The Trinity for Beginners

How are you doing? Doing alright. How are you guys doing? Great. Well, let me give you all a quick heads up. I do have to leave as soon as class is over today. I've got some guys doing work at my house, and my wife is there by herself, and I just want to get back in case they have any questions or anything.

So as soon as I'm done, I'm going to roll. And I want to also make a second point. I think most of you all know me. If you don't know me, my name is Keith. I do the Systematic Theology, which is a 12-week course.

Every week we do a different theological subject. And today's subject is one that is considered to be somewhat difficult, even though I don't think it should be as difficult as people make it out to be.

But I want to ask that you would at least hold off on a lot of questions. Allow me to get out what I want to say before I have to start fielding questions, because if I have to start fielding questions from the very beginning, we ain't never going to get nowhere.

You know what I mean? Normally I don't mind you all asking questions while I'm talking, but today, unless it's just something very, very needful, hold off until the end, and we'll maybe last five, ten minutes.

We can deal with any questions or anything you all have. Okay? So be fair to me. I'll be fair to you all. All right, so let's start with a word of prayer. Father, I thank You for Your Word. We know that Your Word is truth, because Your Son told us that Your Word is truth.

He said, sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth. So Father, today as we seek to understand what Your Word says about this very important subject, this historical, biblical, and foundational subject, I pray, Lord, that You would first and foremost, as I always pray, please keep me from error.

For I am a fallible man, and I am capable of preaching error, and I do not want to. I pray also, Lord, that You would open up the hearts of these men, not just their eyes and ears, but their hearts, to understand what Your Word has to say.

And Lord, if there is confusion today, I pray that You would clarify it. And Lord, do not let me be the perpetuator of confusion. But Lord, help me, by Your Spirit, to bring some clarity to an often confusing topic.

I pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. So in our 12-week theology course, we begin week one with the doctrine of revelation, which is how does God reveal Himself. We talked about common revelation, which goes out to all people, or what we call general revelation.

And we talk about special revelation, which is given through God's Word, whether that's through His prophets or through His written Word, which is what we have today. Week two, which was last week, we looked at the existence of God, and we looked at His attributes.

We looked at the attributes like God's holiness, God's justice, God's love, God's mercy, even God's hatred, which we didn't talk much about that one, but there are things the Bible says God hates. The book of Proverbs says there are six things God hates.

Yeah, seven are an abomination to Him, and He talks about those things that God hates. A lying tongue, a haughty look, all those things that are opposed to God's righteousness. So God expresses Himself as a being who can be known.

The Doctrine of the Trinity Defined

Well, today we are going to look at the doctrine of the Trinity. And this just so happens to be one of the subjects about which I am very passionate. I've written a couple of books over the years, and one of the books that I wrote is called God in Three Persons.

And it is a historic and biblical view of the doctrine of the Trinity. So this is something that I've spent a lot of time with and devoted myself to, and very recently had an interesting interaction with a young man who's now become a good friend.

And that is, I got a call at the church. Our church phone forwards to my cell phone. So I look down at my cell phone, and I see that I have a missed call from the church phone. So I open up my phone, and I listen to the voicemail, and it's a young man who said, I recently got saved, and I feel like I need to be in church.

He didn't get saved at a church. He got saved through a ministry of someone who was online sharing the Gospel. He heard the Gospel and got saved. And he said, I've been reading the Bible. I've read the New Testament twice since I got saved, but I have a lot of questions, and I'm very confused about some things, and I want to ask questions.

Well, I was excited to talk to him. So I immediately called him back and introduced myself, and we began to talk. And one of the things, he said, I have a very important question, and I really need to know.

He said, I don't know if I believe in the Trinity. He said, I know that it's something that churches teach. He said, but I'm not sure that it's biblical. And I said, well, I want to tell you this. And I said, and hear me well.

I said, not only is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical, the doctrine of the Trinity is not optional. It is not something that you can simply take it or leave it. It is something that is so inherently biblical that it is necessary to believe.

