Ask Pastor Mike Live

Focal Point Ministries: Jay is asking—and I want you to go ahead and call me at 877-913-5357—he writes in and says he’s been told not to worry much about the Trinity. Well, he has questions. God sent his only Son, but then God is in the form of Jesus. I imagine you get this question frequently; I need help in understanding.

It is a hard thing to understand, first of all, that there is a Triune being. We can think about different aspects of humanity, but to say there is really someone who is three different persons existing as one essence for all eternity in an eternal fellowship is a hard concept to process.

Yet we are stuck with that because the biblical data in the Bible—unless I am going to somehow fudge on the biblical data, which I should never do—I have got one God repeatedly described as one God. Deuteronomy 6 and all throughout the Bible, there is one God, and yet that one God is described in the Bible as three different persons. Jesus is described as God, the Holy Spirit is described as God, and the Father, of course, is described as God. So, I am stuck with the tri-unity of God.

Now, when it comes to Jesus, where you say if He sent His only Son, then God is in the form of Jesus—it is not as though God said, "I am going to put on the Jesus suit and do this." If that were the case, there are all kinds of passages in the Bible, like John chapters 14 through 17, that make no sense. Jesus is here praying to the Father about the coming of the Spirit.

This is not some kind of schizophrenic discussion about some confused Messiah. This is about three distinctive persons who talk with one another, who love one another, who care for one another, and who enjoy the fellowship of one another. They have existed eternally as one essence, being co-equal with one another, being completely one, and yet being distinct in their personhood.

There are plenty of great books to talk about this. The one I like to say you should start with if you have never thought about the Trinity before, or you are just trying to figure it out, is a book that focuses on the biblical data and leads us to the conclusion. Then we can explore the conclusion in the Scripture itself.

Millard Erickson, a Baptist theologian, wrote a huge systematic theology book, but one little book he wrote is about questions regarding the Trinity. Basically, it is three questions. He deals with this in a little tiny book, I do not think it is more than 100 pages, in trying to look at the biblical data and come to the conclusion that, yes, we have a Triune God: three persons in one essence who is God.

That has been the teaching of the church from the beginning. Even the creeds that have tried to clarify it have just been dealing with people that have been trying to deny it. That reality is all about Christian theology. We are just looking at people saying, "No, that is not true," and saying, "No, that is what the Bible says."

All of these creeds, starting with Nicaea—actually preceding Nicaea but going on from Nicaea in the fourth century—continue to say, "Let’s just be clear about who Jesus is in particular and who the three persons of the Trinity are." Is it hard? Yes. Should you worry about it? We do not want to worry about it, but we do need to know that the complexity of the Godhead, as it is often put, is more complicated than anything I am going to deal with at work today.

And yet, I should dive into it and I should appreciate it. So many good books have been written on the Trinity, and we should definitely dive into those books to help us think through the biblical data and its implications. It gets us to say this is a completely other kind of discussion.

By that, I mean we cannot just analogize it with steam, water, and ice and say we have figured it out, or a yolk, or all these other silly illustrations that have been used. Eventually, all those illustrations are going to break down because the reality of a Triune God is very complicated and yet one that should lead us to worship and praise.

There are so many good resources out there that have tackled that issue. Any good Christian website—you can go to ours at CompassBooks.com and look at our selection of books on the Trinity—will help you think through it from a traditional evangelical, orthodox, biblical perspective. I hope that will be helpful to you, Jay. Thanks for that question.