I have to admit that the doctrine of the Trinity has always been a very hard concept for me to grasp or, at least, explain. I feel as if I completely understand it in my heart but no one has adequately explained how ONE GOD can be 3 persons. The Bible states there is but ONE GOD, the FATHER so how can Jesus Christ be God? It's quite simple, He is God in the flesh and will come again in the flesh. Are there 3 persons or is this more easily explained by scriptures? Are they 3 or One? Jesus Christ is God's right hand. God is the head. We worship THROUGH the Holy Spirit. This is my opinion. This is what the scriptures tell me. I see ONE God, 3 very differing revelations of His Divinity. I use Godhead. Jesus is God in the flesh but no less God!
This is in no way an endorsement of anyone's view of the Trinity or Godhead, I am sharing from Bible.org so that anyone who wants an understanding of how Biblical scholars explain it, they can read. Remember, the Spirit bears witness to the truth. Ask God and He will answer!
This is in no way an endorsement of anyone's view of the Trinity or Godhead, I am sharing from Bible.org so that anyone who wants an understanding of how Biblical scholars explain it, they can read. Remember, the Spirit bears witness to the truth. Ask God and He will answer!
I want to start by asking three questions I hope will alert you to problems I’m willing to bet you’ve never thought about as a Christian.
Three Questions, Three Problems
Here’s the first question: What is the one thing that everyone who believes in God agrees on about what God is like? The answer, by common assent, is that God is love.
Further, we are convinced that God doesn’t just happen to be loving, and could easily have been something else—nasty, mean, cruel, or evil. Rather, love is essential to God, vital to His nature, and without it God would be less than God. It’s one of His moral perfections.
Good so far. Now I want you to imagine yourself completely alone on a remote island. Would really, really loving your solitary self be an example of perfect and profound love? Of course not. It would be an example of perfect and profound conceit.
Deep affection for yourself does not constitute a moral perfection. Love by its very nature involves giving oneself away. When all the “loving” is merely self-loving, it’s not love; it’s narcissism.
Yet before God created anything, wasn’t He all alone with only His solitary self to love? So how could God be truly loving, then, before anyone else existed to give Himself in love to? Do you see the problem?
It gets worse. I have a second question: What is the most famous verse in the Bible? Easy. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). This wonderful passage, though, raises a concern.
According to Christians, God takes a man who was not guilty and treats Him as if He were, by giving Him over to an unspeakably brutal death, so God could show His love in pardoning those who actually are guilty. Now, I can see how the cross would be evidence for Jesus’ love in that scenario, but how is it evidence of God’s love? How is savaging someone innocent on behalf of the guilty a loving thing to do?
This problem is not lost on Steve Chalke, an influential leader in UK Emergent Church Movement. In The Lost Message of Jesus, he characterizes substitutionary atonement—the classic “Jesus paid for your sins” view—as…
…a form of cosmic child abuse—a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed. Understandably, both people inside and outside of the Church have found this twisted version of events morally dubious and a huge barrier to faith. Deeper than that, however, is that such a concept stands in total contradiction to the statement “God is love.” If the cross is a personal act of violence perpetrated by God towards humankind, but borne by his Son, then it makes a mockery of Jesus’ own teaching to love your enemies and to refuse to repay evil with evil.1
“Cosmic child abuse”? Indeed, that’s what it sounds like. How will you answer him? Do you see the problem?
I have one last question. According to John 3:16, who is rescued by Jesus’ death? The verse says, “whoever believes.” That means anyone who believes, and everyone who believes. And if someone doesn’t believe for everlasting life, what is his fate instead? Everlasting death: punishment, banishment, and torment forever.
So here’s the real question: How does a mere man, Jesus, in the short span of three hours on a cross, pay for an eternity of even one person’s sin, much less the sins of anyone and everyonewho believes? How is that mathematically possible? Do you see the problem?
