The Wonderful Teaching of the Holy Trinity

The beginning of each summer is marked, in the Lord's Church, by the celebration of Trinity Sunday. This is a marvelous time to remember the central teaching concerning God, namely that there is one God in Three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This wonderful confession concerning the Trinity is the basis of all that we believe, teach and pray; the very bedrock of the Lord's church.

Unfortunately there are those who call themselves “Church” who deny this central article of the Scriptures.

This past Saturday I was visited by three “Bible Teachers” who came to my doorstep to talk about the Bible and the end of the world. Many of you, I'm sure, have had such visitations from the Jehovah's Witnesses. We talked briefly about righteousness and and the proper distinction between Law and Gospel, and they left me with a couple of Awake magazines and promised to send reinforcements soon.

One of the chief tenants of Jehovah Witness theology is the denial of the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity. (For example: “Christ was God's Son and inferior to Him.... Christ was the first of God's creations.” From the watchtower website.) This denial of the Trinity can be seen in the article in this month's Awake (May, 2006) which extols the Reformation heretic Michael Servetus. Among other things, Servetus wrote a tract titled On the Errors of the Trinity which denounces Trinitarian teaching as non-Biblical. This denial of the Trinity is also the claim of the Mormons, Unitarians, Muslims, Jews, many liberal scholars and, not surprising, The DaVinci Code and other books like it.

So the question has been raised, does the Bible teach that God is the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit? From beginning to end, the answer is “yes.”

Consider the very first words of the Bible, there we see the Father (“In the beginning God created...”), the Son (“then God said, 'Let there be...'”), and the Holy Spirit (“the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters...”). Later in the chapter God will speak from the plurality of the Three Persons, saying, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” [Genesis 1:26]

This teaching is reflected in one of the Old Testament's creedal statements, often called the “Great Shema” of Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one!” Here we see again the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity. The three persons of the Trinity: the Lord, God, the Lord are one in essence.

When we turn our attention to the New Testament we see the same teaching. The Gospel according to Matthew begins and ends with the Trinity. First, in Jesus' baptism [St Matthew 3:13-17] we see the Son standing in the waters of the Jordan River, we hear the Father speak from heaven, and we see the Holy Spirit, descending like a dove. At the end of the Gospel, just before Jesus ascends into heaven, He gives His disciples and His church this charge, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” [St Matthew 28:19]

In these passages we see that the Biblical teaching of the Trinity is not some academic question or philosophical problem, but the very center of our salvation. For the Father so loved the world that He sent His Son to die for us, and so that we might believe in Christ, the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts to give us the gift of faith. Thank God that it is in the name of the Holy Trinity that we are baptized and have our life and salvation.

The Lord's Blessings in Christ,

Pastor Wolfmueller

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