God organized for our salvation

Johnnie had enjoyed a long day of play running and climbing, digging and building. On general principle he protested his upcoming bedtime, but was more than ready to let his mother tuck him into bed.

Mother knelt in the shadowed room with him and heard his prayers. Then he climbed into bed. She adjusted the covers around his shoulders and bent to kiss him good night. Two sturdy arms went around her neck and pulled her close. "Don't go, Mommy. I want to ask you a question."

Ah, the question. A trick every child knows to prolong bedtime, to keep a parent a few moments longer. But often it is during this time the moments be tween wakefulness and sleep that the troubling philosophical questions come to mind. Questions that beg answers, questions that probe the universe, and even the mind of God.

"Mommy," the little boy began, "you and Daddy tell me that God is love. You said that God has loved since before our world began, even before He made the angels." He sighed and nestled deeper into bed. "But how could that be? How could God love before there were angels or people? He didn't have anyone to love! He was all by Himself."

Mother sank to the floor beside his little bed. This answer would take a moment, and she too was tired. "That's a very good question," she told him. "It shows me that you have been thinking about God. But you have forgotten some thing important. Even before God made the angels, He wasn't alone. For God was three. There was God the Father, and God the Son, whom we call Jesus, and God the Holy Spirit. Grown-ups call this the Trinity, a word that means three."

Johnnie yawned. "Does God ever get lonely?"

Mother swallowed hard. Why do children ask such difficult questions? she thought to herself. Then she remembered something. "Yes, God can be lonely. Jesus was often lonely for His Father when He was on earth. When He was dying on the cross, He said to His Father in heaven, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Matt. 27:46).* And God misses us. That is why He came to save us and is coming back soon to take us home. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love each other so much that They created us to share that love. Love always wants more love."

"But what is the Trinity, Mommy?" Johnnie continued between still more yawns.

If you had been Johnnie's mother, how would you have answered?

Judaism and Islam say that God is one. Most Christians say that He is three persons in one. Other Christians say the whole concept of the Trinity is an error borrowed from the pagans. Many early Adventists believed the doctrine of the Trinity to be a false teaching inspired by Satan. What does the Bible teach?

Trinity: what the Bible teaches

What we understand about the nature of God will shape every other teaching, including that of the doctrine of salvation, so it is important that we clearly understand what the Bible says about God.

A biblical teaching. The term trinity does not appear in the Bible. As far as we know, Theophilus of Antioch first used the term during the second century after Christ. He coined the word from the Greek word trias, meaning three. But because the Bible does not specifically use trinity does not mean that the teaching is unbiblical.

For example, we use the term millennium, a word that also does not appear in the Bible. Millennium means "a thou sand years." While the Bible does not mention the term millennium, it does teach the concept in Revelation 19 and 20. We often refer to doctrines taught in Scripture by using terms that were not in use in Bible times.

When you give a Bible study, have you noticed how you have to skip from book to book to present a particular topic? That is the way we study the Bible. It contains stories and letters and sermons and poetic experiences. Few if any doctrines are presented systematically. Instead, the Holy Spirit lets us find a little bit here and a little bit there. We have to search carefully to find all that the Bible has to say about a specific doctrine. And that includes the teaching about the triune, or three-person, God head.

New Testament speaks of three. First, let us notice that the New Testament repeatedly mentions the three members of the Godhead together in such pas sages as Matt. 3:16,17; John 14:16,17, 25;2Cor. 13:13;Eph. 2:18; 1 Peter 1:2; and Jude 20,21. When Christ announced the mission of the church, He told the disciples that they were not to preach in just His name, but in the authority of the threefold name of the entire Godhead. "Go therefore," He declared, "and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). Notice that "name" is singular and applies to all three names together. Christ thought of Himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit as one unit. Three persons together form the Godhead.

Old Testament has plurality. Deuteronomy 6:4 powerfully declares that God is one. How can three be one? Interestingly, in this important passage the Hebrew word for one, echad, often indicates a unity composed of several parts. It appears in Genesis 2:24, where God stated that a man should leave his parents and cling to his wife, becoming "one flesh" with her. Two in one. Numbers 13:23 employs echad to refer to the cluster of grapes the Hebrew spies brought back from the land of Canaan. Many in one. In both cases the word shows a composite unity: two separate individuals comprise "one flesh," and a multitude of grapes form a "single" cluster. Scripture depicts a Godhead of three members in a unity closer than we can ever comprehend.