I pose these three concerns to you for a reason. Many people think the Trinity is largely irrelevant. It’s so much high theology best left to the doctrinal nitpickers and not imposed on ordinary folk of simple faith. Plus it’s confusing. Like the infield fly rule, everybody believes it, but nobody understands it. Anyway, it usually only comes up when people knock on our front door and challenge it, and most of the time we hide when we see them coming.
Yet, when you think about it, only the Trinity can answer the challenge of our three questions. Only the Trinity can make sense of the love of God as an intrinsic moral excellence, a holy affection continuously given and received from eternity past among the divine persons.2Only the Trinity can turn Jesus’ sacrifice on a cross into a testament of God’s love for the world, since it was God’s blood, shed by Christ, that purchased Christ’s church (Acts 20:28). And only with the Trinity can a man suffer a finite amount of time, yet cover an eternal debt for a countless multitude, since the man was Himself the God of infinite grace.
The Centrality of the Trinity
Put simply, the Trinity and the Gospel are inseparable. “The gospel is Trinitarian, and the Trinity is the gospel,” theologian Fred Sanders writes. “Christian salvation comes from the Trinity, happens through the Trinity, and brings us home to the Trinity.”3 The first-century church understood this.
True, the doctrine didn’t fill out in a robust form until centuries later. The word “Trinity” wasn’t used in Christian literature until the mid-second century by Theophilus,4 and the doctrine itself wasn’t officially formulated until the early fourth century when it was directly attacked by Arius.
Still, the elements of the Trinity were all in place—understood, accepted, and taught—early in the history of the church having been handed down by apostolic witness. The most ancient testimony of Christ was, “Jesus is Lord”—Jesus the Messiah (the Savior) is God, that is. In the opening days of the church, Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead after lying to the Holy Spirit since they had “not lied to men, but to God” (Acts 5:1-4). Within 20 years of the cross, Paul confidently notes that Jesus had been “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4). And within 30 years, the ancient Didache records, the Trinitarian formula of Matt. 28:19 was in regular use at baptisms.5
These early Christians’ understanding did not arise out of speculative, philosophical theology. Rather, it was the inevitable result of an encounter with the God who “showed up.” It’s what happened when the Jews met their Messiah face to face. Note Lewis:
People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God, and yet he was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe him. They met him again after they had seen him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out, they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God.6
The deity of Christ meant everything to those first Christians, for a number of reasons. First, the centrality of Christ. The identity of Christ was the key issue of His life and the sine qua non—the absolutely indispensable and essential core—of Christianity.
The disciples had “insisted it is necessary to belong to Christ in order to have eternal life, and…that it is necessary to know and believe the right things about him in order to belong to him.”7 God, Jesus said, must be worshipped “in Spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4:24).
In the face of conflicting public reports, Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” It’s the most important question anyone can answer, and clearly not any answer is adequate. Only Peter’s will do: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:15-16).
Indeed, the entire Gospel of John had the singular purpose of answering that question decisively, and John tied his answer directly to salvation: “These things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (Jn. 20:31). This is the truth Jesus staked His own life on, since He was executed not for anything He did, but for who He said He was (Matt. 26:63-66).
Second, the testimony of Scripture. Paul said it plainly: “If you confess with your mouth Jesusas Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9.) He also warned of “another Jesus” connected to “another Gospel” that believers were falling prey to (2 Cor. 11:4). Jesus, who warned of misleading “false Christ” imposters (Matt. 24:24), told the Pharisees bluntly, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins (Jn. 8:24) and, “Before Abraham was, I Am” (Jn. 8:58). Here in both cases Jesus used the Greekego eimi to identify Himself with the ancient name of God given to Moses, “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14).8 The Jews, understanding the point clearly, sought to stone Him (Jn. 8:59).
