January 22, 2004

Trinity Explained

Dear Munawer:

You asked me:

Christian theologians have said "Deny the Trinity and you will lose your soul; try to explain it and you will lose your mind" LOL. God says in His word in Deuteronomy 29:29 "The secret things belong to Yehovah-our-Elohim, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this Law." There are some things about God we cannot understand on this side of heaven. As this verse states there are secrets that God shares with no one. The mystery of the Trinity is one of them. The Bible teaches us plainly that there is only one God of one essence from eternity past who is manifested in 3 individual persons who have independent intellect, emotion and will. This means that while these three persons who make up the ONE God are infinite God with all of the attributes of deity, yet their individual experiences and choices are unique. This does not mean that these are three individual God's, this means that the ONE God of one essence is manifested in three individual persons.  God IS Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  Take any one of these away and you no longer have the ONE and only True God.

We ask "How Can this Be?"  The best analogy to God's nature, though not even closely related to God's, is man's nature.  God tells us in Genesis 1:26-27 "And Elohim said ‘Let-us-make man in our-image, according-to-our-likeness. . . . And Elohim created man in His-image, in the image of Elohim He-created him; male and female He-created them."  How did God create man?  He tells us in Genesis 2:7 "Then Yehovah-Elohim formed man of dust from the-ground, and breathed into his-nostrils the spirit of lives; and man became-a-living soul."  God tells us in this passage that He created man three in one just like He is Three in One.  Man has a spirit and a soul and a body.  Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Man is spirit and soul and body.  Take anyone of these away and you no longer have a Man.  However, a man is not three men in one Man.  One Man is spirit and soul and body.  In the same way God is not three God's in one God (as the enemies of Christianity claim Christians teach, but do not) but one God manifested in three Persons:  Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  Take any one of these away and you no longer have the one and only true God.  Just as Man is of one essence manifested in spirit and soul and body; so God is of one essence manifested in three Persons:  the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  One Man of one essence and one God of one essence.  The Nature of Man is spirit and soul and body.  The Nature of God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Before anything else existed the Trinity existed and there was love between the Trinity. That is why love exists, because God is love. 1 John 4:8 states "The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love." Jesus said in Mark 12:30 "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all Your strength." He said this is the first and foremost commandment. He then said that the second foremost commandment is that "You shall love Your neighbor as Yourself" (Mark 12:31). Until we love God, who is love, we cannot know what it means to love a human being. As we love God and draw close to Him, we learn what love is and what it is not and what it means to love one another.  I can always tell how much time a person spends with God by how he treats others. God cares about us. Why do I care about you, about those who do not know God? Because this is Jesus’ heart. Jesus said about Himself:  "For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them" (Luke 9:56). 

He cares about us and I love Him and so I know He wants me to care about every man and woman He created in His image. Jesus put it this way, He said "Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me" (Matthew 25:40).

Why is it that so many people have a problem with the concept of the Trinity?  Men have a problem with the teaching of the One Triune God because we are always trying to bring God down to our level. God is not a man, He is the eternal Divine Spirit who lives, the Bible tells us, in unapproachable light.  God tells us about Himself:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways My ways, declares Yehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)

"Elohim is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?" (Numbers 23:19)

The Bible tells us that He is invisible. This makes sense since He is transcendent. To be transcendent means there is no place God is not. David the Psalmist wrote in the Bible about God:

"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [Hell], behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me." (Psalm 139:7-10)

God is transcendent, there is no place you can go that God is not. Therefore it is impossible to see Him because He is everywhere all at once. We talk about getting closer to God, but the truth of the matter is we cannot be any closer to God right now than we already are. Of course when we talk about getting closer to God we are talking morally, not whether He is closer to us than our breath. The difference between Heaven and earth is that on earth we walk by faith with the God we cannot see, while Heaven is the full manifestation of God's presence continually all the time.  Paul the Apostle wrote about God,

"The God who made the cosmos and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things. And He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist" (Acts 17:24-28)

However, this concept is not the same as is taught in Eastern religions which teach that all is God. God created the material universe as we know it, but God is not the material universe He created, He is completely separate from it. He is also not bound by the physics and laws of the universe. That is why He can raise the dead, open the eyes of those who are blind and even in time take on a human nature. A man came to me once whose knees were completely destroyed. I prayed for his knees in Jesus’ name and saw them recreated and healed right before my eyes. There is nothing God cannot do. So to try and bring God down to our level is foolish and to lack wisdom and understanding. The Bible states in Proverbs 9:10 "The fear of Yehovah is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." We struggle with the concept of the Trinity because we compare God to ourselves: created beings. God is not a created being, He is not finite and He is dependent on no one. Whenever we try to bring God down to our level of existence we will always error.

