13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptised by him. 14 John would have prevented Him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptised, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Today is what is known in the Church as Trinity Sunday. It’s a day when our focus is on the mystery which we call the Holy Trinity – One God in three distinct persons.
The doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to the Christian faith, but of course, it raises many difficult questions. How can God be both one and three? Is the Trinity a contradiction? If Jesus is God, why did He pray to God? And there are many other valid questions which we need to try and answer as best as we can, which will help us to understand not only what we believe, but why we believe it.
I need to begin with a disclaimer. If you are expecting to walk out of here today with a perfect understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. A Christian apologist was once challenged by a nonbeliever who asked him how he could possibly believe that God is one, while at the same time God is three. His answer was, “I do not pretend fully to understand the arithmetic of Heaven now.”
That’s a great answer. God is transcendent, meaning that He is above our understanding. He is infinite in His very nature, so we will never fully understand Him and His ways, but we can learn enough about the important doctrine of the Trinity, and more importantly, how this doctrine should impact our lives.
We sometimes think we are supposed to be able to answer all of the skeptics when it comes to the Christian faith, and a favourite trump card of those trying to break down our faith is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The point is that we are not expected to have all the answers, mainly because God has not revealed all of His mysteries to us.
R. C. Sproul wrote in one of his commentaries, “The doctrine of the Trinity does not fully explain the mysterious character of God. Rather, it sets the boundaries outside of which we must not step. It defines the limits of our finite reflection. It demands that we be faithful to the Biblical revelation that in one sense God is one and in a different sense He is three.”
Also, as we begin, I, like many others have often resorted to simple illustrations or examples from nature to try and understand the Trinity, but I’ve come to realise this is a mistake. God says through the prophet Isaiah, “To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with Him?” (Isaiah 40:18)
The Bible teacher Justin Peters wrote recently of this verse, “This is not a challenge. God is not like water that can be liquid, solid or gas. God is not like an egg or a 3 leafed clover. God is not challenging you to come up with something to illustrate His triune nature. The whole point is that there is no one and no thing to which you can compare God. He is without equal and nothing can be compared to Him. Please do away with illustrations of the Trinity. None of them work. That is the point. To even try is to bring God low.”
Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote in one of his books, “It is almost impossible to find an analogy to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity. To use the material to describe the spiritual, to use the finite to describe the infinite, to use the natural to describe the supernatural, imposes a burden upon the teacher that is impossible to carry. I have turned this matter over in my mind for years, and have heard and discarded many supposed illustrations.”
So, what do we believe about God? Who is God? When God told Moses, “I am who I am,” what did He mean? Firstly, it means that God is eternal. God simply is God, and there is nothing or no one like Him, but when we talk about God, what do we really believe about Him? One of the cornerstones of the Christian faith is that we believe in the Holy Trinity, but what is the Trinity?
One of the early Church fathers who died in 225AD named Tertullian, is credited with coining the word Trinity to describe the three persons of God. Three persons in one God - one God in three persons: God the Father our creator, God the Son our Saviour, God the Holy Spirit, our sanctifier.
Though there are three persons in the Trinity, there is one God.
This has created much confusion, and while it is true that the word Trinity does not appear in the Bible, it is consistently taught and referred to. The confusion comes when we try to reconcile the doctrine of the Trinity with the words of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or to put it differently, God is one in essence and three in person. The Bible teaches that the Father is God, Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. So does this mean that there are three different ways of looking at the different roles God plays? No, because this reduces Him to one God who wears one of three different hats at any given time. This is a heresy called modalism.
Since the Father sent the Son into the world, He cannot be the same person as the Son. Also, after the Son returned to the Father, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into the world, which means the Holy Spirit must be distinct from the Father and the Son.
At the baptism of Jesus, we see the Father speaking from heaven and the Spirit descending from heaven as Jesus comes out of the water. John 1:1 teaches that Jesus is God and, at the same time, that He was with God, which reinforces the truth that God the Son is a distinct person from God the Father.
When we look at what Jesus said to His disciples in John 16:13–15, we can see that although there is a close unity between the three persons, the Holy Spirit is also distinct from the Father and the Son. “When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
The fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons means that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. Jesus is God, but He is not the Father or the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God, but He is not the Son or the Father. They are different persons, not three different ways of looking at God.
