Reading & Slides: Blessed Trinity (Dr. Feddes)

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Blessed Trinity
By David Feddes

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). That’s the first sentence of the Bible. But who created God? The answer is that nobody created God. The Lord has always existed. He had no beginning and will have no end.

But that just raises more questions. What did God do before he started creating? Was God all alone before creation, with nothing to do and nobody to relate to? Wouldn’t that get to be boring and lonely? Children wonder about questions like that, and so do some grownups.

A child who asks what God did before he made the world is onto something important. The child senses that there’s a problem with thinking of God as a single, solitary individual who just happens to be stronger, smarter, purer and infinitely older than everyone else. If we picture God simply as the great, divine individual who made everything, then we can’t help thinking that if he weren’t dealing with creation, he’d be doing nothing; and that if he didn’t have any creatures, he’d be all alone.

Then we might take the next step and conclude that God made himself a world to escape boredom and to give himself something to do; and that he made other individuals so that he’d have someone to relate to. What else would there be for God to do if he weren’t dealing with his creation? And how could a single, solitary God love and be loved apart from created beings?

Well, the true answer to all this is that God does not exist as a single, solitary individual. God is a union of three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three divine Persons are eternally united in love and in the very essence of their being. Father, Son, and Spirit eternally have one another to love and to enjoy. Each one has such an infinity of wisdom, beauty, goodness and vitality that it would be impossible for Father, Son, and Spirit to feel bored with one another. Each gives and receives such an infinity of love that it would be impossible for Father, Son, and Spirit to feel lonely or in need of love.

What was God doing before he made the world? If I may say so reverently, God was busy being God and enjoying it immensely. From eternity Father, Son, and Spirit share a richness of being so full that no other being can add to it. From eternity Father, Son, and Spirit share such a mutual love that no other love is needed.

God Is Love

That puts the creation and all of God’s dealings with his creatures in a new light. God created all things and relates to his creatures not to address some lack in his being but to express a great overflow of his being. God formed this vast and varied creation not because he would otherwise be bored but because he is bountiful. God takes a personal interest in his creatures, not because he would otherwise be lonely but because he is love. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Those are perhaps the most beautiful words in the Bible. But to sense the full impact and to be in touch with the reality those words describe, we need to know how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another in the being of God, and how Father, Son, and Spirit relate to us.

The Bible doesn’t just say that God loves, but that God is love. Love is who God is, even apart from the creatures he has made. God is love, and that can’t be true unless the being of God involves more than one person. “Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love” (C.S. Lewis). But God is love, and so God is more than one person. God is love because God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three Persons united in mutual, eternal love.

It was out of a surplus of love—not a shortage of love—that this great God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). God created us for love: to be loved by him, to love him in return, and to love one another.

However, with our fall into sin, we messed things up. We cut ourselves off from God: we broke the rhythm of love and became self-centered. So what has God done? Has he simply cast humanity away? No, he loves the world so much that he’s gone to the trouble of rescuing us. Father, Son, and Spirit each play a distinctive part in this great rescue, and at the same time are fully united in accomplishing our salvation.

The final goal of creation and salvation is this: that we be caught up into the love and life of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). It’s a staggering thought, but it’s true. Believing in the blessed Trinity of love and being drawn up into the eternal life of Father, Son, and Spirit—this is the very heart of Christianity.

Stating the Doctrine

What does the doctrine of the Trinity teach? Theologian Wayne Grudem states it like this:

1.  God forever exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2.  Each person is fully God.

3.  There is one God.

The ancient Athanasian Creed declares, “The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods but one God.”

Every major branch of the Christian church teaches the doctrine of the Trinity. Christians believe three persons are God yet there is only God. Is that good theology, or just bad math? Already when you’re small, you learn that one plus one plus one equals three. But it sounds like, in order to be a Christian and believe in the Trinity, you have to believe that one plus one plus one equals one. That doesn’t seem to make much sense. Why would anyone who believes in three divine persons keep insisting that there is only one God? Why would anyone who understands simple arithmetic believe in the Trinity?

