Trinity

Watson Thornton was already serving as a missionary in Japan when he decided to join the Japan Evangelistic Band. He decided to travel to the town where the organization’s headquarters were located and to introduce himself to its leader. But just as he was about to get on the train, he felt a tug in his spirit that he took to be the leading of the Lord telling him to wait. He was puzzled but thought he should obey.

When the next train rolled into the station, Watson started to board but again felt he should wait. When the same thing happened with the third train, Watson began to feel foolish. Finally, the last train arrived, and once more Watson felt a check. “Don’t get on the train,” it seemed to say. Watson thought he had wasted most of the day for no apparent reason. Yet as he turned to go, he heard a voice call out his name. It was the mission leader he had intended to see. He came to ask whether Watson would consider joining the Japan Evangelistic Band. If Watson had ignored the impulse and boarded the train, he would have missed the meeting.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We can’t just live by our intuition, can we? We do see something like intuition at work in the lives of God’s people in the Bible. Paul tries to enter Asia and Bithynia but is “kept by the Holy Spirit” from doing so (Acts 16:6-7). We do not always get it right using either intuition or careful deliberation. God uses both to guide us. The art of being led by the Spirit is not a matter of waiting each moment for some mystical experience of divine direction. It is a matter of trusting God for the power to obey what he has already told you to do.

Who is Jesus? Few questions could be more relevant at Christmas. Yet a new Lifeway Research study shows nearly half of Americans believe a Christological heresy. Only 41 percent of Americans believe the “Son of God existed before Jesus was born in Bethlehem.” That means 59 percent either do not believe or are unsure whether they believe that the Son of God existed prior to the Nativity.

As pastors prepare their Christmas sermons this year, they might want to keep this fact in mind. Many who will walk through their doors on Sunday morning—some Christians, some not—hold to a heretical understanding of the Trinity. They’ll listen to the sermons and sing the songs, but their view of God is not orthodox. To be blunt, their view of God is not Christian.

(So), rather than a narrow focus on what Christ did, expand your vision to who Christ is. John’s Gospel is exemplary: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (John 1:1–3).

The Apostle is eager to introduce the saving work of Christ, but before he does so, he lifts us outside the confines of history to contemplate who this Son is from eternity: the Word who was not only with God but also was God.

But unless our Savior this Christmas is the “great God” himself, the One who descends into our darkness out of the glory of his everlasting light, we will never enjoy the blessedness and bliss of that (radiant) vision.

In an issue of CT magazine, Lisa Brockman shares her testimony of leaving the Mormon Church and became a born-again Christian:

As a sixth-generation Mormon girl, I believed that the Mormon Church was the one true church of God. I believed Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God. By age six, I was convinced that having a temple marriage and faithfully obeying Mormon laws would qualify me to spend eternity in the highest heaven—the Celestial Kingdom. There, I would exalt into godhood and bear spirit children. This was my greatest dream.

But there were temptations to resist. Throughout high school, Mormon friends of mine began drifting into the world of partying. Alcohol seemed to release them from the striving and shame that comes with performance-based love. For three years I resisted, feeling like a pressure cooker of unworthiness waiting to explode. As a senior, I gave up resisting, I jumped into the party world with the same passion I brought to the rest of my life, funneling beer without restraint.

Yet even as I felt liberated from Mormon legalism, I didn’t waver from believing that the Mormon church was God’s true church. During my freshman year at the University of Utah, I met Gary. Gary told me he was a born-again Christian—I’d never heard of one. For the first month of our relationship we avoided the subject. Then, on a wintry December day, Gary cracked open the door of this conversation.

Gary asked, “How do you know Mormonism is true?” I had never heard this question before. He continued, “Have you looked into the historicity of Mormonism? How do you know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God? How do you know the Book of Mormon is God’s Word?” More questions that had never crossed my mind. Within minutes, my unease turned into terror. What had felt like a firm foundation was dissolving into quicksand.

Nevertheless, our affection for each other was growing, and we knew this lingering division needed to be addressed. So we agreed to study the Bible together. It only took one Bible study to send me into a tailspin. I was shocked to find several crucial disparities between biblical and Mormon teachings. For five months I battled with Gary and the Bible, defending Mormonism with passion. But my fortress began to crumble as I compared the historical authenticity of Mormonism and Joseph Smith with that of the Bible.

This was devastating and infuriating. At the same time, it opened my mind to the biblical view of my nature—sinful, not divine. It also opened my mind to better understand God’s nature—three persons in one God, the Father being Spirit instead of flesh and bones. The Mormon God was a man who worked his way into godhood. The biblical God had always been God, unchanging. I struggled to wrap my mind around this.