Barnhouse again writes, “We must be careful when we name the names of the Trinity not to fall into the common error of thinking that the Godhead is composed of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Rather we must say that the Trinity is God, God and God, or God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that we believe in three gods. Far from it. We believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is God.”
Because of His eternal nature, God always was and always will be three persons. The Bible is clear that there was never a time when one of the persons of the Godhead did not exist. They are all eternal. Also, none of the three persons of the Godhead is inferior to the others. They are identical in their attributes. They are equal in power, love, mercy, justice, holiness, knowledge, and all other qualities and characteristics of God.
Each person is fully God, and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity does not mean that God is divided into three equal parts. The belief that God is made up of three equal parts is another heresy called tritheism. All three persons are each 100% God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each fully God. Paul, writing about Jesus in Colossians 2:9 says, “In Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” (The whole fullness, not just one third).
We believe in one God, made up of three distinct persons. And we believe it because God’s Word reveals God in that way. These three distinct persons are one, true, eternal God.
Not only that, but we are in relationship with each of these persons. We come before God the Father, who created us. We call upon God the Son who delivered us from sin and death, and we have the person of the Holy Spirit, living within us, sanctifying us.
Seeing the three distinct tasks of the persons of the Trinity and the roles each performs may help us to understand, but it is wrong to separate them completely. The Holy Trinity is three persons, but remains at the same time, one in essence – God.
Our reading from Matthew 3 today draws very clear distinctions between the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
God the Son, Jesus, comes up out of the water. God the Holy Spirit, descends upon Him, and God the Father proclaims that Jesus is His Son, whom He loves.
So here, in this passage, we have the three persons of the Trinity presented to us. There are three persons who are God. Baptism is done in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Why? Because they are God, eternally united together.
But how are they united together? What joins them, and what joins us to them?
Now we’re getting to the important bit…
As we answer that question, we’ll begin to not only understand the doctrine of the Trinity better, but also how we are to live out that truth in our own lives.
1 John 4:8 says that God is love. God’s love was complete, even before creating the world. God the Father loves the Son and the Spirit, God the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, God the Spirit loves the Father and the Son.
Out of their mutual, perfect, full, rich love for one another, came the universe in which we live. God created the universe as a means of displaying and expressing His glory and His love.
1 John also goes on to say that love comes from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Now that is very interesting. Do you love? Do you know God? If we’re not really familiar with God, if we don’t really know Him, then can we really love?
The world gets love wrong. The world has exchanged love for sex. Love is a one night stand. Love is a thing you do. Love is being close, but only for a time. Love has become a commodity, rather than a Biblical, truthful reflection of the love of God.
John 15:13 paints a very different picture of love. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” The greatest love shown was in Christ, who died for us while we were still enemies of God.
But why have we suddenly jumped from trying to grapple with the doctrine of the Trinity to talking about the love of God?
The answer is simple. The always-existing Trinity has always loved, and loving one another is the pattern for us. We love in the same way that the Trinity loves.
Christians do not believe that there are three Gods, but that there is one true God who is in three persons. It was Augustine who taught that God is love, and used this as a proof of the Trinity. Love must have an object, and Augustine said that there was the eternal Father, the source of all love, the eternal Son, the object of that love, and the eternal Spirit of love between them. And these three are one.
In 1 John 4 we’re told that that no one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us. We love because He first loved us.
The whole point of dwelling on the love of God today is because expressing God’s love towards each other is the best way of making the reality of the Trinity come alive, rather than leaving it in the pages of a book on theology.
Do you want to understand the Trinity? Then live it. One of the common objections we hear all the time to the doctrine of the Trinity is the idea that somehow we have to make three equal to one, or one equal to three. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a mathematical problem to be solved. Rather, it teaches us about the living reality of the Triune God that we serve, worship and love.
The love that is displayed in the Trinity is perfectly selfless. It is perfectly giving to others. God gives love perfectly to the Son and the Spirit, the Son gives love perfectly to the Father and the Spirit, and Spirit gives love perfectly to the Son and the Father. And this Triune God, in the most mysterious yet beautiful way, brings us into the Trinity as His Church. The Bible teaches us that we are united in Christ and with Christ.
