The Trinity? - Walking with Wes

About this sermon

I get a lot of questions about the doctrine of the Trinity. It doesn’t seem to matter if I’m talking to Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, or atheists, the doctrine of the Trinity they say, just doesn’t make any sense. How can you have one God but talk about three? Does one plus one plus one equal…. one? So what’s going on here? Well first let me start off by saying that the Trinity, as it is understood biblically, teaches three fundamental truths we see in Scripture: First, there is only one true God. From the beginning to end of the Bible we see this confessed time and time again. God via the prophet Isaiah declared that “Before me there was no God formed, and there will be none after me.” Secondly, that within that one true God there are three divine persons who are distinguished from one another: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Sprit, and the Spirit is not the Father. When Jesus prays in places like the Gospel of John chapter seventeen, he’s not praying to himself. Instead he says “glorify me with the glory I had with you in your presence before the world was. That’s clearly two persons speaking, Jesus is describing a time in eternity past when He and the Father existed within company to one another. And these three are identified by the same name. And the name of God that we see in the Old Testament is Yahweh. New Testament passages about Yahweh are applied to both the Father and the Son and the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of Yahweh. We even see Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel chapter twenty eight, verse nineteen, tell his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. That word we translate as name in English is the Greek word “onama” and its an accusative neuter singular noun. One name, and yet it goes on to say that within that name are Father, son, and spirit. One God, three divine persons revealed. The third truth we see taught is that these person’s hold equality. And that equality doesn’t mean sameness - the Father, Son, and Spirit clearly do different things from one another, and yet are equally given the honours, the attributes, the names, and the deeds, of Yahweh God. So how does this really work, how can we have three in one? Well there are a couple of distinctions made, the first to remember is the distinction between “being” or “essence” and “person.” God is one “being” but three “persons.” Being is an English word we use to describe what something is. Person is the word we use to describe who someone is. So it would make no sense if Christians believed that God was one in being and three in being - that would be a logical contradiction. Or if we said that God was one person in three persons. Once again, illogical. For example. I am one being - a human being, and one person - Wesley. But being and person are distinctive categories. And categories that accurately describe what we see when we continually read in Scripture that there is only one God, but that God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all called God yet still distinguished from one another. Or as the Athanasius Creed says: this is the universal faith: that we worship one God in trinity and the trinity in unity, neither blending their persons nor dividing their essence. One God encompassed by three coequal, coeternal persons: The Father, the Son, and the Spirit. - Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/wesley_huff - Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wesleylivingstonehuff - Titter - https://twitter.com/WesleyLHuff - Website - https://www.wesleyhuff.com

Topics

• The Trinity