I saw, too, that God was inviting me to walk into his kingdom through trust in Jesus. Covered in Christ’s righteousness, I would always be worthy of the Father’s delight and presence. But rejecting the faith of my forebears and risking the wrath of my family terrified me. I wanted further assurance that I was right to take this plunge.

After five more months of research, I was still wrestling with the idea of a Trinitarian God. One day, as I sat in bed conflicted, God drew near to me in a vision. I saw a sea of people around Jesus, who sat on a throne. They bowed before him, singing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. Who was, and is, and is to come.” As they worshiped, I fell to my face and wept. I received Jesus into my heart and walked into his kingdom. I was free of the shame that had suffocated me for 18 years.

On my 21st birthday, after consuming large quantities of alcohol, I spent the night fending off drunk guys who wanted to take me home. I steadied a friend’s forehead as she vomited into the toilet of a urine-soaked bathroom. I craved a different kind of life.

That same December night, I returned home and fell face-down before God. With fists clenched and tears streaming, I offered each addiction to him, inviting him to have his way in my heart, my mind, and my body. I asked him to free me to live fully surrendered to Jesus, the One who gives life.

When I awoke the next morning, I felt born again, as if God had performed a total heart and mind transplant. I was released from my addictions, and peace filled my entire being. The Mormon girl inside me breathed a sigh of relief. Set free from the burden of proving myself worthy, I rested in the arms of the One who had loved me enough to cover me with worthiness all his own.

Editor’s Note: Lisa Brockman is currently a staff member of Cru.

The Trinity almost never comes up in the songs sung by American Christians, according to a new study from Southern Wesleyan University. In worship songs churches mostly sing about Jesus (68%), with only occasional references to the Father (7%), and few (if any) mentions of the Holy Spirit (5%).

The relationships within the Godhead only rarely make an appearance in the 30 most popular hymns or the 30 most popular worship songs. Michael Tapper, professor of religion at Southern Wesleyan says, “In the music we sing, it seems like we’re not as Trinitarian as we think we are.”

When the Bible scholar N.T. (Tom) Wright was asked what he would tell his children on his deathbed he said, "Look at Jesus." Tom Wright explained why:

The [Person] who walks out of [the pages of the Gospels] to meet us is just central and irreplaceable. He is always a surprise. We never have Jesus in our pockets. He is always coming at us from different angles … If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you're not just a spectator, but part of the drama that has him as the central character.

Author Michael Reeves, author of the book Delighting in the Trinity, expresses our basic problem with the Trinity—that the Trinity is "seen not as a solution and a delight, but as an oddity and a problem." Reeves explains:

In fact, some of the ways people talk about the Trinity only seem to reinforce the idea. Think, for example, of all those desperate-sounding illustration. "The Trinity," some helpful soul explains "is a bit like an egg, where there is the shell, the yolk, and the white, and yet it is all one egg!" "No" says another, "the Trinity is more like a shamrock leaf: that's one leaf, but it's got three bits sticking out. Just like the Father, Son, and Spirit." And one wonders why the world laughs. For whether the Trinity is compared to shrubbery, streaky bacon, the three states of H2O, or a three-headed giant, it begins to sound, well, bizarre, like some pointless and unsightly growth on our understanding of God, one that could surely be lopped off with no consequence other than a universal sigh of relief.

While every analogy of the Trinity has its limitations, this picture illustrates one aspect of our Triune God—that they are all on the same team.

Say a family is trapped in a forest fire, so a helicopter team undertakes a rescue. One fireman flies the helicopter over the smoky blaze to coordinate the operation and see the big picture. A second fireman descends on a rope into the billowing smoke below to track down the family and stand with them. Once he locates the family, he wraps the rope around them, attaching them to himself, and they are lifted up together from the blaze into safety. In this rescue operation the first fireman looks like the Father, who can see the whole field unclouded from above to sovereignly orchestrate the plan.

The second fireman looks like the Son, who descends into our world ablaze to find us, the human family, and identify with us most deeply in the darkness of the grave. The Spirit is like the rope, who mediates the presence of the Father to Jesus, even in his distance, and raises Jesus—and the human family with him—from sin, death, and the grave, into the presence of the Father. Of course, like all analogies, this one falls short. The Spirit is a person, not a thing (like the rope). And the Father, Son, and Spirit are not separate individuals but the one God, sharing a divine nature and essence as one being.

