Tag: trinitarianism

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godhead Meditations

Knowing that The Triune God Needs Nothing

If we understand that God, in all three persons, is also perfect in all his attributes, then we would also understand that he doesn’t need anything. God describes Himself this way:

  • Acts 17:24-25 He doesn’t need temples. He doesn’t need to be served by human hands. He doesn’t need anything. He is the one who gives life to everything.

This means that God, in all three persons, is in Himself and of Himself. He has no moment of needing anything or anyone outside of Himself. God didn’t need companions or relationships or complexity to ponder since He has all of that in Himself in all three persons. In fact, what this tells us is that when God decided to create or give life or give gifts, He did it only because He wanted to.

  • Rev 4:11 You are worthy, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power because you created all things and because of your will they were created
  • Col 1:16 For in Christ, all things were created: all things have been created through Him and for Him
  • Job 26:13 By His breath, or by His Spirit, God adorned the heavens

Be thankful and joyful! We don’t have a weak God who needed toys to keep him busy but rather an all-powerful God who decided, out of His grace and giving, to create others to enjoy Him forever!

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godhead Meditations study

Knowing That God, In All Three Persons, Is Love and Holy and…  

There is a mistake of saying that God is mainly Love or mainly Holy. This mistake tames God in our merely human eyes because we can easily understand people like that—who are mainly loving. What God shows in Scripture is that God, in all three persons, is the glorious definition and perfection of all his attributes.

  • The Father loved the world and gave his Son to satisfy God’s holy punishment of sin (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; Rom 8:3)
  • The Son only does the things He sees the Father doing so he loved us and gave Himself for us as the one who rightly can condemn sin (John 5:19-20; Eph 5:2; John 5:22; Rom 8:34)
  • The Holy Spirit, as knowing the mind of God by being God, and taking the place of the Son on Earth, creates fruit in the lives of God’s people by creating love, holiness, purity, and godliness (John 14:16; 1 Cor 2:11; Gal. 5:22; 1 Peter 1:16; 1Thes 4:7)

This tells us that God, in all three persons, is: love, holy, truth, light, life, (and so on) all at the same time! There is no person in the Trinity that is love while another is holy, and another is judge. There is no attribute that is more indicative of who God is in His essence, than any other. God is love through His holiness and He is holy through his love and both through His truth and all through His life and life through all. That is a confusing sentence but also starts to reflect the bigness of God.

God is not loving or holy or truthful because there is some concept of love, or holiness, or truthfulness out there in space. God is the definition and example of all His attributes. We can only love or tell the truth or do right or be kind because God, in His essence, known in all three persons, is the meaning of those things! Christian, shudder! Stand back in awe! Shut your mouths in utter wonder! This is the basis of the constant Biblical refrain: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!

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godhead Meditations

Knowing That God Is Right in His Self-Revelation As Triune

There is a saying that goes like this: he or she who doesn’t learn their heresy is doomed to repeat it. A heresy is a damnable belief that is outside of the boundaries of Christian teaching. It’s not a difference of opinion on the form of baptism. Did you know that the major false religious and Christian heresies make their deepest mistakes on the nature of God?

  • The Mormons, rightly believing that there are three divine persons, deny that He is One God—they think each person is an individual God! (Deut 6:4).
  • The Jehovah Witnesses, believing that the Father is God, deny that Christ is God thinking he is merely the chief angel of God. (John 10:30; Acts 20:28; 2 Peter 1:1)
  • The Jews and the Muslims, rightly believing that there is only one God, deny that God is Three co-equal co-eternal divine persons in one eternal essence. (John 6:27; John 1:1; Acts 5:3-4).
  • Oneness Pentecostals, rightly believing that there is one God, deny that God is three persons instead saying that the One God has three different roles. God is not merely acting in three different ways, or has three different jobs. The Father is a real person who is not the Son; and the Son is not the Spirit; and the Spirit is not the Father ((John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7)

Embrace the truth of this teaching and worship God as he really is. No need to make up different language or come up with different illustrations—let God be true and all men liars! (Rom 3:4)

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godhead Meditations

Knowing that God is Three in One

When God reveals his oneness and plurality in Scripture, he ultimately says five facts. Feel free to look up these passages and meditate on them:

  1. There is only one God (Deuteronomy 6:4)
  2. The Father is God (John 6:27; Rom 1:7)
  3. The Son is God (John 1:1, 14)
  4. The Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4)
  5. The Father is not the Son, and the son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7)

For two thousand years, the church has used this definition: God is a trinity.  God is one in his essence (or being) AND three co-equal and co-eternal persons. This is hard to understand because God is unique! None of us know what it is to be three persons in one essence. Each of us is one person (one mind: one WHO) in one human being (one WHAT). God is special. He is three persons (three eternal minds; three WHOs that existed forever) in one God (one WHAT).

This is massively helpful when we consider that the one God, in all three persons, was involved in our creation and our salvation and our eternal preservation.

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godhead Meditations study

Knowing that God is A Plurality

From the earliest chapters in Scripture, God refers to Himself in a unique way.

  • God’s single name is written in the plural form. (Gen 1:1)
  • God refers to Himself saying, “Let US make man in our own image” (Gen 1:26) then the text proceeds to say that God made man in His own (singular) image (Gen 1:27).
  • God commissions Isaiah saying, “Whom will I send? who will go for US?”! (Isaiah 6:8)
  • The Lord’s anointed says He is in the beginning with God, and that He and God’s Spirit are sent by the Lord God (Isaiah 48:16)

God is, in the cases listed above acting of His own power and authority and referring to Himself at the same time as ONE and MORE-THAN-ONE. Unlike Allah, the one God of the Muslims, the Living God knows what it is to be in a relationship! Yes, he’s the only God, there is none beside him, but He is not a lonely god.

Of course, this wasn’t very clear in the Old Testament. God’s self-revelation wasn’t made crystal clear until later. For now, we can come to terms with this truth.  In our loneliest and darkest moments, we can take comfort in the fact that God, making us part of His family, does not start a relationship but rahter brings us into a truly unique and eternal relationship.