Transcript & Slides: Treasuring the Trinity

PDF Article

PDF Slides

Treasuring the Trinity
By David Feddes

Over the course of many centuries, God made Himself known particularly to the people of Israel. He always insisted that He was one God and there was none like Him. However, already in the first chapter of the Bible, there were the words, "Let us make man in our own image." There was a hint of plurality, yet always insisting that there was one God.

In the blessing that God told the priests to put on the people, they were to say, "The Lord [YHWH] bless you and keep you. The Lord  [YHWH] make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord  [YHWH] lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace." For some reason, the Lord [YHWH] was repeated three times, that one great name that means "I AM."

In a vision of Isaiah, when he saw the Lord high and lifted up, the seraphim, the heavenly beings, hid their faces and cried out, "Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts." They cried out three times, "holy," for some reason. 

But those things remained a mystery in Old Testament times. There was belief in one God and some hints of plurality and faint suggestions of threeness in the one God.

Then there came into the world a man who claimed to be the Son of God, who claimed to be equal with God His Father. After He came, He promised that another like Him would be sent and this one would live in them. It was in those events, the appearing of a man claiming to be God and then the sending of someone else to live in God's people, that people began to think really hard about what this meant regarding who God is. Jesus Himself teaches a great deal about the Father, Himself, and the Holy Spirit in John 14-16. I just want to highlight a few of the verses where He speaks of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

He said, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor [Helper, Comforter] to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth" (14:16-17). "The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (14:26). Here we see the Father, and Jesus Himself, and then the Counselor whom He is going to send. "When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me" (15:26). "The Spirit will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is Mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is Mine and make it known to you" (16:14-15).

With those and many other teachings of Jesus, we see the unveiling of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When you read through the Gospel of John, that's very prominent. When you read the letters of Paul, you hear again and again of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Yet the Old and New Testaments continually insist that there is but one God. 

Comparisons

This has spurred some people to try to make things more understandable and to explain what the Trinity is like, attempting to solve intellectual puzzles.

Some point to a steaming iceberg in the ocean and say, "The Trinity is kind of like H₂O, where you have ice, and steam rising from it, and liquid water. It's all H₂O but it takes three different forms." Or they'll say, "The Trinity is kind of like an egg. You've got an egg white, a yolk, and a shell—three different components but one egg." Or. "The Trinity is like a shamrock, a three-leaf clover. There are three leaves, but they're joined together in one clover." Or, "The Trinity is like the Nile River. It has a source, a channel, and a delta, but it's all one river."

Sometimes illustrations like these can give you a tiny, helpful hint about threeness and oneness if you don't extend them very far. However, they can also lead you into heresy. H₂O is not ice when it's liquid and it's not steam when it's liquid. This represents a heresy known as modalism, where God operates in different forms or phases but not as three distinct persons. The problem with the egg or the clover leaf is that they have different components, but God is not three different chunks where you add them up to get one God. All of God is in each of the three persons, not a little chunk of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit each is entirely God. The Nile is a decent illustration in some respects, but the delta isn't the source and it isn't the channel. Each of these comparisons has its problems in trying to explain how God can be three and be one at the same time.

The main problem isn't just that if you follow these hints too far, you land yourself in a heresy. Another problem is that none of the comparisons stirs awe and reverence. Have you ever wanted to worship an egg? Have you ever said, "Oh great three-leaf clover," or bowed down to the Nile or were struck by how kind and loving a steaming iceberg is? The difficulty with these illustrations is that each of them is completely impersonal and does not really lead to awe or wonder at who God is. In trying to find a comparison for what the Triune God is like, you might try to make it nice and simple, but you show nothing about the real being of God, particularly the wonder of God, the love of God, and the unending delight and joy of God in being God.