Possible Preaching Angles: The point of the analogy is this: the rescue mission requires the interdependent action of all three persons. Each has a distinct and necessary role. And yet, zooming out, they are undertaking one united, joint action: the rescue of the human family. We miss what is happening if we pit Jesus against God, or God against Jesus. The Father, Son, and Spirit are working together at the Cross, of one will and nature, in a united, joint action for the redemption of the world. The Cross is a triune act.

Skye Jethani uses the following personal story to illustrate the beauty of God as a Trinity, a party of love and goodness and power:

Have you ever found yourself at a party you stumbled into, maybe uninvited or totally unexpected—and just had a great time? I was in Cooperstown, New York at the Baseball Hall of Fame on the weekend when three players were inducted. The night before the induction there was a private, red carpet reception at the Hall of Fame—and I was there.

I'm not even a baseball fan, but there I was getting a picture with Cal Ripkin, the former short stop for the Baltimore Orioles who still holds the record for starting in the most consecutive pro baseball games—an astounding 2,632 games in a row. I was chilling with former L.A. Dodgers' manager Tommy Lasorda (who sat in one corner like the godfather as people kissed his ring). I had a nice conversation with Jonny Bench, the former catcher who played in 14 All-Star games. There was Andre Dawson, Wade Boggs, and Carlton Fisk. I didn't even know who most of these guys were. But I had a great time. But I had no right being there. I have friends—huge baseball fans—who would have killed for my place at the party. How did I get in?

Turns out that one of the inductees this year was a player named Deacon White. White played in the 1870s—he was one of the early superstars of baseball—an amazing athlete. And it just so happens that I married his great, great, granddaughter. So we got invited to the VIP party at the Baseball Hall of Fame—and we had a great time.

Possible Preaching Angles: Jethani adds, "Friends, the Trinity is a party of love, joy, goodness, creativity, and glory that has been going on forever—and it will continue forever. And you and I have been invited to join it. Not because we've earned the right to be there, but because a long time ago, the Father sent the Son. And the Son died so that our sin would not prevent us from joining it. And the Father raised him from the dead through the power of the Spirit. If we put our faith in him, we too can be filled with the Spirit, raised from death to life, and join the Father, Son, and Spirit in this party that will never end."

In his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, Nabeel Quershi explains how an insight from organic chemistry helped him, as a young Muslim, to accept the truth of the Trinity.

We sat front and center in Mrs. Adamski's lecture hall, not more than three feet from her as she taught. I vividly remember the exact location of my seat because it was there that I first opened up to the Trinity, a moment still etched in my mind.

Projected in the front of the room were three large depictions of nitrate in bold black and white. We were studying resonance, the configuration of electrons in certain molecules. The basic concept of resonance is easy enough to understand, even without a background in chemistry. Essentially, the building block of every physical object is an atom, a positively charged nucleus orbited by tiny, negatively charged electrons. Atoms bond to one another by sharing their electrons, forming a molecule. Different arrangements of the electrons in certain molecules are called "resonance structures." Some molecules, like water, have no resonance while others have three resonance structures or more, like the nitrate on the board.

Mrs. Adamski continued: "These drawings are the best way to represent resonance structures on paper, but it's actually much more complicated. Technically, a molecule with resonance is every one of its structures at every point in time, yet no single one of its structures at any point in time." My eyes rested on the three separate structures of nitrate on the wall, my mind assembling the pieces. One molecule of nitrate is all three resonance structures all the time and never just one of them. The three are separate but all the same, and they are one. They are three in one.

That's when it clicked: if there are things in this world that can be three in one, even incomprehensibly so, then why cannot God? And just like that, the Trinity became potentially true in my mind.

Here's one way to look at Jesus' earthly life of obedience to God the Father. Jesus lived approximately 33½ years, or 1,057,157,021 seconds. In every second the average human being's brain has 100 billion neurons all firing around 200 times per second, giving a capacity of 20 million billion firings per second. If we want to know how many conscious decisions Jesus made to obey his Father's will, multiply 20 million billion by the number of seconds he lived: 1,057,157,021. The equation would look like this:

20,000,000,000 x 1,057,157,021 = a very large number!

Jesus Christ never made one decision, consciously or unconsciously, in all those innumerable split seconds that wasn't completely consistent with loving his Father and his neighbor. And his obedience wasn't merely an outward performance. He always did the right thing, and he always did it for the right reason. During his lifetime of constant, unwavering obedience, from infancy all the way to death, he wove a robe righteousness sufficient to cover millions and millions of us. Yes, even you.

