What is the Holy Trinity?

Our title at the head of this paper is one such. Yet there is abundance of teaching in the Holy Scriptures that God reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not three Gods, but a Triune God, though Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet one God indivisible.

The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods, but one God, "God is one" (Gal. 3:20; 1 Tim. 2:5, N.Tr.). Baptism is to the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," we are told in Matthew 28:19. This indicates for us the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, all of whom share in that supreme glory.

The Holy Trinity—Three in One, and One in Three—is in its essence a mystery beyond human comprehension, even when the comprehension is that of the renewed mind of the believer. In the very nature of things this must be so. How can the creature comprehend the Creator; the finite, the Infinite; the relative, the Absolute.

In human language when we speak of a person, we think of separate entity, separate existence, separate will, different characteristics, thoughts and plans peculiar to each person, not shared with any others. Carry that human thought into the subject before us, and the truth of the Trinity is entirely perverted and lost. Instead of the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit, ONE God—we should have three Gods, an absolute impossibility, for there can only be one God, unique and incomprehensible.

This is hidden in the very first verse of the Bible. "In the beginning, God [the word God, is not in the singular, not in the dual, but in the plural, which at the least must mean three, and in the light of Scripture it is undoubtedly three in this case] created [the verb is singular, thus emphasising that God is One] the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).

Now, even though it be allowed there were intimations in the Old Testament of the doctrine, yet God was not revealed in Trinity until the Son had come. Only by the presence of the Son of God on earth could the knowledge of the Father be revealed. We know the Father in and by the Son. The Father bears witness to His beloved Son, and the Son makes known the Father.

On this praying and dependent Man the Holy Ghost descended in bodily shape like a dove, while the Father's voice declared Him to be the beloved Son, the Object of all the Divine delight. Thus at last the truth of the Trinity became manifest. The Spirit became for a moment visible; the Father became audible; the Son was here in flesh and blood, and consequently not only visible and audible but tangible also.

such is the unity of the Godhead that there cannot be one thought in the Father's mind that is not altogether shared and approved by the Son and the Spirit—not one intention or purpose in the mind of One of the Persons in the Godhead but what is fully shared and endorsed by the other Two Persons in the Godhead, for God is One.

But the Father would have sent the Son in vain, and the Son would have come and died and rose again for naught as far as men were concerned, if the Holy Ghost had not come to give an answer in the hearts of men to the grace of the Father and the Son. His work is as essential to the carrying out of the divine purpose as is that of the Father and the Son. The glorious Persons of the Trinity are one in purpose and equal in glory.

If God has revealed Himself, as is seen in the Scriptures, surely He desires that revelation to be received and prized above aught else. Our highest blessing springs from the revelation God has been pleased to make of Himself. The more we understand of these things, the more is the very foundation of Christianity laid in our souls, the formative power of such truth leading to the true worship of God as nothing else can do.