Posted on 02/05/2024 5:21:42 AM PST by metmom
“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).
Though there is only one God, He exists in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
God is one, but He exists in three distinct Persons. We call this the Trinity, a contraction of “tri-unity,” meaning “three in one.” The word Trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible, but God’s existence as three Persons in one God is clear from Scripture.
Old Testament evidence of God’s plurality can be found in the very first verse: “In the beginning God . . .” (Gen. 1:1). The Hebrew word used for God is Elohim, which is a plural noun. Isaiah 42:1 speaks of the Messiah: “Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations.” The Messiah says in Isaiah 48:16, “The Lord God has sent Me, and His Spirit.”
The New Testament is more explicit about God’s triune nature. After Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit of God descended upon Him as a dove, and the Father said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are together in the same scene.
Jesus says, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17). Paul closes 2 Corinthians by saying, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (13:14). Peter declares that believers are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2).
So God is one, but God is three. This is a profound mystery that no human illustration can adequately describe and no scientific explanation can prove. The Trinity is something we have to take on faith, because God has taught it in Scripture.
Suggestions for Prayer
Praise God that He is so far above our finite understanding, yet has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
For Further Study
Read John 14—16.
What does Jesus teach about His relationship with the Father and the Spirit?
What do you learn here about the different functions or ministries of each member of the Trinity?
From Strength for Today by John MacArthur Copyright © 1997. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.
Studying God’s Word ping
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Caucus; eh?
I guess Mormon quotes are outlawed.
Oh well. Folks know where to find me.
I’m no biblical language scholar, but I have always heard that in the Book of Genesis, where god says. “Let US make man in OUR own image”, the word for God is ELOIM and THAT word is translated as a plural pronoun.
This was the one thing that I felt my childhood church failed to properly explain to me as I was growing up. My understanding into young adulthood was Jesus was God’s son and not God ...took me a long time and a lot of study to reconcile that mistake.
If you just say God is three, you are wrong. God is also one, which your article says later. Please don’t feed the trolls
I have a couple of favorite cases-in-point:
1: Who raised Christ from the dead:
a, “if that same SPIRIT that raised Christ from the dead dwell...”
b. “...and believe in your heart that GOD (theos, the Father) has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
c. “Destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up again...He spake of the temple of His body.”
Is any of that untrue? No? Then all 3 raised Him from the dead; ergo, the three are one, operating distinctly while remaining unified.
I’ll give the other illustration if anyone wants to hear it.
I don’t see the mystery. Christ asks His Father for His Apostles to be one with Him just as He is one with His Father. The one refers to unity not physicality. Christ also expects us to be one with Him and His Father.
From John 17
Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. . . . . . .That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
“the Riddle-god, whose one is three and three is one”— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi, by Richard F. Burton.
it’s only a riddle to the blind.
Everything in the universe is 3 in one.
If our universe did not have breadth, depth, and height, the volume of it would be ZERO - it would not exist.
Yet, breadth is different than depth and height - there is no confusion there.
I can’t quote it chapter and verse but Christ was there at the beginning. Even the demons knew of Him because He was there at the fall but yet there (for a lack of a better word) are boundaries between God, Jesus and the Spirit. Christ mentioned that only the Father knows the time and date and I read an article speculating that the reason that there have been many anti-Christs over the centuries is that the devil is guessing when himself.
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