THE TRINITY

Theme: “There is one God manifested in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

We believe in the Trinity of one God manifested in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (The Word Trinity does not appear in the Bible; but the Bible uses the word Godhead. Since the word Trinity is in popular use and means the same thing, we have no problem with using the word.)

Perhaps the best natural illustration of the Trinity is H₂O. This exists in a solid form as ice, a liquid form as water, and a gaseous form as water vapor. It is still two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in all three states, but the different forms have different characteristics. They are the same in essence but different in “personality”.

People sometimes get confused by the fact that Jesus is referred to as God’s only begotten Son, and the word begotten implies being the offspring of another. He was born as a Man in Bethlehem with God being His Father and Mary being His mother. This was not when He started to exist, however. He has always existed. He was incarnated in Bethlehem, but not created there.

Proof that Jesus is God, that He has existed forever and was not created the day He was incarnated in Bethlehem

A. The Apostle John’s Declaration of Who Jesus is:

John 1:1-3:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

Is this Word referring to Jesus? Yes:

John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

From this we see that Jesus was with God, yet He was God – simultaneously. This shows the mystery of the Trinity – distinct and yet one. You may never understand this with your mind, but you aren’t commanded to – the only thing you’re commanded to do is believe the gospel, not intellectually understand every part of it.

B. Jesus’ Testimony of Himself:

John 8:58:
Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”

John 14:9:
 “…He who has seen Me has seen the Father”

John 10:30:
“I and my Father are one.”

John 17:5:
“And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”

John 10:38:
“…believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”

Jesus’ claim to be God was certainly not lost on the Pharisees:

John 5:18:
Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

John 10:32-33:
Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”

(The absurdity of thinking that Jesus was “a good teacher but not God” is shown by Jesus’ own statements.  Since Jesus taught that He was God, he was a very bad teacher if that is not Who He really was!)

C. John the Baptist’s Testimony

John the Baptist said that Jesus “was before him” although he was born about six months earlier. (We get the 6-month difference from Luke 1:36, where Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth her cousin was in her sixth month. Elizabeth was John the Baptist’s mother.)  We know that John was born first because he was born in Luke 1, while Jesus was not born until Luke 2. Here is John the Baptist’s testimony of Him:

John 1:30:
“This is He of whom I said, ‘After me comes a Man who is preferred before me, for He was before me.’”

D. Paul’s Teaching

Colossians 1:16-17:
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.  All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

Colossians 2:9:
For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;

1 Corinthians 10:4:
And [they, the Israelites] all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.

E. Isaiah’s Testimony

Isaiah 9:6-7:
For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government will be upon His shoulder.  And His name will be called, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God…”

F. Thomas’s Testimony

Thomas was hardly a bastion of the faith, but finally, speaking to Jesus, he exclaimed, “My Lord and My God!” (John 20:28)

G. God’s Own Testimony

Hebrews 1:8:
But to the Son He says:  “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your kingdom,
(Note: This is quoted from Psalm 45:6)

H. Jesus’ Acceptance of Man’s Worship

God has always forbidden men from worshipping other men or angels. Herod was struck down because he accepted it when people implied that he was a god:

Acts 12:22-23:
And the people kept shouting, “The voice of a god and not of a man!” Then immediately an angel of the Lord struck him, because he did not give glory to God.  And he was eaten by worms and died.

However, Jesus allowed people to worship Him, something He could only rightfully do if He were God.  In fact, God commanded the angels to worship Him (Hebrews 1:6)!

The disciples worshiped Jesus in the boat after they saw Him walk on water (Matthew 14:33). Jesus did not rebuke them for this.

The disciples praised Jesus as He entered Jerusalem. They did not get eaten of worms and die; what they did was proper.

The Canaanite woman worshiped Jesus and said, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)

The demon-possessed Gadarene man ran and worshiped Jesus when he saw Him afar off (Mark 5:6).

The disciples worshiped Jesus after He was taken up into heaven (Luke 24:52).

(We could use other examples where, for example, the leper came and worshiped Jesus – in the King James Version!  The New King James uses the word “pleaded” in many of these cases, so you could not flip to them and make this point with all versions of the Bible.)

Error Alert: The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that Jesus was a created being and was “a god” instead of “God”.  Their claim that he was “a god” comes from the fact that they rewrote John 1:1 to say that the Word was “a god” instead of “God” in their “Watchtower Bible”, despite the fact that the Greek does not include “a” in that place.  They also base their claim that Jesus was created on the phrase in Colossians 1:15 that says He is the “firstborn over all creation”.  However, this use of “firstborn” here could refer only to (a) His humanity, not His deity or (b) His position of first place in the world, in light of the other Scriptures.  The Scriptures do not contradict themselves.

