Our Triune God
Text: Matthew 28:16–20 ESV
Join us this Sunday, August 30, as we finish up our series on The Great Commission. Ryan Eagy will be teaching on the topic of “Our Triune God”. We hope you can join us!
Order of Service
Opening Worship
(3:30 PM live, at home/watch parties prior to service)
Sermon Video
If you would like a compiled playlist of the worship set, you can view it here.
Our Triune God
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18 ESV)
Introduction
How much does the Trinity matter? If you found out tomorrow that God was actually one person instead of three, would your relationship with God change at all? Would you pray differently, witness differently, read your Bible any differently?
How much does and should the Trinity matter to your church? If one of your pastors or elders or staff members came and said that they really believed that the Father, Son, and Spirit are actually just one person instead of three who shows up in different forms at different times, would you feel the need to plead with him to think differently and, if he didn’t, eventually remove him from ministry?
We live in a great age of Christian ecumenicalism—meaning we value Christian unity across a diversity of beliefs. In many ways this has been very good. We have looked at our own theology and tried to rightly assess which aspects of our faith are secondary and difficult to get a clear answer on from Scripture, which aspects are even tertiary and shouldn’t preclude much if any cooperation, and which issues should still be primary issues. Sadly, this is also happening in an age where many are quick to say, “You can believe what you believe, and I’ll believe what I believe, and it is all okay.” Is the Trinity a primary issue, secondary issue, or tertiary issue?
From our passage this morning we bump into one of the clearest examples of the trinity in Scripture. Here Jesus is giving his disciples what we call “The Great Commission”—which should indicate to us that for a long time Christians have viewed this statement as important. Jesus says he has all authority in heaven and on earth, and his message is for his people to go out into the world, find others who don’t know him, and baptize and teach them about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If there ever was a moment where Jesus could have made everything about him, this was it. He had condescended and lived on earth among mankind, lived a perfectly righteous life yet still died our death on the cross to save us. He had literally just risen from the grave in glory, definitively stamping his lordship and godhood on his life. He is about to ascend into heaven right before his disciples’ eyes. Here, if we were to imagine anywhere, Jesus could have told his disciples to go forth and baptize people into Him, into the name of Jesus alone as the one name by which all will be saved (which he does in other places, cf. Acts 4:11–12). Yet he doesn’t. He tells his disciples that this baptism and teaching are to be in/into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This morning we are going to dive into this topic of the Trinity, and I hope you see and savor four realities about our God:
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Our God being Trinity matters.
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Our God being Trinity is Biblical.
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Our God being Trinity is necessary.
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Our God being Trinity is worshipful.
I especially pray this last one, that instead of inducing a headache, that the nature of our God will induce worship—which should be all of our responses when we ponder our amazing God.
God Being Trinity Matters
Imagine you lived in a world where news could take months, even years to reach you. Where few people owned books let alone the internet. That most of your discussions centered on church issues because it was (rightfully) the center of your world. After the last several months in our culture, some of you may think this sounds like the most wonderful and magical place on earth. This is what culture was like in the days around Jesus. Paul’s epistles, the missionary journeys of the disciples, they were the best information people could get about what had happened and the amazing news of God’s work in Jesus Christ.
And for the next 600 years after Christ we see that it was the nature of God himself that was one of the most hotly discussed topics amongst the church. In this age when travel was difficult, getting information took effort and time, this is one of the major discussions they were having. And it was one of the major points of disagreement. The Trinity spawned countless “councils” and “bulls” (decrees) that tried to settle through study of Scripture the very nature of God and how we can know and worship him. And even up to today, we can trace many offshoots from Christianity as related to the question of the nature of God.
One of the first debates is around what today we call Modalism (also known as Sebellianism or Patripassianism if we want to use big words). Its core argument is that what we call three persons is really three “modes” of how God reveals himself to us. We may see God as the Father, God as the Son, and God as Spirit, but he never really exists as all three of those at once. They are just the three specific ways he has chosen to reveal himself to us at different moments. So, a Modalist in the early 300s through 500s (and even today) would look at Matthew 28 and say that Jesus was trying to explain the omnipresence of God—the fact that we always see him, just in different modes, throughout all of history. In the Old Testament, God the Father. In the beginning of the New Testament, as Jesus. Today, we have him as the Holy Spirit.
But that isn’t even scratching the surface of this debate. There was also Arianism—not to be confused with German “Aryan” race that the Nazi’s considered to be superior to all other races—but those who followed the teachings of Arius. Arius claimed that Jesus was indeed begotten of God, but as the first and as part of his creation. Jesus was the most wonderful of all that God created, but he was not divine. Yes, we are still to worship and follow him, but not as God.
