Matthew 3:16–17; 1 Corinthians 2:12–13; Ephesians 1:3–14

Bible Studies for Life
Associate Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

KEY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE TRIUNE GOD
Matthew 3:16–17; 1 Corinthians 2:12–13; Ephesians 1:3–14
The three previous lessons have emphasized that God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit are each intimately involved in our experience of living the Christian life. The doctrine of the Trinity — the distinctively Christian concept of who God is that distinguishes Christianity from all other claims to knowledge of the divine nature — is, therefore, not an abstract concept. The Trinity is, in fact, a thoroughly practical doctrine of the Christian faith, for the shape of the Christian life is Trinitarian. This week’s lesson explores three biblical texts that link the Trinitarian character of God with the Trinitarian shape of the Christian life.

How Do We Know God Is Triune? (Matt. 3:16–17)
When Jesus presented Himself for baptism by John the Baptist, He identified with us so that we become identified with Him when we follow Him in baptism. What happened in this story was, therefore, not merely an isolated historical event in His earthly life. It was also a paradigm for the relationship of the triune God to the life of every believer. The account of Jesus’ baptism does in brief what the whole Bible does at length: It tells the story of a God who reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This can be understood adequately only if one conceives of the story’s main character as the one God who exists eternally as a community of three persons. In this passage are the biblical building blocks of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is the triadic biblical story (the Son baptized, the Spirit descending and the voice of the Father). There is a distinction between the persons (the Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Spirit comes to rest on Jesus and the Father speaks of His paternal relationship with His Son). And there is the mutual sharing of the three persons in the one divine work of saving human beings — “in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15).

For those of us who have put on Christ in baptism so we are identified with His death and resurrection, the same paradigm is at work. We are adopted by the Father, identify with the Son and are indwelt and gifted by the Holy Spirit. We experience the saving work of the triune God in our baptism, and we continue to experience it throughout the saved life.

How Does the Triune God Guide Us? (1 Cor. 2:12–13)
One dimension of the continuing life of salvation for which we depend on the work of the triune God is our need for divine guidance to know how we should live in the midst of a world that insists there is another way we ought to live. The source of this knowledge is the eternal wisdom of God that is disclosed in flesh and blood in the person of Jesus — whose cross, in particular, is contrary to the world’s wisdom (1 Cor. 1:18–31) — and bestowed on us by God’s Spirit. We are able to know how we should live because our God is the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

How Does the Triune God Save Us? (Eph. 1:3–14)
The fourth-century debates over the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to the divine nature were not irrelevant philosophical abstractions. Our very salvation was at stake, for our plight is such that only God can save. If the Son and the Spirit are anything less than the fullness of divinity that belongs to the Father, then we cannot be saved — or else the God who saves is a God who saves only at a distance with no personal involvement. Therefore those who defended what we now know as orthodox Christian teaching insisted on the basis of Scripture that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-eternal, co-equal and consubstantial (sharing the same divine essence). One of the key biblical texts in this ancient clarification was this passage from Ephesians. The one 12-verse-long Greek sentence repeatedly mentions the various ways in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each fully involved in the one divine work of saving us, from God’s choice to save us even before the world was made to our final redemption in the fullness of time.