The Three In - One - God - Trinity Sunday - Pastor Fletch Matlack
The Three-In-One God
Ephesians 4:1-6
Trinity Sunday – Immanuel – 6/21/26
Though May 31 was the true Trinity Sunday in the liturgical calendar, because of some things in our church calendar, we are considering the Trinity today.
One of the most mind-bending truths about God is that he is Triune: one God existing eternally in three persons. I remember as a child feeling my head spin as I tried to understand it. How can God be one and yet three? It seems to shatter every category we know from ordinary experience.
But this too is a fundamental truth of our Triune God. God is beyond us, outside of space and time, infinite and eternal, distinctly three and perfectly one. Who is so arrogant to think they should understand this awesome and transcendent God?
Augustine of Hippo said, “If you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend.”
Though we can never comprehend God fully, we can know him truly. Not one of us should think, “Welp, God is too hard to understand,” then give up trying. “Leave it to pastors and theologians.” No! What joyous effort it is to know this God, one in three, and to plumb his depths! Then, once more, to have our minds break that this same, infinite, eternal, Triune God, concerns himself with us, and loves us, and gave himself for us!
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? -Psalm 8:4
Who is this God, that is above all and beyond all, yet rends the heavens and comes down? Who is this Holy One that delights to dwell among and within sinners like us? Yes, the great work of our life is to know this God, to experience him, and to proclaim his wonders to the ends of the earth.
Main Point: Relationship is the foundation of reality.
· To understand this we need to understand the Trinity.
· Then we need to understand how to live in response to this truth.
You won’t find the word Trinity anywhere in the Bible, but you will find its truths everywhere – Old Testament and New. Our passage today is but one example. See the truth of the Trinty proclaimed in Ephesians 4:5-6.
There is one body and one Spirit…one Lord (Jesus), one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Father, Son, and Spirit all spoken of with the same divine authority. These three persons are the one God who is over all and through all and in all. So, while the word Trinity is not found in Scripture, the doctrine is. The church did not invent the Trinity; it simply gave a name to what Scripture reveals about God.
The Church Fathers, during the 4 centuries following Christ, wrestled with how to put words to these weighty truths about the Living God. And how they were gripped with holy fear, careful not to articulate any false idea. Following the 1st Council of Constantinople in 381, the church has defined the Trinity in the following way:
One God, eternally existing as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God, sharing the same divine essence.
One God. Three persons. Equal in deity. Distinct in personhood.
And if you are wondering why all of this theological stuff matters, our recently trip to North Africa makes it crystal clear. As we spoke with Muslims on streets and in coffee shops, one objection surfaced again and again. “How can God be one and yet three?” To Muslims, the doctrine of the Trinity not only sounds irrational, it is blasphemous.
Because the Quran explicitly rejects the Trinity. It says:
“Those who say, ‘Allah is one in a Trinity,’ have certainly fallen into disbelief. There is only One God. If they do not stop saying this, those who disbelieve among them will be afflicted with a painful punishment.” (Quran 5:73)
Whether from Morocco or the Mohawk Valley, a major reason Muslims reject Christianity is because of the Trinity. But we must understand they are right about one thing: there is only one God. Both Christians and Muslims reject the idea of three gods. We are not tritheists. We do not worship three separate divine beings. We worship one God.
But where Islam sees the Trinity as a contradiction, Christians see it as God’s divine revelation of himself. Despite the Islamic strawman, we do not believe God is one person and three persons at the same time. That would indeed be nonsense. Rather, we believe God is one in essence and three in person. One being. Three persons. One divine nature fully shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And this matters greatly because the Trinity is not some theological curiosity tucked away in the attic of Christian doctrine. If we lose the Trinity, we lose Christianity itself. If the Son is not truly God, he cannot save us. If the Spirit is not truly God, he cannot bring us to God. If God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then the God revealed in Scripture is not the God we are worshiping.
The Trinity is not an embarrassing doctrine and we should not minimize it. It is one of the glories of divine revelation. We do not apologize for it. We marvel that before there were stars, there was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we bow before our three-in-one God!
In the Immanuel Baptist Church Statements of Faith, here is what we confess as a church body:
We believe that there is one living and true God, eternally existing in three persons; that these are equal in nature and divine perfection, and that they execute distinct but harmonious offices in the work of creation, providence, and redemption. He is the supreme ruler of heaven and earth.
