The Triune God

Intro

We have before us today a somewhat rare passage, where we see all three persons of the trinity at work. Now, in that statement there, we have the divine mystery of the Trinity. The Holy Three-in-One God of the universe. We don’t have anything similar in our material world. Nothing in this world even closely resembles the relationship of the Godhead.

John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

To aid in our explanation, I’ll read a blog post from one of my professors.

“The doctrine of the Trinity can be summarized in seven statements.

There is only one God.

2. The Father is God.

3. The Son is God.

4. The Holy Spirit is God.

5. The Father is not the Son.

6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.

7. The Holy Spirit is not the Father.

The two key words here are essence and persons. When you read essence, think God-ness. All three Persons of the Trinity share the same God-ness—one is not more God than another. When you read persons, think a particular individual distinct from the others. Theologians use these terms to express the relationship of three beings who are equally and uniquely God, but not three Gods. The Persons are not three gods; rather, they dwell in communion with each other as they subsist in the divine nature without being compounded or confused.” 

—Kevin DeYoung, “The Doctrine of the Trinity: No Christianity Without It,” Clearly Reformed (2011)

We have few places where the Trinity is on display all in one passage in a clear, articulable way. We know that the Trinity is always in communion and at work together, so when we get a passage like this, where we can trace out the works of all three persons of the trinity at work in one place, I will always jump on the opportunity.

The best example of a passage like this is in the Baptism of Jesus. We have the Spirit, descending like a dove on the Son, and from heaven, the voice of the Father, saying, “You are my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”

We have all three persons of the Trinity acting in the same moment. All working in distinct ways, but all according to the one divine will, the one nature of God. I recognize that this may seem elementary, but this is the foundation of core Christian doctrine. Heresies against the doctrine of the trinity are among the most common departures of Christian Orthodoxy.

Today, we’ll cover such a passage, where Paul is speaking of the inter-workings of the trinity, and I can’t express how important it is to have a solid understanding of the trinity. Misunderstandings of the trinity are the root of the majority of heretical teachings and understandings of Scripture.

I want to read a portion of an article by Mike McGarry on the Trinity.

“Alice was an elderly friend of mine who is now with the Lord. For years she struggled with the Trinity and the more we talked about the Trinity, the more concerned I was about her faith, because she kept arguing that God could not be three-in-one. And yet, she continued to affirm that she is indeed a Christian.

Alice thought it was just some Christian mumbo-jumbo and it didn’t really matter if you understood it or not. Eventually, I gave her the warning, “Alice, if you deny the Trinity, you cannot be a Christian. You either believe in the Trinity and you’re a Christian, or you deny the Trinity and set yourself outside the lines of Christianity.”

A few months later, she came to me after church smiling, and said, “I finally get it. 1+1+1=1.” I was overjoyed. So was she, and she thanked me for being so direct about the seriousness of our discussion.

The Trinity really is that important. All Christian theology is an explanation of the Trinity. You cannot understand Christianity without a basic understanding of the Trinity.”

Romans 8:26-30

This is a dense passage that helps us understand the perfect communion of the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity has a role that the other persons of the Trinity do not, and all of this, in the One God. In perfect harmony and unity, eternally.

This is the beauty of the language that scripture uses to describe marriage. Where these two, distinct people come together as one flesh. We take on this shared life of loving communion with one another.

Now, hear what I’m not saying. Marriage is not an analogy for the trinity. Actually, let me pass on a piece of advice that I once received. Don’t even try to use an analogy for the trinity, because there is not one sufficient to explain the divine mystery that is the trinity. Better no analogy than one that leads to heresy.

Now, what I am saying, that the marriage relationship, without sin and in it’s redeemed state, is a shadow, or an image, of the relationship that exists within the trinity. The loving relationship that God has been experiencing throughout all eternity in the trinity is the loving relationship that God designed us to mirror in marriage.

For more on that, reach out to the Martinez and Llerena families to know more about Christian Family Life.

What I’m saying is that Paul is outlining the separate works of all three persons of the Godhead, that are in no way at odds with one another, but are in perfect unison with the one, shared will of the triune God.

We’ll explore this in three parts today, The Spirit’s Help, The Father’s Grace, and the Son’s Golden Chain.

