Article by Justin Dillehay, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Hartsville, Tennessee (original source here)

How much does the Trinity matter to you? If you found out tomorrow that God is actually only one person instead of three, would your relationship with God feel any different? Would it require a drastic overhaul in the way you think or witness or pray? How much does the Trinity matter to you personally?

How much does the Trinity matter to your church? If you found out tomorrow that your beloved youth pastor had become a staunch modalist—he now insists the Father, Son, and Spirit are actually one person in three manifestations instead of three distinct persons—would your church excommunicate him? Or would that seem like splitting hairs? Is the Athanasian Creed really right to say, “Whoever wishes to be saved must think thus of the Trinity. And whoever rejects this faith will perish everlastingly”? Or is that the overstatement of the millennium?

Judging by the church’s historic creeds, Christians used to think the Trinity is really important. Judging by the honest answers likely given to the questions above, many modern Christians have lost the sense of why it’s so important, even if they’ve retained it in their doctrinal statements. But judging by a growing number of voices, there’s a renewed sense we’ve lost something precious that needs to be recovered.

Most of us have retained a formal belief in the Trinity. What we need to recover is an understanding and a felt sense of why it matters so much. To help us do that, here are two reasons why the Trinity matters.

1. The Trinity Matters because the Gospel Matters
The Trinity isn’t some complicated distraction from the simple gospel—it’s actually part of the gospel. Now, as Fred Sanders once quipped, this doesn’t mean you should begin every witnessing encounter, “God loves you and has a wonderful Trinity for you to understand.” You don’t have to unpack the Trinity in every gospel presentation (although you might, especially if you’re talking to a Muslim).

Nevertheless, I would maintain that the Holy Trinity is right below the surface in even the simplest gospel presentation (and it may poke its head up now and then).

If you don’t believe me—if you still think the Trinity is just advanced theology for the experts—consider John 3:16, one of the most famous and simple gospel statements in the whole New Testament. And think carefully about what it says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Continue reading →

Transcript from a portion of a message by Dr. J.I. Packer “What is the Creed and why is it Important?:

…a word or two about the Trinity. Yes, the Trinity is part of a heritage of Christian understanding that all Christendom has received ever since the fourth century but it has always proved a problem to teach. In fact and I say, straight away, that there isn’t a good way of teaching it because it’s a reality for which there is no parallel. And realities for which there is no parallel are very difficult to express in words and equally, difficult to illustrate.

We’re used, I suppose, to the Sunday school illustrations. A teacher will tell the class, “Well, the Trinity is like water. It has three forms: liquid, steam, and ice.” And then there’s another illustration which was very widely used in England, I don’t know whether it’s still widely used over here. But, again, this is Sunday school stuff. You know how the clover leaf is. There are three little clover leaves as it were bound together by a single stalk, that’s how God is. One cloverleaf, three clover leaves, three in one.

You can see, I’m sure, what’s wrong with both of those illustrations. Neither of them makes the point that here we are talking about three persons. Each of them depersonalizes God in a way which really means, I think, that the kids in Sunday school lose more than they gain by being presented with that illustration. It encourages them to think of God as a thing rather than as three persons to each of whom one should be relating.

When I have to teach the Trinity, I offer a couple of different illustrations which try to do justice to the thought that there are three persons here. One of them is the illustration of a family. Now I know that three persons related in a family, whoever they are, are three distinct persons and not, in any sense, one person but they are one family. So, think of the three persons as related in the unchanging way that folk are related in a family. A father is always father in relation to sons and daughters. There’s a pattern there which doesn’t change and so it goes on with other family relationships. The relationship remains the same and that’s what I’m trying to illustrate by using that illustration which a number of theologians these days are working with because they think it’s the best illustration that’s available to us.

My other illustration is purely Packer and may simply be second rate, I’m not sure but, think in terms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as a team – a team in the same sense that in hockey or in soccer. The 11 players form a team.

