A Community of Faith - part 2
The unity of the Trinity
We continue with our series on Southern Baptist beliefs with a look at the trinitarian nature of God.
To begin, I’d like you to take a look at the bulletin and find the T-chart. On the left side, write “God” at the top. Then, take a moment to list a few descriptions of who God is.
Next, write “Jesus” on the right side, and then take a moment to write a few descriptions of who Jesus is.
Go ahead. Take your time.
Now, for many people, they think “God” and come away with descriptions such as “mean, angry, all-powerful,” and “distant.” But, for Jesus, most people have no problem writing “compassionate, loving, forgiving,” or “wise.” This phenomenon illustrates how skewed the popular view of God is. In pop culture, God is viewed as an old man with a long white beard. But, consider what Jesus said in John 14:9,
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
John 14:9b
If Jesus says He and the Father are like mirror images, then why do we think of God the Father as angry and mean, and Jesus as compassionate and forgiving? I believe the answer lies in how we allow everything and everyone except God explain to us who God is.
Our understanding of God must be dictated by what God has said about Himself.
Today, we are going to take a quick look at who God is, and specifically His nature as Trinity—three in one. It is a concept that has become plagued with bad illustrations. Apparently, when some look at God, they see an egg, an apple, a clover, or some other thing. These illustrations can be helpful in showing how something can be unified in its multiplicity, but they all fall short when pressed too hard. I was in a systematic theology class where we each were given the task of explaining the trinity to the class. The exercise was more about reinforcing the human inadequacy of comprehending God’s nature than actually coming up with a good illustration. Each of us took turns sharing what we came up with, and then the class would dismantle the illustration. I thought I had come up with something very good in comparing the Trinity to music whose harmonies gave the full picture of the music. Then, a music major proceeded to share how even single note melodies can exist alone. Personally, I think he just didn’t understand what I meant, but then, that’s kind of my point. All illustrations about the Trinity fall short because at the end of the discussion, God is not like any thing. He is God. He alone is God, and so we will never fully understand His nature because nothing else is God.
Let’s begin today by starting with the Baptist Faith and Message, point 2.
II. God
There is one and only one living and true God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal Being, the Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe.
God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections. God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future,
including the future decisions of His free creatures. To Him we owe the highest love, reverence, and obedience.
The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
Most of the adjectives that describe God are pretty straight forward. In fact, most of these are encapsulated in a very straightforward verse—the first verse in the Bible.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
God first revealed Himself to us by the very act of Creation. He would exist alone except that God decided to create. In this one act we also see the immeasurable intelligence and immeasurable power that He holds. The intricacy of God’s design of the Universe exhibits His intelligence. As scientists dive ever deeper into the microscopic realm of cells, atoms, and even at the subatomic level, they have discovered matter does not become more simple, but rather even more complex. Zooming out into the cosmos, again, we have found the heavenly orbs of the ancient world are really highly complex objects with billions upon billions of stars with even more planetary objects.
God’s holy nature is first revealed by His act of Creation.
Accepting that God created everything we see and don’t see is the first step towards understanding how holy and powerful God really is.
Just this last February, a team from the University of Tübingen working in Arizona discovered a new type of star. The “normal life cycle” of a star thought to be fairly well understood through the 20th century now has an anomaly. This new discovery may not change the average person’s life, but it does point us to the fact that every time humans think we have things figured out, God has left us another surprise to remind us we are still finite.
“God is infinite in holiness and all other perfections” reminds us God is not like anything else in Creation because He exists beyond Creation. He is utterly holy. Consider the Name God gave to Moses when Moses asked, “Who should I say sent me?”
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Exodus 3:14
I AM is the Name God gives. It is the Name that points us to the singular truth of God’s nature—He simply is. Children will often ask, “Where did God come from?” The answer is simply that He always was and always will be.
God’s Name, I AM, points us further to His holy and transcendent nature in that He exists apart from everything else.
And yet He exists in Trinity. God the Father is God. God the Son is God. God the Holy Spirit is God. Three persons Who together are One. In Deuteronomy, Moses gives Israel the Shema, something like a creed that the Jewish people would recite even until today.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Deuteronomy 6:4
He is One. He is not three gods, or a three-headed god. He is One God, One Lord, who exists and is revealed by three persons. Paul summarizes it this way:
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:4-6
Paul is telling the Ephesians to maintain unity as a body of believers. Though they are many people, they are to operate as one body in whom dwells the one Spirit. Your Bible should have “Spirit” capitalized, because he is referring to the Holy Spirit. Though each of us exist individually, we are united by the indwelling of the One Holy Spirit. We serve One Lord. We have One faith. We have one baptism, and one God and Father of all.
God has revealed Himself as Trinity to spur us toward unity.
Every time God reveals something about Himself, it is to help us understand how we should better live. Instead of looking at the topic of Trinity as a theological conundrum, we should see it as a call to be unified. Jesus even prayed that we would be one as He and the Father are one.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
John 17:20-21
Return with me to Ephesians 4. Before we close today, I’d like us to take one more look at what Paul wrote for us.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift.
Ephesians 4:1-7
Paul says we are called to live worthy of the calling we have been given through salvation in Christ. Humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another in love are attributes of God that we see revealed in the Trinity. The Father is gentle with His Creation not wanting rebellious humans to perish, but rather sending His Son to offer salvation. The Son humbly left heaven in order to bear with His Creation in patience and love. The Spirit works in the life of believers pointing us toward the Father through the Son with all gentleness and patience.
All three persons of the Trinity work toward the salvation of humanity in perfect harmony, because they are One.
Likewise, we are called to become one, both one with each other and one with God, in our work towards pointing others to salvation. We can achieve such a high goal because of the grace that was given to us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
How big is Christ’s gift? Well, we will return to that in a few weeks, but for today, I will leave you with this.
The salvation offered by Christ includes access to and union with the Trinity of God.
All that we know about God has been revealed through Jesus His Son. He came so that we can know our Creator and Father. He came so that we can have forgiveness and eternal life through Him. And Jesus came so that God’s own Spirit would in-dwell us and point us toward the life we were created to have.
Today, as we close, don’t walk away befuddled by a doctrine that has plagued theological seminaries for centuries. Walk away understanding that God’s Trinitarian nature points us to the beauty and grace that is our God.