As we study all that the Bible says about God, we find still more clues that the Godhead consists of more than one person. Genesis 18 and 19 describe how the Lord and two angels walked into Abraham's camp one day. The patriarch fed them a special meal. Then the angels traveled on to Sodom to warn Abra ham's nephew Lot of the city's impending destruction. When Abraham learned what was going to happen, he pleaded with God to spare the city if it contained at least 10 righteous people. Unfortunately, it did not, and "the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven" (Gen. 19:24). The passage seems to speak of at least two individuals (one on earth and one in heaven), both called Lord.

The Lord's visit to Abraham was one of many in which a member of the Trinity came from heaven to speak to or save His people. These incidents pointed for ward to the ultimate visit Christ's incarnation and subsequent death on the cross.

In the Old Testament, sometimes God speaks of Himself in the plural (Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:7). In fact, of the many Hebrew words the Old Testament writers used to designate God, one, Elohim, is a plural noun. But most of the time the Old Testament speaks of God as one. And that is understandable. God's people lived in a world in which many gods were worshiped, and whose followers were often struggling with each other for supremacy.

The Lord wanted His people to worship Him alone, and thus He did not stress the Trinity lest the concept confuse them. He did not want Israel to think of the Trinity as a group of rival gods like those worshiped by the surrounding nations. It was hard to wean Israel away from polytheism. Archaeologists have found inscriptions about the Lord's wife, and fertility idols have been dug up even in the ruins around the Temple site in Jerusalem.

But by New Testament times God began to reveal more about the Trinity. The New Testament associates three Beings together in its doxologies of praise to God, and the Old Testament speaks of more than one divine Being.

But does that mean that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all members of one Godhead?

Jesus fully God

The way to answer this question is to see how Scripture consistently endows the Son and the Holy Spirit with the same attributes that the Old Testament applied to the God of Israel. By comparing scripture with scripture we may piece together a more complete picture of the Trinity.

God's prerogatives as Creator. Let us look at a series of images or pictures that appear throughout Scripture. Psalm 18 describes the Lord's mighty power (the psalm uses the Hebrew name Yahweh, often translated "the Lord," for God). In verse 15 "the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord [Yahweh], at the blast of the breath of your nostrils."

Similar imagery appears in Psalm 104. "You [Yahweh] set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight" (verses 5-7).

Psalm 106 recounts the Exodus. Verse 9 states that "He [the Lord, or Yahweh] rebuked the Red Sea, and it became dry" (cf. Ex. 15:4-10).

Isaiah 50 tells of the Lord (Yahweh) demanding of His people, "Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer when I called? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? By my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert" (verse 2).

The prophet Nahum proclaims that "the Lord [Yahweh] is slow to anger but great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebukes the sea and makes it dry, and he dries up all the rivers" (Nahum 1:3, 4).

Notice that these passages, and many more that we could quote, tell of the Lord rebuking the sea in the context of His creative and redemptive power. Some times the passage will personify the sea as an enemy or opponent of God. These few examples we have chosen from among many illustrate how the Bible writers portray Yahweh (the most sacred name of God to the Hebrews) as over powering and commanding the hostile sea. If you will go through a concordance you will find that only the Lord ever rebukes the sea. Human beings or even angels never rebuke it in the Old Testament. It is God's prerogative alone.

Jesus exercises the Creator's prerogatives. Now let us look at a familiar story in the Gospels and see what the fact that only the Lord can rebuke the sea now tells us about Jesus. Matthew 8:23- 27 describes how Jesus stilled the sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee by rebuking the wind and the sea (see verse 26). After witnessing Jesus rebuke the storm tossed sea, they asked each other in amazement, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?" (verse 27). They knew their Scripture that only the Lord Himself had the power and authority to rebuke the sea. In total awe they recognized that Jesus had just done something that only the Lord (Yahweh) Himself ever did in the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus had assumed the prerogatives and authority of the God of Israel. It would be blasphemy unless He was God Himself.

God rebukes Satan. In the Old Testament the sea is not the only thing that the Lord, or Yahweh, rebukes. In Zechariah 3:1, 2 He rebukes Satan. Psalm 76:9 and Isaiah 17:13 depict Him as rebuking the enemies of Jerusalem. As you study those scriptural passages in which the Lord rebukes something, you will find that He alone has the authority and power to deal with those forces that seek to block His will, especially on the supernatural or cosmic level.