There was Macedonianism (or Pneumatomachianism), which claimed the Holy Spirit was not truly God but a created being sent by the Father and the Son.
There was Adoptionism (or Dynamicmonarchianism), which claimed Jesus was born fully human and then adopted (at his baptism or resurrection) in a special way by God. In this way Jesus was purely human but with extraordinary gifts. He followed the laws of Moses rightly and in doing so was accepted by God.
There was Partialism, which claimed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were only part of God. That each represented a piece of him, and that God was only fully God when all three were taken together.
And there was pure Tritheism. That God was truly three independent beings. In fact, when many would talk about Trinitarianism, this was the opposing accusation, that they really believed in three Gods.
These concerns helped spawn the First Council of Nicea in 325 that stated the Son was equal in Godhood with the Father. And then the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the Synod of Tyre, the Synod of Alexandria, the third Council of Constantine in 680-81, and others. The debate continued in many different forms. The most concisely put statement about the trinity was the Athanasian Creed, which was formulated in response to these concerns and to specifically helping to define our belief in the Trinity. In part, it says:
That we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending the persons nor dividing their essence. (Athanasian Creed)
It is impossible to look at the first 600 years of church history and think that the Trinity is an unimportant issue. Our great-great-great-great-great…grandparents in the faith knew this was part and parcel of our faith and would have grave outcomes if it wasn’t understood. Even then they could see how each position had other entailments for how people lived out their faith and understood God beyond just the nature of the trinity. So, they fought with one another, contending for the faith they loved and the Scriptures they cherished, that others might rightly know and love God as well. And we see those implications still today.
The Oneness Church preaches modalism still today. Mormons are at least tritheists, and most are polytheists (because they believe they themselves will become God someday) and also mix in Arianism as well claiming Jesus was just a good man. Jehovah Witnesses are Arians and do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Not rightly understanding our God will lead us astray into a multitude of errors. God being Trinity matters.
God Being Trinity is Biblical
So, we turn to Scripture to see that God being Trinity is Biblical. It doesn’t matter how much we enjoy debating something, if it isn’t a biblical matter then it doesn’t pertain to our life and faith in the same way. And we find God’s trinitarian nature written all over Scripture.
Just like in our passage in Matthew 28, in Matthew 3:13–17 we see all persons of the Godhead in one scene. Jesus comes to be baptized by John, and from heaven the Father speaks and calls Jesus his son, and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus empowering his ministry.
In John 14:26 Jesus says:
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my [Jesus] name, he will teach you all things and bring to you remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26 ESV)
Again, all three persons of God are listed with distinct roles. The Father sends, the Holy Spirit goes and teaches and reminds, all this is done in the name of Jesus—in what he has accomplished.
In Acts 2:33, Peter having just heard Jesus speak these words to him, and now speaking to the crowds of Pentecost says:
“Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” (Acts 2:33 ESV)
Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Again and again. Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians with a trinitarian sign off in 2 Corinthians 13:14. In Galatians and Ephesians, he mentions all three persons of the godhead. Peter again in his opening of his epistle prays for the knowledge of God the Father, by the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:2).
In addition to simply listing and talking about all the persons of the Godhead, we see repeatedly that the Bible views them all as God—one God.
We see in Philippians 1:2, and many of the other introductions to Paul’s epistles, that he reminds us that the Father has and always is seen and known as God himself. Places like Titus 2:13 remind us that Jesus is both our Savior and our God. And in places like Acts 5:3–4, Peter tells Ananias that he is lying about the proceeds of his property sale, lying to the Holy Spirit, which is lying to God.
We also see that they have distinct personhood, especially in relationship to one another. In John 3:16 we see that it is the Father who has sent the Son to earth. In John 16:10, the Son will return again to the Father. In John 14:26 and Acts 2:33, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. And again at Jesus’ baptism in Mark 1:10–11, the Son is baptized, the Father speaks, the Spirit descends.
I think for many of us, it is our misunderstanding of the Old Testament that causes us to think that Old Testament Jews would find a trinitarian God repulsive. That Jewish attitude doesn’t really become clear until after Jesus. Most Jews were quite comfortable with binitarianism—God being at least two and one. The Old Testament is complete with references to the Father and the Holy Spirit. In fact, think about Genesis 1:1–3. We will be going through Genesis this fall, but we see immediately that God is described as creator and as having his Spirit, which hovers over the deep waters. It is the Spirit of God who empowers Joshua (Numbers 27:18), Othniel (Judges 3:10), Gideon (Judges 6:34), Samson (Judges 13:25; 14:6), and Saul (1 Samuel 10:9–10). David declared “the Spirit of Lord spoke by me” (2 Samuel 23:2). What many of them missed was that the Messiah would also be God-incarnate to accomplish his mission. They missed that God was trinitarian.
