Who is the Triune God?
Foundations Series • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewWe worship the triune God: One God, in three equal, unified persons.
Notes
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The first part of the story - as we talked about last week - is this idea of the “triune God.” So here’s a question, how would you explain the triune God?
Get Answers.
Ok, thank you. Now, I’ve got a little video I’d like us to watch together on the Trinity.
Lutheran Satire Video on Trinity. (3.50)
Obviously St. Patrick needs work on his analogies haha. But the reality is that we cannot fully comprehend God. Much like the lego man cannot comprehend the person who chooses to place him in this lego scene or that, we both cannot fully comprehend the nature of our God, or the full extent of His purposes. God is holy - set apart, distinct, separate.
We’re on the second week of our series called foundations. Last week we did a brief overview of what this series was going to cover. Really it’s the story of what we believe. As we work together over the next few months, we are working on understanding and implementing what we believe, why we believe it, and who this church is called to be by God. Today, we’re going to start work on our foundation by exploring the very foundation of both our faith and existence. The triune God. We’re going to take two Sundays to look at this subject.
Today, the big point is that
We worship the holy, triune God: One God, in three equal, unified persons.
Really we’re going to explore this in two parts, first understanding who the triune God is, and then understanding the essential nature of our God.
One God, Three Persons
One God, Three Persons
So, according to our Statement of Essential Truths, or SOET for short:
“There is One God, the creator, who exists eternally in unity as three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 13 14).
Again, as we go through this series, we are going to understand why we believe what we believe not because some document produced by our fellowship says so. We are going to look at this based on what the Bible teaches us about our Triune God.
Let’s start at the top: We believe there is just ONE God. This is indisputable fact. Scripture amply demonstrates this fact:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Jesus Himself quotes this in the book of Mark in a striking way:
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
The Bible clearly shows God as One God, the creator. This is absolutely essential to basic Christian doctrine and thought. The oneness of God is seen throughout Scripture, right from the beginning to the end. Christians can get accused of worshipping three different gods, but Scripture makes it clear that there is just ONE God.
Yet what Scripture makes clear and is therefore equally essential to basic Christian doctrine is the understanding that our One God exists eternally in three equal persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The New Testament clearly exhibits the three persons of the Trinity throughout the Gospels and the letters. Even the commissioning we are given by Christ is in the name of all three:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
This idea of the Triune God is more clearly seen in the New Testament, but that doesn’t mean that the Triune God is not present in the OT. The Old Testament certainly gives evidence of the Triune God at work. Take for instance the creation account:
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.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Psalms likewise alludes to the trinity:
The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”
So we see this idea clearly in Scripture of One God, in three eternal, equal, and totally united persons. This is what we call the Trinity. The word Trinity is not explicitly used in the Bible. Nonetheless, it means “tri-unity” and describes the “three-in-oneness” that exists in the Godhead (Grudem, p. 227). In fact the unity that the Trinity has is something that humanity can only poorly attempt to recreate. The unity between a man and a woman in marriage is a picture of this unity to a degree, but even then the perfect harmony and unity of the Trinity cannot be matched. All three members share the name YHWH. If you ever look in your Bibles and find the translators using the all capitals LORD, that is the translation for this holy name of God. It was considered so holy by Israel that they would not even speak it. But the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ALL possess this name. In Greek - which of course the New Testament was written in - the translation is Kurios.
So we see all three members are fully God. As we have already seen, none of them is part God. The Son and the Spirit are also not just creations of the Father. Neither are these three persons merely different ways of God revealing Himself. Our One God exists eternally in three equal and united persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Therefore, as theologian, Wayne Grudem notes: we must hold in tension the following three things:
God is three persons
Each person is fully God
There is ONE God.
The reality is that there is no simplistic answer for explaining the Trinity. To try and do so will eventually result is simply denying one of these three basic core things (Grudem, p. 239), as our little video showed us.