Jesus rebukes Satan. If we keep this fact in mind, we will discover some thing important that the Gospels are telling us about Jesus. They tell us that He heals a boy after rebuking the demon that possessed the child. Jesus also rebukes demons or supernatural powers in Mark 1:21-28. In Mark 8:33 Jesus specifically rebukes Satan as the one who had instigated Peter's response to His teaching about His coming death. Notice that while the story of Jesus' healing of the demoniacs in Matthew 8:28-9:1 does not specifically employ the verb "rebuke," the incident immediately fol lows His rebuke of the sea.

People who treated the subject of God so carefully that they would not even pronounce the sacred name Yahweh (except for the high priest on the Day of Atonement) would not attribute Yahweh's prerogatives to Jesus lightly. The New Testament writers would do so only if powerfully compelled by the Holy Spirit to apply those attributes to Jesus.

Jesus claims preexistence. Another evidence that Jesus was God in the same way as the Father appears in John 8. The chapter describes another of Jesus' many encounters with certain Jewish leaders. They had accused Him of demon possession, which He denied. Then He said that anyone who kept His teachings would never see death. Angrily and in rebuttal, the leaders pointed out that even their greatest ancestor, Abraham, had died, along with all the prophets. They demanded to know if Jesus was greater than their beloved Abraham (see verse 53).

Christ replied that Abraham had rejoiced to see Christ's day (see verse 56). The religious leaders interpreted Christ's answer as a claim to having personally seen the patriarch alive. Aghast, they retorted that He was less than 50 years old, meaning that He hadn' t even reached the Jewish retirement age (see verse 57). Then Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am" (in Greek, ego eimi, verse 58).

The mob immediately rushed to stone Him (see verse 59). Why? Stoning was the Jewish punishment for blasphemy (see Lev. 24:10-23). They saw His reply as applying the divine name "I am" (Deut. 32:39; Isa. 43:11) to Himself. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses ego eimi to render the "I am" of these passages. A similar incident appears in John 10:33, where some leaders again tried to stone Christ and accused Him of making Himself God.

Jesus empties Himself. Most of the time, though, the Gospels depict Jesus not as the second member of the Trinity, but as incarnated into a human being. The Son set aside His divine attributes (see Phil. 2:5-8) to become one with us that He might take up where Adam had failed. That is why the Bible often describes Him in ways that make Him seem less than the Father. Jesus was subservient to the Father and the Holy Spirit during His life on earth. He came as a suffering servant, not as the national redeemer so many expected.

From Scripture we can see that Jesus was a member of the Godhead. He had a right to the attributes and prerogatives of the God of Israel even though He had emptied Himself of them during His life on earth. But what about the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit fully God

Through the centuries many have regarded the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Godhead, as only a divine "active force" or power that God the Father used to accomplish His will. They did not see the Holy Spirit as a conscious, separate personality. Scripture, however, describes the Holy Spirit in a way that shows He is not mindless divine energy, but a real person, just as the Father and the Son are.

The gender usage. First, notice the gender the New Testament uses to refer to the Spirit. Greek, like many other languages, has masculine, feminine, and neuter forms of words (he, she, it). But passages such as John 14:26 and 16:8, 13-15 employ the masculine form of the pronoun referring to the Holy Spirit ekeinos, instead of the neuter ekeino. If the Holy Spirit were only a "force" or "influence," John should have used the neuter gender.

A conscious being. Second, Scripture constantly mentions characteristics of the Holy Spirit that can fit only a conscious being. For example, the Bible says that the Holy Spirit speaks (see Rev. 2:7; Acts 13:2); makes intercession (see Rom. 8:26); calls, oversees, commands (see Acts 16:6, 7; 20:28); teaches (see John 14:26); glorifies Christ (see John 16:14); counsels (see John 14:16); may be grieved (see Eph. 4:30); may be insulted, "outraged" (see Heb. 10:29); can be lied to (see Acts 5:3); and can be blasphemed and sinned against (see Matt. 12:31,32).

Romans 8:27 talks about "the mind of the Spirit." Do forces or influences have minds? Such biblical description is far more than personification. The Bible writers would hardly equate a personified force with two actual Beings as Matthew did in the baptismal formula (see Matt. 28:19), or as Paul did in the apostolic benediction (see 2 Cor. 13:13).

Equal with God. Third, the Bible does more than just link the Spirit with the Father and the Son in doxologies. For example, Paul, in Acts 28:25, records the Holy Spirit as having said what Isaiah 6:8-10 has the Lord declaring. The Spirit also has such divine attributes as omniscience (see 1 Cor. 2:10) and omnipresence (see Ps. 139:7). Both the Old and the New Testaments describe the Holy Spirit as God's special representative on earth. Most of the time you could substitute Lord or God in each reference to the Holy Spirit, and the passage would still mean the same thing.