It is one of the things that the church has affirmed historically that if a person rejects, it puts them on the outside of the faith. In fact, if we look at the groups like the Jehovah Witnesses or the Mormons, or even the Unitarian church, like the Universalist Unitarians, the thing that separates them is that they reject the doctrine of the Trinity.

It is not something that is optional. And that is my firm stance on this. If you come to me later and say, well, I don't believe the Trinity, I would say there's two things that are happening. Either one, you're very confused or you're still lost.

And you say, well, how can you be so judgmental? I'm not being judgmental. I'm telling you that is the historic affirmation of the church. And when I say the church, I mean the church in general. This is not something that has been debated.

This is something that has been affirmed for 2 ,000 years. Now, there have been debates along, but the debates have always fallen on the side of the doctrine of the Trinity. The historic church has always stood on this teaching.

So when we say we affirm Christianity, we are saying something about what we affirm about God. This is not an optional doctrine. Does that make sense? Alright. So, before we even jump into the doctrine, because here's what we're going to do today.

We're going to define the doctrine. We are going to defend the doctrine. That's the two parts of today's lesson. But before we even do that, I want to make a distinction between two words. There is a distinction between understanding and comprehending.

Now, oftentimes we use those two words interchangeably. Like if I were teaching you how to use a nail gun. I say, do you understand this? You say, yes. I say, do you comprehend it? Yes. And in that sense, it's a synonym.

But there's also a way where they're not synonyms. For instance, if I say to you, do you understand that God is eternal? You could say, yes. That means He has no beginning and no ending. That's what you understand.

That's what it means to be eternal. But if I said, do you really comprehend what it means to be eternal? No beginning and no ending. You say, no. Because everything you know has a beginning and ending.

You have a beginning and ending. Your children have a beginning and ending. Your mom and daddy had a beginning and ending. Even the earth that you walk on had a beginning and one day will have an ending.

You are unfamiliar with anything that is eternal and therefore for you to comprehend the eternal would be somewhat impossible. Because you have nothing against which to compare it. You have nothing with it to analogize it.

Therefore, you can understand it because you can define it. No beginning, no ending. But you can't really comprehend it. To comprehend it would be like taking all of the Atlantic Ocean and putting it in a thimble.

You can't do that because it's just too much to comprehend. Our finite mind cannot fully embrace everything it means when we talk about the eternal God. We can't comprehend all that is. So when I tell you today, you can understand the Trinity.

Yes, you can. And you will. Before you leave today, you're going to learn three things, three statements. And if you've ever been in this class, you guys know this class rotates so some of you have been here before.

But you're going to learn the same three things you learned last time and that is the three doctrinal affirmations that are affirmed in the Trinity. And you will understand what each of them means. But I cannot promise you're going to comprehend it because that level of comprehension is somewhat beyond us.

In the same way that God is eternal, fully comprehending how it works and all of the intricacies and all of the moving parts, if you will, is going to be a little bit beyond us. So we're good with that?

Alright. Well, let's go into our definition. Like I said, we're going to do two things today. We are going to first define and then defend. No use trying to defend something you don't understand so we've got to define it before we can defend it.

When we talk about the doctrine of the Trinity, most people think of the Trinity like this. God is one in three and three in one. In fact, we sing songs that say God is the great three in one or something like that.

Nothing wrong with that. But that is somewhat obscure. Because like I remember years ago, my beloved mother, she and I were talking about the Trinity. And she goes, I know about the Trinity. It's like three in one oil.

And I love my mother and I thought that was so cute. But you know, three in one oil like what you put in a lawnmower. That's just the way she thought. And that's a simple faith and I'm fine with that.

There's nothing wrong with it. But that is somewhat obscure. Because three in one oil means three different types of oil in one. And that's where there can be some confusion. It's not a perfect analogy.

So I did go in and explain a little bit to her. I said, yeah, but we can't think it's three different gods or something like that. And that's the part, when we get to the end, when we get to the defense, we're going to talk about some of the false views.

And we need to be able to understand that as well. So when the Trinity is defined as three in one, that is true, but it's a little obscure. It's a little ambiguous. And so the church has historically sought to define the Trinity more specific than just three in one.

