The Trinity
A central tenet of Christianity is that God is a Trinity, and we worship God as being one God in three Persons. Both New and Old Testaments confirm this issue. It is a hard concept for us to understand, which is not surprising given that we are mere mortals trying to understand God Himself. This doctrine has confounded believers for a long time. But the Trinity can be understood, at least to a much better degree which enables better understanding of God and therefore enhanced love, appreciation and worship of Him.
The Trinity means God is three separate and distinct Persons sharing the same exact essence or qualities of being. God is one in essence and three in Persons – each member perfect and co-equal to the other members. When God acts, He always acts in unison as one God, and it is impossible for God as a Trinity to act in any other way but as one in unison. Therefore God in Trinity is three in personality but one in unity of actions. God must be One since He is perfection, and there is nothing higher, better, or more comprehensive than perfection, meaning there can be nothing above Him including any single member of the Trinity. And each of the three members of the Trinity cannot be less than any of the other members since each exists as perfection, and there can be nothing lower than perfection which can be called God. Therefore each member of the Trinity is exactly the same and equal in essential qualities to the others, however they are not each other. God has three separate self consciousnesses, with three separate identities called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the key issue in understanding the Trinity is to realize that God has three separate and distinct consciousnesses and personalities each possessing the same exact qualities of divinity. Therefore the three members of the Trinity are not three separate Gods, but rather three separate perfect Persons who make up one single perfect God. The exactness of the three members in essence means God is one God, which can only be possible in a state of perfection, which defines God. The three members of the Trinity have existed together eternally, and they have existed in unity. It is this matter of unity which brings the three separate perfect Persons into a single God. Therefore the overarching explanation of the Trinity is that God is three separate and distinct perfect Persons who exist together in perfect unity but with separate consciousnesses and division of responsibilities toward created creatures.
As a Trinity God shares mutual love, shared consciousness, conversation, humor and other traits enabling God to have a perfect relationship with Himself as a perfect Being in three Persons. Everything about God is and has always been perfect. Perhaps the most succinct verses in the Bible covering the three members of the Trinity are:
Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit . . .”
1 Peter 1:2 “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: may grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.”
And although the Old Testament does not make the issue of the Trinity as clear as the New Testament, it quotes God as saying "Let us" do this or that as in Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” God would not use "us" and “our” about Himself if not for the Trinity. And the Hebrew word for God is plural (Elohim). But as with many Old Testament issues, it left the details to the New Testament.
The three separate designations called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit show how God has divided tasks among the single Person of God, and how He relates to His created beings. But the nomenclature does not designate superiority or inferiority among the Trinity. Each is equal perfection. However they have divided the tasks among themselves in order to define how God interfaces with the creatures He created. But it is a fallacy to say God only describes Himself as a Trinity in His dealings with creatures so they can understand Him better. God was a Trinity before any creature ever existed, and did not become a Trinity after creatures came on the scene.
One of the stumbling blocks to understanding the Trinity is that man thinks in terms of time, with one moment following another in sequence. God is not limited by time. God is eternal existence. God lives in an “eternal now” apart from time. This means He can be anywhere in the expanse of time at any moment, and can be at all moments in time at the same time. Because of this, the three members of the Trinity always know what each other is thinking, so their three separate consciousnesses are shared even though separate. This also makes their three separate personalities shared even though separate. This sharing of consciousnesses and personalities is a key aspect of the oneness of God.
Many have tried and failed to develop an analogy to the Trinity based on things humans understand. None can provide an accurate enough view to be useful. Since all end up failing to convey an accurate and useful analogy they are ignored here. There is a good reason why the Bible does not use analogies about the Trinity when it uses many analogies about other issues.
The Trinity of God is a requirement of perfection which defines the Being of God. God could not have perfect love unless He had someone perfect and worthy to love. The three members of the Trinity have this perfect love for each other, completing a requirement of God to be perfect love. So it is shared perfect love which makes the Trinity a requirement of God Himself since three members of the Trinity are required to share a perfect love, and that love could not be shared unless there was someone else on their same level. Creatures do not count since they had to be created long after God existed, and they also are not capable of the full and perfect love God deserves. A singular God without a Trinity could not share perfect love. God must share His perfect love, and that is only possible in Trinity. It is therefore love which requires God to be a Trinity, since a singular God would be unloved, and could not share perfect love on His own level. Instead of wondering why God is a Trinity, the right question should be how could God be anything but a Trinity?
Moses asked God His name when God commissioned him to be the spokesman to the Jewish people. “Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'" (Exodus 3:13-14). The meaning behind this name is that God is the eternally existing One. It is the name which is transliterated YAHWEH or Jehovah (Lord). Each member of the Trinity is called by this name in the Bible, but it is primarily used for the Son since He is the revealed member of the Trinity.
As a general overview of the separate functions of the Trinity, the Father is the planner and director, the Holy Spirit provides the empowerment and is the member who provides many behind the scenes actions, and the Son is always the revealed member of the Trinity to mankind. The Bible clearly shows the Father as the source of direction and planning for the Trinity to follow, but He has never appeared to man directly. The Holy Spirit renovated the earth prior to the creation of man, empowered miraculous actions of prophets and others, activates salvation after acceptance, and provides numerous other actions. As such, the Holy Spirit is the behind-the-scenes mover and empowering member of the Trinity, and is also never seen by man. The Son is the revealed member of the Trinity to mankind. In all of the Old Testament when individuals or Israel as a nation interfaced with God they were interfacing with the same member of the Trinity, and it was always the member called the Son, who later came to earth as Jesus Christ. It was the Son who spoke with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who spoke with Noah about the ark, who spoke with Abraham, and spoke to Moses from the burning bush and on Mount Sinai to provide the Ten Commandments, was in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle and Temple, and so on. Therefore the individual members of the Trinity generally divide their tasks in these ways, but they always act as a Trinity in absolute unison of purpose and agreement.