In our endeavor to understand our Triune God, let’s explore his three persons. The church has historically seen the Father as the first person of the Trinity, the Son as the second person of the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. Let’s look at them each in turn.
But when we look at each one in turn, you will notice that it becomes impossible not to see the other two and their oneness. As Gregory of Nazianzus beautifully captured, “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”
As you shall see, every time we focus on one person of the Trinity, we immediately find ourselves encountering the other two.
Even still, let’s first consider the Father.
The name “Father” is not a metaphor humans use to help explain God. The truth is the exact opposite. On this Father’s Day, know that your fatherhood is meant to be a faint and distant reflection of the fatherhood of God. He is the truth you, fathers, are meant to reflect.
Yet we reflect him dimly. Human fathers become fathers at a particular moment in time. God never became a Father. He has eternally delighted in his Son. There was never a moment when the Father was without the Son. The life of the Son is the Father’s everlasting delight. How great then was the Father's love, that he would send his beloved Son into the world to suffer and die for sinners.
As Jesus said, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” -John 5:26
Jesus tells us that the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. For millenia Christians have described this mystery as the eternal generation of the Son. That language may sound intimidating, but the idea is simple: There was never a moment when the Son came into existence. There was never a time when the Father existed without the Son. Yet the Son eternally receives divine life from the Father.
This is why the Nicene Creed, written in 325, declares that Christ is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made.”
The title Father describes the role and relationship of the first person of the Trinity. The Father eternally begets the Son and the Father sends the Holy Spirit. The Father planned our redemption, he draws sinners to himself and adopts them, and he purposes all things for our good and his glory.
Second, let’s consider the Son.
Before there was creation, there was relationship. Before there was history, there was fellowship. Before there were stars, there was pure and perfect communion between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
John calls him the Word of God. What a remarkable title! Words reveal what is hidden inside a person. Through words we make ourselves known. The Son is the eternal self-expression of God. He is the perfect revelation of the Father.
When God spoke all things into being, he did so through the power of the Son. The Son reveals the Father’s will in all creation.
In these last days [God] has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
-Hebrews 1:2-3
The Son is the eternal Word through whom all things were made. Then, wonder of wonders, the eternal Son became flesh and dwelt among us.
The One who hung upon the cross was not merely a good teacher. He was not merely a prophet. He was not merely a moral example. He was God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.
The Father planned our redemption and the Son accomplished it. Jesus obeyed where Adam failed. He bore our sins to give us his righteousness. He drank the cup of God's wrath that we may swim in God’s forgiveness. He rose from the dead, and as he lives so shall we. He ascended to the Father's right hand where he reigns over heaven and earth, sending us to proclaim his mighty works!
Third, we consider the Holy Spirit.
Both the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to be our Helper. As Jesus said,
“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness.” -John 15:26-27
The Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. He is sent to help us, to enliven us, to set our hearts ablaze, that we would bear witness about Jesus Christ and the Father who begets him!
The Spirit is the most self-effacing person of the Trinity, and lives to bring glory to the other two. Thus, in many ways, the Spirit is the most hidden of the three.
Yet it is the Spirit who inspired Scripture. The Spirit opened your eyes to the gospel. The Spirit gave you new birth. Every prayer you have ever truly prayed came through the Spirit's work, every conviction of sin, every act of faith, every victory over temptation, every moment of worship, every desire for holiness. All of it comes through the gracious ministry of the Spirit. He is closer than your breath. He is God who dwells within you.
If we had not been given the Holy Spirit, we would have no hope of knowing the Father nor the Son, there would be no relationship with God without the Spirit’s work. Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck profoundly stated, “He who gives us God must himself be truly God.”1
The Spirit wants nothing more than to magnify the Father and Son. And the Father and Son love to pour out more of the Spirit. Each of the three are about the glory of the others. The three are at work to exalt the one.