The historic formulation of the doctrine is this. This is the three statements I said you were going to get. Number one, God is one in essence. Now, immediately, we have to ask the question, what is essence?

Well, another word for essence, if you want to be a little more specific, is the word being. God is one in being. But you can even go further than that and use a more, what we would say, a more doctrinally appropriate term, the term that was used by our ancestors in the faith.

And they used the word substance. Now, when you think of substance, you usually think of something that you can handle. Like we talked about oil earlier. Oil is a substance, right? You can put your hand in oil.

You can feel it. You can wipe it on you. You know what oil is by how it feels and the fact that it has a substance. When we talk about the substance of God, we're talking about what He is. And the Bible says He is spirit.

Isn't that what it said in John 4 when Jesus was talking to the woman at the well? God is spirit. And those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth, right? So the idea of God's substance, it's not something tangible like oil or wood or concrete.

It's spirit, but it's still a spiritual substance. It's that which God is. Now, when we talk about that which God is, we say God is... We learned this last week. Remember the three omnis? Remember omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, right?

That's the nature of God. Omnipresence means God is everywhere. So His substance is everywhere, right? It's all around us. It's everything. God is... The Bible says if I go up into heaven, you're there.

If I go down into Sheol, you're there. I can't escape from your presence. I can't escape from you, right? So that's what we're talking about. That is one. God is one in essence, being, or substance. Okay, so that's number one.

Number two. God is three in person. God is three in person. Now, the theological term which has typically been used in regard to person actually corresponds to the word substance and it is the word subsistence.

So we can say God is one in substance and He is three in subsistence. And this should be a C. Pardon me for that. Sometimes when I'm writing on the board, my brain disconnects from my fingers and I write the wrong thing.

So I apologize. So we say God is one in essence, being, or substance. God is three in person or subsistence. And the last one, the last of the three is that the three persons equal eternal. Co-equal and co-eternal.

Alright, so let's just break these down a little further. Because this is where groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and everything, they immediately start making the argument. They say if God is one in essence, He has to be one in person.

Because essence and person are the same thing. And we say no, that's not true. Essence and person are not the same thing. Or being and person are not the same thing. And the easiest way to define that, the easiest way to prove that, is to look at a rock.

Does a rock have substance? Does it have being? No, yes it does. It has being. It's there. It has substance, being, and essence all the same thing. So it has being. It be. Versus it don't be. Being is simply the state of existence.

It be. And if you don't believe it be, I throw it at you and when it hits you, you'll know that it be. Because it be hurting. Alright. So, a rock has substance, it has being, it has essence. It's the essence of a rock, right?

It is. But it does not have person. You can't talk to a rock, even though years ago, back in the 70's, you know a guy made a million dollars selling a pet rock? Pet rock. Million dollar company. Selling pet rocks.

I don't even, I can't even imagine. But he did. Million dollar company selling pet rocks. People talked to the rock. Guess what the rock did not do? It did not talk back. It did not have personality. It did not engage.

It did not feel empathy. It did not feel pain. It just was a rock. So it be. It be, but it not do. Person do. Persons do, beings be. So if I said to you, a rock can have being and not person, you understand there's a difference between being and person.

If I said to you, a cow can have being but not person. And by person, now we're beginning to be more specific about person. You say, well cows can have certain personalities, like bull can be ornery, or a heifer can maybe be somewhat passive, right?

You know, they can have little personalities. But those are what we call instinctual personalities. They're based on instinct, not on real personality like you. You know, you are who you are because God has endowed you with His image.

We're going to talk about this when we get into anthropology. You are a man made in the image of God, therefore you have personality, you have intellect, emotion, will, right? Those are all part of what make you person.

And so we distinguish between personhood and being all the time. And we do that naturally. So what we are used to is we are used to a ratio of one to one. One being, one person. Because if you met a being, like if I met you, and there were three persons or four persons or six persons, we'd have a problem.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Because that would indicate some type of mental problem in a person if they had multiple persons in the one being, right? Now I am not in any way, shape or form defining the Trinity as some type of holy schizophrenia.

