Q9. How many persons are there in the Godhead?

There are three persons in the godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in essence, equal in power and glory.

1 John 5:7 “For there are three that testify:”

Matthew 28:19 “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,”

Has everyone here heard the term Trinity? It is not a term that actually appears in the Bible, but it describes a doctrine that the Bible teaches and we are going to talk about it many times I hope, but a couple times over the coming weeks.

As always, we must begin with definitions. This time in the question. What is a person? Personhood would boil down to meaning an individual conscious being. Each of you are individual persons. There is no way in which I am Emma or that Emma is Ian. We are individual persons. Just in this same way God the Father is not the Son, and God the Son is not God the Spirit.

So that seems simple enough, but then people get confused and say… Are there three God’s then? And as we learned last week, what is the answer to that question? No, ok so now how are there three persons and one God?

First, we must say that the Trinity is a mystery. Many things are called mysteries in the Bible: Christ, faith, Godliness. They are things that we cannot fully comprehend, and we must believe God’s word in.

The second word we will define is Essence. an indispensible or necessary quality. So, when it says that all the persons, Father Son and Spirit, are the same in essence. it means that all of their essential qualities are the same. Their infinity, eternality, unchangeableness, and all the other qualities are exactly the same. We are going to stop there for now and pick up next week so we can try to explain this mystery more fully.