The reason Christians believe in the Trinity is that this is how God has revealed himself. The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t something that anybody could have dreamed up. It is a response to God’s self-revelation. It’s the church’s best effort to map out what God reveals about himself. God reveals his nature as Trinity in the coming of God’s Son in human flesh and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into human hearts. God’s nature as Trinity is displayed in these actions of God, it’s written in the Bible, it’s professed in the church, and it’s experienced in the lives of Christians.

God Forever Exists as Three Persons

 Let’s begin with the fact that God forever exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Old Testament already hints of a plurality within the being of God. In Genesis 1, God said, “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.” Some might say, “God is just using the plural of majesty, like a king who says, “We” when he actually means “I.” But in Hebrew there is no plural of majesty. So when God says, “Let us make man in our image and after our likeness,” there’s a sense that some plurality is speaking. Isaiah 48:16 says, “From the time it took place I was there. And now the Lord God has sent me and his Spirit.” These are words from the Messiah, the servant of the Lord, speaking of the Lord God who sends him and of God’s Spirit. That’s another Old Testament hint of the Trinity. In Psalm 110:1 King David says, “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” One who is called “the Lord” says to another whom David calls “my Lord” to sit at the Lord's right hand. This Old Testament statement is often quoted in the New Testament as God the Father exalting God the Son.

Those are some hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament, but the Trinity became much clearer in God’s revelation when the Son of God came to live among us and the Holy Spirit was poured out. The coming of the Son and the coming of the Spirit are described in the New Testament.

The baptism of Jesus clearly shows the plurality within God. “As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17) There you have Father, Son, and Spirit: the voice of God the Father speaking from heaven to his Son while the Spirit of God descends on the Son in a visible form and lands on Him.

The New Testament clearly reveals the three person in other ways as well, when it speaks of Trinitarian baptizing, Trinitarian blessing, and Trinitarian praying. Jesus said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19) Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “the names”; he says “the name.” So it’s the name of one being, but this one being is the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, not only baptism but also blessing is trinitarian: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14) Likewise, prayer in the New Testament is Trinitarian. You pray in the Spirit, through Jesus, and to the Father. There are countless other passages in the New Testament where Father, Son, and Spirit are mentioned within a few sentences of each other and seem to be closely interrelated. Scripture reveals that God forever exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

 Each Person is Fully God

The next thing to be clear about is that each person is fully God. I won’t give evidence here for the fact that the Father is God. Everybody who claims to believe the Bible already grants that the one we call God the Father is God. That’s clear throughout all of the Scriptures. Anybody who believes in one God would have no problem granting that the invisible, eternal Father is God. But some might question the deity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit. They might say that Jesus is less than God and that the Holy Spirit is only God’s power, not a divine Person, and that the Father is therefore the only one who can truly be called God. However, the Bible plainly teaches that both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are divine and personal, along with God the Father.

Referring to God the Son as “the Word,” John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before the beginning of creation, and long before he became the man Jesus, the Word was God. John 1:14 goes on to say, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1,14). John 1 clearly shows that the Son of God existed before coming into the world and that He was equal with God.

When Jesus was here on earth, he would say to various people, “Your sins are forgiven.” His opponents knew what that meant: Jesus was talking like he was God. They objected, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7) They were asking the right question but wouldn’t accept the answer standing in front of them. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” The answer is, Jesus can, because Jesus is God.

Jesus acted as God’s equal when he exercised authority to forgive sins, and when he commanded the forces of nature through various miracles. In talking to his Father in heaven, Jesus said, “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had before the world began” (John 17:5). Jesus told some religious leaders, “Before Abraham was, I AM!” (John 8:58). He had existed from all eternity as God the Son, before Abraham was ever born. Indeed, the reason the religious leaders gave for crucifying Jesus was that he claimed to be equal with God. And Jesus proved himself to be the Son of God in power when he rose from the dead. After Jesus’ resurrection, Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Jesus accepted those words of praise and worship. He didn’t rebuke Thomas. So, then, the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is God.