The Trinity and our salvation

Clearly the Bible teaches the concept of the Trinity. Each member of the Godhead is fully God. But what practical importance is the doctrine? Is it more than just something to argue over as Christians have been doing for nearly 2,000 years?

The doctrine of the Trinity answers many questions that trouble us. Some are philosophical; others involve our salvation and practical Christianity.

Answers our questions. For example, this doctrine answers the question of where the ability to love, communicate, and relate to others comes from. Some have suggested that before God created other beings, love existed only as an abstract ideal or concept in His mind. But that is a concept borrowed from the Greeks. Abstractions have no real existence. Yet love did exist before God made other beings, because the members of the Godhead could and did love one another. Jesus stated that the Father had loved Him before the foundation of the world (see John 17:24). They loved each other in real, active, concrete ways. God's love is just as real as the love we feel. In fact, it is more real than ours because it is not polluted and warped by sin.

Those who do not believe in a personal God have a hard time explaining how the ability to communicate could evolve in an impersonal universe. God, however, is personal; in fact, God is three persons. And persons can communicate with each other.

Also, the Trinity answers the philosophical problem of how we can find both unity and diversity in the universe. The Godhead created humanity in Their image. There is a unity in humanity. Each individual belongs to and makes up a whole, yet each human being is also an entity uniquely his or her own. That is the way it is with the Trinity.

The Trinity gives clues as to how members of the church should treat and relate with each other.

Tells us about how the Godhead saves. But the most important thing we learn from the doctrine of the Trinity is how the whole Godhead works together for our salvation. The Trinity is determined to do everything possible to save us. In the words of Catherine Mo wry LaCugna: "It has become clear that the original purpose of the doctrine was to explain the place of Christ in our salvation, the place of the Spirit in our sanctification.... The doctrine of the Trinity is... the summary of what we believe about God who saves through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit."¹

We see the Trinity working together at Jesus' baptism (see Matt. 3:13-17; Luke 3:21, 22). And long before that, the prophet Isaiah told how the Lord (the Father) and His Spirit (the Holy Spirit) promised to send the Messiah (the Son of God) to save the whole human race (see Isa. 42:1; 48:16).

Critics have charged that the biblical story of salvation portrays a great injustice. They claim that it states that one Being (God) took the punishment of a guilty being (Adam) and placed it on a third, innocent Being (Christ). But the concept of the Trinity shows the falseness of this claim. The Beings of the Godhead did not dump the punishment of sinful human beings on someone else, but They agreed among Themselves to personally accept that punishment, Christ volunteering as Their representative. The Holy Spirit has been working since Christ returned to heaven to make the salvation Christ gained at the cross effective in each of our lives. Christ intercedes with the Father in the heavenly sanctuary.

The doctrine of the Trinity teaches us that God did not send some underling to save us. Those who believe in a created, inferior Christ may believe that. But the Bible does not teach that. Sin and rebellion were so serious, and God's love so great, that only God Himself could come and die in our place. Just as the Lord came to Abraham to tell him about Lot's danger in Sodom, so the Lord came to Bethlehem to live and die as the Messiah, our Saviour. God gave the very best Himself.

The doctrine of the Trinity helps us to understand a little more of what Jesus went through to save us. The misunderstanding of His disciples, the rejection by His people, and the physical pain of the cross were only a tiny part of His suffering. The loneliness of separation from the rest of the Trinity was beyond our comprehension. Even prayer could not restore that closeness He had had with the Father before the Incarnation. It was like missing a loved one we can only talk to on the telephone but never visit in person. But at the cross that loneliness intensified to a horror that we will never understand. As He hung on that instrument of torture, His humanity could not see beyond the grave.2 He must have wondered if it was worth it all. But His love a love identical to that of both the Father and the Holy Spirit had driven Him to take the infinite risk of failure to save us. He could have failed. He put the universe in jeopardy by coming as a human being and dying for us. But the divine love of the Trinity was determined to risk every thing to save us.

Far more than an attempt to explain how the members of the Godhead relate to each other, the teaching of the Trinity seeks to put into words and images the inexpressible love of God for each one of us. The cross explains the Trinity, and the Trinity explains the cross. Johnnie's bedtime questions are ones that we must also come to grips with ourselves. God loves and seeks to save us because that is the very nature of the Trinity.