The Father creates (yet the Son and Holy Spirit were also involved), the Son redeems, the Holy Spirit sets apart.

To start off, the scriptures do not teach that there are 3 Gods. This is an extreme misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that actually shapes how you view God. Nor does it teach that God just wears 3 different ‘masks’ or personalities depending on the situation. The bible instead teaches the doctrine of the Trinity: There is one God who has revealed himself in three persons- The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit — in which are all one God.

I know this will be a bit difficult to understand and make sense of, but this is exactly what the Bible tells us.

ONE GOD

The bible teaches that there is only one God!

• (Deuteronomy 6:4) “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!”

• (Isaiah 44:6) “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God be

God is one in His essential being/nature, yet He has three persons.

• (1 Timothy 2:5) “There is one God!”

• (Genesis 3:22) “God said, ‘Behold, and man has become like one of us”

• (Genesis 1:26) “Let us make man in our image”

Some try to rebuke these passages and say that He could have been possibly talking to angels. This would be false, for angels could not and did not help God create. Jesus Christ is the one who created all things, not the angels. (Col 1:15, Hebrews 1:2, John 1:3, Genesis 1:26–27, Genesis 1:1, Isaiah 44:24, Ephesians 3:9, 1 Cor 8:6, Psalm 104: 29–30

The father, Spirit and Son are each distinct persons.

This does not mean 3 different ways of looking at God. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus is absolutely God, yet he is not the Holy spirit nor the Father. This also means that each member of the Trinity has an extremely distinct center of consciousness-they relate to each other personally. Throughout the bible you see God the Father refer to himself as “I” and to the Son and Holy Spirit as “you”. Likewise, you see the Son refer to himself as “I” and to the Father and the Holy Spirit as “you”. For example, When Jesus prayed to the Father, he did not pray to himself! (Matthew 3:17; 17:5, John 5:19; 11:41–42;17) proving that they are distinct persons.

Is there a contradiction?

God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is not a contradiction to worshiping one God. In order for something to be contradictory it must of course violate the law of contradiction. This specific law states that A cannot be both A (what it is) and B ( what A is not) at the same time and in the same exact relationship for example. If I were to say ‘I have an Iphone” yet also say I do not have an Iphone, I would have contradicted myself. Therefore there would only be a contradiction if it is said that God is three yet in the same way He is one. And that is not at all what is being said. We worship 1 God who is in 3 persons. God is one in essence (being). All three persons are all the same essence, therefore we worship just one God. IF we deny this we deny God and face eternal damnation, simple as that. So it is very important for you to understand this.

Who are the 3??

The Father Galatians 1:1

Deuteronomy 33:2 Mentions how God the Father is eternal. “The eternal God is your refugee”. He is the creator of all things! Genesis 1:1, 2:4, 14:19–22; He is the ruler and preserver of all things. The creation that you see…it is from the hands of the maker.

The son (Jesus) John 20:28

JESUS CHRIST- Known as the Son, the Word yet also God. (John 1:1) “The Word was God”. There are plenty of times Jesus “ called God His own father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18, John 8:58, Luke 7:36–50, John 10:37–38, Matthew 9:5–7, Matt 11:27) Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is our savior!!! The savior of the world! To understand this you have to understand what He is saving us from. When God created humanity, He made it very clear he did not want to have us just as his puppets or robots and control us how He pleases. He gave us free will; a choice to have fellowship with Him and a close relationship or to reject Him. We see this obviously playing out in our lives today; we have the choice to lie to our spouse or not, to steal from a store or just wait until we have the money, to get mad and hit someone or just to walk away.

God made the first humans – Adam and Eve. He made them walk with Him and enjoy all of His goodness that was intended for all humans to enjoy! Adam and Eve were tempted by the devil, they chose to disobey God. (Read more about this in Genesis). A problem with their rebellion is that sin cannot dwell around a Holy God. This puts separation between God and Human beings. Sin separates us from God and creates a debt that needs to be paid. Something that will enable us to dwell with our living God again. The problem is that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, so we all will have a sinful nature to us from their sin. Sin is now inherited. Romans 6:23 states “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Humans can never pay this debt to God, even if we are a very good person; we will always sin against Him.