Missions

It's better to just look at God the way the Bible shows Him and unfolds the reality of the Trinity. We came to know of the Trinity because of the missions of God, the two great missions. The entire Bible can be summarized by saying, "The Father sends the Son and the Holy Spirit." These sendings--the Latin word "mission" comes from "sending"--are the basis of our understanding of who God is. In the Incarnation, the Father sends His only begotten Son to become human, and the Spirit anoints Jesus for mission. Another sending involves indwelling: the Father and the Son send the Spirit to apply the Son's work and to live within us. It is because God did those things—those missions of the Father sending the Son and then the Spirit—that we even think about the Trinity at all. So, it might be best to leave the eggs for breakfast and focus on what God actually did and what He says in the Bible. 

Glimpse of Trinity

One of the great events in the Bible that really helps us to see Father, Son, and Spirit is the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. As Jesus comes out of the water, the Holy Spirit descends on Him visibly in the form of a dove, and a voice comes from heaven, the voice of God the Father, saying, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." In that great moment, you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Scott Swain, a scholar who teaches about the Trinity, says that in Jesus' baptism, the Father publicly crowns His only begotten Son; the Son is crowned; and the Spirit is the crown.

We also think about our own baptism, which is in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Notice that it is "the name," not "the names." The name in the Old Testament was "I am," Yahweh. When you are baptized in the name, you are baptized in Hashem, the name of God. However, the name of God turns out to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the God who is the great I AM. Though it may leave you scratching your head with some questions, it is more likely to bring you to your knees in awe and wonder than an iceberg or an egg.

When we think of how God revealed Himself in the New Testament, we reflect again on the fact that He did hint in the Old Testament at his threefold nature: "Let us make man" and "holy, holy, holy." In the New Testament, you have a vision in the Book of Revelation that is somewhat like the vision of Isaiah. There again, the angels are crying, "Holy, holy, holy." This time, the vision shows Someone sitting on a throne, and then there's a Lamb sitting in the middle of the throne, and before that throne of God and the Lamb, seven lamps are blazing: the sevenfold Spirit of God. At the very end of the Book of Revelation, you have the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Jesus). What is that river? The river is the Holy Spirit. Jesus promised that out of those who believe in Him would flow rivers of living water, meaning the Holy Spirit (John 7:38-39). In that picture, the river of the Holy Spirit flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Theologians describe this as proceeding: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

When we think about God—Father, Son, and Spirit—we need to think about Him along biblical lines. With the help of Christians who have thought deeply throughout the centuries and looked at the Bible, we can get a better understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine doesn't merely solve an intellectual puzzle in our minds but, more importantly, helps us to treasure God for who He is—to treasure the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let's look at this from three different angles. One is to think about the eternal being of God: who He is in Himself apart from the world and anything else He does in relation to the world, who God is in Himself as an eternal being. Then, we will see how that eternal being carries out His mighty works in a Triune way. Finally, we'll think about what that involves for us in rich relating: how we can treasure the Trinity in our own lives and in our walk with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Eternal Being

God in His eternal being can be described as one God in three persons. The Athanasian Creed says, "We worship one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence." You don't just mix the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all together and turn them into just one person, nor do you divide the Trinity and chop up the being into three different beings. The Creed says, "For the person of the Father is a distinct person. The person of the Son is a distinct person. The person of the Holy Spirit is a distinct person. But the divinity [Godhead] of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty co-eternal."

The Athanasian Creed goes on to say, "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three Gods; there is but one God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord. Yet there are not three Lords; there is but one Lord. Just as Christian truth compels us to confess each person individually as both God and Lord, so it forbids us to say there are three gods or lords." That is one of the classic statements of the Christian faith in the Trinity—three persons, one God. The three persons are distinct, yet the being is one.

Distinct Persons

What do we understand when we learn about these distinct persons? That can get a little confusing because in our experience, the word "persons" refers to humans. When you know one human, you know one person. When you know a different human person, that's a whole different being. But in the being of God, distinct persons exist in one being. One reason why we can't conceive of three persons in one being if we're thinking in just human terms is that we're bodily. My body is separate from your body and from another person's body. As bodily beings, we are separated by our bodies. But God is spirit, so there's no physical separation. God is also united in being in such a manner that God's mind is one and God's will is one. In the Trinity, you do not have three separate minds thinking totally separate thoughts. You don't have three separate wills wanting three different kinds of things. You have one mind and one will in distinct persons. This is very difficult, even impossible, to completely understand. So try to understand as much as you can, and then adore the Trinity beyond understanding. But don't stop short of understanding as much as you can.