How then is the best way to describe the Trinity? How can we have One God, yet three persons of the Godhead. The reality is that as humans, the total mystery of the Godhead is something we cannot fully understand. But I believe it is best to side with St. Patrick at the end of that video:
We worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity,
neither blending their persons
nor dividing their essence.
For the person of the Father is a distinct person,
the person of the Son is another,
and that of the Holy Spirit still another.
But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one,
their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.
This is the first paragraph of the Athanasian Creed, named for Athanasius, who championed healthy faith and right understanding of the Trinity. It does a marvellous job of fleshing out the confession we have within our own SOET, that:
“There is One God, the creator, who exists eternally in unity as three equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
They are in tri-unity, neither blending nor dividing their essence. All three are distinct, yet their divinity, their glory, and their majesty is equally eternal.
However, this is not the only thing that Scripture teaches us about the nature of our God.
Loving, Holy, Infinite…
Loving, Holy, Infinite…
So again, let’s look at how we would express our belief about the nature of God.
“The triune God is loving, holy , infinite, just, and worthy of all worship.” (Ex 34:6-7; Ps 99:4-5)
When we talk about the God that we serve, that we believe in, that we have personal relationships with, we must also talk about God’s nature as loving, infinite, holy, just, worthy. He is all these things, and they are essential to our understanding of who the Triune God is. It may seem like a bit of a shift, but part of our foundational understanding of God is to understand His attributes. But again, we are not going to confess that God is holy, or loving, or infinite, or just, or worthy because the PAOC and their document said so. We are saying these things because Scripture tells us that they are so.
So, let’s look at Scripture:
The first attribute we find is love. Perhaps this is one of the easiest attributes to affirm about God. The entire Bible is about the love of God. As 1 John 4:8 tells us
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Essential Truths: PAOC SOEt Commentary (The triune God is loving, holy, infinite, just, and worthy of all worship)
The triune, eternal nature of God as loving is defensible on the basis that God must have someone to love in order to always be selfless. An eternal Father loving an eternal Son removes any possible contradiction.
God is love. This sums up his being, and is demonstrated throughout Scripture. Numerous times in the OT, God is seen to be loving. From the account of the fall and the promise of a Messiah, to the revealing of God to Moses in Exodus 34. To the Psalms that extol God’s care, and love, right through to the Prophets, who continually proclaimed the way back to God even when His people repeatedly turned away from Him. Finally, to the coming of Jesus Christ, and the redemptive act of the Triune God to save anyone who would believe. God is love. Haha, we could definitely have a few sermons on God’s love. But in this moment, recognize the Triune God as loving, caring for His people, disciplining His people so that they might mature. God is love.
We also see demonstrated in Scripture God’s holiness, or set-apartness. God is unique and majestic. Nothing compares to God. He has no limitations, He is completely perfect, all powerful, enthroned in majesty. Proclaimed throughout Scripture and all of heaven is the fact that God is Holy. In the book of Revelation we get this picture of God as holy:
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,
“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty,
who was and is and is to come!”
Likewise when Isaiah sees the throne room of God, he encounters the same proclamation:
And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
This cry “Holy Holy Holy” stresses the uniqueness and set-apartness of our God. When revealed to us sinful humans, it is both humbling, and terrifying (Holman, p. 773).
Within this experience of God as holy, we also understand God’s infinite nature. Jesus proclaims at the end of Revelation:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
This demonstrates God’s essential nature as having no beginning, nor end. However, infinite spans beyond just time, to include ability.
For nothing will be impossible with God.”
And again, thinking of God’s love, we read in Psalm 100 5
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
God is also just. Complete justice and righteousness are His. Exodus 34 7 shows us God’s justice in relation to his love:
keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
God is just and righteous. He is the just judge who has the right to judge everyone. Yet as we see so often throughout the Old and New Testaments, God is merciful. Again and again he extends His mercy to His people, even when they turn away from Him. Right now, if you have not accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour and still have breath in your lungs, you are experiencing the grace and mercy of God. He is continuing to hold off judgement for you, giving you time to repent. But the reality is that God will judge, both the living and the dead as 1 Peter 4 5 tells us:
but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
God makes right judgements. No one can ever call God injustice, corrupt, or incorrect. He knows all, sees all, and is the master of time. As Psalm 89 14 tells us:
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;
steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.