Now, how do you define a team. Well, each player is related to 10 others in a way which remains the same whatever is going on in the game. The goalkeeper is always a goalie and the forwards and the backs, they’re related to each other and they are supposed to mark each other and keep together in a pattern. Whatever is happening in the game as the ball goes up and down or the puck if it’s hockey that you’re thinking of. And in the way in the revelation of God that you have in the New Testament, well the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are always are related to each other in the same way. That, I believe, is the best concept to work with when we are thinking about God and the way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are working for the fulfillment of the Father’s plan.

The Father always does what he does through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus, our divine Savior, always does what He does on the one hand in obedience to the Father’s direction. He made it very plain when he was on earth that everything that He said and did was in obedience to the Father’s direction. And at the same time, now that he is gone from this world, He works through the Holy Spirit doing everything that he does in our human lives.

So, there you have a constant relational pattern and you identify each of the three persons by stating how He, let’s say He for the moment because God is genderless. Everything that’s involved in masculinity and femininity is involved in God’s being, but God isn’t one as distinct from the other. No, but everything, as I say, God does in this world is done by this three-fold pattern of action, which is a pattern of togetherness, as you can see, and explains what is meant by talking about one God. To my mind, this is the most helpful of the illustrations that is available. If you don’t agree, never mind. It’s only a Packer illustration and I’ve never heard it used by anyone else.

But anyway, what we can agree on even if we don’t attach much weight to any of the illustrations, is that here you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons, who yet are one God.

There is at least one Scripture that makes this perfectly explicit with no room for doubt. It’s Jesus’ words recorded right at the end of Matthew’s gospel when He’s giving the church, well, the apostles and through the apostles, the church, their marching orders, which is of course our marching orders – make disciples of all the nations baptizing them, he says, in the name.

Now, name is singular, not in the ‘names’ but in ‘the name.’ So this is one name. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, three persons, one name. That’s the foundational scripture, as I say of all the scriptures that refer to the three persons together. It seems to me that the clearest and solidest in the sense of being foundational, that’s the Lord’s directive. Every disciple is to be baptized and baptized in that three-fold or trio name. So, there we have the Trinity.

Article by Kim Riddlebarger – The Biblical Witness to the Holy Trinity (original source here)

It is common to hear claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. The God of Abraham is often claimed as the father of the three great monotheistic faiths. A survey of the Bible, however, reveals a Triune God completely unlike the god of the Qur’an or even the God of contemporary Judaism. The doctrine of the Trinity is Christianity’s most distinctive doctrine, despite the fact that this doctrine stretches the limits of human language and logic. Admittedly, in many ways the Trinity is beyond our comprehension, yet we confess it because this is how God reveals himself to us in his word.

The biblical witness to the doctrine of the Trinity is extensive and can be set forth in any number of ways. We begin by noting that the Scriptures are absolutely clear that there is only one God. In Deuteronomy 6:4 Moses declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In Isaiah 44:6 we read, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 Paul proclaims, “There is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth’as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords”yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe’and shudder!” (2:19). The Scriptures of both testaments teach there is but one God.

One God in Three Persons
Yet the Bible also teaches that, although there is one God, he is revealed in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” even as the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus as a dove (Matt. 3:16-17). In Matthew 28:19, Jesus commands his disciples to “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.” The mission of the church is to go and make disciples by baptizing them in the name (singular) of the three persons of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

In the benediction concluding his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul blesses his readers with, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14). In John 14:26, Jesus informs the disciples that “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things.” As God in human flesh (cf. John 1:14), Jesus speaks of both the Holy Spirit and the Father as equals.

Another line of biblical evidence for the Trinity is that the same divine attributes of glory and majesty are assigned to each of the three persons of the Godhead. The Scriptures teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternal. According to Isaiah, God says, “I am the first and the last” (44:6), and Paul adds that God is “eternal” (Rom. 16:26), without beginning or end. John records the Son saying, “I am the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13), and Micah notes that God’s “coming and going are from everlasting” (5:2). In Hebrews we read of the Holy Spirit as “the eternal Spirit” (9:14). All three’Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’are eternal, without beginning or end. Continue reading →