When we think of the distinct persons, the persons of the Trinity are different than human persons in not being physical, not having separate minds or wills. But don't just focus on what the persons are not; think also about what each distinct person is. Each distinct person is entirely God—not a little chunk of God, but entirely God. 

There is a great division you can think about. There is God, and then there are all created things. Father, Son, and Spirit are on the God side of that divide. There is nothing in God Himself that is created or made. Everything about God is eternal, entirely present, and equally God. The Athanasian Creed says, "Nothing in this Trinity is before or after; nothing is greater or smaller; in their entirety the three persons are coeternal and coequal with each other.

So you do not have separation or inequality. What you do have is limitless life, love, delight, and glory. God is love, and God is love apart from ever making a world. God is love apart from ever showing love toward anyone of us. God is love because God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the life of God, the Father loves the Son completely, the Son loves the Father completely, and the Holy Spirit is the bond of their love.

Father

In the early church, around the 200s and 300s, there arose a heresy. One of the main spokesmen for it was a person named Arius. He said that the Son was created, that there was a time when the Son didn't exist. This view had a major problem, of course, and we would rightly focus on the fact that Arius was denying that Jesus is God. But you know what else he was denying? If Jesus is not forever the divine Son, then God is not forever Father. Arius accordingly called God "Unoriginate." This term upset Athanasius, a great champion of the Trinity. Arius denied the Father as eternally loving the Son, pouring forth His being in giving life and love to the Son.

Knowing God as Father radically changes everything. Earthly fathers do at least a couple of things. One is that they give life; they beget life. Another is that they give love, at least if they're decent fathers. Our heavenly Father is supremely beyond all earthly fathers, but He does do those two things at the very least. He constantly gives life in the eternal begetting of the Son, and He constantly loves the Son with complete and total love. So, Christians don't call God "Unoriginate"; we call him Father.

Consider Jehovah's Witnesses and Jewish people who believe in one God but not in Jesus. They hold a view where God is not eternally the Father because He did not have a Son eternally. If He is to be a Father at all, He has to start being something He wasn't, which is impossible in God. God can't start being something He's never been. The whole view you get of God is different. When you say, "Oh, we all believe in the same God," I hope not! I hope you don't believe there is just a God alone out there—the all-powerful and dominating—who was not Father from all eternity, who was not love from all eternity. The Christian faith teaches that God is love, not just that He started being love at some point in time, but because in His very being, He is love.

Son

When we think about God the Son, He is of God. He is begotten of God. The Nicene Creed says, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible." Then it says, "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, begotten of the Father before all worlds." This means begotten from eternity [eternal generation], meaning He never started being begotten. He forever has His being from the Father. The Father is constantly pouring forth His own being, which is His Son reflected back to Him. "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord." He is "God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, of one substance [one being, one essence] with the Father, by whom all things were made." This is what the Church Fathers at the Council of Nicaea said about Jesus: He is begotten, not made.

What does it mean to be made? To be made is to be on the creation side of things; you had a beginning. To be begotten eternally is not to be on the creation side of things. He is begotten; He is eternally generated by the life of the Father. The only thing the Father can father is Himself; He can only father His own being. In fathering His own being into another divine person, the Father has a Son who is exactly like Him. We human fathers have kids, but they're not exactly like us. At least I hope you haven't done cloning! And even with cloning, the upbringing would be different. Fatherhood on earth is different from divine Fatherhood. You can only contribute half of your genes and a part of your upbringing to help form a child. When God begets, He begets exactly His own being. So when God begets a Son, the Son is the essence, the being, of the Father Himself. When we think about the life and love of God, we reflect again on the fact that Father and Son have an undivided essence. 

Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. The Bible pictures the Father forever, without beginning, pouring forth the life of His Son. The Father and the Son love and enjoy and delight in one another. Somehow, their very delight, their very love, their very bond is a third person: the bond of their love and being is the Holy Spirit. When we think of the Holy Spirit, He is Himself the love that unites Father and Son, and He is Himself a person.