Third: the meaning of the cross. There is a reason the Word took on a human nature. The gap between man and God could only be bridged by the God-man. Beisner cites Ignatius (A.D. 110-120) saying, “The Lord our God” became man “that he might free our souls.” Beisner then adds, “In the New Testament we find the same teaching (Heb. 2:5-17; 9:14), the idea being that he only can mediate properly between God and man who is equal with both parties (1 Tim. 2:5).”9 Further, man was guilty, so man must pay. Yet what kind of man could make a boundless payment adequate to cover endless punishment due for the sins of the entire world? Only the God-man. Man was obliged to pay the price for sin, but only God could.
Fourth: persecution. In the first 300 years of the Christian faith, martyrdom was a real possibility for most believers. What motivated them to be willing to pay the supreme price for their faithfulness? “The early Christians...could trust Christ in the midst of persecution precisely because they were persuaded that certain very specific things about Him are true.”10 To them, the particulars mattered. Indeed, they were so important the first believers were willing to sacrifice their lives rather than deny them.
Simply put, a correct Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead matters to everything we do and everything we believe as Christians. To a true knowledge of God. To the intelligibility of God’s love expressed through Jesus’ sacrifice. To a proper understanding of the work of the cross. Indeed, to salvation itself. Note Sanders:
The good news of salvation is ultimately that God opens his Trinitarian life to us. Every other blessing is either a preparation for that or a result of it, but the thing itself is God’s graciously taking us into the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be our salvation.11
The Trinity—Problem or Solution?
Immediately, though, we run into a problem. Maybe you can sympathize with Robert Ingersol who wrote this reflection on the Trinity in The Classics of Free Thought:
Christ, according to the faith, is the second person of the Trinity, the Father being the first, and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these three persons is God. Christ is His own Father and His own Son. The Holy Ghost is neither Father nor Son, but both. The Son was begotten by the Father, but existed before He was begotten--just the same before as after.
Christ is just as old as His Father, and the Father is just as young as His Son. The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the Father and Son before He proceeded, that is to say, before He existed, but He is of the same age as the other two.
So it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and that these three Gods make one God.
According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to Himself and the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.
There are all kinds of inaccuracies and distortions in this statement, but we can understand Ingersol’s frustration. The Trinity is so odd to the theologically untutored it borders on contradiction. Lewis, though, finds a hidden virtue in the conundrum of the Trinity when he writes, “We cannot compete in simplicity with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with fact. Of course, anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.”12
His point is a good one. Invented religions (“God to me”) have the luxury of being simple and relatively straightforward. Revealed religion is another thing entirely, since facts are stubborn things. And in our case the facts—at least initially—seem to create another intractable problem for Bible believers.
The Scripture teaches three different things that seem at odds with each other. First, there is only One who is God in His essential nature. Second, the Father is not the Son, and neither of them is the Holy Spirit; they are each somehow personally distinct. Three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each identified as God in numerous ways. The critic understandably asks, “How can these things be? How can Jesus be God, and talk to God, and send the Spirit who is God, if God is one Being?”
This problem has a solution, though. It’s called the Trinity.
Here is my simple thesis: The Trinity, properly understood, is a solution, not a problem. Why? Because if you believe in the Bible, yet reject the Trinity, you’re faced with serious and unsolvable textual conflicts. There’s only one solution that makes sense of all the data. The Trinity is the only way of understanding God’s nature that holds all of the Scriptural data in tact. That’s why I say the Trinity is a solution, not a problem.
What Kind of Three in One?
Since most of the objections against the Trinity are based on a misunderstanding of the orthodox view, the key to the solution is in the definition (“the Trinity, properly understood…”).
The Athanasian Creed (A.D. 450), the classical creedal formulation, starts this way:
We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confounding [blending, mixing together] their persons, nor dividing their essence. For the person of the Father is a distinct person, the person of the Son is another, and that of the Holy Spirit still another. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.
