Last week we were challenged to think of God as spiritual in nature as well as personal. The challenge becomes even greater this week as we read in the Bible that God has shown Himself to be both a unity and a trinity. As for His unity, we confess ourselves to be believers in one God. And in this confession we are right on target with how God has revealed Himself. However, at the same time He has revealed Himself to exist in three persons, a trinity within unity. The fact that oneness and threeness can both be true of God defies all mathematical precision, but this is how God introduces Himself in Scripture. We conclude from the Bible that the eternal God reveals Himself as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence or being.
In contrast
In the Old Testament we find an emphasis on the unity or oneness of God, which stood in marked contrast to the multiplicity of gods among Israel’s neighbors. In the New Testament we encounter an emphasis on the threeness of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We come to the conclusion that the truth of God in three Persons came into view only as He progressively revealed Himself. The fullness and clarity of God’s self-revelation as a Trinity of Persons awaited the coming of Christ and outpouring of the Spirit. Attempts to explain how trinity and unity both apply to God always fall short in one way or another. For example one common attempt points to a man who can be a father, a son and a brother while being one individual. However, these human distinctions are distinctions of relationships and roles, while God’s threeness belongs to His essential being and nature.
As has been said in previous weeks in relation to His being, God is eternal and personal. This also is to be said of each of the Persons who comprise God’s fullness. Just as God the Father is eternal and personal, so is God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. While the Son came into the world incarnate in human flesh, He is the eternal Son of God. What He is, He has always been and always will be.
Personal and eternal
In like manner the Spirit is personal and eternal. He has always been and we should always think and speak of Him in personal terms, such as “the Spirit, He” rather than “the Spirit, it.” In light of the fullness of God’s revelation about His nature as three Persons, we can hear intimations of this trinity of being in Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.’”
We are in step with God’s self-revelation when we ascribe to His threefold being terms like equality, distinction and cooperation. As to equality, neither the Father, Son or Spirit is inferior to the other two, nor any one of the three superior to the other two. Within the essential unity of the Three, the Bible ascribes certain distinctions to the work of the Father, Son and Spirit. For example we might say with biblical warrant that as Christians we have been selected by the Father, saved through the Son and sealed with the Spirit. Or, with Scripture, we confess that the Father sent the Son into the world, and the Son sent the Spirit into the world. Again concerning salvation we might say that the Father authored it, the Son accomplished it and the Spirit applies it.
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