How can the love of two persons ever produce a third person? Well, even on the human level, the love of two bodily persons can produce a third person who is distinct from the other two persons. In the being of God, the eternal love of the two persons is itself an eternal person. This is about as far as we can go in saying things about the eternal being of God as three persons. Each person is eternally, entirely, equally God. Each of the persons is fully God, with limitless life, love, delight, and glory. There are three distinct persons loving one another in the life of the Trinity. 

Undivided Essence

Although there are three distinct persons in the Trinity, we must not think of three different Gods or three different Lords or three different beings. The essence, the being, the substance of God, is undivided.

The Bible teaches that God is one. This means at least two things: God is single and simple. The fact that God is one means that there is one single God. Nobody and nothing else is God. All other supernatural beings or made-up statues that people have ever worshiped are not God. God is one, and there is no other.

The other sense in which God is one is that He is simple. You might say, "What you just talked about doesn't sound very simple!" But when theologians say that God is simple, they mean that God isn't a collection of various chunks and parts; God is completely united in who He is. Everything that God is, is simply who He is. We can speak of God being loving or being holy or expressing wrath towards sin. We speak of various attributes of God, by which we attempt to describe who He is and how He relates to us. In the very being of God Himself, however, we should not think that God is 14 different chunks of stuff—30% holiness, 33% love, 20% righteousness, 5% wrath, and so on. God is not bits and pieces or components. God is one being, undivided and completely united. To say that God is one means nobody else is God (single). It also means God is not divided up into parts (simple).

Relations of Origin

How are the three persons of God distinct? The classic answer the church has given, after much reflection on the Bible, is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct only in relations of origin. What's meant by relations of origins? The Athanasian Creed says, "The Father is neither made nor begotten from anyone. The Son is neither made nor created. He is begotten from the Father alone. The Spirit is neither made nor created nor begotten. He proceeds from the Father and the Son." That's the classic statement of the eternal relations of origin. There are three relations of origin. 

The Father is distinguished by eternal paternity—He does not come from anyone or anything else. He is the source of all  that is in the being of God. The Father is the one who begets the eternal Son. It is His being that He pours forth and that then relates back to Him in the person of the Son. His eternal paternity is what distinguishes Him from the Son and the Spirit. 

Eternal generation, or eternal begetting, is what distinguishes the Son. The Son is forever begotten by His beloved Father. 

The Holy Spirit's eternal spiration [breathing forth] means that the Spirit is forever breathed out or proceeds from the Father and the Son.

These are the only things in classic Christian theology that distinguish Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You cannot say, "Well, the Father is superior to the Son and the Spirit." He begets the Son and breathes out the Spirit, but He is not superior to them because of that. Some views suggest one person of the Trinity is subordinate to another. Sometimes even in evangelical Christian circles, there is talk of "eternal functional subordination," where the Father is always commanding and the Son is always obeying because there is a superior-subordinate relationship. We know that when the Son became a human on Earth, He related to the Father that way because that's how humans ought to relate to God the Father. Of course, in the Trinity itself, the Son is always doing the will of the Father, but not as a subordinate or lesser, but because there is one will in the Trinity. "Nothing in this Trinity," says the Athanasian Creed, "is before or after; nothing is greater or lesser." The Creed teaches that the eternal relations of origin are the only distinction in the persons of the Trinity, not that one is greater than another.

When we think about God in His eternal being, we worship one God in three persons with complete equality, distinguished only by the fact that the Father begets the Son and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. 

Mighty Works

When we think about God's mighty works, we see the Trinity at work. When you read the New Testament, you'll find Father, Son, and Holy Spirit repeatedly. You'll find them at work in creation, salvation, indwelling, sanctification, glorification. Sometimes we tend to associate those works with different persons of the Trinity—the Father with creation, the Son with salvation, the Holy Spirit with indwelling. It's not terrible to do that. In a moment, we'll talk about "appropriations"—a term theologians use to explain why we associate certain works with particular persons of the Trinity. However, whenever you say it that way, remember you are not saying the whole truth. The whole truth is that the Trinity works through inseparable operations, and the Trinity's works reflect eternal relations.

