For a lot of us, so much of the doctrine we hold to as believers is just something we grew up being taught and never really thought twice about. So when the questions come at us for the first time, it can be pretty tough to know what to do. Something that falls under this category is the doctrine of the Trinity – God in three persons. To be honest, I’ve always understood it to be really confusing but just let it be something that my mind could never fully grasp.

When I deal with hard concepts of Christianity like this, I usually just think to myself, don’t harp on the questions, cling to what I know to be true and can understand more easily, like God sent Jesus to this earth to live perfectly and die on the cross for my sins then rise from the grave to conquer sin and death… That’s essentially the Gospel, but it doesn’t just make every other aspect of Christian doctrine unimportant. I still don’t think we should spend all our time on confusing things and question everything all the time in a fruitless effort to understand the depths of God and His Gospel. He is God, which means He is far above all I can imagine and, therefore, cannot ever be fully grasped by my finite, human intellect and reason. However, part of loving God and pursuing Him comes in digging into a deeper knowledge of His Word and who He is.

This week at the ‘Tute, we specifically focused on the doctrine of the Trinity and had a speaker come in for a few days to go in depth into trinitarianism with us. I thought, oh okay, so this guy is gonna help clear up the Trinity for us. Pretty confusing concept. Can’t wait for everything to start to make more sense. Huh. Funny. That’s not at all how that went down. More accurately, he made me more unsure of everything I thought made sense, made me ask more questions only to leave them pretty much unanswered, and just challenged me altogether. Honestly, it was really good. We so often want the answers given to us. We want all our questions to be cleared up. We want to walk away without any doubts or skepticism, to be fully convinced of all the things we believe to be true.

The fact is that being without any doubts or skepticism and fully convinced of something omits the faith factor. And we know that we are called in Scripture to have faith in God. We are told that to be Christians, we must place our faith in Christ – Paul says over and over again that we are saved by grace through faith. There is so much comfort and assurance in that truth alone. I’m so thankful for that. And there is just so much comfort in the fact that I know I can never fully understand and grasp a God outside of my understanding and grasp… He is far greater than I. His thoughts are above mine. His ways are above mine. He is outside of time as I know it. He is outside of my own reality. I can’t put Him in a box. DUH. But somehow I have to be reminded of that so much. And let me tell ya, God is faithful to do that. He is faithful, period.

Okay so I’m supposed to be talking about the Trinity and instead I’m just talking about God while kind of glossing over all the confusion of three persons in one. Well here we go… I’ll try to bring some clarity to the explanation of the Trinity based on what I’ve learned this week. God is triune. He is three persons in one – God the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit. These three persons are not separate but One. We see different functions from one person to the other but no distinction or shift in character. For example, God is constant and unchanging; He is just and holy and merciful and gracious and slow to anger, abounding in love. God is good. God the Father and Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit are one but the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. All three persons are eternal – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God as in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are not separated.

But, in John 1 we see that the Word (Christ the Son) became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ was born to us and given the name, Jesus, that is to be highly exalted. When Jesus ascended into heaven after His death and resurrection (John 14), He told the disciples that God would send us His Helper to come and dwell within us – the Holy Spirit.

God the Father offers us redemption through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus and seals us for that redemption with the Holy Spirit of promise. In 2 Corinthians 13:14, Paul addresses believers within the context of the Trinity, which explains how the three persons function in the life of the church – we have grace through Jesus, love through God the Father, and fellowship through the Holy Spirit.

There is no simple formula to the Trinity. The best way I’ve ever personally seen it explained is in a book that we got to read over Christmas break, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. (Also, I’ll just throw in that I would highly recommend reading this book – it’s an awesome personal testimony of a former muslim’s thorough process of converting to Christianity – convicting and enlightening into knowledge of how to confront Islam knowledgeably rather than in ignorance). In his book, Nabeel Qureshi explains, “So the Bible teaches that God is one being and three persons. This is not a contradiction, because ‘being’ and ‘person’ are two different things. Your being is that which makes you what you are, your person is that which makes you who you are. For instance, I am one being, a human being, and one person, Nabeel Qureshi. Yahweh is one being, God, with three persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. Complex? Yes. Unique? Yes. Nonsensical? No.”

He further explains with a metaphor from the science world, about atomic structures and stuff that makes sense when he intelligently explains it, but ya gotta read it, people, because I’m not a science gal so I won’t do it justice. Anyway, so much insight into who God is this past few weeks – reading the book and hearing our speaker. It is so exciting to confront tough concepts and be unafraid to ask the hard questions, to really dig deep and go in without preconceived notions, to just allow God to speak and reveal Himself. Because at the end of the day, our God tells us in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”

What a stinkin promise. I cling to that so much in my life. Our God is not a God of confusion. He doesn’t desire to confuse us; He desires for us to know Him. But not without effort. We don’t put in effort for salvation; but we do put in effort for sanctification. If ya wanna grow in your relationship with the Lord, put in time in His Word, in prayer, in communion with Him – asking Him to make His presence known, to reveal Himself in Scripture, to reveal His character in your life. I struggle with that so much if I’m honest because I can be so selfish with my time but there is truly no greater joy than knowing and being known by the One True God.

Let my heart’s desire be to live like Jesus by walking in the Spirit to glorify God.