The Spirit’s Help

In our weakness, what is your tendency? Are you prone to withdraw? Gatherings start to sound burdensome? Do you get distant from from friends and internalize? I know that can be me at times, and it’s true of my relationship with the Lord too. I read less scripture, I spend less time meditating on God’s word, and possibly worst of all, my prayer life suffers.

But, see, that’s one of the Spirit’s roles, that when you are weak, He is interceding on your behalf. The Spirit of God is moving and groaning within you constantly. And not just in your weakness, but, even at our best, we’re still weak. We can still fall, we still fail, we still sin. And it’s here that Paul is telling us that the Spirit is constantly at work on our behalf. Now, this is not an excuse to recuse your responsibility to pray, but encouragement, that no matter the condition of your prayer life, the Spirit is active on your behalf. He is actively calling you back to the Himself.

And in v. 27, “he who searches your heart” is God the Father, and it is through this intimate relationship in the trinity that God does not just search your heart, but he knows your heart intimately.

The word translated “mind” in v. 27 is the same greek word from Romans 8:6-7, that was translated, to set your mind on. And if you remember from a couple of weeks ago, we said that word, phronēma, could also be translated mindset. So, the mindset, or thing that the Spirit’s mind is set on, who is within you, is your spirit. So, the Holy Spirit is ministering to your spirit. He is interceding for us with groanings too deep for words.

That Spirit who knows you intimately is who is interceding for you. He is also leading and guiding your spirit. The Spirit is praying for you, and in a different way, the Son is praying for you. The Spirit is within you and knows your spirit. Knows your every thought. Jesus is hearing those prayers, and sharing them perfectly with the Father, pleading His own blood over them.

The Holy Spirit is just as much God as the Father and the Son. That is to say that the Holy Spirit is fully God. Of the three, no doubt, the Holy Spirit is the most mysterious, but we see that the mysteries of Scripture were intentionally left mysteries, and they are beautiful.

That said, we do see the Holy Spirit consistently at work in the Bible, and I’d like to pull on those specific works of the Holy Spirit to hopefully demystify what exactly the Spirit is doing.

We read here that the Spirit is interceding for us, and that the Spirit is within us. We also know that Jesus, before He was crucified, said that the Helper, the Holy Spirit, would come. He said that he was leaving with His disciples, His Spirit. So, we see again, Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit as both distinctly different from Him, yet, in this mysterious way, the same as Him.

Jesus said that He was leaving His Spirit, but then goes on to say that it is better that His Spirit be the one that is with us, because Jesus was confined to one physical location at any given time, but that the Spirit could be omnipresent. It is though the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we can also say that we are indwelt by Christ. And see all over Scripture, this idea that our body is the new temple of the Lord. That is to say that God lives in us. So, it’s not as if we only have one person of the trinity in our heart, but because they share the same divine essence, we have the Spirit of God within us. The trinity indwells our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Confused yet?

This is a divine mystery that is full of beauty, and worth your thought and meditation. Now, to bring it back to the practical.

Sinclair Ferguson writes this, “The central role of the Spirit is to reveal Christ and to unite us to him … the indwelling of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit are two aspects of one and the same reality.”  

So, the Spirit’s primary work is to reveal the beauty of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus to us in a way that leads us to faith and repentance. Once we have repented of our sin, asked forgiveness, the Spirit’s work then turns to sanctifying us. He is clearly and constantly changing our hearts to more closely resemble the heart of Christ.

Ferguson traces every phase of Jesus’ life—from conception to exaltation—“lived in the Spirit’s power,” so that the risen Christ now “sends the Spirit to reproduce his human holiness in us.”

So, it is the ongoing work of the Spirit within us that is conforming us to the image of the Son, all to the working our the plan ordained by the Father.

The Father’s Grace

v. 28 Here we have the promise that the Holy Spirit softens our hearts, opens our eyes, and unblocks our ears to the love of God, and conforms us to the image of Christ, growing our love for God as we are sanctified. And if we love God, then we know He will work out all things for our good. And when we are called, that is, when we respond to the Gospel, we are called according to the purpose of God the Father. The One who ordains the plan.

Ephesians 1:3–10 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

So, the Father is the one who has foreknown and predestined. He is the one who sends the Son. This plan, for the redemption of all mankind, is the shared will of God, but it is the role of the Father to ordain the plan, then send the Son to accomplish the work, and the Holy Spirit to administer that salvation.