Inseparable Operations

What one person of the Trinity does, the whole Trinity does. There is no work of God that just one person of the Trinity is involved in. 

The work of creation is commonly associated with God the Father. But read Genesis—God was there, He spoke a Word, and there was a Spirit hovering over the face of the deep. That Word, the New Testament tells us, was with God and was God. Through Him, all things were made. John 1, Hebrews 1, and Colossians 1 all speak of everything being created by the Father through Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is the effective power that God uses to bring life into the world. So, the work of creation is an inseparable operation involving Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

When you think about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Jesus becoming human, you might say, "Certainly the Son of God did that." And that's true: the Son is the one who took on a human nature. But did He do that on His own? John 3:16 says God so loved the world that He gave His Son, sending Him into the world. How did He send Him? He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made human. Even the incarnation—the Son becoming human—was accomplished not just by the Son but by the Father and by the Holy Spirit.

When we think about the atonement, you might say, "Surely Jesus the Son did that." Certainly, He offered His life on the cross. But what does Hebrews 9:14 say? It speaks of "the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God." There you have it—the atonement is Jesus' blood offered through the Holy Spirit to God the Father. Again, the work of atonement on the cross is an inseparable operation by all three persons of the Trinity, not just the work of Jesus but also of the Father and the Holy Spirit.

When we think of indwelling, the Holy Spirit comes to indwell us. But is it only the Holy Spirit? Jesus said in John 14:23, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." When the Holy Spirit comes to make His home with you, you've also got fellowship with the Son and with the Father. 

Whether it's indwelling, making us holy, atonement, incarnation, or creation, all the acts of God, all the mighty works of God are inseparable operations—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each and all, are involved in everything God does.

Order of Operations

There is an order of operations in the Trinity's works. God's external works are patterned on His internal, eternal being. God's works follow the same pattern—they proceed from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. When you come into a relationship with the Triune God, the Holy Spirit touches you, you get to know the Son, and you come to know God as your Father. There is an order of operations, or "taxis." God does things in a certain order that reflects the eternal relations of origin. For every work of God, the Father originates, it comes through the Son, and in the power and application of the Holy Spirit. The Father acts from no one and acts through the Son and in the Spirit. The Son acts from the Father and in the Spirit. The Spirit acts from the Father and the Son. You have inseparable operations but also a pattern: from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit. You'll find this pattern in God's actions throughout the New Testament.

Appropriations

Appropriation is when a particular work is appropriated to a particular person of the Trinity, where He stands in the foreground. The Father is often spoken of as the Creator, even though the Son and the Spirit are involved in creation. Jesus is often spoken of as the Savior, even though God the Father is our great God and Savior, and the Holy Spirit is involved in salvation. The Holy Spirit is often called the Sanctifier or Indweller and Comforter, even though the Father and the Son are working through the Spirit. The Bible often speaks in these terms. These ideas help us to make sense of many passages and to have a unified understanding of what God's Word reveals about the one true God. In God's mighty works of creation, salvation, indwelling, and everything God does, the operations are inseparable, ordered according to who God is.

In God's actions of salvation, He not only give us what we need but shows us Himself and give us Himself. He wants us, in His actions, to know Him in His being. Appropriation allows the Father to get attention at one point, the Son at another, and the Spirit at another; but always remember that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are doing all those mighty works as one.

God's Gospel

The amazing fact is that God is the gospel—the Trinity is the gospel. Lose the Trinity, and you lose the gospel. It is God the Father who sent His Son to be our Savior. It is God the Father and Son who send the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts. These are the blessed truths we rejoice in.

Fred Sanders, perhaps the greatest evangelical theologian of the Trinity today, writes: "The Father sends the Son and the Holy Spirit" would be a summary of the entire Bible... Salvation history not only shows what God does but who God is." When you read the history of salvation through the Old and New Testament, you find out what God does and who He is as Trinity." Sanders says, "God put Himself in the gospel." That is a glorious statement—God put Himself in the gospel! God doesn't just give forgiveness or good things; he gives Himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Sanders adds, "God's self-revelation is not charades but show and tell." Charades is a game where you can't say anything but have to act out a word or phrase for others to guess. God's revelation is not playing charades by acting without saying anything. In Scripture he explains what He has done and who He is. In the gospel, God gives Himself and explains Himself.