James White’s definition in The Forgotten Trinity is more compact and concise: “Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”13
Note, the persons are distinct, but the substance is one. The Trinity is, therefore, tri-personal, but monotheistic. There are three distinct centers of consciousness (three first-person points of view) who each share the same, individual essential nature—put simply, one “what” and three “whos.”
Notice three essential elements in these definitions. First, there’s only one God. Second, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct and separate persons. Third, each of these persons is fully God.
These three affirmations stand in contrast to the aberrant teachings of current popular groups often thought to be Christian, but are not.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are thoroughgoing monotheists who also affirm that Jesus and the Father are different persons. Yet, in their view, Jesus is a created being, not God. In this they are kin to the ancient Arians who held that the Word was not God, but rather a lesser “semi-divine” being of who they said, “There was when the Word was not.”
Oneness Pentecostals14 also believe in one God and affirm the deity of Christ. Yet, for themJesus is not a distinct person from the Father. Instead, Jesus and the Spirit are the same person as the Father under a different guise or mode (e.g., “When Dad’s at home he’s a husband and a father; when he’s at work he’s a banker,” or “Water can appear as a liquid, a solid, or a gas”). Called “modalism,” this ancient heresy “is the most common theological error among people who think themselves orthodox.”15
Mormons affirm a true distinction between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and acknowledge they are each fully God. Yet, in their view there are multiple Gods, not one God. They are united in purpose, plan, and perfection of attributes, but “are separate and distinct personages and beings.”16 Mormonism is explicitly polytheistic.
Notice that an objector cannot properly argue against the Trinity (as they often do) by pointing to Scripture showing that there is only one God or that Jesus and the Father are distinguished from each other and therefore must be different persons. We agree with both points, which constitute two of the three legs of our definition.
Escaping the Contradiction
I hope you have noticed something else: As odd as the Trinity may be, there is nothing incoherent or contradictory about it.
Consider three scenarios. Suppose I said there is only one God, and I also said there are three separate, distinct, and individual gods. Would that be a contradiction? Yes, but it’s not the Christian view. The first half is the Christian view, but the second half is the Mormon view.
Consider three scenarios. Suppose I said there is only one God, and I also said there are three separate, distinct, and individual gods. Would that be a contradiction? Yes, but it’s not the Christian view. The first half is the Christian view, but the second half is the Mormon view.
Suppose I said God is three distinct persons, and I said God is a perfect unity of only one person with one nature. Would that be a contradiction? Yes, but it’s not the Christian view. The first half is the Christian view, but the second half is the Jehovah’s Witness, Oneness Pentecostal, and Muslim view.
What if I said there is only one who is God by nature, and I said the one God subsists in three distinct persons? He is one individual divine being with three distinct centers of consciousness. Would that be a contradiction? No, it is not.
The first two scenarios describe a contradiction, but neither is the Christian view. Only the third captures the Christian Trinity, and only the third escapes contradiction.
Not all three-in-ones entail contradictions. One triangle can have three angles. One family can have three members. These are not illustrations of the Trinity, but they do show that not all three-in-ones are contradictions.
The Christian view is not contradictory, period, so let’s put that complaint to bed right now. Anyone who says the Trinity is contradictory is not listening carefully to our view and has fallen prey to the “straw man” fallacy. That does not mean the doctrine is true. It does not mean the doctrine is biblical. It simply means the Trinity, properly understood, is not contradictory.
Demonstrating that the Trinity is truly biblical is another task, and that will be the focus of part II of “The Trinity: A Solution, Not a Problem.”
Editor's Note: Part 2 of this topic may be accessed
......................................PART TWO.......------------------------------------
Few doctrines of the Christian faith are as awkward as the Trinity, yet few are as important to understand and affirm. Get the basic nature of God wrong and much of what follows theologically will falter, being built on the wrong foundation. For that reason, I have devoted two issues of Solid Ground to the topic. My broad goal is to make a clear case for God’s Triune nature with a particular focus on the deity of Christ.
