Fixing The Anchor Points

Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.   Matthew 28:19

The Father, Son, and Spirit permeate every part of a believer’s life. To try and grasp what this means, let’s summarize what God has revealed about his nature:

• There is one God. This is clear in both the Old and New Testaments. God says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4, NIV). There is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father” (Ephesians 4:5-6). Christians do not believe in three gods. There is one God.
• God is three persons. There’s no place in the Bible where we read, “God is three persons.” But within the limitations of human language, person is the best word we can use to describe the identities of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
• The distinct identities of Father, Son, and Spirit are written all through the New Testament. The Father sends the Son (see Galatians 4:4), the Son prays to the Father (see John 17:1), the Spirit glorifies the Son (see John 16:14), and the Son sends the Spirit (Acts 2:33). But don’t confuse the three persons of the Godhead—the Father did not die on the cross; the Son did not send himself into the world; the Spirit did not rise from the dead. There is one God and God is three persons.
• Each person is fully God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. Christ said, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30), and he talked about the glory he shared with the Father before the world began (see 17:5). When Christ spoke about sending the Holy Spirit, he was not talking about an alternative to his own presence; he was promising that his presence would be with the disciples, even though he was returning to the Father (see 14:16-18). If the Spirit was with them, Christ was with them; and if Christ was with them, the Father was with them (see 14:23).

The Father, Son, and Spirit are God, but there are not three gods. There is one eternal God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The more you think about this, the more staggering it gets.

For further reading, see John 17