Rich Relating

In thinking about the Trinity, we've considered God's eternal being and God's mighty works, as Trinity. Now let's focus on rich relating to the Trinity. 

We're baptized into the name: the eternal name of the I AM is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

We experience adoption and fellowship. The Bible says that God sent His Son born of a woman and then sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts crying, "Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:4-6). He sent us the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15). We have fellowship with the Son and with the Father through the Holy Spirit. God does not just rescue us and then say, "Okay, now you're free to do what you want." He wants us to fellowship with Him, to enjoy His love as the Son enjoys His love. Jesus prays to His Father that the love the Father has for Jesus will be in His followers and that Christ Himself will be in them (John 17:26). That's what the Bible means by adoption and fellowship. 

God shares His love with us: not just a little bit of love for us and lots of love for Jesus. The same love He has for Jesus is directed toward those who are in Jesus and united with Jesus. Remember, God is simple. God can't divide himself into a little chunk of this or that. When He gives Himself, He gives His whole self. He gives the love He has for His Son. When He gives us His Spirit, He shares the life of Father, Son, and Spirit. That's why we live eternally—we're adopted as God's sons. We are not eternally begotten sons like Jesus is, but by participation in Jesus, we get to be adopted as God's sons and have His life in us, an eternal life that cannot die. God even shares His mind with us. He shares His mind with us in the Scriptures, and He also shares His mind by giving us what the Bible calls the mind of the Spirit or the mind of Christ (Romans 8:6; 1 Corinthians 2:16). Adolf Saphir, a preacher and writer from the late 1800s, asked if we've ever read the Bible in the original languages. He added that he wasn't talking about reading it in Greek or Hebrew. The original language of the Bible, said Saphir, is the love of God for His Son. Only when you know the love of God for His Son and that love is speaking to your heart, and you hear the voice of God himself speaking in the Bible, do you begin to understand the original language of the Bible—the voice of God, the voice of love. Then you understand more and more what the mind of the Spirit and the mind of Christ mean.

Rich relating includes our patterns of prayer and praise. When we pray, we ought not to ignore the Father or neglect the Holy Spirit. Some of us perhaps focus almost entirely on Jesus in our prayers. It is certainly appropriate to pray to Jesus, though it's not the main pattern of the Bible. It's appropriate to pray to the Holy Spirit because He is divine, or to sing a song of praise to the Holy Spirit because He is divine. However, there is no prayer to the Holy Spirit in the Bible. That's not because the Holy Spirit is not worthy of worship or can't be prayed to, but because the normal pattern of prayer in the Bible is Trinitarian. You pray prompted by the Holy Spirit in the name or authority of Jesus to the Father. The normal pattern of prayer is to know there is someone in you stirring you to pray—that's the Holy Spirit. You know you have the right to go to God because of Jesus, and you know that God is your Father because He's the eternal Father of Jesus and because He adopted you as His child. That changes the way we pray. If we pray along the flow of the Trinity—from the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father—then we start to realize what an amazing thing it is.

Jesus taught us to pray, "Our Father." You might say, "I've rattled that off a thousand times." But do you really know what it means to say, "Our Father"? You're talking to God as though you are Jesus Christ! You're talking to God like you're His Son! What gave you the idea you could do that? Only because His Son made it possible for you to do that. You talk to God as though you are Jesus Christ because you're joined to Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. You're united with Christ. The more you learn to pray and think in a Trinitarian way—in the Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to the Father—you'll get better theology along the way as you pray properly. More importantly, good theology can help you pray in a more daring and meaningful way. You can talk to God as though you're His own Son or His own daughter because you are! Jesus said so.

