What Is the Trinity

The Trinity is a doctrine that truly boggles the mind. I have heard pastors say, “We just can’t understand it.” It’s a concept that seems so difficult to grasp that many simply throw up their hands and say, “We just can’t understand it.” But what if we can?

The common doctrine of the Trinity is this: There is one God, existing eternally in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This means there are three different individuals (three distinct persons) who come together as a team to form what is called God. You can think of it like a board meeting: there is the president of a company, the vice president, and the trustee. Together, they represent Company XYZ.

But here’s the problem: aside from one place in the Bible (which we will discuss in later this study), the Scriptures always speak of God as an individual person. The Bible uses words like “me,” “I,” “my,” “he,” and other singular descriptions.

This is just a small sample of verses showing that God is an individual. This is one of the main reasons the Jewish people rejected Jesus. They believed God was a single individual, and Jesus was “making Himself out to be God.”

Obviously, they thought, God the Father could not be God alone if Jesus was also God. This went against everything they understood. There are not two Gods. The Scriptures do not support that. Interestingly, this is also one of the reasons many Muslims reject Jesus.

Three Gods or No Gods

I ask you this: What is an individual? An individual is a single person with their own mind, will, and body. We call this personhood. It is not two or three people in agreement working as a team.

Some use marriage, where “two become one,” to explain how God can be three individual persons and yet one at the same time. But this analogy doesn’t work because you still have to acknowledge that more than one individual is involved. They become one as a team but are not a completely new single being with one mind. If you take one away, the other remains.

Are you still with me so far? Because, for the sake of showing you the problem, I’m about to take you on a journey that will have you chasing your tail. When you finally give up, I’ll be there with the answer to what you’re trying to figure out. Get ready to chase your own tail, but trust me—there’s an answer at the end of the journey.

The Beginning of the Circle

There is a question that must now be asked: If there were no Father, could there be a Son? Or, phrased another way, if there were no God the Father, could there still be God the Son?

Let’s say you answer yes. That means you have more than one individual person who is God by themselves. In other words, you have multiple Gods.

But that doesn’t align with the Scriptures, which say there is one individual God, does it? So, let’s return to the question again. This completes our first circle. Let’s begin the next one.

This time, let’s say you answer no. That means that without the Father, Jesus is not God. And without Jesus, the Father is not God. Now, you have no single person who is God at all.

But that doesn’t align with the Scriptures, which say there is one individual God, does it? So, let’s return to the question again. This completes our second circle. Let’s begin the next one (notice a pattern?).

This time, let’s say you get crafty. You decide the problem isn’t with your logic—it must be a trick question. So, instead of answering yes or no, you say that they cannot be separated at all: one cannot exist without the other.

That means you no longer have three distinct individuals because they do not exist as separate persons. You have one individual with one personality. It is not three persons; it is one.

But that doesn’t align with the doctrine that God is three persons, does it? So, let’s return to the question again. This completes our third circle. Let’s begin the next one.

On second thought, let’s not!

I don’t know how many times you’ve gone in circles just now. You may have gone through that question several times, trying to get a different result. As they say, that’s the definition of insanity.

Eventually, you’ll reach a point of exhaustion, chasing your own tail. You’ll throw your hands up and say, “We just can’t understand it.” Then, you’ll give the reason: we can’t understand it because we’re human, and God is so far greater than us. It’s impossible to understand God!

Well, that sounds like a mature, spiritual answer, doesn’t it? But this is not an answer. It’s a declaration of ignorance and an excuse to remain in ignorance.

Jesus expected Philip to understand. He compared not understanding the relationship between the Father and the Son to not even knowing Him. How devastating it must be to say, “We can’t understand God,” only to have Jesus reply, “Have I been with you so long, and you still don’t know me?”

It’s a good thing that salvation is based on trusting Jesus, not necessarily on fully understanding Him. Truly, the depths of God are too great for any of us to ever fully comprehend. But we should at least understand a little.

Made in the Image of God

We struggle to understand how there can be one person called God made up of three distinct persons because it simply doesn’t make sense. That’s the truth of the matter. It’s confusing because we’re trying to cram a triangle block into a round hole!

Does this mean the Bible is wrong? No! It means we are wrong. We don’t understand who God is. We need an example. We need to be taught. We need it drawn out in crayon for us! And this is exactly what God did.

This is the one place in the Bible that explicitly uses the plural word “us” to describe God. It is the strongest verse in the Bible used to support the idea of a God composed of multiple persons.

But is that really how we should understand this verse? If God is three individual persons, why would He create only one man at first and declare it to be His image? Why not create three?

