Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (ESV)

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Trying to Understand

As I was growing up, I certainly believed in the Trinity – that God is three yet one. I didn’t understand it, but I believed it. I knew that each person in the Trinity loved me, but practically, in my mind, I felt like God the Father was waiting on me to mess up, Jesus was the One who really loved me (He died for me), and I never really thought much about the Holy Spirit.

The older I get the more I realize that it’s important to have some understanding of the Trinity. If for no other reason, each person in the Trinity is for me (Romans 8:31).

God is One

The Bible clearly teaches that God is one. Perhaps the strongest argument for the unity of God can be made from Deuteronomy 6:4-5. “Intelligent Israelites have always considered Deuteronomy 6:4-5 as the very heart of the revelation made by God to them through Moses and the prophets” (Torrey 1999, 52), but there are numerous other passages which support the teaching (Isaiah 44:6-8; Isaiah 45:5; 1 Corinthians 8:4; 1 Timothy 2:5). “That God is one, that there is no other, that He has not equal is the forceful testimony of about fifty passages of Scripture. The fundament duty of life, namely, the devotion of the entire being to the Lord, is based upon the unity of God” (Evans 1974, 25-26).

Three Persons Who are God

The Bible also clearly teaches that there are three persons who are God. The deity of the first, the Father, is scarcely in dispute (Erickson 1985, 324). The deity of the second and third Persons of the Trinity, the Son and the Holy Spirit, can also be proven from the Bible. First, consider the deity of Christ. It is said of Jesus in John 1:1 that “the Word was God.” In John 3:16, Jesus identifies Himself as the Son of God. Jesus also affirmed to the high priest that He was the Son of God (Matthew 26:61-64). If Jesus did not consider Himself to be the Son of God, He would have told the high priest that He was not. Second, consider the Holy Spirit. “So completely do the Scriptures identify the Spirit with the Supreme God, that the fact of his personality having been established, his essential divinity will at once be admitted” (Boyce 1887, 132). An example from the Bible is found in Acts 5:3-4. In this passage, Peter equates the Holy Spirit to God.

The Three-in-Oneness of God

The Bible also clearly teaches the three-in-oneness of God. This teaching seems contradictory to human reasoning. R. A. Torrey addresses the apparent contradiction as follows:

A perfectly satisfactory answer to this question is, from the very nature of the case obviously impossible.  The first reason is that . . . God is spirit, and numbers apply primarily to the physical and material world.  The second reason is that God is infinite and we are finite.  He “dwell[s] in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16); therefore, our attempt at a philosophical explanation at the tri-unity of God is an attempt to put the facts of Infinite Being into the forms of finite thought.  (Torrey 1999, 71)

Although the three-in-oneness of God cannot fully be reconciled in the mind of man, it is a concept taught in the Bible:

In several places in Scripture the three persons are linked together in unity and apparent equality. One of these is the baptismal formula as prescribed in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20):  baptizing in (or into) the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Note that “name” is singular, although there are three persons included. Note also that there is no suggestion of inferiority or subordination.  (Erickson 1985, 329)

Summary

The biblical evidence supports that there are three persons of the Trinity, difficult for us to adequately describe, yet working together toward a common purpose. We should relate to others in the same way the persons of the Trinity relate to one another, because we are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).

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REFERENCE LIST

Boyce, James P. 1887. Abstract of systematic theology. Hanford, CA: den Dulk Christian Foundation.

Erickson, Millard J. 1985. Christian theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Evans, William. 1974. The great doctrines of the Bible. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.

Torrey, Reuben Archer. 1999. The God of the Bible. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House.