C.S. Lewis, in the last part of Mere Christianity, has a chapter called "Let's Pretend." He says it would be "an outrageous bit of cheek" to go around pretending you're the Son of God--except that God tells you to do it, and God pretends that He's your Father. Actually, He doesn't just pretend. If He starts acting like your Father, it's because He is. Children sometimes play pretend games about being adults, and before you know it, they've turned into the kind of grown-ups they were pretending to be. Now, there's a bad way of pretending, of just faking to make an impression; that's hypocrisy. But there's also a good way of pretending: you reckon something to be so, and you believe and act as though it's true. You reckon it so that God is your Father, that you are in Christ, and that the Holy Spirit is working in you. Sometimes you only feel it very dimly, but you start acting and talking like this is true. Before you know it, rich relating to the Trinity becomes a reality in your life.

A Trinitarian pattern can also guide our praise. The songs we sing should praise each person of the Trinity, sometimes by appropriations where we praise God the Father as our Creator, the Son as our Savior, the Holy Spirit as our Indweller. Sometimes, we praise the whole Trinity. In our praise, we do not want to be Father-ignoring or Spirit-neglecting. Our very choice of songs should reflect that.

A quick word about missions. Mission is the Latin word for "getting sent." Jesus said, "As the Father sent me, so I send  you." We're on a mission because Jesus came on a mission. The Father sent the Son and the Spirit. Christian mission is the proclamation that God has sent His Son into the world and that you can have the Spirit of His Son living in your heart. The church is wasting its time if it tries to do many other things in mission but neglects this gospel message. Just being a do-gooder who tries to improve the world a little bit or gives some polite suggestions on better behavior, or tries to start some kind of organization that makes the world better, is not what Christian mission is about. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to make the world better in whatever little ways you can, but if you want to know what Christian mission is, it is the proclamation that the Father has sent His Son into the world and that you can have the Spirit of His Son living in your heart. The only thing we have to offer--and it's a wonderful thing to offer--is God Himself. If the church is not offering the Triune God, it should shut up and go out of business. We exist to glorify and praise God and to make Him known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the words of an ancient hymn, "Glory be to God the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen."

Recommended Books
(from shortest to longest)

Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity

Scott Swain, The Trinity

Fred Sanders, The Holy Spirit

Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God

Matthew Barrett, Simply Trinity

Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity

Treasuring the Trinity
Slide Contents
By David Feddes

Trinity (John 14-16)

^{14: 16} And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth…

^14:26 But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

^15:26 When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.

^16:14 The Spirit will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. ¹⁵ All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

Comparisons

Comparing the Trinity to H₂0, or egg, or shamrock, or Nile River shows that something can be three in a sense but one in another sense. However, there are two major problems with such comparisons.
1. They can suggest wrong ideas, even heresies, about God.
2. They can smother awe, wonder, and worship. Who adores an egg or a shamrock?

Missions

• Incarnation: Father sends only begotten Son to become human, and Spirit anoints Him for mission.
• Indwelling: Father and Son send the Spirit to apply Son’s work and live within us.

Glimpse of Trinity
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 alighting 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)

Treasuring the Trinity

• Eternal Being
• Mighty works
• Rich relating

Eternal Being
Three persons, one God

• Distinct persons: Father, Son, Spirit
  • Each eternally, entirely, equally God
  • Limitless life, love, delight, glory
• Undivided essence: single, simple
• Distinct only in relations of origin

Relations of origin

• Eternal paternity: Father forever begets his beloved Son.
• Eternal generation: Son is forever begotten by his beloved Father.
• Eternal spiration: Spirit is forever breathed out by Father and Son.

Mighty Works
Creation, salvation, indwelling
Works reflect eternal relations

• Inseparable operations
• Order of operations
• Appropriations

God’s Gospel

“The Father sends the Son and the Holy Spirit” would be a summary of the entire Bible… Salvation history not only shows what God does but who God is… God put himself into the gospel… God’s self-revelation is not charades but show and tell. (Fred Sanders)

Rich relating

• Baptism into the Name
• Adoption and fellowship
• Sharing love, life, mind
• Prayer and praise pattern
• Partnering in missions

Treasuring the Trinity

• Eternal Being
• Mighty works
• Rich relating