Because that makes sure I'm not. But my point is when we talk about personhood, we are used to one being and one person. That's the ratio that we are used to. And there is no other being in the universe that has one being and three persons other than God.

This is why we say the Trinity is a unique definition to God because there's no other being that we can define that way. So God's ratio is not one to one. God's ratio is one to three. One being, but three persons.

And the three persons, here's a key word, the three persons share the one being. The three persons share. Remember I talked about the substance or the stuff of God? Well, even though we can't touch it, it's there.

God is everywhere. That substance that is God is shared by three persons. And you say, well, where do you get that from? I'm going to show you when we defend the doctrine, but before we even go any further, I want you to think in your mind to the prayer of Jesus in John 17.

You see, most people think of the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. That's not the Lord's Prayer. That's the model prayer. That's the prayer Jesus gave us to pray because His disciples said, teach us to pray.

And He gave them a model prayer. But the prayer that Jesus prayed, the real Lord's Prayer is John 17 when Jesus takes His disciples and He prays for them and He prays for you. Because the Bible says, Jesus said, I'm not only praying for them, but I'm praying for everyone who will believe in My name because of their testimony.

Why do you believe in Jesus? Because of the testimony of the apostles. That's who wrote the New Testament. We believe in Jesus because of their testimony. So Jesus prayed for you. Isn't that neat? Jesus actually prayed a prayer where He said, I'm not only praying for them, but I'm praying for those who will believe in Me because of their testimony.

So Jesus prayed for us. But in that prayer, He says this to the Father. He's speaking to the Father. He is the Son. He said, Father, glorify Me with the glory that we had together before the world existed.

Glorify Me with the glory that we had together before the world existed. Think about what Jesus is saying. He's saying that He and the Father shared glory before the world existed. Therefore, when I say the three Persons share the One Being, I'm just simply repeating what Jesus has said when He talks about sharing the glory of God.

You know what the Bible says in the Old Testament? No one shares the glory of God except God Himself. But Jesus said He did share His glory. How could He do that unless He was one with God? Unless He shared God's essence as well.

So we see this ratio expressed to us through the words of Jesus Himself. Now, I want to very quickly before we move to the defense of the doctrine when we look at more texts, I want to talk about the subject of contradiction.

There are people, and there are quite a few people actually, who deny Christianity or deny biblical Trinitarian theology and they say, I deny it because it's a contradiction. You're saying that God is one and you're saying that God is three and you can't be both one and three.

That is a contradiction. And that would be true if we were saying God is one God who is three gods. Or God is one person who is three persons. Because that would be contradictory. Polytheism maybe? Yeah.

But we are making a category distinction. And understand this. Categories matter. If you don't think categories matter, even your own salvation, you are either in the category of the redeemed or the damned.

That's two categories. There ain't no third way. There ain't no purgatory. There ain't no other option. You're either in the redeemed, which means you're in Christ, or you're among the damned, which means you're outside of Christ.

Now my prayer is that all of you are redeemed. But that's categories, right? We have to understand the Bible is filled with categories. In fact, the Bible itself distinguishes by categories. What does Jesus call His believers?

He calls them His sheep. What does He call the unbelievers? Goats. He makes a category distinction, right? So the Bible is filled with category distinctions and here we make a category distinction. God is one in this category.

God is three in this category. We are not contradicting because we are not mixing our categories. We're not saying we have one God who is three gods. We're saying we have one God who exists in three Persons.

So the doctrine of the Trinity simply explained is God is one in essence. God is three in Persons. These Persons are co-equal and co-eternal, which means the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have always been and they have always shared the essence of God.

There wasn't a time when the Father said, you know what? I'm going to create me a Jesus. Or I'm going to create me a Holy Spirit. They were always and have always been the Trinity. And this is an important thing to make known because I believe in what is called essentially the eternal plan of God.

Some people call it the covenant of redemption. I simply call it the eternal plan of God, but that's a more specific term is the covenant of redemption. What that means is I believe that in eternity past, which when you talk about eternity, you're talking about past and future is kind of foolish, but from our perspective, in eternity past, God made a decision to create the world.