Bradley Nassif, a follower of Christ from Lebanese descent, tells the story of his grandmother, who often showed her love by cooking. Nassif writes:

When I was a boy, she would spend hours in the kitchen kneading dough, grinding lamb, boiling cabbage, mixing spices, rolling grape leaves, making baklava, and baking bread. The foods were elaborately prepared with time-tested techniques. Many dishes went back centuries, some to the days of Jesus. Salads, desserts, side dishes, and main courses offered the best of Grandma's Mediterranean gems. I especially loved her hummus, a chickpea dip now popular in America.

Grandma died many years ago. For years I longed for her hummus. But to my dismay, I failed as I mixed the wrong ingredients and spices over and over again. "What am I doing wrong?" I asked. "Why can't I make hummus like Grandma did? What is the right blend of lemon, garlic, and olive oil? What's essential and what's not?" Eventually, I discovered the balance. Now my hummus is to die for—at least according to my family.

Similarly, Christians have a long tradition of enjoying a delicate combination of ingredients that compose a proper understanding of the Trinity. That beautifully balanced doctrine of the Trinity came in the fourth century, after church leaders reflected on how God exists as a unity of three equally divine and equally eternal Persons. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God—three divine Persons sharing one divine nature. The doctrine was eventually summarized in the Nicene Creed.

Editor's Note: Nassif adds some more background: "The heresy the Nicene Creed stood against was a bad recipe called Arianism. The heresy was named after Arius, a priest who believed that Jesus was not fully God but rather a created being through whom God the Father made the world. If Arius and his followers were right, enormous consequences would follow: The church would be wrong to worship Jesus as God. Salvation through Jesus would be impossible because only God can save—and Jesus would not have been fully God."

Theologian Michael Reeves notes that many people in our culture who have rejected God may be reacting against a certain sort of God—what he calls "a loveless dictator in the sky." Reeves writes:

In my own experience, when I ask atheist or agnostic students to describe the God they don't believe in, I am usually treated to what sounds like a good description of Satan: a self-obsessed, merciless bully. And if God is not an ever-loving Father, eternally pouring out his Spirit of life and blessing on his Son, then their descriptions are probably pretty accurate. If God is not Father, Son, and Spirit, then he must be an eternally solitary being who has managed to get through eternity without love.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Trinity; God as Trinity—Reeves uses this quote in an article to explain the beauty of our Triune God. Here's the paragraph before the quote above: "In the Western world today many people think that 'spirituality' is fine but belief in a personal God is often met with hostility. But is it possible that many people are reacting against a certain sort of God: the concept of a loveless dictator-in-the-sky? Could such popular antitheism be the rumblings of a deep hunger for a better God?" (2) God, goodness of—This quote also emphasizes the goodness of God, especially to skeptical people who have distorted images of God's character.

One of the chief obstacles to a Muslim becoming a Christian is the doctrine of the Trinity. Muslims believe there is only one God—Allah—and that Christians practice polytheism (the worship of many gods). In his book The Faith, Chuck Colson argues nonetheless that we shouldn't shy away from teaching the Trinity. In fact, he's found that the very doctrine itself is one of the best evangelistic tools at our disposal. He writes:

Take the case of "Farid," originally a nominal Muslim who came to the United States in 1993 to study. He fell under the spell of the MSA [Muslim Student Association] and soon joined their ranks, evangelizing. In debates with Christians, he contended that the Trinity was idolatry, or, as the Muslims call it, "shirk." But in those same debates, he found his own positions weak when he was forced to argue that Jesus didn't die on the cross, only appeared to, as Muslims believe. Although he was warned against investigating the topic, Farid began to study…

Farid soon gave up his evangelizing on behalf of the MSA, continuing his search more deeply into Christian theology. He came to see that far from rejecting the Trinity, it "was the only logical explanation of what is reported in the New Testament, and [it] was logical and non-contradictory, just as a wave-particle duality principle in physics was the only plausible yet unbelievable and seemingly contradictory way to explain the world."

Eventually, Farid's search brought him to the point of exhaustion, where, in his imagination, he lay outside the gates of the City of God. At this point he cried out to God to rescue him, if God would. "I felt a strange feeling of God's love, as if he was telling me that I am his, and that he will love me and take care of me for the rest of my life and after." This experience led to Farid committing himself to a new life as a Christian… God became Farid's eternal Father, "an infinite being who cares about me personally, and who wants me to be fully committed to him."