The Bible also shows that the Holy Spirit is God. The Bible’s formulas for baptism and blessing include the Holy Spirit along with the Father and the Son. How could that be so, unless the Holy Spirit is also God? The Bible often refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of God.” Some who deny the Trinity argue that the Spirit is not a person but is just a force, the impersonal power of God. But Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit as a person, a comforter or helper or advocate (John 14:16,26; 15:2; 16:7). The apostle Peter said that lying to the Holy Spirit was lying to God (Acts 5:3-4). Elsewhere the Bible warns, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30). You can’t lie to a force; you can only lie to a person. You can’t grieve a power; you can only grieve a person. The Bible says, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16) If you are God’s temple, and the one living in you is the Spirit, then the Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is not just a force. He is a person. He is God.

There is One God

God forever exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and each person is fully God. But we must not say, “And therefore there are three Gods.” That would be a disastrous mistake. There is one God. Where do we find in the Bible that there is one God? Everywhere! The Scriptures are too numerous to mention. I’ll quote just a few. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). God declares in Isaiah 45:5, “I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.” The New Testament says bluntly, “There is only one God” (Romans 3:30)

There are not three Gods. There’s only one God. Some have accused Christians of tritheism, belief in three Gods. But Christians believe in one God, not in three. Still, the question arises, “If Christians believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how can we honestly say we believe in only one God?” Let’s talk a bit about the oneness of God as compared to polytheism, belief in a number of different gods.

One difference is equality. Polytheists really didn’t have equality in the beings whom they considered to be gods and goddesses. The Greeks had Zeus as the number one god. The Romans had Jupiter as the number one god. The Norse people had Odin as their top god. But in the being of the true God, there isn’t a number one and number two and then differences in rank or value. There are some role differences in the Trinity where the Father sends, and the Son carries out what the Father wishes, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and witnesses to the Son and points us back to the Father. But those differences in what the persons' order or operations does not mean less value in who they are. There is complete equality in the persons of the Trinity.

There’s also unity. Believers in polytheism often pictured the various gods competing, squabbling, having different agendas, different ideas, totally different personalities. The Trinity is always one in purpose. Jesus never had to try to change the Father’s mind about us. The Father always loved us. That’s what John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son,” and the Son so loved the Father and so loved us that He came. Some Christians have unfortunately tended to think, “The Father seems to be the grouchy one of the Trinity who’s angry about our sin, but Jesus is the nice one of the Trinity who came and loved and died for us.” That is bad thinking. It’s almost blasphemous against God the Father. Jesus came because of the Father’s love and because Jesus was perfectly in tune with the Father’s love. The Holy Spirit is perfectly in tune with the love of the Father and the Son. Father, Son, and Spirit are always united and not squabbling, not pursuing different agendas, not with different personalities or purposes. That’s a huge difference from tritheism or polytheism.

Another key difference is in the extent of authority. In the one Triune God, there are not separate gods with different specialties, where they have one sphere where they’re effective and other spheres where they’re not effective. The ancient Greeks and Romans, for instance, had different gods for war, for sex and beauty, for wisdom, and so forth. God is not like that. The Father is God over all. The Son is God over all. The Holy Spirit is God over all. Father, Son, and Spirit are one, without each having their own separate turf or territory or domains. In 1 Kings 20 the Bible describes how the people of Israel were involved in a battle against a pagan country, and Israel won the battle. The pagans thought they knew how to solve the problem. They said, “We fought that battle in the wrong location. The Israelites are people of the hills, and their God is a god of the hills. We just need to fight them again in a different location.” So they set everything up just as they had the first time: same number of officers, same way of organizing, but this time they were going to fight the battle in a valley. This time their gods, the gods of the valley, would beat Israel’s God of the hills. Well, they fought that battle in the valley, and they got whipped even worse than they had lost in the hills. The God they were fighting against was the one true God, the God of the valleys as well as the hills. He has authority over everything.

A final thing Christians affirm in opposition to tritheism is that God is one in His very being in a way that goes beyond our comprehension. We don’t understand how three persons can be one being that cannot be separated, that cannot be divided in any way. They are united in personality. Their personalities, so to speak, are identical. You don’t have features in God the Father or strengths or talents in God the Father that are lacking in the Son or in the Holy Spirit. Every attribute that applies to the Father also applies to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. The three are also one in mind. Father, Son, and Spirit are always on the same page. They’re always thinking the same thing. They are always completely and perfectly in tune with each other. There is a union of love so deep and so eternal that it is a union of their very being. They are three distinct persons but never three separate persons or three divided persons. The three distinct persons are somehow united in a way that goes beyond individual personality as we know it.

