Youth 180 - Devo - NCC - How many persons are there in God?

Youth Devo

Good morning Youth 180.

In case you don’t know today is Thursday. And it’s Thursday with Germ.

Hope all is going well with you wherever you are today. Hope that you are getting some time outside and getting to enjoy the sunshine and company with those around you. It’s pretty cool things are starting to open, hope you’ve got to visit Starbs in SA. People are coming outside. It’s not getting back to normal but there are some small elements of normalcy.

Anywho, this morning we’re going to continue with another question from the New City Catechism. Yesterday we talked about What is God with Kev and today we’re going to look at the question “How many persons are there in God?”. Which is a weird question but a really interesting question at the same time.

2 Corinthians 13:14 says, “14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

As Christians we are monotheists. That means that there is just one God that we believe in, that we serve, that we love and that loves us. But wrapped up in that same answer is the fact, and the answer to the question for this morning from the New City Catechism that I’ll read for us is, “There are three persons in the one true and living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are the same in substance, equal in power and glory.”

This is what we call the Trinity. Essentially one God that is manifested in 3 different distinct persons who share the same authority, same power and same glory.

So you might be asking yourself, why is that important. Why do I need to know and understand this at all. I believe that there is a God, that’s good enough right. Well, a pastor by the name Kevin DeYoung explains the reason why this is important in this way, “The doctrine of the Trinity is the most important Christian doctrine that most people never think about. It’s absolutely essential to our faith, and yet for many Christians it just seems like a very confusing math problem.” He says, “The word Trinity, famously, is not found in the Bible, but the word does very well at capturing a number of biblical truths. There are actually seven statements that go into the doctrine of the Trinity:

God is one. There is only one God.

The Father is God.

The Son is God.

The Holy Spirit is God.

The Father is not the Son.

The Son is not the Spirit.

The Spirit is not the Father.”

He says that if you get that then you understand the Trinity, that you get the idea of 3 persons in 1.

And I think that there are 3 things, that we will end with, that Pastor DeYoung tells us that help us to understand better why this all matters. What this all means for us.

The first thing is that the Trinity helps us to understand how there can be unity in diversity. It’s easy for us to be divided, that’s our world. We are all so different and aren’t always on the same page as one another. The trinity shows us that we can have a profound, real, organic unity with diversity, so that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are working in complete union in our salvation. DeYoung says, “The Father appoints. The Son accomplished. The Spirit applies. We encounter God as fully God in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. And yet, their divine work is neither interchangeable nor redundant.”

The second thing is that when we have a God who is triune, we have an eternality of Love. What does that mean, that we have a love that existed from the beginning of time. If there wasn’t God who existed in three persons then he would have have to create a being to love. But through the trinity we know that the three persons have always existed and so did this relationship of love. What we can take form this is that love isn’t a created thing, it was always there, it’s eternal. So when we have a triune God, a God who exists in three persons then we have fully a God who is love.

And the third thing, which is the most important, is that this discussion on the trinity is so important because there is nothing more important in the life of a Christian than knowing God. If God exists in three persons then we don’t want to be ignorant of this reality. DeYoung says, “In the end, the Trinity matters because God matters.”

Let’s pray together.

Father God. Thank you for today. We know that you are our great God. And you are really beyond our understanding. That you for bringing us into you love, love that existed before the beginning of the world and that exists perfectly in your three persons. Thank you God for today. Amen.

So I hope this helps a bit on your understanding of the Trinity. If you have any questions on anything that we talk about on our daily devotions please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can direct message us here on Instagram or on Facebook or send us a message. We’d love to hear from you and help you in any way that we can.