Trinity & Incarnation

Introduction

The Trinity in the Bible

John 1:1 NLT

In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

I want to start with a question. So, the Word is Jesus and in the beginning, at when God created the world, John says that Jesus was with God, and Jesus also was God. So, my question is: what?

Genesis 1:1–3 NLT

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Here’s what we find out about God in the OT: There is only one God. The idols of other religions aren’t real. There is only one true God. But this God has a complex identity. You see it in . God created everything, so he’s outside of it. But his presence is there on earth specially as the Spirit. And then there’s a character in the Old Testament called the Angel of the Lord. And there’s a bunch of times where this “angel” speaks, but then it says in the next line that God spoke.

And then Jesus shows up and he’s human, but like also more than human, and he does and says things that only God can do. He acts like he has the same authority as God. We’ve already seen examples of this in Mark. When Jesus announces that he forgives a man’s sins, the Pharisees are like, wait a minute, only God can do that.

Like, imagine if you have a test tomorrow and you walked to the front of the class and said, “Excuse me class I have an announcement. You no longer have to take this test. You all get 100s.” And everybody is like, can she do that? She’s not the teacher.”

That’s the kind of thing Jesus is doing all over the gospels, but here’s the difference. Jesus backs it up. When Jesus forgives the man, he then says, hey you know, to prove that I can heal this man’s soul, I’ll heal his body too.

Jesus repeatedly connects himself to the Father, saying that he and the Father are ONE.

And this is what John is writing about in the beginning of his gospel. In the beginning, the Word, Jesus, was with God, and he was God.

Read , .

Jesus is shown to be the exact representative of God himself—”the unique One who is himself God.” So, we’ve got God the Father and God the Son, who are both God, but remember : God was present in the world through his Spirit.

Jesus talks about the Spirit of God as, not a weird life force thing, but as a person: “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.” Jesus even says that it’s better for him to leave so that the Holy Spirit can come and lead people.

At Jesus’s baptism, God the Father speaks and the Holy Spirit comes down on him like a dove. So, we have these three persons, who are different, but who all are God.

This is what Christians call the Trinity. There is one God who has always existed in three persons.

Community of Love

Why does it matter?

First, it means that God is a community of love. Read all through . It’s ALL OVER. God the Father loves God the Son, and the Spirit loves and represents both of them. Since before time began, God has been showing the same selfless love that we see at the cross within himself. Which is straight wild. And this is what’s amazing. God has invited you into that community of love. “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love.” God wants you to be a part of the love of the Trinity. And he wants you to live that out toward others. Two verses later, Jesus says, “Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” If God exists as a community that loves each other, then you and I also should live in a community that loves each other, starting with God and flowing out through us into the people around us.

How can you better know God: Father, Son, and Spirit?

How can you better love the people in your life? SHARE YOUR LIFE.

God became a human

There’s a second thing that this means. The idea of the Trinity is connected to another incredibly important idea in the Christian faith: incarnation.

Incarnation means that God became a human. Let’s look again at .

The Word, Jesus, God, became flesh: he became a human being. And while we’ve never seen God, this God as a human shows us who God is.

Sometimes I worry that I’m being annoying with how much I talk about Jesus. But here’s the thing: He’s the entry point to God. We don’t can’t understand the Father without Jesus. We don’t get access to the Spirit without Jesus. If God doesn’t become a human, we’d be lost forever.

Have you

When we talk about

When I was a freshman, I played basketball, and I was not very good. We had this center on our team who was like 6’4” and one time I blocked his shot because he started it way down here. So my coach, to make a point, told him to hold the ball over his head, and then said TJ get it. and I couldn’t get it. No matter how hard I might jump, my body physically couldn’t get that high. The only way I got the ball was if he brought it down to my level.

We’re human, we’re not God. We’re imperfect and sinful, no matter how hard we might try, we can never jump up to God. He has to come down to our level.

Good News

THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL: God’s perfect community of love didn’t leave us on the outside. The Son, Jesus, humbled himself to come down to our level so that he could bring us up with him to share with God in real love.

So Jesus is totally and completely God, and Jesus is also totally and completely human. Which means that he really has been through everything that you’ve been through—he has experienced pain and hunger and loss and uncertainty and anxiety. He knows what you’re going through and he has made a way to fix it through his death and his resurrection. God himself came to stand in the way of our sin and self-destruction, dying on the cross for our sins, which he can do because he’s fully human. BUT he overcame that sin and destruction and came back to life to bring new life to the world, which he can do because he’s God.

Who is God? God is the one who left his throne to chase you down and bring you into his family.