False Denials of the Trinity

As Christians we rejoice in the truth of the Trinity, but we also need to be very clear about some false denials of the Trinity so that we don’t fall prey to them. 

Arianism

One huge error in the early centuries of  the church involved a man named Arius. He claimed that Jesus was not fully God but had a beginning. He said that the Word existed before coming into the world as Mary’s child but that he was not eternal or uncreated; he was the first of God’s created things, and later came into the world as a child. Arius had a motto about the Word: “There was a time when he was not,” a time when the Word did not exist. According to Arius, what Christians call the second person of the Trinity was actually just the first creature made by God the Father. Meanwhile, said Arius, the Holy Spirit was just a power, not a person. Arius’s view was a great threat and nearly swept away part of the church. But eventually the Council of Nicaea met in 325, and orthodox believers upheld the doctrine of the Trinity.

Hundreds of years after Arius, in the early 600s, Muslims denied the Trinity. The Koran declared that the Trinity is a lie and a damnable blasphemy. Muslims deny that Jesus is God, though they say he is a prophet. The Muslim religion is an anti-Christian heresy. It denies that Jesus is the Son of God and denies that Jesus died. So according to Islam, Jesus did not pay the penalty for the sins of the world, and he is not divine.

Mormons believe that Jesus was the product of the sexual union of God the Father and Mary. That involves a whole different category of ideas about God, and it agrees with Arius’s idea that Jesus had a beginning. In the Bible, being eternal, without any beginning, is one of God’s attributes. To say that Jesus had a beginning is to say that he is not really God.

Jehovah’s Witnesses hold that Jesus came from the first created being, the greatest of the angels, the archangel Michael. In their view, Michael became human in the person of Jesus. Again, Jesus is not truly God.

Unitarians likewise insist that only one divine person is God. They say that Jesus was just a man with a very heightened consciousness of God.

The old errors of Arius keep popping up in various forms. They have been recycled by Satan again and again to deny the Trinity and to deny who Jesus and the Spirit are.

Modalism

Another variety of denying the Trinity is called modalism. This view holds that Father and Son and Spirit are different labels for different roles or phases in the life and work of God, but not distinct persons at all.

One type of modalism focuses on God’s different roles: a creating role, a saving role, and a purifying role. In his creating role, he is called Father. In his saving role, he is called Jesus. In his purifying and transforming role, he is called the Holy Spirit. But these are not three persons, only three roles performed by the one divine person using different titles. Think of it this way. I have different roles. I’m Dave to my friends. I’m Dad to my kids. I’m Pastor to others. So, I’ve got these three titles: Dave, Dad and Pastor. Yet there are not three David Feddeses; there is only one. Does that make David Feddes a trinity? No! In the same way, it is not the doctrine of the Trinity to say God does three different things and yet there are not three persons but one. God does a lot more than three things. God does tons of things! The Trinity is not just a God of three different roles but three distinct, divine persons.

Another version of modalism taught that God has three phases in His career. From the creation of the world until the coming of Jesus, God was in his Father phase. Then, while Jesus was living on earth and doing His miracles, God was in the Jesus phase of God’s career. After that, the Holy Spirit came, so now God is in the Spirit phase. In this type of modalism, the Father and Jesus and the Spirit are not distinct persons but the same person with three different career phases. Consider Barack Obama. For awhile he was a law professor. Later he became a Senator. Then he served as a President. Were there three Barack Obamas? No, there was just one, who had these different career phases. Modalism uses that sort of idea to picture how God can be three and yet one. But that is a disastrous error. Father, Son, and Spirit are three distinct persons, not one person with three different career phases.

Tritheism

Tritheism is another way to deny the Trinity. It would be tritheism to teach that there are three separate Gods who aren’t unified as one being, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three beings who are all divine but separate and doing their own thing.

Arianism, modalism, and tritheism are all false. These errors must be identified and rejected, whether they are ancient history or appear in a revised form in our own time. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that there are three persons who are distinct but not divided. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit; yet they are never separated from each other. This means that you can never be in a relationship with the Father without also being in a relationship with the Son, without also being in a relationship with the Spirit. Father, Son, and Spirit cannot be divided or separated.  