God is enthroned on justice and righteousness. Yet He loves us enough that to satisfy justice and righteousness, Jesus Christ came and died and took our place. He rose again, and is seated in the heavenly places, and now holds the power and will someday judge everyone. What kind of God is this that could - in an instant - rightly send a sinful humanity to hell. Yet out of His great love He loved us enough to take our place, to take our punishment, that we might be made righteous through Christ, and dwell with Him forever? Only our holy, infinite, triune God could do this. And He did.
Therefore, God is worthy of worship. He is worthy of praise. The praise that the angels sing to Him “Holy Holy Holy” should echo from our lips as well. Perhaps one of the most fitting verses at this point comes from Psalms:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
God is so worthy of praise that, as Jesus enters Jerusalem to the praise of the people, He tell the scribes and pharisees that didn’t like this display of worship that even the rocks would cry out, should the people stop. All of Creation is a symphony of praise to one being. Our God! The creator, the sustainer, the infinite one. Who is just, and loving, and merciful, and right.
Our One, Triune God truly is loving, holy, infinite, just, and worthy of all worship.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we’ve looked at all of these things this morning, your head might be swimming. Again, we have seen how Scripture demonstrates God as three in one. Perfect tri-unity. Scripture also demonstrates how God is loving, holy, just, infinite, and worthy of worship. You see, we don’t believe that the Triune God is holy or worthy because this document told us to. This document is written by humans; simply a tool to help sum up what we find in Scripture. Don’t base your faith off this little four-page document. Yes time, effort, skill, and prayer went into this. But there in only one inspired Word of God. Our belief - our foundation of faith - must be based on God and His Word, not this document, helpful as it may be. So at this point, we have seen who God is from Scripture. Truly, God is extraordinary! In many senses, too much for us to grasp. Yet He has revealed Himself to us, and we have the priviledge of both talking about Him, and personally knowing Him.
The question now becomes for us: How do we take all of this theology - all of this information - and make it intersect with our lives. If we’re going to confess these things, that God is ONE God, three united, equal persons. That God is holy, and loving, and just, and infinite, and worthy of worship. If we are going to confess this as part of the foundation of what we believe… this needs to affect our lives on more than just a head-knowledge level.
How do you understand God? The reality and weight of where we find ourselves today is that we, as humans, are trying to understand the God that we have - I pray - personal relationships with. Yet clearly, our finite minds cannot grasp in totality the infinite God. Yet, the God of the universe, this God who has the knowledge, wisdom, and skill to make our world. This God who loved us enough that He came and reconciled us to Himself after we wronged Him. This God, who has some of the most powerful beings in our universe worshipping Him day and night; This God has revealed Himself to us.
How amazing is it, that the Triune, holy God would choose to reveal Himself to us. Not just in a casual, distant way. Instead, we are on a journey now through Christ of continually gaining intimacy with God! The three persons of the Trinity meet us as Father, Brother, Saviour, Helper, Friend.
As a church, we’re working on strengthening the foundation of our belief. As individuals, I can’t tell you how God wants to use this time today, but it is never too soon, nor too late, to do work on your foundation. Today is not just about a better head-knowledge about God. Today is about recognizing the awesome, amazing reality of who our God is! So, how does God want to take the head-knowledge you’ve just received and use that to strengthen your faith? How does He want to stir your heart using this? I’d like to take some time to pray today before the last song. Use this time to worship God, and ask Him to shake up your heart with a fresh heart conviction about the awesomeness of God. I’d also like to invite those who would like prayer for anything, to come forward and receive. In this time, let your heart be stirred up as you spend time with our awesome, Triune, holy, loving, just, infinite, worthy God.