Ah, but God made both male and female, you might say. However, when we read Chapter 2 of Genesis, we get a more complete picture of what happened. God created a single man, and then He took a rib from that man to make a woman.

The Bible tells us here that the man himself was the image of God even before the woman was made. The woman was then created in the image of that man.

So why does scripture use the word “us” in Genesis 1:26? How exactly does all of this fit together?

Think about how God created us. Our mind sends signals to the body, telling it to act. The body sends signals back to the mind, providing feedback about the world around us. They communicate with each other!

This is why the scripture uses the word “us.” It reflects each part of God saying, “Let’s make man to look like us.” The term “us” refers to the three parts of God, not three individual people. It is the mind of God telling the body, “Let’s make man. I’ll give you the blueprint, and you shape the dirt.”

God created a single man with a single personality, composed of a mind, body, and soul. This is the image of God: a single God with a single personality, possessing a single mind, body, and soul—not three persons with separate minds, bodies, and souls.

The Trinity Revealed

A common way to illustrate the Trinity is with a triangle. Each corner is labeled with one of the names: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At the center of the triangle is a circle labeled “God.” Lines connect the center circle to each corner with the word “is,” while additional lines between the corners are marked “is not,” emphasizing their distinctiveness.

Now let’s examine that image against the scriptures.

Here we see the Bible telling us that Jesus is the Everlasting Father. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus. From this, we can understand how Jesus is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So let’s remove the word “not” from that image of the triangle.

Some see this verse as evidence that God MUST be three different people because they are listed individually here. But notice the verse doesn’t say names, it says name. This is singular. It is talking about one person.

Now, we have one God who is one person, made up of three parts. In the same way, you and I are individual people with three parts: we have a mind, body, and soul.

This is the Father (mind), the Son (body), and the Holy Spirit (soul).

How Can Jesus Be Both Father and Son?

The story of the birth of Jesus is well known. A virgin was visited by the Holy Spirit, and she conceived a child named Jesus.

Now, let me tell you the story again, but this time, I will reveal the mystery to you.

The eternal Creator God, who is a Spirit, created a body in the womb of Mary. Then that Spirit entered that body. This shows us how the body was created by God and is, therefore, the Son of God. At the same time, within that body is God Himself, making Him also the Father who created that body.

Thus, Jesus is 100% God in Spirit and 100% man in the flesh.

Jesus came both before and after John. This is because He is God, eternal in Spirit. He has no beginning and no end. Yet, He is also the Son of Man, born in the flesh of a woman at a specific moment in time.

In these verses, we see that Jesus is the Word made flesh. This, in itself, means Jesus is God in the flesh. And we know that Jesus died for us.

God is eternal and cannot die because God is Spirit. But the body of Jesus had a birthday and could die. Do not make the mistake of thinking I am saying Jesus is a created being.

He is the eternal God which is a Spirit. He has no beginning. His body is what has a beginning. It was His body that died for us. Our mistake is not being able to understand the difference between the flesh and the Spirit.

What This Means For Us

What I have just explained to you and revealed in the scriptures is often seen as heresy. It is misrepresented and villainized. It was basically the Roman Catholic Church that labeled it as such. That in itself is reason enough to question if that label is true.

What you will hear are people saying this view of scriptures denies that Jesus is eternal. But as I have shown already this is untrue. They will say it doesn’t make sense that God could be both Father and Son. But I have already shown how this is true and not in contradiction.

They also claim that this view contradicts the scriptures that say God is not a man and that God does not change. I believe I have already shown this to also be untrue because there is a difference between flesh and Spirit. God never changes!

There is an irony to these accusations though. The very things they object to is what they teach!

The idea that God is both Father and Son is mocked. But if they are not then what you are saying is that one of them is not God. The idea that God can not also be in the form of a man is also the a denial of Jesus as God. So who is really teaching heresy?

The Truth

God is one Spirit who fills heaven and earth. He is all around us and even in the very cells of our bodies. Thus, Jesus was in the Father, and the Father was in Him, as He told Philip.

This means He could be tempted as a man in His flesh, but not as God in His Spirit. He could die as a man in His flesh, but not as God in His Spirit. He could not know the future as a man in His flesh, but as God in His Spirit, He is the beginning and the end. He could pray to the Father in His flesh and answer the Son in His Spirit.

He gave us the penalty of the law as the Father in the Old Testament and provided the payment for that penalty as the Son in the New Testament.

All of this is true, yet most Christians don’t understand it. But today, after so long… maybe you do.

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