Blessedness of the Trinity

Let’s review these basics of the doctrine of the Trinity.

1. God forever exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2. Each person is fully God.

3. There is one God.

“The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods but one God.” (Athanasian Creed) With that doctrine in our minds, let’s allow it to sink into our hearts and think just a little about the blessedness of the Holy Trinity.

C.S. Lewis and others have compared the Trinity to the sun. You can’t really look directly at the sun. You go blind staring at it. But because of the sun, you can see everything else! It enlightens and warms everything else! If you accept that the doctrine of the Trinity is true, even though it’s a great mystery, it makes sense of everything else. If you deny it, you can’t make sense of Jesus as the Son of God. You can’t make sense of what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit. You can’t make sense of human relationships. We’re created in God’s image, and the very image of God is relational.

Faith in the Trinity brings light and warmth to everything. Let me remind you again that it shows the independence of God and the fullness of God and the blessedness of God to know that He is Trinity. Everything the Trinity did in creation and salvation was from a surplus, not a shortage, of life and love.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the only view of God in which God is more than personal, rather than less than personal. We’re used to thinking of persons as separate individuals, so we can hardly imagine how three persons could be one being. But why should we suppose that God can be reduced to our level and understood in our terms? Not only is God personal, he’s more than personal. God is not just one person but a superpersonal union of three divine Persons. C.S. Lewis writes,

Christians are the only people with any idea of a personal being who is more than personal. Christians know that God is more than a person; God is a superpersonal union of three divine Persons. And therefore God is not just a power; God is love. It is out of the overflow of God’s love that he created the world. It is out of the overflow of God’s love that he redeemed his people by sending his Son to live a perfect human life, die a terrible death, and rise again for their salvation. It is out of the overflow of God’s love that his Holy Spirit comes into the hearts of believers and floods them with the love and life of the Holy Trinity.

When we’re in Christ and the Holy Spirit is in us, the Father loves us and delights in us just as much as He delights in His own Son. In the last prayer that Jesus prayed to his Father before he went to the cross, Jesus said of his disciples, “I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26). Jesus said that when someone obeys his commands, the Father will love him, and the Father and the Son will come to him and live within him (John 14:21).

This is not just talk about empty doctrines. This is talk about relationship, about Christ in us, about the Father loving us with the very same love that He has for His dear Son, Jesus Christ, and about this love of Christ and the Father being poured out in our hearts by the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).

The church lives its life, and Christians live our lives, calling on the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are baptized in that name. We are blessed in that name. We pray in that name: in the Spirit, through Jesus, to the Father. We sing in the name of the Trinity: 

The Apostle Peter speaks of becoming “partakers of the divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4), of being drawn into the relationship and caught up into the life and love of the Trinity. We don’t become the fourth and fifth and umpteenth persons of the Trinity. But we’re caught up into that dance and that rhythm of love and that glorious relationship with God.

So, if you believe in the blessed Trinity, if you’ve been baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I hope that you’re filled with awe and deep joy at the wonder of God and that you long to know him better and better. In our minds we can’t fully understand the deep truths which the blessed Trinity reveals about himself. But in our hearts, we can bow down and worship before the majesty and mystery of these three infinite, magnificent, eternal persons, united in a perfect oneness that surpasses all human imagination or description. And we can look forward to the day when we no longer see dimly but see more clearly and more directly, and have all of eternity to enjoy the life and the love of the blessed Trinity.

God is love

Blessed Trinity

Old Testament hints

New Testament makes clear

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17)

New Testament makes clear

Blessed Trinity

Blessed Trinity

1.  God forever exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One God

Oneness (not tri-theism)

False denials of Trinity

Blessedness of Trinity

• Trinity is like sun: we can go blind staring at it, but it enlightens and warms everything else.
• Surplus, not shortage, of life and love. More than personal, not less than personal.
• When we are in Christ and the Spirit is in us, the Father loves us and delights in us just as he does in His Son. (John 17:23,26)
• Calling on God’s name: baptizing, blessing, praying, and singing in the Trinitarian Name 
• “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4)