And He made a decision to redeem the lost before He ever created the world. He knew that Adam was going to fall. He knew all that. He had decreed what was going to happen. And in that, He chose the Son to be the one to bear the burden of sin.

How do we know that? Because the Bible says Jesus was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. So the second person of the Trinity was designated as the sin bearer before there was even one stone laid to create the world.

Now I know the world wasn't created by laying stones, but you understand what I mean. Before God ever spoke the world into existence, He had already determined that the Son would be the Savior. That He was going to glorify Himself through the salvation of His people through the work of His Son.

Which tells us the Son existed prior to the creation of the world. Alright? So we have this biblical testimony of the doctrine of the Trinity and it's not contradictory. Now, there are several creeds and confessions that we could look at, but I want to look at Scripture because I think Scripture is the most important thing.

Obviously, it's the highest authority that we have as Christians. So if you have your Bibles, we're going to look at several passages of Scripture. And I want to give you a few. If you want to write them down, you can.

If you want to open your Bible, you can. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at... I wish I had a different color marker. But we're going to look at this one. God is one in essence.

And we're going to look at two passages specifically that make... Now, there are many passages, but we're going to look at two passages that essentially prove this doctrine. Go to Deuteronomy 6. Now, you may know this one by heart.

I think this might be one of y 'all's memory verses. Do y 'all have Deuteronomy 6 as a memory verse?

Is it level 2?

Okay, okay. Well, Deuteronomy 6 verse 4 is what is called the Shema. If you're writing it, it's S-H-E-M-A. But it's not Shema. It's like Shema. That's the way it's pronounced. And that simply means the prayer of Israel.

It's the prayer of faith. It's sort of like... Have you ever heard people talk about the sinner's prayer? Well, this is sort of like that. But it was the ancient Israelite version. They were praying about faith in the one true God.

And this is what it says. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

Alright, we'll stop there. It goes on to talk about hanging them on your doorposts and keeping them as frontlets before your eyes, all those things. But the most important part is where He says, Hear, O Israel, which is a call to respond.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might. So not only are we to understand that the Lord is one, but we are to understand that the Lord is one over all.

That we are to love Him over all. So that is a passage which affirms our first line. God is one in essence. Deuteronomy 6, 4 -6 affirms that God is one. What do we call a belief in one God? Monotheism.

Monotheism. Very good. Monotheism. We are monotheists. Understand that. Christians are monotheists. Now we are Trinitarian monotheists. I'll explain that in a minute. But just understand, we have not departed from that belief in the one God.

When we talk about God, we talk about the one true and living God. Now turn in your Bible to Isaiah. Isaiah 43 .10. Now Isaiah tells us something about this one God. 43 .10. Yep. Now I'm going to read the King James Version.

I like how this is worded. It might be a little different than what you have. But it says it this way. It says, Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe Me and understand that I am He.

Before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after Me. Alright. So, for a moment, let's just consider what God is saying through the prophet. One, He says that, He says, I am God. He says, I am He.

And He says, Before Me there was no God formed. Now, here's the thing about that. There is no before God. There is no B .G. You know, we can talk about B .C., before Christ, before He came into the world, but we can't talk about B .G.

There's no before God. Alright? So, God is saying, I didn't come from another God. It isn't as if there was a greater God who made Me and I'm the product of Him. If you're familiar with Mormon theology, Mormons teach that God, the God that made our world, was once a man.

That He lived on another planet and that because of His adherence to His Mormon teachings, which was what He was taught, He became a God. And the belief of Mormonism is that you can become God. You. You can become...

Wouldn't you be a great God? No, I don't think so. Me neither. I'm a pretty terrible human. It would be an even worse God, right? Well, the idea of this... In fact, this is the passage I use when the Mormons come to my door.

Because a lot of people run to other passages. I really like this passage because I will ask them, I say, do you believe that there were gods before Yahweh? The one true God. Do you believe there were gods before Him?

And they will say, yes. I say, well, how do you deal with Isaiah 43 .10? Which says, before me there was no God formed. There was no God before Him. But here's the key to what's important for the Trinity.