Error Alert: Any group that denies that Jesus existed before His incarnation is a cult moved by an antichrist spirit.  The sign of a cult is a group that does not believe that Jesus “has come in the flesh”.  This will be expanded upon in Lesson 4.

Proof that the Holy Spirit is God:

The following shows us that the Holy Spirit is God.  In Acts 5, to lie to the Holy Spirit was the same thing as lying to God:

Acts 5:3-4:
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself?  While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?  You have not lied to men but to God.”

The Holy Spirit dwells within every believer (John 14:17, 1 Corinthians 6:19, Romans 8:9; these are spelled out later in this lesson). This would be impossible for any being who could not be everywhere at once like God.

The Holy Spirit was involved in creating everything we can see today in Genesis 1:

Genesis 1:2:
The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

One “proof text” sometimes used to prove the Trinity appears in the King James and the New King James, but not all translations.  It is good to know this one, but it is important to know others in case someone has a different translation as well as for the reasons cited below.

1 John 5:7:
For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.

This looks like about as direct a declaration of the Trinity as we could get, at least once we realize after reading John 1:1 that the Word refers to Jesus Christ. The problems with this are that (a) some translations do not include this verse because some old manuscripts did not have this verse in them, so if you go to show someone this verse in his own Bible, it might not be there! (b) “One” as used here can be used more than one way – it can mean the number one, but also “one” as in “one in agreement” – as used in the immediate context in 1 John 5:8.

Another interesting point is God’s use of the plural to describe Himself!

Elohim, translated God in Genesis 1, is actually a plural and could be translated Gods. This does not mean there is more than one Godhead, but there are distinct persons in the Godhead.  This explains the seemingly strange verses below:

Genesis 1:26:
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…

Genesis 11:7:
“Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand each other’s speech.”

The Holy Spirit is not a force or a feeling. “Feeling the Spirit” sometimes gets cheapened in modern-day usage.  The Red Sox can be beating the Yankees and the folks at Fenway Park might “feel the spirit” of victory or something, but that has nothing to do with God, unless one assumes that it is a miracle that the Red Sox would be ahead of the Yankees.

The Holy Spirit is a person, just like God the Father and God the Son.  A force is impersonal, but the Holy Spirit has personal attributes.

Proof that the Holy Spirit is a person and not just a force:

It is possible to “insult the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29), but you can’t insult a force like electricity.

Perhaps some misunderstanding arises from the King James translation of Romans 8:26, where it says that the Spirit “itself” makes intercession for us. More recent translations have cleaned this up (for example, Spirit Himself in the New King James Version).

It is possible to grieve the Holy Spirit because Ephesians 4:30 commands us not to “grieve the Holy Spirit of God…” – but you can’t grieve a force like electricity.  (See also Isaiah 63:10: “But they rebelled and grieved [vexed in the King James] His Holy Spirit.”)

You can lie to the Holy Spirit (see Acts 5:3-4 cited above)

You can rebel against the Holy Spirit (Psalm 106:33).

The Holy Spirit does other personal things:

• teaches you all things (John 14:26)
• reminds you of the words of Jesus (John 14:26)
• makes intercession for us (Romans 8:26)
• convicts the world (lets the world know it is a sin not to receive Jesus) (John 16:8)
• guides you into all truth (John 16:13)
• shows you things to come (John 16:13)
• glorifies Jesus and declares the things of Jesus to you (John 16:14-15)
• speaks and calls people to ministry (for example, Acts 13:2, where “the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them”, also Acts 8:29: Then the Spirit spoke to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.”

None of these things would make sense if spoken of an impersonal force.
 

Question 1-1: Could we say that God is one person who manifests Himself three different ways?

No.  God is three persons who each manifest themselves, not one person manifesting Himself three different ways.
 

Question 1-2:  How can one be three and three be one?

There is probably no good answer to this that will appeal to your mind.  It simply needs to be accepted by faith.
 

Question 1-3:  What is the difference between the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ?

None.  All these names are interchangeable.
 

Question 1-4:  Which persons in the Godhead come to live inside you when you are born again?

All three.

John 14:23:
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home in him.”

John 14:17:
“The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells you and will be in you.”

1 Corinthians 6:19:
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?

Romans 8:9:
But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

Romans 8:11:
But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

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