Grasping at the Trinity

This weekend while we were in John 1:1-18 we discussed, in part, the Trinity, the doctrine of the person(s) of God. While Mathematically it makes no sense (3 is 1), and all of our descriptions of it fail (for all we have is what we know and all we know, save God, is creation) this doctrine is reasonable and sound.

Another way to say God is Trinitarian in nature is to say, “God is love.”

God is love means God is Trinity.

Let me explain.

God the Father is eternal. He is the most perfect Being in the entire universe and as such he deserves worship from all other beings including himself. Therefore he must love himself above all things. He, the Father, loves himself in such a perfect fashion so as to be the person of the Son. The love between the Father and the Son is so perfect and so complete so as to be the person of the Spirit.

And since God is eternal we cannot say that there was any one time when God was not God and the Trinity did not exist.

This love is one. It cannot be added to nor subtracted from. For we cannot say the love between the three was so perfect and so complete so as to create another being (for there is no other being).

3 is 1 and is stronger than any other number. Given three points you’ll have a triangle, the strongest form in geometry, engineering and architecture.

Yet the roles of these three (one) are different.

Think of a play. (This description fails in the end but serves a purpose)

Seeing the director as God the Father, the stage manager as God the Spirit, and the lead actor as God the Son. Such are their roles.

The Father oversees, coordinates and plans the play; he is the orchestrator of it all. The Spirit moves props and flats into position so as to make the movements of the Son effective. Thus all eyes are turned onto the Son, the one sent into human history to redeem.

Yet the Trinity is still beyond us and for that we worship God, because we must confess his ways to be higher than our ways and his thoughts to be higher than our thoughts and his very being to be higher than our being.