In the first installment,1 I emphasized four things: the significance of the Trinity, the problemof the Trinity, the definition of the Trinity, and the alleged contradiction of the Trinity. My basic thesis: The Trinity is not a problem, but a solution. It’s the only way of understanding God that is consistent with His own self-revelation in both Testaments. Without it, the biblical record deteriorates into contradiction.
In this second installment, I want to center on the biblical fact of the Trinity2 by making a scriptural case for the unique deity of Christ. I won’t deal here with the deity of the Spirit, not because the third person of the Trinity has second-class status, but rather as a practical concern.
That the Father is God is not controversial, biblically. The deity of Christ is the issue most fiercely challenged and has historically been the center of the theological controversy. Once we’ve established the second person of the Godhead, adding another is easy if the Scripture warrants it for the same reasons it warrants belief in the deity of Christ.
My method is simple: provide clear scriptural support for each element that is essential to the definition of the Trinity as it applies to the person of Christ.3 There are three components. One, there is only one God. Two, Jesus is a distinct person from the Father. Three, Jesus is fully God. We know this because Jesus is called God, He possesses divine attributes, and He exercises divine privileges.
One thing I will not do is invite you to “picture” the Trinity by reducing it to an illustration. There are built-in problems with any attempts to visualize the Godhead in this way.
One, illustrations appeal to faculties that simply are not capable of helping us. God’s nature cannot be captured in an image (indeed, the 2nd commandment forbids it). Second, most illustrations depict a heretical notion of the Trinity (modalism, for example).4 Third, illustrations risk making the Trinity credible because it’s visual, not because it’s revealed. We know God’s nature because He’s told us about Himself. Therefore, my appeal will be entirely to His Word.
Hints of Promise
The idea that God Himself would come to the earth was hinted at in the teachings of the ancient Hebrew prophets.
Micah told of an eternal One being born in Bethlehem: “His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity” (Micah 5:2). Isaiah said a child born of a virgin would be called God: “...you shall call His name Immanuel” [lit. “God with us”] (Is. 7:14), and “His name will be called...Mighty God5…Eternal Father” (Is. 9:6 ). Jeremiah added:
“Behold the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch...And this is His name by which He will be called, ‘The Lord our righteousness’” (Jer. 23:5-6).
The prophet Malachi told of a future messenger who would declare God’s arrival to earth: “Behold I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me” (Mal. 3:1). Isaiah said that messenger would be a voice calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness. Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God” (Is. 40:3). Luke identifies John the Baptist as that voice (Lk. 3:4-6) who came to bear witness to Jesus: “I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God” (Jn. 1:34).6
These are mere hints, though, not the kind of clear statements needed to establish our doctrine. Instead, the case for the deity of Christ rests on more explicit textual evidence showing that Scripture teaches, 1) there is only one God, 2) Jesus and the Father are personally distinct, and 3) Jesus shares the Father’s Divine nature.
There Is Only One God
The unmistakable teaching of the Bible is there is only one who is God in essence. This foundational element of Hebrew theology is found in Deut. 6:4, the great Sh’ma Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” Isaiah also speaks with clarity that there is no God but one:
Is. 43:10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me.”
Is. 44:6 “Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.’”
Is. 45:5 “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God.”
Is. 45:21b, 22 “And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me. Turn to Me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.”7
Since there is no true God but Yahweh, all other so-called “gods”—idols, spirit beings, etc.—are false gods:
We know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him (1 Cor. 8:4b-6).
Jesus Is Distinct from the Father
Jesus is a separate person from the Father, not merely a different “mode” of God (i.e., God was in the “Father” mode in the Old Testament and the “son” mode in the Gospels, the way a woman is in “mother” mode at home and “worker” mode at the office). How do we know? From the many instances in Scripture where Jesus interacts with the Father in personal ways, clearly distinguishing each from the other.