The Father is the one who bestows blessing on Jesus, but not because the Father is greater than the Son. Jesus says in John 10:38, “the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” So, while their roles are distinct, their divinity is not. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Sprit are not pieces that make up the one true God, but they are all full the One true God. One God, three persons.

And it is this plan of redemption, the will of God, that we can know we are saved. We know that we have a God who finishes what He starts. We know that the work that He has started in our hearts will be accomplished.

v. 29 And now those, whom the Father foreknew, he also predestined to what? to be conformed to the image of His Son. So, when we talk about the active work of the Spirit today, it is to apply the saving, redeeming, once and for all gift of the Gospel. The work that was accomplished by the Son.

And all of this that the Son might be the firstborn among many brothers. And sisters too. This is to say that we are no longer the children of Adam. The children of sin. The children of destruction, but the children of God, and Heirs with our elder Brother, Jesus.

The Son’s Golden Chain

Now, on to the last verse. v. 30 This is called the golden chain, or the unbroken chain of Romans. Notice the verbiage here. Those whom he predestined, he also called. So, all of those, that whether we use the language foreknew or elected, all of those that are written in the Lamb’s book of life will be called. Now on this word, called. The calling being discussed isn’t talking about an alter call. This calling is also called effectual calling. Those whom God calls are those whose eyes have been unblocked, and ears have been unstopped, and they have seen and heard the Gospel in new light and understanding, that only comes from the work of the Spirit.

Our ability to understand the message of the Gospel has nothing to do with how well we did on our reading comprehension tests in high school. If that were the case, I would for sure be out. The Gospel message becomes clear when the Spirit reveals to our spirit who God is and what we are deserving of, being God’s wrath, when the Spirit softens our heart and turns us away from sin and toward the Lord in repentance.

And it’s not some who were predestined, but those, being all those who were predestined were also called, then all those who were called were justified. Every single one who received this effectual calling will surely be justified, and all those whom He justified, as Paul has already written about at great length, all of those who have been justified will surely be glorified.

So, to summarize the chain, God foreknows or elects, He calls, meaning His spirit moves in our hearts. He justifies, making us in legal right standing with the Lord, then He glorifies, makes us holy, removes our sinful flesh, and fully redeems our fallen state, welcoming us into glory, or eternity with Him, at the end of our life, or when Jesus comes back.

And the redeeming work that we experience here is all because of the finished work that Jesus accomplished in a fully sacrificial life, even unto death on the cross, from which He was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven with the Father.

Conclusion

Now, I can’t just let this one slide. This passage highlights one of the biggest, if not the biggest theological debate that has divided churches for all of church history, and has been center stage especially in the debates since the 1600s.

Does God choose you, or do you choose God? I have had conversations with many of you about this topic, and I know that many of us in this room right now disagree on this topic. Before I spell out the argument for those of you who don’t really know where you fall, know this. This is a secondary issue. It is important to discuss because whatever side you fall on impacts much of your theology, but know this, both arguments are fully valid. Both arguments are based in scripture. Both arguments lead to the exact same mechanism of salvation, being the blood of Jesus Christ alone. Both of these arguments find themselves well within Christian orthodoxy, and you are well supported by Scripture to believe either position. Theologians have been having this argument for much of church history, and there has been no clear winner.

One more point before we dive in. God is glorified in us discussing, or even debating these points, because when we do, we are thrust right back to Scripture to meditate on these wonderful Divine mysteries. And let me tell you, there is great beauty in these Divine mysteries. These topics of conversation are not just welcome in this church, but they’re encouraged. I would urge you, even if you’re not the confrontational type, to go a few rounds with your fellow believer in the comfort and safety that we are unified in affirming the truth of the Gospel.

Whether you like academics or not, God didn’t give us a brief how-to book on how to be a Christian, He gave us this beautiful living Word to devote our lives to studying. Engage with these debates, and know that by saying, “I don’t know what I believe about that, and I don’t really have any interest.” Know that you are saying that you don’t believe that this wonderful mystery of God is important. If it weren’t important, it wouldn’t be in the Bible at all. It’s okay if you really don’t know where you land, but let that drive you to study Scripture, or pick up a book on the topic. Your faith will be deepened by this exercise.

Notes

What is the good that we hope for? To be conformed to the image of God.