1+1+1=ONE

Build Connection

Imagine you are sitting on your couch on a Saturday morning, drinking some coffee, reading or scrolling on your phone and the doorbell rings.

Now it could really only be one of three things: a delivery, some kid selling fundraiser stuff, or a couple well dressed religious people with the watchtower magazine.

Create Tension

If one of those well dressed people, aka Jehovah witnesses, were to ask you “where does it say trinity in the bible?” what would you say, would you be able to show them?

Today I want to talk about how 1+1+1=One.

How the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equal one God.

Provide Solution

We see from the very beginning that God is One, but he is also more than one!

Let's start where the Bible starts — Genesis, chapter one. God is about to create humanity, the crown jewel of His creation, and He says something curious:

Genesis 1:26

“26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.””

Us. Our. Now hold on — if you grew up like I did, memorizing the Shema, you know Deuteronomy 6:4 “4 “Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”

One God. So what's going on with "us" and "our" in Genesis?

Here's where the Hebrew gets fascinating.

The word for God in Genesis 1:26 is **Elohim**. Now, Elohim is a plural noun — the "-im" ending in Hebrew typically indicates plurality, like "cherubim" or "seraphim." But watch this closely: Elohim is consistently paired with **singular** verbs throughout the Old Testament.

"In the beginning, Elohim **created**" — not "created" in a plural sense, a singular verb form. It's grammatically strange. It's as if the Hebrew language itself is straining to describe something that is both plural and singular at the same time — a unity that contains plurality.

Then there's that word in Deuteronomy 6:4 — "the LORD is one." The Hebrew word for "one" there is **echad**. Now, echad does not mean an absolute, isolated, solitary one — Hebrew actually has a different word for that kind of one, **yachid**, which means a single, solitary unit (used, for example, of Isaac as Abraham's "only" son in Genesis 22:2).

But echad is a **compound** unity — a oneness made of parts working together. Where else do we see echad used? Genesis 2:24: "a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into **one**" (echad).

A husband and wife — two distinct persons — become one flesh, one unit, one family identity. That's echad. Unity, not solitude. So even in the Old Testament, the language of God — Elohim (plural form), echad (compound unity), paired with the personal pronouns "us" and "our" — is planting seeds of what will fully bloom in the New Testament: One God, eternally existing as more than one Person.

This is not an easy concept to understand,

When it comes to God, he doesn’t expect us to understand everything, but to have faith in everything!

This issue is nothing new. It has been around for almost 2000 years.

Arius - a preacher in Alexandria Egypt in about 325 was preaching that Jesus wasn’t truly-eternally God. He was created by God. this wasn't a quiet disagreement between seminary professors. This was a fight that shook cities. Riots broke out. Sailors sang shanties about whether the Son was "of the same substance" as the Father or merely "of similar substance" — one Greek letter, an iota, was the difference between *homoousios* (same substance) and *homoiousios* (similar substance). Historians actually call this "the fight over the iota." One letter. That's how much precision mattered.

The Emperor Constantine, tired of the chaos, called bishops together at a city called Nicaea — over 300 of them — and after fierce debate, a young deacon named Athanasius stood up and argued with everything he had that Jesus was not almost-God, not sort-of-God, but "very God of very God," eternally begotten, not made. The council sided with Athanasius. The Nicene Creed was born. And that phrase — same substance, not just similar — became the dividing line between historic Christianity and every cult that would ever come after it, from the Arians of the fourth century to the Jehovah's Witnesses today.

God's Solution, Part 2: The Son — Fully God, Fully Man

Now let's move to the New Testament and meet the second Person of the Godhead — the Son. John opens his gospel with what might be the boldest theological statement in all of Scripture: "In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God... So the Word became human and made his home among us" (John 1:1, 14, NLT).

Notice the careful, deliberate language: the Word was **with** God — distinct person — and the Word **was** God — full deity.

Not "a god." Not "godlike." God.

Paul reinforces this in Colossians: "For in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body" (Colossians 2:9, NLT). This is where our Greek word study gets rich.

The word Paul uses for "fullness" here relating to "God" is built on the Greek noun **theotes** — which refers to the essential nature and being of God, full and complete deity itself, not merely divine qualities or God-like attributes. There's a different Greek word, **theios**, that means "divine" in a more general sense — the way we might say a sunset is "divine" or a piece of music feels "divine." Theios describes divine quality. But Paul doesn't use theios. He deliberately reaches for theotes — the very essence, the fullness, the whole substance of Deity — and says all of it, every bit of it, lives in Christ, in a human body. Jesus isn't divine like a beautiful sunset is divine. Jesus IS God, in human flesh.

God's Solution, Part 3: The Holy Spirit — Person, Not Just Power

Now to the third Person of the Godhead, and in my experience, He's the one most often misunderstood — even by folks who've grown up in church. Some picture the Holy Spirit as a force, an energy, a feeling that comes over you during a good worship set. But Scripture insists the Spirit is not an "it." He is a "He" — a full Person, fully God. Look at Acts chapter 5. Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and lied about the amount they were giving to the church, secretly keeping some back for themselves. Peter confronts Ananias and says something remarkable: "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart? You lied to the Holy Spirit... You weren't lying to us but to God!" (Acts 5:3-4, NLT). Read that carefully — lying to the Holy Spirit is equated directly with lying to God. Peter doesn't say "you disappointed a divine force." He says you lied to a Person, and that Person is God Himself.

Now jump to the New Testament and the Greek term Jesus uses for the Spirit in John 14: "the Father will send you another Advocate" — that word "Advocate" translates the Greek **parakletos**, which literally means "one called alongside" — a helper, a counselor, a legal advocate who stands with you in your defense. Jesus says in John 14:16-17, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, who will never leave you. He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth" (NLT). Notice the word "another" — Greek **allos**, meaning another of the same kind, not a different kind (that word would be **heteros**). Jesus is saying, "I have been your parakletos while I've been with you physically; now the Father will send you another parakletos, of the very same kind as Me, to be with you forever." A Person, replacing the physical presence of a Person, doing the very same kind of work.

Encourage Change

So let's bring this back to the porch. If someone shows up at your door tomorrow and challenges you the way those two young men challenged me, here's a simple toolkit — three verses you can carry in your back pocket, three verses that trace the doctrine of the Trinity from Old Testament to New.

First, **Deuteronomy 6:4** — "Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone" — establishing, from the very heart of the Old Testament, the absolute oneness of God, using that rich word echad, unity made of parts, not yachid, isolated solitude.

Second, **Matthew 3:16–17 “16 After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.””

Third, **2 Corinthians 13:14** — Paul's benediction, one many of us have heard a hundred times without noticing its weight: "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (NLT). Grace from the Son. Love from the Father. Fellowship from the Spirit. Three Persons, distinctly named, extending one seamless blessing.