Jesus’ baptism is one example. Both the Father and the Son are present, but one speaks and the other is silent. Note Luke 3:21-22:
Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”
John 3:16 famously states that God gave His Son. The first gave the second. In John 17, Jesus prays to the Father. Jesus was talking to another, not to Himself. Later that night in Gethsemane, Jesus submits Himself to the Father’s plan with, “Not as I will, but as You will” (Matt. 26:39). A person cannot surrender to himself, but only to another party. Paul tells Timothy, “There is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). A mediator stands between two parties and is distinct from each.
Jesus Is Fully God
Three lines of scriptural evidence demonstrate Christ’s Divinity: Jesus was called God, Jesus had divine attributes, and Jesus exercised divine prerogatives.
The Scripture is replete with examples of Jesus being called or equated with God in unmistakable terms, and Jesus Himself made the claim.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory... (Jn. 1:1,14 )
...from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. (Rom. 9:5)
God our Savior...Jesus our Savior (Titus 1:3-4)
God our Savior...our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ... (Titus 2:10, 13 )
He is the image of the invisible God....For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form. (Col. 1:15, 2:9)
And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. (Heb. 1:3)
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am.” (Jn. 8:58)
And note this stunning statement in Acts 20:28: “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of Godwhich He purchased with His own blood.” When did God bleed? When He was crucified on a Roman cross.
Jesus also had divine attributes. First, notice Isaiah’s unequivocal statement about the ultimate source of all things in Is. 44:24:
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself, and spreading out the earth all alone.”
Yet at the same time, the New Testament teaches that Jesus created all things. The point is made in a couple of places, but none more clear than John 1:3, providing one of the most decisive biblical evidences for the deity of Christ.
The Irrefutable Argument
The opening verses of John’s Gospel offer a scriptural proof for Christ’s divinity that is so simple you can sketch it out on a napkin from memory the next time a missionary knocks on your door.
John 1:3 states, “All things came into being through Him [the Word], and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”8 Have your visitor read the verse out loud. Then take out a piece of paper and draw a large box, explaining that the box represents everything that exists. Run a line right through the middle of the box, dividing everything that exists into two categories. It will look like this:
Everything That Exists
On the left side write, “all things that never came into being,” that is, all things that exist, but have never been created. Ask your friend, “What goes in that side?” If he says “God,” he got the right answer. God alone is eternal and uncreated. Put the word “God” in the left-hand side of your box.
Label the right side “all things that came into being,” that is, all created things (write that in, too). According to John 1:3, everything on this side was created through Jesus. Ask your friend if he understands that. Now write “created through Jesus” outside the box and run an arrow to the right side. Your box should now look like this:
Everything That Exists
All things that never came into being
GOD
|
All things that have come into being
ALL CREATED THINGS
|
All these were created through Jesus (Jn. 1:3)
Take a moment to point out to your guest how this illustration is structured. The larger box includes everything there is, was, or ever will be. Every existing thing falls into one—and only one—of those two categories: created or not created. Simple.
Next, take a coin from your pocket and tell your guest the coin represents Jesus. Hand him the coin and ask him to place the Jesus coin on the side where He belongs. This is where things get interesting.
The first impulse of a Jehovah’s Witness is to place Jesus in the category of created things because that’s what his theology dictates. But the verse doesn’t allow that option. John says, “All things came into being by Him [or through Him], and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being,” not even one thing.
John’s meaning is unequivocal and unmistakable: Everything that ever came into being owes its existence to Jesus, who caused it all to happen. If Jesus caused all created things to comeinto existence, then He must have existed before all created things came into existence. Therefore, the Word could not have been created. If He was, He would have created Himself, which is impossible.
The coin cannot be placed on the right side, and it can’t be placed anywhere on the paper outside the larger box (which he may attempt), since there is nothing out there. These categories are all-encompassing and mutually exclusive; there’s no “place” outside to put Him. Everything goes in one side of the larger box or the other.