God is one God, but three coeternal, consubstantial persons. In other words: God is one in essence, three in persons. The trinity is a biblical concept and a necessary concept.
God Being Trinity is Necessary
And that is what makes the trinity so imminently practical and necessary for you and me.
To go down any of the heretical roads we listed previously lead us to a God who cannot ultimately help us.
In Arianism, we have a Jesus who is not divine, so he cannot save a sinful people. We know from Scripture that only God himself can save us from our sins (John 1:1–18; Romans 3:23-25; Philippians 2:6). In Arianism, we are left with a good model, but not a God who can actually save us.
In Adoptionism, we do not have a God who has condescended to come down to us and love us. Rather, we have a human who tried very hard and finally succeeded. I don’t know about you, but a works-based righteousness is completely unattainable for me. I need a God who will condescend to me and love me through grace and mercy, and it could only be a god-man who can live that perfect life on my behalf.
In Macedonianism, the Holy Spirit is not God himself, Christ is gone, and the Father still sits on his throne. You and I wouldn’t have access to either without God himself indwelling in us. We would be left truly alone, apart from God.
It is the trinitarian God who can be our perfectly righteous father, our Lord and Savior the God-man Jesus Christ, and our constant comfort and help today in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus encourages his disciples to baptize others into the Trinity because it speaks to our very identity. Being baptized in/into the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit reminds us of the complete picture of God that we need—in our understanding of our predicament before a righteous Father, our only hope for salvation in Jesus Christ, and the necessary softening of our hearts and minds by the Holy Spirit that we might even begin to love this trinitarian God.
This is why Paul and other writers of Scripture so often call us to look back at our baptism (Romans 6:3; Colossians 2:12; Galatians 3:27; 1 Corinthians 12:13; 1 Peter 3:21). It reminds us our identity is in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The work done by Jesus on our behalf, the washing of our sins and cleansing of us by the Holy Spirit, and the loving embrace by our Father in grace and mercy.
The trinity also helps us understand the content of the next statement by Jesus in Matthew 28—teaching them. If our identity is to be in our trinitarian God, then we also must teach people about him. They need to know more than just Jesus as their savior—they need to know this God who is Father, Spirit, and Son. They need a complete picture of God—not all at once, but over time—that they may rightly worship and wonder at our amazing God!
We see Paul lives this out in Acts 19. He arrives in Ephesus and asked the people if they had received the Holy Spirit when they believed. They said no, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit. And Paul’s immediate question was, “Into what then were you baptized?” Paul’s concern is not a formulaic statement that occurred when they were baptized, but rather if they didn’t even know about the Holy Spirit what had they been taught prior to belief and baptism. So, Paul teaches them about Jesus, who is the only way of repentance, and the people were baptized in Jesus’ name, as that was also something they were apparently missing. And if you get tripped up on the fact that it says they were speaking in tongues and prophesying, remember that this was an act of worship!
God Being Trinity is Worshipful
That is where our examination of the trinity should always lead us—to worship.
There is a great quote by RC Sproul, who often quotes Charles Dickens from A Tale of Two Cities when talking about the Trinity. He uses the quote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” This is undoubtedly a paradoxical statement. A time truly cannot be both. But we understand what Dickens is getting at. Can we fully explain it, can we fully show how both are true? No, but we can appreciate and even love what is being said there.
It is the same with the trinity. It is the paradox that keeps the trinity ultimately worshipful. God—one in essence, three in persons. As the created, we should always find ourselves ending at a place of paradox and wonder when we think about God. He will never be, nor should he be, fully comprehensible to us. He is completely other—the potter to a clay pot. If you ever meet someone who claims they can fully explain the trinity to you—either in a sermon or a class or a book—run away. Anyone so bold to think they are capable of placing God in a box that you (O’ Man) can examine him is teaching heresy.
Our job is not to make God fully comprehensible, but neither are we to shy away from his towering glory. Every drop of Scripture introduces us more and more to a God who is both beyond our comprehension and ultimately knowable through his word and in Jesus Christ. We as Christians are guides heading up a mountain. Climbing up, further and further, attempting to take in both breathtaking glimpses of the path above us and the vistas we get to behold all around us as we further know our God—Father, Son, and Spirit—and the ways he has loved us, blessed us, engaged our world in ways we have never thought of before. We find as we travel that the trinity matters, it is biblical, and it is practical and necessary to our everyday faith.
We know we will never reach the top in this lifetime or the next. Yet we still climb, behold, wonder, and worship.