This is what brings us into the mystery of the Trinity, and consequently, we too receive love perfectly. The question is, are we loving with the perfect love of the Father, Son and Spirit?
Love is selfless. It is completely focussed on each other, and the best way of expressing the truth of God is by loving as He loves. We reflect God’s love, which is perfectly, freely given by the members of the Trinity, to one another.
But the most amazing thing is this: The Holy Spirit is in us, so we are able to experience the Trinity as a reality, not as a theory, as we live out and experience God’s love. We are to reflect God’s love. But how do we do that?
In God, there is no sin, no jealousy, disrespect, lying or blaming. There is just love, so in us there should be just love. We can show, and act out love to one another.
Jesus was perfectly humble and perfectly submissive to the will of the Father. And in His prayer for us in John 17, He prayed that we would be one, and that God would be glorified through Him and His Church.
Jesus prayed that we would be one as Christ was one with His Father.
God is glorified through us by His indwelling Spirit as we live out the reality of salvation in Jesus. It’s the Trinity, alive and well and at work in the Church and in His people.
The Trinity is the example of perfect oneness, and as believers in the Trinity, we realise that we are to demonstrate the reality of the perfect unity of the Trinity in our living.
We know we are to love as God loves us. It’s a wonderful principle, but what about the specifics? How do we actually go about reflecting the Trinity in our lives?
Remember that within the Trinity, the Father is not the Son, nor the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Father, nor the Spirit and the Spirit is neither the Son nor the Father. There is diversity. There is a difference of persons in the Trinity. There is also a difference in the function in the persons of the Trinity. God the Father sends the Son to redeem the world. God the Son redeems the world by His death and resurrection. God the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers.
Different functions, but all for one main purpose: The Trinity works together for God’s glory, and our salvation. And how does this play out in our lives? We recognise that there are differences in the Church in who we are and in what we do. We all have different spiritual gifts, but the purpose of the gifts is not just the gifts. The purpose of the gifts is that we would bear fruit.
In Galatians 5 we find a list of what is often mistakenly called the fruits of the Spirit. But that’s not what the Bible says. Galatians 5:22-23 says, “The fruit (singular!) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” All of these qualities combined are the fruit of what we believe and what we live.
As we use our individual and unique spiritual gifts for God’s glory, we bring unity within the Church as we bear fruit. In the Trinity there is perfection of unity, and in the Church there is to be perfection of unity.
That unity must be seen and experienced in the Church. Unity in the Church is not an optional extra. If there is no unity, then we are doing something wrong. There is no envy or jealousy in the Trinity. The Son doesn’t despise the Father the Father’s glory. The Spirit doesn’t despise the Son His redeeming work. The Father and the Son don’t begrudge the Spirit His sanctifying power.
But as a rule, the Church doesn’t understand the essence of this teaching. We say we do. We proclaim tolerance as being a Christian virtue. There are people within Churches all over the world and in this congregation too who don’t like each other, but they think they’re doing the right thing by putting up with each other and tolerating one another. That’s not Christian love.
The Trinity doesn’t speak about tolerance - it speaks about submission. Christ submitted to the Father’s will, and so should we. We to have to submit to the Father’s will. When we begin to do that, we’ll begin to understand what it really means to love. And then we’ll gain a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Trinity.
Last week was Pentecost Sunday. Last Sunday we looked at how God’s Spirit totally transformed the life and witness of the early Church, and we were challenged to allow His Spirit to continue that work today.
It’s all very well to have some understanding or even a working knowledge of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It’s good to have that, but more importantly, how should this truth affect our lives?
Through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit we are called to live out the truth of the perfect unity of the Trinity in our lives. That has always been the task of the Church, and nothing has changed.
The Trinity is first of all important because God is important. To understand more fully what God is like is a way of honouring God. Added to that, we should allow the fact that God is triune to deepen our worship. We exist to worship God, and God seeks people to worship Him in spirit and truth, as Jesus said in John 4.
Our relationship with God should be enhanced by consciously knowing that we are relating to a tri-personal God, as we learn to love Him and one another.