If Jesus can’t be placed in the right side with created things, then He must go in the left side with uncreated things. Jesus was the uncreated Creator. Therefore, Jesus is God.
Counters that Jesus is distinguished from the Father in other passages (as when He prays to the Father in John 17) merely reinforce our defense of the Trinity. Agreed, Jesus is not the Father. Jesus can talk to the Father because each is a separate person, but as Creator, Jesus shares the same divine essence as the Father. That was John’s point, which is why he calls the Word “God” in John 1:1.
The final evidence that Jesus is God is that He exercises prerogatives reserved for God alone. The most vivid example is Jesus receiving worship.
“Bowing Down”
The word proskuneo (translated “worship,” or “bow down”) occurs 59 times in the New Testament in five different contexts. Clearly, there is a sense where someone could “bow down” in homage or obeisance in a way that does not entail worship. This happened with Jesus, for example, when the leper came to Him for healing (Matt. 8:2).
However, there is a type of “bowing down” reserved for God alone. When John “fell at his feet to worship” [proskuneo] the angel in Rev. 22:8, the angel rebuked him. When the gentile Cornelius did the same thing with Peter in Acts 10:25, he was likewise corrected. How were these two instances of proskuneo different from mere homage or respect?
Here’s the difference. Cornelius could not fall at Peter’s feet and then bow down. He was already down. John didn’t fall down at the angel’s feet and then bow down. He was already down. Whenever the phrase “fall down” is followed by proskuneo, that word cannot simply mean “bow down,” since the person is already down.
Remember the devil’s words at Jesus’ temptation in Matthew 4:9: “And he said to Him, ‘All these things will I give You, if You fall down and worship me.’” Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’” This was the same pattern as with John in Revelation and Cornelius in Acts.
So, do we ever see that pattern—a “falling down” followed by the word proskuneo—with others toward Jesus? Only the context can tell us. I’ll give you two examples.
In the birth narratives, the wise men asked, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and have come to worship Him” (Matt. 2:2). When they found Him, “after coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him” (Matt. 2:11).
After Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus met the women at the tomb. After He greeted them, “they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him” (Matt. 28:9). Notice that when the women take hold of Jesus’ feet, they are already down. When proskuneo is added once they are down, it can only mean worship.
Worship is reserved for God alone, yet clearly Jesus was worshiped as God.
God will also not share His glory: “Thus says the Lord God…‘I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another’” (Is. 42:5, 8). Yet Jesus claimed, “The Father…has given all judgment to the Son so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (Jn. 5:22-23). Peter made the same point: “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18).
God Is…Jesus Is
There is yet another powerful line of scriptural evidence that Jesus is God: characteristics or privileges unique to God in the Old Testament are applied to Jesus in the New Testament. There are many examples of this. Here are a few:
“I have sworn by Myself…that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swearallegiance” (Is. 45:23).
“That at the name of Jesus every knee will bow…every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…” (Phil. 2:10)
“I, even I, am the Lord; and there is no savior besides Me” (Is. 43:11).
“..by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:1).
“Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none” (Is. 44:8).
“All drank the same spiritual drink [in the wilderness], for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4).
“God said to Moses…say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14).
“Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I AM’” (Jn. 8:58).
“Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me’” (Is. 44:6).
“I am the first and the last, and the living One, and I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore” (Rev. 1:17-18).
The Glorious Solution
In the final analysis, the Trinity is a mystery. It’s a revealed doctrine, not an invented one. Our job was to find out what the Bible teaches, not unravel the mystery. We did that.
If there is only one God, and if the Father and Son and the Spirit are distinct in personal ways, and if are all affirmed to be God in Scripture, then the only explanation that makes sense of God’s own self-revelation is the Trinity.
The Trinity is the ground of God’s love. It is the foundation of the work of the Cross. It is the basis of Christian community. It encompasses all aspects of our salvation.
Is the Trinity a problem? No. It’s a solution—a magnificent, marvelous, glorious, solution.
