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Intro
The Trinity is one of those topics that can confuse easily.
How in the world does 1+1+1= 1?
Is it really that important?
Can’t we simply love Jesus?
Just to clarify:
We know God is love, because God is a Trinity
We can be saved because God is a Trinity
We can live the Christian life because God is a Trinity.
The Trinity isn’t the doctrine that confuses.
The Trinity clarifies.
The better you understand the Trinity, the better you will understand Christianity.
I am following the outline of what I believe to be most helpful book on the Trinity; Delighting in the Trinity: an introduction to the Christian Faith by Michael Reeves.
It is only about 125 pages.
They’re dense pages, but they’re great pages.
What was God doing before creation?
Was he making hell?
Or was he lonely?
Two paths to understanding God: 1) God is who he says he is and that’s that, he’s unknowable; 2) the second (Better) way is to look closely at Jesus, the Son of God.
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
No one gets to the Father, except through Jesus.
That tells us a bundle.
God has revealed himself first and foremost as a Father, over Creator and Ruler.
What was God doing before the creation?
He was being a Father.
He was loving the Son.
John
Let’s look at this closer.
First, The Loving Father
The most foundational thing we are to understand about God is that he is a Father.
OT references
The Lord refers to Israel as a child (; ; ; ).
He carries his people like a father carries a child ().
He disciplines them as children ().
He is compassionate like a Father ().
He intends to have a fatherly relationship with his people (; ; ; ; ; 64:8).
NT references
Jesus refers to God as Father ().
Paul and Peter refer to God as Father of Jesus (; ).
Paul states God is our Father (; ).
God treats us as children ().
The Holy Spirit causes us to call out to him as Father (; Rom 8:15).
Calling God “Father” has incredible implications.
Father is not a title, it is who he is.
God is and has always been a Father.
Everything he does, and every thought we have of him, should be guided by the fact that he is a wise and good Father.
Part of being a Father means he is eternally life giving.
God is an eternally out-going and life-giving God.
He did not give life for the first time at Creation, he has eternally been giving life and giving love.
This is who the Father is.
For all eternity, God has been overflowing with life and love into the Son.
Through the Son, he extends this life and love to us!
Love is not something God has, it is something God is.
If he did not love, he would not be Father.
Second, the Beloved Son
The Father could not be love if there were no one to love.
It is important to note that God did not create so he could love.
That would make him dependent upon creation.
He was not poor and lonely, needing companionship.
He is love.
Jesus is the eternal Son who has received the love of the Father for all eternity.
The Son is not only the recipient of the Father’s love, but he reflects it as well.
Gregory of Nyssa (4th Century Church Father) argued that the heat that comes from the lamp is the exact nature of the lamp and is united to the lamp.
As long as the flame exists, there is is never a time when the flame does not put out the heat, or, that there is heat but not flame.
Likewise, the Son and the Father are eternally present and together.
The Son is the eternal beloved of the Father, radiating the Father.
Gregory of Nyssa (4th Century Church Father) argued that the heat that comes from the lamp is the exact nature of the lamp and is united to the lamp.
As long as the flame exists, there is is never a time when the flame does not put out the heat, or, that there is heat but not flame.
Likewise, the Son and the Father are eternally present.
The Son is the eternal beloved of the Father, radiating the Father.
Notice something very significant:
The shape of God-driven love, Trinitarian love, is like a cascade.
It is a waterfall of love.
God the Father begins the cascade as he loves the Son.
This love “spills over” into the people of God as well.
The Father is the lover and the Son is the beloved.
So the Son becomes the lover and the church become the beloved.
This dynamic of cascading love is replicated in the church, marriage, and parenting.
Third, the Spirit of Love
God the Father loves the Son in a very specific way - through the Holy Spirit
The Father makes his love known through the Holy Spirit.
The love of the Father is experienced through the Holy Spirit.
God’s love is very personal.
Reeves writes, “The Spirit stirs up the delight of the Father in the Son and the delight of the Son in the Father, inflaming their love and so binding them together in the fellowship of the Spirit.”
pg.
29
Consider .
The Spirit hovers over the waters.
In the work of creation and re-creation (salvation), God’s Word goes out through his Spirit.
The Spirit is the one through whom the Father loves, blesses and empowers his Son.
Hence the term Christ (Greek) or Messiah (Hebrew) indicate the one who is supremely anointed by the Father.
Does this mean the Spirit is impersonal?
Absolutely no!
He speaks and sends (,); he chooses (); he teaches (); he gives (); he can be lied to (); he can be resisted (); he can be grieved (; ); and he can be blasphemed ().
He is God.
Does this mean we have a Heavenly Hodgepodge?
Trinitarian Shield
Throwing God into a blender and assuming each are the same is called Modalism.
This is the problem with the ice/water/steam illustration.
We appreciate God best when we recognize the beauty of the beauty of the individual persons.
Calvin wrote, “If we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son and Spirit, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion fo the true God.
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