The Father sends. The Son accomplishes. The Spirit applies. Three distinct operations, one Holy God. And indeed, the declaration of Scripture is that God is one! The Shema:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. -Deuteronomy 6:4
There is one God. There are not three divine beings standing beside one another. There is one divine life, one divine power, one divine will, one divine glory. Everything that makes God, God belongs equally and fully to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This is where our human experience fails us, because human beings are diverse. (And our diversity is a good thing!) Yet that same diversity implies separation and division. We live side by side, or sequentially, and we have all kinds of differences. Thus our communities are – by nature – limited, and our ability to be united is limited.
But God is without any limits, and his persons are not separated by time or space. He is three persons infinity and perfectly united. And this is why Scripture says – and we can confidently trust – that God is love (1 John 4:8). At his essence, he is love. All God's works flow from the fullness of his Triune life and love.
Islam teaches that Allah exists as a solitary person, alone before creation. Even if he possessed the attribute of love, there was no one to receive that love. Creation had to exist before love could be expressed in relationship. Christianity, however, teaches that God eternally exists as Father, Son, and Spirit. Thus Christianity can say that love is eternal, because loving relationship has eternally existed within God himself.
Before there were stars, the Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Father, and the Holy Spirit delighted in them both. The Trinity reveals that loving communion belongs eternally to God's own life.
Unlike human unity, the unity of God is not contractual (meaning there is an exchange of benefits, obligations, and expectations). God’s unity is not an ethical union (as if it were decided that being together would be better than not being together). The union of the Trinity simply is and always has been. Thus, relational unity is the foundation of reality. Hear this: relationship is the foundation of reality.
Therefore, reality is not about you! It is about how you relate to others! It is about how you relate to God and reflect the love that comes from him!
And now we can begin to understand why Paul speaks of the Trinity in Ephesians 4. He is urging the church toward unity because the church is meant to reflect the God we worship. The Father, Son, and Spirit live in perfect love, perfect harmony, perfect fellowship. Christians, we cannot be content with division, bitterness, pride, and selfishness!
Read Ephesians 4:1b-6
Our love for one another reflects the Trinity. The way we forgive, overlook each other’s faults, bear one another’s burdens, treat each other with humility, serve one another – all this reflects our Triune God! But fractures come when we think we are owed something, or deserve to be treated differently, or hold our hurts tighter than our fellow image bearers. How many have rejected God because of the lovelessness seen in the church?
Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” -John 13:34-35
Oh if you love Jesus, should you not also love the church? Love the church as a whole, love the local church, love each individual within it; and the glories of the Triune God will stream from us: the family of the Father, the Bride of Christ, the Spirit’s temple.
God exists in perfect harmony, perfect love, and perfect fellowship. As his people, pride, bitterness, division, and selfishness have no place among us. Like Paul exhorts, let us pursue humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, love, unity, and peace.
The doctrine of the Trinity was never intended merely to fill bookshelves or fuel theological debates. It is meant to flood love among us and awe within us. Augustine was right: If you comprehend, it is not God you comprehend. The goal is not to master the mysteries of God. The goal is worship of God.
May we stand before the doctrine of the Trinity and marvel. Cast you mind upon our Triune God and quickly find your limits. But let your heart continue to ascend in awe and worship. Where your thinking ends, let your heart soar in adoration.
Brothers and sisters what wonder! Your salvation does not rest upon your grip on God. It rests upon God’s grip on you! The Father planned it. The Son purchased it. The Spirit applied it. The whole Trinity is committed to bringing you safely home.
The diversity of humanity is a wonderful thing. But what makes diversity powerful and beautiful is when we overcome all our differences to rejoice in and worship our One Triune God! The Holy Spirit gave the Apostle John a vision of this very thing.
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” -Revelation 7:9-10
Before there were stars, there was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Before there was a sinner to save, there was eternal love. And it was from the overflow of that eternal love God created humanity. And his love overflowed to redeemed sinners. And his love overflowed to bring sinners into fellowship with himself!
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor…O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
-Psalm 8:4-5,9
In all the earth! Let’s go tell all people – from every nation, tribe, and language – that there is a God who is love; a Triune God who works wonders to save sinners. Are you not loved by the Father, redeemed by the Son, indwelt by the Spirit. How can you hold this news to yourself?!
Brothers and sisters, relationship is the foundation of reality because relationship is at the heart of God. Worship him! Love the church! Tell the world!
1Bavinck, H. (2004) Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2: God and Creation. Pg 312. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
