One of Christianity’s most important doctrines is the Trinity, the understanding that God exists in three Persons who are each fully God, yet there is only one God. The Trinity is who God is, and he’s revealed this truth to us in his Word. If we want to know God, and we should want to know him deeply, then we should have a desire to know everything he’s revealed to us about himself.
There are four building block statements in the doctrine of the Trinity, and we’ve looked at the first two:
- There is one and only one true and living God. God is One.
- This one God eternally exists in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Now, let’s examine the third point. These three persons are completely equal in attributes, each possessing the same divine nature.
In other words, each of them is God.
But are they? Let’s take them one at a time.
The Father is God. This is the one most people readily understand, so I’ll spend the least amount of time on it.
Jesus referred to the Father as God, and used the names interchangeably:
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?… But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? (Matthew 6:26, 30)
Jesus calls him “Father” in verse 26 and “God” in verse 30. Jesus also calls him “God the Father”:
Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal. (John 6:27)
I think most people would accept the truth that the Father is God.
The Bible also teaches that the Son is God.
I discussed this in three earlier blog posts: Is Jesus God?, The Deity of Christ, and Bonus Material. Feel free to click those links for a more detailed look. There’s a more recent blog post here.
Jesus claimed abilities unique to God, such as omniscience (Matthew 9:4), omnipotence (Matthew 28:18), and omnipresence (Matthew 28:20). He claimed the authority to forgive sins (Mark 2:5) and to judge in the future (John 5:27), and proved his authority by raising the dead (John 12:9). Jesus confirmed his deity and eternal existence: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).
Scripture affirms the deity of Christ in passages like Philippians 2:5-11, which states that Jesus from eternity past was in the “form” of God. The word “form” there means “the genuine nature of a thing.” He is in his genuine nature God. Paul also uses the term “equality with God,” meaning that Jesus is equal to God, and he therefore must be God.
Paul also wrote about Jesus, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The author of Hebrews says, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3, see also verse 8 where he addresses Jesus as God and verse 10 where he addresses Jesus as Lord).
And don’t forget the high point of John’s gospel, the confession of Thomas that Jesus is “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
Again, for more study, visit the previous posts I linked to above.
But not only is the Father God, and the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is also God.
The Holy Spirit is called God (Acts 5:3-4), where lying to the Spirit is equated to lying to God. He possesses attributes that only God has, like omniscience (1 Corinthians 2:10) and omnipresence (1 Corinthians 6:19). He’s responsible for regenerating people (John 3:5-8), which only God can do. For a more detailed look at the deity of the Holy Spirit, see the blog post The Holy Spirit: Who Is He?.
So, each of the three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is completely and fully God.
But there are not three Gods. There is only one God.
And it isn’t that the one God operates from time to time in one of three “modes,” each having a different purpose and function. That’s called modalism.
Neither is this one God divided evenly into three parts. We don’t have a Triune God where one-third is Father, one-third is Son, and one-third is Holy Spirit. That’s what we get when we use the egg illustration, stating that the Trinity is like an egg, with the shell, the white, and the yolk, but one egg. The problem with that illustration is that a third of the egg is the yolk, a third is the white, and a third is the shell. The shell is not an egg in its essence, in its “what it is,” and neither are the white nor the yolk. If you saw an empty eggshell sitting on a kitchen counter, you wouldn’t say, “That’s an egg.” You’d say, “That’s an egg shell.” Each of those is only part of an egg.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not just parts of the Trinity. Each one is fully and completely God. They are united in essence, in what they are…and what they are is God.
It’s getting complicated, isn’t it? If you’re feeling like you’ll never be able to understand the Trinity, then you’re right where God wants you, humbling yourself before an Almighty God whose ways we will never be able to grasp. Still, when you need his help in your life, isn’t that the kind of God you want?