The second part of the sentence. Neither shall there be any after. You see, even before God, there was no gods, but after God, He didn't make any other gods. God cannot create a God. People say there's nothing God can't do.

No, there's a lot God can't do. God can't lie. God can't deny His Word or His own nature. God is bound by His own goodness. So God can't be evil. Right? So there are things God cannot do. One of the things God cannot do is He cannot create another God.

Because by definition, God is uncreated. He is self-existing. So if a God is created, guess what He ceases to be? God. He's created, not creator. Right? See, the Jehovah Witnesses believe that Jesus is a created God.

Do you know what a created God is? It's no God. It can't be a created God. Because you can't make a God. God either exists or He doesn't exist, but He can't be created because God has existence in Himself.

So the idea that Jesus is a created God is a false view because you can't make a God. Even God can't create a God. Alright, so He says, "...before Me there was no God formed, neither shall there be any after Me.".

So what does this tell us? This goes back to here. God is one in essence. We've affirmed that twice. And again, we could go through a myriad of passages where the Bible affirms the oneness of God. But now, we want to look at the second part, and that is the three in persons.

And we're going to go to a passage I'm sure you're all familiar with, but I still want you to look at it. And I wish I had more white board.

I don't want to erase that because it looks like it's useful. But I don't want to erase this either because this is important. But when we get to John 1, turn to John 1, I want to show you that is John 1.

That is right.

But I want to break something down for you that I think is very important about that passage. In John 1, verse 1, it begins with the phrase, in the beginning. In the beginning is the same phrase that begins what other book?

Genesis. Genesis, right? So John is hearkening back to Genesis. In fact, in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it actually is written the same way. John is copying that phrase, in arche, which in the Greek means in the beginning.

So in arche, in the beginning, in Genesis, it's the same as John, in the beginning. But notice what he says. In the beginning, and he uses a very important word, and that word is the word, was. The word was.

He says, in the beginning was the Word. Now we'll learn in verse 14 that the Word is Jesus because it says, the Word became flesh, dwelt among us, we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten Father, full of grace and truth.

So we know who the Word is. We don't have to try to figure it out. It's defined. We know the Word is Jesus. So he says, in the beginning was, the word was indicates that He already was. He was there in the beginning.

He was already there. In fact, one translation, the New English translation I think it is, actually translates it. In the beginning, the Word already was. He already existed in the beginning. It wasn't as if God created Him in the beginning because that's again what some people believe.

They believe that God created Jesus and then Jesus created everything else. No, He was already there. So in the beginning was the Word and then we have that important phrase, and the Word was with God.

You say, okay, so there's a distinction between the Word and God. But then the next clause blows that out of the water because it says, and the Word was God. And you say, man, that is heavy duty thinking.

How can we say that the Word was with God and the Word was God? This is the only way to make sense of it. That He shares the being of God, that's why we can say He is God. But that He is also distinct from God because He is a different person than God in the sense of the Father.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have each one of them person that is able to relate to the other. The Father, guess what the Father does to the Son? He loves the Son. And you know what the Father and the Son do together?

They send the Spirit. The Bible says, Jesus says, I must go away and send the Spirit. You know, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. So we have this wonderful interaction between the three persons and that interaction happens because they are persons who can interact, but they share the being, the substance of God.

Three persons, one substance. So we see that. Now notice verse 2. The same was in the beginning with God. Verse 3, all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. I love saying this to people because sometimes I like to see their wheels turn.

I say, I worship my Creator, Jesus. People say, that's a weird way of saying it. I say, yes, but verse 3 tells me, all things were made by Him. Who's the Him? Him is the Word. Who is the Word? The Word is Jesus.

Therefore, I can say I worship my Creator, Jesus, because He made me. It says all things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. So when I look around, I can say nothing was made that wasn't made by Christ, including me.

So, John 1, 1 -3 is a very important, what we call Christological passage. It tells us something about Jesus, about His nature. Christological. Christology is the doctrine of Christ. Now I'm going to give you a few other verses.