The Trinity 3 in 1
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
The doctrine of the Trinity means that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct Persons — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. SimpIy put, God is one in being and three in persons.
What The Trinity Is:
For example; If your name is John then John is who you are but human is what you are. John identifies you as a person, and makes a distinction between you and Bill. Human is what you are, human identifies your being, nature or essence. So you are John a human being.
Three Who’s and One What:
The Father is who he is, and God is what he is. God identifies his being, nature, or essence. Jesus is who he is, and God is what he is, The Holy Spirit is who he is, and God is what he is. So, in the God head there are three who’s but only one what. In the God head there are three distinct persons who eternally possess the same divine being, nature or essence. There is a distinction in persons but there is no distinction in being. Each person in the God head co-equally possess the same being, 1x1x1=1. There is only one God, one divine being, who eternally exist in three distinct persons.
The Trinity Concealed in the Old Covenant:
In the book of Genesis the Spirit of God is present at creation, Gen.1:2 And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. God the Father speaks the Word and the Spirit of God carries out the Word that was spoken.
God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness … Gen 1:26”
“Let Us” plural, here God is speaking to the other members of the Godhead, he is not speaking to the angels because angels do not create, and Hew.2:16 makes it very clear that Jesus did not take on the nature of angel but of man.
God appears to Abraham in Human Form in Genesis 18: One day three men visit Abraham and one of them is identified at least seven times as The Lord (YHWH), since no man has seen God the Father at any time this is the pre-incarnated Christ. The men leave Abraham and journey to Sodom, and Genesis 19 identifies two of the men as angels. Genesis 19:24 says the Lord (YHWH) (who we met in chapter 18) rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens Gen 19:24 (NKJV). In this passage you have the Lord (YHWH) on earth outside of Sodom and the Lord (YHWH) in heaven.
A similar picture is painted in the New Covenant where you have Jesus in the water being baptized, the Holy Spirit descending as a dove, and the Father speaking from heaven Mt.3:16-17.
What The Trinity Is Not:
Polytheism: Polytheism is the belief in many gods.
Modalism: Modalism is the belief God is one in essence, but he exists in three different modes. To state it differently, God shifts in the way he manifests himself. In the Old Testament, he functioned as God the Father. In the New Testament, he switched modes to become Jesus. Now he has shifted modes again to function as the Holy Spirit in the world today.
Modalism is an effort to try and explain away the eternal relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John 1:1 declares the word was with God the father in the beginning. This is an eternal relationship, an eternal positioning in the Godhead, not a mode.
Erroneous Illustrations of the Trinity:
Illustrations used to describe the Trinity like water, ice and steam are examples of modalism, they describe three different modes or functions of the same water.
Other illustrations used to describe the Trinity like an egg which has a shell, a yoke and a white fall short because the shell is not the fullness of the egg it is only 1/3 of the egg. Whereas, Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead bodily Col.2:9. Each person in the Trinity is fully and completely God.
