TRINITY: God IS

This post is just the beginning of our study of the Trinity, the doctrine that Bruce Ware says, “affirms that God’s whole and undivided essence belongs equally, eternally, simultaneously, and fully to each of the three distinct Persons of the Godhead.”  Ware, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, p41

 

Mark Driscoll’s sermon, TRINITY: God IS, will be the starting point.  The following notes are from the first half of that sermon:

Augustine of Hippo once said:  If you deny the Trinity, you lose your soul.  If you try to explain it, you lose your mind!

People want love and relationships.  Look at the explosion of communication in our age.  Deep desire for peace and unity within our culture.  Rooted in our being created in the image of God. 

If we have a faulty view of God, we suffer in very way!  This discussion of God and the Trinity is very important.  Who is my God?  Who will I see when I die?  What is the Trinity?

While the word trinity does not appear in Scripture, the concept very clearly does. ONE GOD-  He eternally exists as THREE persons.

THREE PERSONS- not “its”.  God thinks, acts, feels, speaks. Father, Son , Holy Spirit.  Equal. They are each fully and equally GOD!

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647) summarizes the doctrine by saying “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.” Wayne Grudem defines the doctrine of the Trinity as follows: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, p. 226). Bruce Ware provides another helpful definition: “The doctrine of the Trinity affirms that God’s whole and undivided essence belongs equally, eternally, simultaneously, and fully to each of the three distinct Persons of the Godhead.” (Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, p. 41). Louis Berkhof explained the doctrine of the Trinity under these headings:

1. There is in the Divine Being but one indivisible essence.
2. In this one Divine Being there are three Persons or individual subsistences: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
3. The whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons.
4. The subsistence and operation of the three persons in the divine Being is marked by a certain definite order.
5. There are certain personal attributes by which the three persons are distinguished.
6. The Church confesses the Trinity to be a mystery beyond the comprehension of man. (Berkhof, Systematic Theology, pp. 87–89)

The Trinity is ONE God who eternally exists as THREE distinct persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—who are each fully and equally God.

“Person” does not mean that God the Father or God the Spirit became human beings. Rather, it means that each member of the Trinity thinks, acts, feels, speaks, and relates because they are persons and not impersonal forces. Further, each member of the Trinity is equally God, which means that they share the divine attributes, such as eternality, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

The doctrine of the Trinity seeks to hold all of the truth that God says about himself in Scripture, such as the following truths, without dismissing or diminishing any truth.

There is only One God.

• “ . . . the LORD is God; there is no other besides him” (Deut. 4:35).
• “ . . . there is no god beside me” (Deut. 32:39).
• “ . . . you alone are God” (Ps 86:10).
• “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me” (Isa. 43:10).
• “I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God” (Isa. 45:5).
• “ . . . the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God” (1 Tim. 1:17).
• “ . . . there is one God” (1 Tim. 2:5).

All other gods are demonic false gods.

• Jesus says……“… the only true God” (John 17:3).
• This was true in OT as well……“They sacrificed to demons that were no gods” (Deut. 32:17).
• Also in NT, Paul says…”… what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Cor. 10:20).
• Counterfeit deities…false signs and miracles….
• Allah….a demon.  Not God.  Not Yaweh, true God of the Bible.
• Mother Earth…a demon.  Not God.
• Test the spirits! (1John 4:1-6)

The Father is God.

• “God, the Father” (John 6:27).
• “ . . . there is one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:6).
• Virtually EVERYONE agrees with this doctrine.  NO heresies exist that deny that God the Father is GOD.  Even the heretics get this doctrine right.

The Son is God.

• Heavily debated, and many heresies arise from not believing this.
• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14).
• “Truly, truly, I [Jesus] say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). (and religious leader wanted to stone Him, for He claimed to be GOD(blasphemy)! Ex 3:14) The reason Jesus was killed was because of claims to be God.
• “Thomas answered him [Jesus], ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:28).
• “ . . . Christ who is God over all” (Rom. 9:5).
• “ . . . our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
• “ . . . Jesus Christ. He is the true God” (1 John 5:20).

The Spirit is God.

Note: It must be stressed that the Spirit is a “he” and not an “it.” The Spirit is not an impersonal force, but rather a person who can be grieved (Eph. 4:30), resisted (Acts 7:51), and insulted, outraged (Heb. 10:29).

• “Now the Lord (a title for God) is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17–18).
• “But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? . . . You have not lied to men but to God’” (Acts 5:3–4).

The statement “God is love” in 1 John 4:8 only makes sense in light of the fact that God is a perfectly loving Trinitarian community.  Like saying, “God is TRINITY.”  God lacks nothing.  He doesn’t need us!  This insight also helps illuminate what Jesus said in John 3:35, “The Father loves the Son,” and in John 14:31, “I love the Father.”

Does the “Trinity” appear in the OT?  Yes, the echoes of the Trinity in the early pages of Genesis also make sense:

• “In the beginning, God (Elohim, plural…)  created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:1–2).
• Targum…an accepted Jewish reading of the OT.  200 years before Jesus was born,  there were Jewish scholars who believed in the Trinity!
• “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’” (Gen. 1:26). This makes NO sense without the doctrine of the Trinity.
• “Then the LORD God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us” (Gen. 3:22).
• “And the LORD said . . . ‘Come, let us . . .’” (Gen. 11:6–7).

Lastly, two more verses on the Trinity in the Old Testament apply directly to the incarnation of Jesus:

• “And now the Lord GOD [Father] has sent me [Jesus], and his Spirit” (Isa. 48:16). (written hundreds of years before Jesus was born…) Jesus says this repeatedly.
• “The Spirit of the Lord GOD [Father] is upon me [Jesus], because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor” (Isa. 61:1).

As an insightful aside, Jesus began his public ministry by reading Isaiah 61:1, according to Luke 4.  (“Today, this is fulfilled in ME!”)

We also examined a few places in the New Testament where the Trinity appears, including the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:35), the baptism of Jesus (Matt. 3:16–17), and the Great Commission of Jesus (Matt. 28:19–20). (THE singular NAME of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit –3 persons!)