The three members of the Trinity have existed together eternally, and they have existed in unity. Jesus Christ did not become a separate member of the Trinity at the time of His human birth, but rather existed eternally as a member of the Trinity called the Son and took on human form to be the only God-Man. Jesus Christ referred to Himself as the "I AM" several times during His earthly ministry, showing He had always been part of the Trinity. "Very truly I tell you," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!" (John 8:58) Jesus declared that He had existed eternally even though He was also born some 30 years before He made that statement. God's plan for the salvation of mankind was to have a member of the Trinity take on humanity and pay for the sins of all mankind, allowing God to offer salvation through faith in the God-Man Jesus Christ. God Himself could not pay for the sins of mankind. God required a human to pay for mankind's sins. The eternal member of the Trinity called God the Son chose to take on true humanity alongside His eternally existing deity and pay for the sins of mankind as Jesus Christ, the Messiah (Savior) who was prophesied in the Old Testament. The union was more than God inside a body, but rather God and man combined into one person as the only God-Man, with the consciousness of the Trinity Son and also the soul consciousness of a true human co-existing together. God the Son became the most unique member of the Trinity when He remained truly God yet also took on human form. Jesus Christ had to be truly God and truly man at the same time, and once He became the God-Man He remains that way forever. Jesus Christ the Son of God is now in a resurrection body, and it is the same type of body all human believers will eventually have after they have been resurrected. 1 Timothy 6:15 says of this body "the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see." Salvation would not be possible for mankind without the Trinity dividing tasks, with the humanity of the Son bearing the punishment on behalf of all mankind, the Father doing the punishment of the Son's humanity, and the Holy Spirit providing a sustaining ministry for the humanity of the Son. The Father had to punish the God-Man Jesus Christ for the sins of mankind, and this would not have been possible without the Trinity’s division of tasks. And the Holy Spirit empowers and supports the overall plan of God the Father throughout human history, which would also not be possible without the Trinity.
There are many more divisions of tasks among the Trinity over the various Ages of time. The Son created the original universe and all in it. Colossians 1:16 says speaking of Jesus Christ “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” The Holy Spirit restored the universe in preparation for man’s occupancy of earth (Genesis 1:2). The Father is the planner, having planned all of time from the beginning to the end. The Son provided the Ten Commandments and other scriptures to Moses on the mountain (Exodus 34). The Son was the one who dwelt in the Tabernacle and Temple Holy of Holies in Israel, and was in the pillar of fire and the cloud by day as the Israelites traveled out of captivity. The Holy Spirit empowers Church Age believers and enables learning of the deep concepts of the Scriptures. The Father provides overall direction for the Trinity to follow. The Holy Spirit restrains fallen angels from interfering with mankind to unacceptable degrees, and protects the earth from the destructive activities of Satan and fallen angels. The Son judges angels and man when it is required. These are just some of the many tasks which have been divided among the Trinity.
One of the more accurate scholarly approaches to the Trinity is contained in the Athanasian Creed:
“That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit... And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are co-eternal, and coequal.”
The picture many people have of God is as an old curmudgeon; namely a stern, scowling, harsh and dictatorial overseer who places unreasonable demands on mortals and judges quickly anyone who gets out of line. That could not be farther from the truth. God is a God of love, and He loves sharing what He has, and wants to save and bless every person who is ever born. God’s requirements are not burdensome, and He does not have very high expectations for man. He has done the hard work of providing salvation by doing the unthinkable thing of judging His Son on the cross. This took great effort on God's part to take the sin issue out of the way, making it no longer a barrier for the salvation of any person. All man needs to do is to say “yes” to all God offers, starting with salvation, and then in the spiritual life. However God cannot ignore any part of His essence, especially His righteousness which places the requirement for accepting salvation on sinful man so God can have a relationship with each one. That is what salvation is all about, namely enabling God to have a relationship with mankind without violating any portion of His perfect essence. When He is forced to judge, He does so as a last resort. God wants man to share His happiness. He did not create man just to have someone to judge. If man lacks blessing, it is because man does not enable God to grant the blessings He wants to share, first salvation, and then as part of the spiritual life of the believer. God Himself suffered unimaginably when Christ as a member of the Trinity was judged on the cross in place of man. Jesus Christ was personally judged by God the Father on the cross, and the cost to God was beyond measure. Why would He do such a thing if not totally loving, giving, and gracious to man? He would not.
The Trinity means God is one God in three separate and distinct persons. These three Persons are each exactly the same in essence, but with different personalities. It is love which requires God to be a Trinity, since a singular God would be unloved, and could not share perfect love on His own level. One premise of deciphering the truth among various options is that the hardest option to reconcile is usually true. No other religion believes in the Trinity. Only the Bible reveals such information, both New and Old Testaments, and it is the only source of truth about God. Others are taking the easy road to untruth, and by doing so do not find God. We take the harder road and live by faith that what God says is true. And why should God be easy for mortals to understand? If He were easy to understand, that would be a problem much greater than comprehending the Trinity.