The Trinity

The Trinity

The definition of the Trinity is that the One True God chooses to exist in Three Divine Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  All are equally all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, present everywhere, and unchanging.

The Father is not the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is not the Son.  And the Son is not the Father.  All three Persons can be called “God.”

• We get this doctrine directly from the Bible:
  • The Father is God:
    • Galatians 1:1 (ESV)
      ¹ Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—
  • The Son is God:
    • Hebrews 1:8 (ESV)
      ⁸ But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

 John 5:18 (ESV) 

• ¹⁸ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

• The Holy Spirit is God:
  • Acts 5:3-4 (ESV)
    ³ But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?
    ⁴  While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.”
• Yet the Bible tells us there is only One God:
  • 1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV)
    ⁵ For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
  • Isaiah 44:6 (ESV)
    ⁶ Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.

 

• What the Trinity is not:
• Modalism (One God wearing three hats)
  • Modalism comes in two forms, “static” and “dynamic” modalism.
    • Static modalism is the belief that God is one person who reacts to us in three ways. He is the Father as a creator, the Son as our Savior, and the Holy Spirit as He empowers us.  But He is only one person.
      • This belief is held by the United Pentacostal Church
    • Dynamic modalism is the belief that God was the Father in the Old Testament times, Jesus or the Word when Christ walked the earth, and the Holy Spirit today.
  • Monarchianism
    • This is the belief that the Father and Son are separate beings. Only the Father is God.  Jesus is a sort of vice god or God’s fist and greatest created being.  This belief is held by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
  • Tritheism
    • This is the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separate Gods. This belief is held by the Mormons.

 

• Submission
  • The Son is voluntarily submissive to the Father:
    • Philippians 2:5-8 (ESV)
      ⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
      ⁶  who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
      ⁷  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
      ⁸  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
    • Hebrews 1:5 (ESV)
      ⁵ For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”?
  • The Holy Spirit is voluntarily submissive to the Father.
    • John 14:26 (ESV)
      ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.