Three in One

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

In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses gave his final address to the Israelites before he died. One of the great truths of the Bible that Moses spoke by the power of God was this: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4). Later in the same speech, Moses quoted God as saying, "See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me" (Deuteronomy 32:39). King David prayed: "How great you are, O Sovereign LORD! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears" (2 Samuel 7:22). To Isaiah, God spoke these words: "Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior" (Isaiah 43:11). In the New Testament, Saint Paul wrote, "Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith" (Romans 3:29-30). And James added, "You believe that there is one God. Good!" (James 2:19).

It is the clear teaching of Scripture that there is only one God, one Supreme Being of whom we stand in awe, one Lord whom we love. And yet, Scripture also speaks of God in the plural. In Genesis 1:26, God is recorded as saying: "Let us make man in our image." After Adam and Eve fell into sin, God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever" (Genesis 3:22). When mankind began building the Tower of Babel, we read: the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other" (Genesis 11:5-7).

Right from the beginning, Holy Scripture teaches us that God is one, yet God is seen as three different persons. At the creation of the world, God is present in all three persons. Saint John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1-3). John is writing about Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. Jesus was with God in the beginning, and was involved in the creation of the world. And one more person was present as well—in Genesis we read, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (Genesis 1:2). God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all involved in the creation of the world.

Jesus taught that God consists of three persons. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said, "The…Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you" (John 14:26). He also told His disciples, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). And all three persons of the Godhead were seen at Jesus’ baptism: As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:16-17).

Furthermore, both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are just as much God as the Father is. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Matthew testified that Jesus is truly God when he wrote, The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" --which means, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23). Paul adds, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). The Holy Spirit is also God. In Acts 5:3-4 we read, Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit…You have not lied to men but to God." How can this be? How can there be three persons, yet only one God? Frankly, we don’t know. We don’t understand how God can be three yet one at the same time. Nevertheless, it is the clear teaching of Scripture. God expects us to believe what He has told us.

Many years ago, the great Christian theologian Augustine wrestled with this very question. One day, as he was walking along a beach, he saw a young boy with a bucket, running back and forth from the shore to pour water into a little hole in the ground. Augustine asked, "What are you doing?" The boy replied, "I’m trying to put the ocean into this hole." It was then that Augustine realized that he had been trying to put an infinite God into his small, finite mind. Augustine realized the truth of Moses’ words in Exodus 8:10, "there is no one like the LORD our God."

In 2nd Corinthians chapter 13, Paul speaks of the blessings that come from our three-in-one God. He concludes his letter with the words, "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." This blessing neatly summarizes how God shows His love for us through the three persons of the Trinity. We have but one God, yet He blesses us in three different ways!

God the Father blesses us by loving us. Love is not just an emotion, an affection that makes the heart feel all warm and fuzzy. Love is caring for others; love is active service. God loves mankind. God loves to create life, and God wants each life that He creates to enjoy perfection. However, Satan introduced imperfection into God’s perfect world, and we humans have been only too happy to wallow in our imperfections ever since. Thankfully, God the Father was not willing to let things rest there. The Father created us to be perfect—to perfectly love Him, and perfectly love each other. Our heavenly Father did not want us to suffer under the pain that imperfection brings into our lives, nor did He want us to spend eternity in Hell, the place set aside for all things imperfect and thus unacceptable for entry into God’s home. But the Father also knew that we had fallen into a hole that we could not climb out of; every imperfect act that we took to try and fix our imperfection only made things worse--imperfection heaped upon more imperfection. So God demonstrated His love by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us.

God the Son blesses us by showing us grace. The word ‘grace’ means ‘an undeserved gift’. We deserve nothing from God. It was God’s decision to create each of us in our mothers’ wombs—life is a gift we had done nothing to deserve. God created us to dedicate every moment of our lives to Him, yet we all waste the bulk of our time creating problems for ourselves and then trying to crawl out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into—we don’t deserve Jesus’ help. God gives, and we waste--God doesn’t owe us anything. But because God loves us, Jesus gives us the undeserved gift of mercy, a chance to leave our mistakes behind and start over again with a clean slate. Jesus made such new starts possible for us by dying for our sins on the cross as our substitute. Because we are imperfect, God would have consigned us to Hell at our deaths—but Jesus endured the torments of Hell in our place, so that our imperfections could be disregarded by God. When Jesus rose from the grave, He rose victorious over all the imperfections of sin; when we come to Jesus asking for mercy, a fresh start, Jesus stands between us and His Father, hiding our imperfections with His perfection. With our sins hidden in Christ, we are assured that God’s eternal home will also be our eternal home. It is by the grace of the Son of God that we are saved from the damnation of our sins.

God the Holy Spirit blesses us with fellowship. Actually, the word ‘fellowship’ doesn’t fully capture what the Holy Spirit gives us. Some Bible translations say ‘communion’, and this might be a better word. Communion is about being in complete harmony and unity. The Holy Spirit brings us into harmony and unity with God, and with each other as well. He does this through the gift of faith. When we hear or read God’s holy Word, the Spirit sets to work within us, helping us to trust that what the Bible says is true—that God really does love us, enough to send his Son to show us His grace, His undeserved gift of forgiveness. It is only when we trust in God’s love and Jesus’ grace that we personally experience forgiveness, and when we do, we come to love and trust our gracious Lord. The more that we love and trust God, the more we want to please Him, and the more we will study His word and gather in His worship. The more that we study His word and gather in worship, the more the Holy Spirit builds faith within us. As our relationship with God grows, we begin to share His priorities, and we grow closer in communion with Him. And as other Christians slowly grow to share God’s priorities, we find ourselves joined together in common cause, and we have communion with each other as well. This communion—this unity of belief and priorities in life—is the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

We worship the Triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is no other ‘god’ like Him. There is no other God that created you, that gave you the undeserved opportunity to leave your mistakes behind and start over again, that rescues you from loneliness by bringing you into fellowship with Him and millions of fellow believers all over the Earth. Because you believe in Him, you have been triply blessed. Now, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.