Dr. Michael D. Halsey
Chapter 10
THE
TRINITY
INTRODUCTION
What
are some things you’re interested in? Don’t
you find it true that when you really get interested in a subject, you begin to
investigate all about it? Let’s
say you become interested in some event in history and would like to know more
about it. Take the battle of the
Alamo, for example. Your read the
book, Thirteen Days to Glory by Walter Lord. You read the biographies of David Crockett, Jim Bowie and
William Barrett Travis. You’re
really fascinated by the subject, so you read a doctoral dissertation on the
subject that you get on interlibrary loan for the University of Texas, which is
the definitive work on the subject. Then
you go to San Antonio and walk through the Alamo and soak up its history.
You go across the street and buy a few more books on the subject from the
History BookStore.
It’s
then that you begin to discover something: you’re reading the same things that
you read in other books, only from a different author.
You find that you’re somewhat of an expert on the subject.
Things start to repeat themselves.
What’s
happening is that the mystery is gone? It’s
like hearing the same story twice. When
you first started your investigation, everything was new and exciting.
There was an intrigue about it, something of a mystery.
But now it’s lost its mystery.
Yet
there’s on area that’s different and always has an inscrutable mystery about
it. The Bible.
When you read the Bible, you find that you can’t exhaust it.
You find that you can’t master it, it masters you.
The Bible always has a tone of mystery about it, a sense of, “This is a
mystery, now live within the light of it.”
That’s
not to say that we can’t know or learn a great deal for the Bible, after all,
it’s revelation. But there is a
tone of mystery about many of the facts it reveals.
For example, we read of the substitutionary atonement where God (not we)
laid our sins on Christ when He was on the cross. That’s a revelation of what was transpiring for those three
hours. But there’s a mystery to
it—exactly how did God do this. Take
the virgin birth. That’s
We
come now to the great mystery. The
greatest of them all. It’s a
mystery that, if it isn’t there, the whole of Christianity falls apart.
It’s the mystery of the Trinity.
Moving
to a definition we find that B.B. Warfield defined the Trinity as:
“There
is one and only on God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three
co-eternal and co-equal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in
subsistence (necessary existence.)”
Scripture
teaches the mystery of the Trinity by saying that the Father is God (Jn. 6:27
and I Peter 1:2); by saying that Jesus is God (Matt. 9:4, 28:18; Mark 2:1-12; Jn.
12:9; Col. 1:17; Jn. 1:3; Jn. 5:27) and by saying the Holy Spirit is God (Acts
5:3-4; I Cor. 2:10, 6:19; Jn. 3:5-6,8).
Perhaps
the following common illustrations of the Trinity might prove helpful:
1. Water is three in one. It
can be a solid, a gas and a liquid. There
is a “triple point” for water, a condition where ice, steam and liquid can
co-exist in equilibrium.
2. The sun is something on one has seen, just as no one has seen the Father.
Yet we learn about the sun by studying its light, just as we learn about
the Father by studying His Son who is the radiance of His glory (Heb. 1:3).
We see the power of the sun when we see seeds grow. What makes them grow? The
answer is “the sun.” The Holy
Spirit is the one who enables spiritual growth.
Yet, still the Trinity is a fascinating mystery. Yet, it’s a mystery we must have or Christianity falls apart.
1. If there is no Trinity, then we have the impossible—a needy God.
2. If there is no Trinity then we
have no Savior—Those who reject the Trinity, reject the deity of Christ.
If Jesus isn’t God, then He’s not perfect and He’s not God’s
great gift to us. If Jesus isn’t
God then He’s imperfect and therefore can’t be the perfect sacrifice for our
sins. God won’t forgive, as an
act of generosity because that would compromise his own holiness. Zechariah 12:10 says that it was God who was pierced
(“Me” in God) and that could only be a prediction of Jesus who was the One
who was pierced. It was God’s
blood which purchased the church (Acts 20:28) which could only be a reference to
Jesus, because He was the One who bled. Paul
says that they “crucified the Lord of glory,” which ascribes deity to Jesus.
3. If there is no Trinity, the Bible falls apart—because the Bible says
that
Jesus
is God and that the Holy Spirit is God. If
they are not, then the Bible has misled us.
4. If there is no Trinity, there is
no regeneration—because when a person believes in Jesus as Savior, the Holy
Spirit regenerates Him—a work only God can do.
CONCLUSION
The Trinity is a mystery beyond all earthly logic. It’s otherworldly. What can never be the case with the Trinity. The Trinity shows us a would we’re hungry for, not the world we live in.