We needed someone without sin, to be a sacrifice for our sins to dwell with God. The good news is that God loves us so much, He wants us to dwell with Him even though we are such sinners against Him. He still gives us a chance to be with Him! THIS is where Jesus comes in. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. He states in John 10:30 “I and the Father are one”. He is our mediator to our God in heaven since we are separated from HIm. He even gives us assurance that He was there in the beginning and claims pre-existence, “Before Abraham was born, I Am!” (John 8:58). He claimed equality with God. He had to be born of a human, to take a human place. Animals cannot take a human’s place, nor angles, nor inanimate objects. A human for a human. This is why God Sent Jesus; to be our true human sacrifice to dwell with God again. He was beaten, bruised, abused and eventually died, all for us humans to be able to dwell with God again. He died for our sins. God died for us to be with Him again. But His death is not the only thing that allows us to be with God again. After 3 days of his death, He was risen. He was alive again. Impossible you may think right? That is the point. Only God is able to make this possible. This is where we get what we call ‘Easter’ from!

Jesus is God in the flesh in scripture. Jesus was there from the beginning: John 1:1 states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here John introduces Jesus as a word or term that both Jewish and Gentile readers were very familiar with. The Greek word translates ‘Word’ as Logos. John in a sense is pointing them back to the Old Testimate where the Word (logos) of God is associated with the essence of God’s revelation. So for his readers, using the term Word (logos) would have brought forth the idea and understanding of a sort of mediating principle between God and the world. 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.’ The Word became flesh…Jesus.

John 10:30 Jesus states how He and God the Father are equal: “I and my Father are one”.

(Matthew 28:18–20) And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

The Holy Spirit Acts 5:3–4

The Holy spirit is seen to be treated more like a ‘force’,an ‘it’ rather than a person. (Acts 8:16, John 14:26;16:7–15). He thinks, speaks, understands and reasons, feels, wills and gives fellowship. (Hebrews 3:7, Acts 15:28, 1 Cor 12:11, Ephesians 4:30, 2 Cor 13:14) This is not a role that God plays, nor are these 3 different Gods. This again is 1 God, 3 persons.

Some may also think that God takes on these 3 roles when the time is needed, that He sometimes is the Father, sometimes is the Son and sometimes is the Holy Spirit, this is incorrect. The scriptures are very specific in stating that the Father, Son, and Holy spirit always were there since the beginning and always will be. They are all eternal, there was never a time that one of the 3 did not exist.

Also named the ‘Helper, Comforter, Advocate’. John 14:26, John 15:26. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Even though God has 3 persons, not one of them is inferior to the other. (Acts 3:5,4)

The term ‘Persons’ (God is 3 persons)

We use the term ‘person(s)’ differently in everyday life in regards to the Trinity. This is also the reason it may be difficult to understand how God is 1 essence, 3 persons. In reference to the Trinity, I do not mean an individual person or independent individual as in ‘you and I are both separate persons’. You and I both can exist apart from one another, that is not the Trinity. As previously mentioned God the Father will refer to the Son and the Holy Spirit as ‘you’, and refers to Himself as ‘I’ and vice versa, yet these 3 are not a division within the being of God, but a form of existence, not a different being! How do they relate? Within God’s one being are three personal distinctions.

Not three different divisions of God but three different modes in one being.They each have a distinct center of consciousness. As theologian Norman Geisler once said “Essence is what you are and Persons is who you are. So God is One ‘what’ and three ‘whos’”. Nor are the Holy Spirit and Son attributes added onto the divine being, the divine IS all three in one being, with all three persons being 100% fully God. The three persons are not each part of God, they are each fully equal to God. God is not one person who took on three different roles.

The way we see these three are not a difference of ‘being’ but a difference of ‘relationships’. As you see, this is not something we can easily comprehend as humans, every different human person is a completely different being as well. Jimmy is not the same being as Tommy — it’s impossible! Not with God in this instance.

The term ‘Essence’

The word essence is the same as ‘being’. It is simple what you are! God is divine, He is spirit (John 4:24) so not in the same way as just a physical object but to make it a bit more understandable terms, it is the “stuff that you consist of”. Yet for God, God is simply just divinity.

You also may be asking, well why would God want to be 3 different persons? Can’t He just be one? And the answer is because He is God…He can do whatever He wants.

The term ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible:

The term Trinity is a theological term used to describe what we see very clearly in scripture as the revealed ‘identity; of God. The Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. This is also called the doctrine of the Trinity that defines God as being just one God as existing in three coexistent, coequal, coeternal persons.

Summary:

• There is only 1 God. He is in 3 persons. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is called the Trinity, in which this term is not found in the bible, it is a theological term.
• God the Father is creator of all things. He is eternal, ruler and maker.
• God the Son-Jesus Christ- is whom God the Father sent to save us from our sin. He died in our place, for our sins, so that whoever comes to Him may have eternal life. If we believe and confess Jesus is Lord along with confessing our sins, we are saved through Him to be with the Father again. He is our savior and mediator to God the Father.
• God the Holy spirit is God the Fathers helper/advocate/comforter. Once we become Christian we are filled with the Holy Spirit- in which guides us, convicts us and fulfills us.