (Judges 6:33-7:23).

In Isaiah we are given a peek into the relationship of the Holy Spirit with the Messiah, who we now know (although Isaiah didn’t) is God the Son, Jesus. “A shoot will grow out of Jesse’s root stock, a bud will sprout from his roots. The Lord’s Spirit will rest on him— a Spirit that gives extraordinary wisdom, a Spirit that provides the ability to execute plans, a Spirit that produces absolute loyalty to the Lord” (Is. 11:1-2). And when Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit began to fulfill that prophecy: “After Jesus was baptized, just as he was coming up out of the water, the heavens opened and he (John the Baptist) saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my one dear Son; in him I take great delight’” (Matt. 3:16-17). The Son being baptized, the Holy Spirit descending, and the Father speaking. The trinity were all three revealed at the baptism. And when we, as Christians, baptize new believers in Christ, we are told by Jesus to baptize them “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19).

Just as the strands in the braid are wound around each other so that it becomes hard to discern which strand you are looking at, there are numerous verses that wind God the Father and God the Son together in like fashion. “I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” Jesus told us (John 10:38), right after He had told us, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). After the Last Supper Jesus told His disciples, “The person who has seen me has seen the Father! How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father residing in me performs his miraculous deeds. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me,” (John 14:9-11), and a very short while later prayed, “And now, Father, glorify me at your side with the glory I had with you before the world was created…. I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me” (John 17:5, 20-21). Could Jesus have made it any clearer that He and the Father are one and the same? They’re just different strands, when seen from where we’re looking, because we can’t see the beginning or the end. And Paul talked about “the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13), referring to both God and Savior as being one and the same, Jesus Christ. He also told us that “in him (Jesus) all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).

There are also a number of verses that weave together the Holy Spirit to both the Father and to Jesus. Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of God” (Matt. 12:28) when He said that blaspheming the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, and “the Spirit of your Father” when telling His disciples to not worry about what to speak (Matt. 10:20). Paul told us, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this person does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is your life because of righteousness. Moreover if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit who lives in you” (Romans 8:9-11). Did you notice how Paul referred to the Holy Spirit as both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ? This only makes sense if Christ is God. In Galatians 4:6 we are told that “God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts,” and 1 Peter 1:11-12 talks about “the Spirit of Christ” and “the Holy Spirit” as the same thing.

And so, even though the word “trinity” may not appear in the Bible, there certainly seems to be plenty of evidence that the word accurately describes the relationship of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, even as the Nicene Creed set out to do. The next time we will look at what the Bible tells us about the role each of them plays in their relationship with one another.

Do you have questions or comments that you would like to share with me? Feel free to drop me an email (stevesuterfaithandfruit@gmail.com).

My posts come from my observations in reading the Bible literally dozens of times, always hoping to understand it a little bit better. If you want to go back and read more of what I’ve observed in my reading, click here.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scriptures quoted are from the NET Bible® https://netbible.com copyright ©1996, 2019 used with permission from Biblical Studies Press, L.L.C. All rights reserved