The Trinity

The trinity is the concept from the bible that our God exists as 3 persons: father, son, and holy spirit, yet is still one God. The three persons are all equally God, they share the same omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, as well as all characteristics that we attribute to God. Even while we see them as the same, the bible describes different activities that they perform which we will look at later which is part of how we distinguish them as three different persons. If the bible were describing one person through different lenses, you wouldn't be the relational aspects between the persons that you do.

I believe that each member of the Godhead is fully God. God the Father is fully God because he has supreme authority over all things and he is the creator of all things that we see in Genesis 1:1. But we still need to think about how the other members of the trinity are fully God. Jesus is fully God because of verses like John 1:1 which say "In the beginning was the Word" (speaking of Jesus) "the Word was with God" (speaking of the Father) "and the Word was God". So we see that God the Father and God the Son were two different people because one was with another, but it still says that the son was God. There is also a clear duality to the verse from Genesis 1:1 that I believe is supposed to impart the equalness of these 2 people. Similarly I see the Holy Spirit as also God because he is mentioned in the same breath as the Father and the Son in verses like the Great Commission where we see Jesus telling his disciples to go baptize in the "name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".

We often see the bible portraying the different persons of the Godhead performing different actions which is one of the reasons that we say they are indeed three persons. One example of this is in prayer. The bible asks us to "pray without ceasing", but the persons of the trinity are what make the prayers work. The Father is the person who prayers are directed at and receives prayers (Matthew 6:6 "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret."). Jesus works as our intermediary to the Father (John 14:6 "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.""). And the Spirit also acts as an intercessor for us with the Father (Romans 8:26 "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings."). In the three members of the Godhead we see them working together to hear and listen to our prayers as we pray to God. Another case where we see the trinity is in our salvation. Salvation is necessary because God is perfect and he cannot allow imperfection in heaven. Our sin makes us imperfect so we are separated from God the Father. God the Son became a man and died on the cross for our sins which allowed us to have a relationship with the Father (and the Son and Holy Spirit). Romans 5:10 sums this up as "For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son". The Holy Spirit then marks us with a seal to show our belief in Jesus for our salvation as Ephesians 1:13 says "And when you heard the word of truth (the gospel of your salvation)—when you believed in Christ—you were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit,". In these scenarios we can see how the members of the Godhead perform different actions but they are all working in unison to accomplish their will.

The Godhead works in perfect unity at all times. There is no individual agenda being carried out throughout any of their eternal existences. When Jesus came to earth as a man, he states on several occasions that his goal is to do the will of the Father (John 6:38 "For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me."). Jesus also mentions that the Holy Spirit will be "sent" in a similar manner in which Jesus was sent so we can assume that the Holy Spirit will be doing the will of Jesus (which is the will of the Father). The three members are always working in unity. I will admit it is unclear to me if the "will" always comes from the Father or if that was more referring to the time that Jesus was on the earth when he was doing the Father's will. It's possible that in all other times it is a shared will that the Godhead is pursuing.

The reason the idea of the trinity, and specifically the deity of Jesus is so important is that we rest the basis of our salvation on this fact. I believe Jesus died on the cross, and while on the cross he took the wrath of God for the whole world's sin (Romans 5:9 "Much more then, because we have now been declared righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath."). A created being similar to us could not have done that. We can't even hope to atone for our own sins. Through the work of Jesus we have reconciliation to the Father in salvation. And another reason the trinity is important is that without this doctrine, we would be saying that there is not one God, but three Gods. This violates the teaching of the ten commandments when God says "you shall have no other gods before me" in Exodus 20:3.

From this we can say that all three members of the trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are all fully God and there is only one God. They experience perfect unity and they act of one accord in everything they do.