Talking about the Trinity can sound a bit like explaining the chart above. It's common for people outside the church to mock it, while those in the church often ask, "Does it Matter?" I believe it does, and I hope to briefly explain what you need to know and how it relates to trusting the Bible.
Trinity is simply a word that means "three in oneness." Saying that God is Trinity is to describe God as one being existing in three persons. You can break this into three simple statements:
1. God is three persons.
2. Each person is fully God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
3. There is one God.
Some people object to the Trinity on the grounds that the word never appears in the Bible. This is true. However, the word "trinity" simply expresses the three concepts above. The concepts are in the Bible. The word just helps us talk about them. Using the word is not important, accepting the concepts that it refers to is.
Why does it matter? First, if you cannot accept the concept of the Trinity, than you cannot accept the Bible. Since the Bible teaches the Trinity (see below), then trusting the Bible will be impossible if you cannot accept the Trinity. Since the Bible teaches that there is one God and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each individual persons and are fully God, a denial of the Trinity means one must reject the Bible outright or pick and choose which teachings in the Bible are good and which are bad.
Second, if you deny the Trinity, you will almost certainly deny other key teachings in the Bible as well. This is why many cults like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses deny the Trinity and also differ from Christianity in many other ways. For example, many churches reject the idea that Jesus' death pays for sins, even though this is clearly taught throughout the Bible. If you find a church that rejects this, you will probably soon find that they have some confusion about the Trinity as well. Why is this? One example is that if Jesus is merely a created being, how could he possibly suffer the full weight of God's wrath and pay for the sins of the world? This only makes since if Jesus is fully God.
Third, the Trinity clearly separates the Christian God from all other gods. People often claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Yet, Muslims are greatly offended at the concept of Trinity. They fully reject the God that Christians believe in. According to the Bible, if you are not worshipping a Triune God, then you are not worshipping the true and real God.
Does the Bible really teach this?
Yes. Consider Genesis 1:26. "God said, 'Let us make...'" Here "said" is in the singular form and "us" is in the plural form. The same is true in Isaiah 6:8 "I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?'" God is a unity and yet a tri-unity.
Matthew 3:16-17 shows the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all acting distinctly of one another at the same time. God doesn't simply change forms from one to another, like an actor changing costumes.
God is clearly one (Deuteronomy 6:4, Romans 3:30, Isaiah 45:5).
Look at Romans 8:9-11, where the Holy Spirit is said to be the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ interchangeably. And yet the Spirit himself is described as a unique person.
There are plenty of more Scriptures that I could list here, but they are easy to find in other places.
But some will object that it is impossible to believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each God and yet believe there is only one God. Here we must admit that it may be impossible to understand the Trinity. However, that is entirely different from seeing that it is logically possible. We should expect a lot of things about God will be difficult if not impossible to understand. I don't understand how my iPhone works, how should I expect to understand the Triune nature of God?
However, if the Trinity is logically impossible, then that would be a problem for the Bible. Therefore, what I hope to do is demonstrate the logical possibility of the Trinity. The Bible is not saying that God is one person and that he is three persons. That would be a contradiction. The Bible says God is one being in three persons.
Let me use several illustrations to show how this is possible. An illustration is different from an analogy. Some people use analogies to show how God is like something else. All analogies fail. For instance, it is popular to explain the Trinity by saying, "God is like water. Water can be ice, liquid, or steam." But this is not what God is like. Water changes from one state to another. God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously. Every analogy must take something from creation and try to compare it to the Creator. They all fail, but that is not surprising. The Creator is different from His creation.
Yet illustrations can help us to see the logical possibility of a three person being. Take the soul, for instance. A human being has one soul. The soul is what continues to exist after death. An animal is a being with no soul. (Now you may disagree with either of these points, but hopefully you can see how they could be true.) So you can see how there could be beings with differing numbers of souls. Humans with one, animals with none. Could there not be another type of being with two or three souls? Again, this is not to say that God is like a three-souled being, only that the concept of a three-in-one kind of being is not impossible.
Cerberus is another example. In Greek mythology he was an animal with three heads. There was only one Cerberus. Yet, he had three distinct minds and personalities in the three heads. God is clearly different from this on many levels, but there is nothing impossible about a three-person being.
The Bible gives us good news that God loves us. He offers us salvation by sending his Son to die on the cross to pay for our sins. The Bible also says that God can give us life through his Spirit (Romans 8:11). This beautiful message of the Gospel only comes together and makes sense in the context of a Triune God.
Trust the Bible is a weekday radio program that begins at about 8:10 each morning on WDOG 93.5 in Allendale, SC. You can listen to previous programs online here: http://www.fairfaxfbc.org/trust-the-bible.html
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