So what can we know about God? Only what He chooses to reveal to us about Himself, and He has told us that He is a Trinity of three persons but of one essence. Concerning Jesus the Bible tells us:

"And He is the reflected-brightness of His glory and the exact-image of His essence, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Hebrews 1:3)

Jesus being the reflected-brightness means he is God in all His fullness. Colossians 2:9 states "For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form." It does not say that Jesus is God in a body or that God dwelt in the man Jesus, it says that Jesus IS God in bodily form. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that Jesus is the exact-image of the essence of God. That means He is equal in nature and substance to the Father. They are of the same essence, exact-image of His essence. Do I understand that? No. Why? Because I am a finite man, with finite understanding, I am not God. However, the fact I do not understand the nature of God revealed in the Trinity does not mean I am to accept this teaching and truth blindly. God has not left us without witness. First, creation itself testifies to God’s nature. How? The universe has three dimensions: Height, width and depth. Time is past, present and future. Light has three spectrums: Light you can see like Jesus; light you cannot see but feel like the Holy Spirit; and light you cannot see or feel like the Father, but it is all of the same essence and source: Light. Water is in three stages: gas, liquid and solid, but it is all of the same essence and source: water. Space has three dimensions: space identified, space manifested, space experienced, but it is all space. Energy has three states: energy generated, energy manifested and energy experienced, but it is all energy. God created man a spirit, soul and body. The spirt of man we cannot see or feel like the Father. We can feel the soul but cannot see it like the Holy Spirit. The body we can see and feel like Jesus the Son, but together they make one human being. Take any one of these features of man away and he is no longer a man. You see the signature of God’s nature throughout His creation. The Father is the invisible, omnipresent source of all being, manifested and declared by the eternal word, the Son, who is, in turn, experienced in the Spirit. John wrote about the Father and Jesus in John 1:18 "No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, that one has revealed Him." The word "revealed" can also be translated "manifested." The Bible tells us that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy & peace (Gal 5:22). We can feel the Holy Spirit, but we cannot see Him. That is why He is metaphorically compared to the wind. We can feel the wind, but we cannot see it. The Fruit of the Holy Spirit is one of the trade marks of God in knowing what is true. When I go to God for an answer about something, when His answer comes to me by the Holy Spirit, if it is the Holy Spirit it will be accompanied by His love, joy and peace. That is because God is love, joy and peace all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, it is His nature all the time forever. When I first received Jesus into my heart as Savior and Lord I became united with God and begin to experience Heaven. What did I experience? I experienced who God is, His nature: love, joy and peace forever. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 6:17 and in Romans 14:17,

"But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him."

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace." (Galatians 5:22)

"For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

When I am in God’s will I experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit of love, joy & peace. When I am not, I have no peace and I do not experience God’s nature.

If I receive what I think is an answer from God but have no peace, I will not act on it until I have God’s peace, for He says this is His nature. Of course if His word does not back up what I am feeling, whether I feel love or peace or not I will still reject it.  God promises us in His word that He will never go contrary to His word. Jesus said in John 8:47 "He who is of God hears the Words of God." The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 138:2 "You have magnified Your Word according to all Your name." That simply means that the moral character of God and the moral character of God described in the Bible are equal and the same. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away." And the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 13:8 "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever." God’s word never changes and Jesus never changes, thus they are equal and the same.

Also the Bible teaches us that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Again for that reason we cannot rely on our feelings alone because Satan will counterfeit the fruit of the Holy Spirit to lead us astray. If what I feel is not backed up with what the Bible teaches about God and what he says about the subject, those feelings are not coming from God—the Holy Spirit, and are to be rejected. This means I can have feelings of love but not true love, deception which will always result in emptiness and no peace and no love in the end. But because God’s nature is love, joy and peace, the fruit of the Holy Spirit will always be accompanied with His answers to us. It is His trade mark because it is who He is: love, joy and peace forever.

Finally, again God has testified to us about what is true about His Divine Triune Nature through the Physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I may not understand the concept of the Trinity because I am trying to understand God’s Divine Nature which is uncreated life, infinite, in need of no one, can do anything and has life in Himself, to my human nature which is created by Him, finite, limited and completely dependent on the life of God to exist. So as you can see, while I will never fully understand or comprehend the Triune Nature of God on this side of Heaven, yet He has not left us without witness to this truth about His Nature through what He has created, through His creation of us, through the Physical Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and through the witness of the Holy Spirit.

God’s word says about the witness of creation in Romans 1:18-22,

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they know God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks; but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools."

Munawer, if you try to understand God’s nature, you will go insane, but He has not left you without witness to the existence of His Triune Nature in what He has created, in His creation of You, through what He has revealed to you through His Son Jesus Christ and proved absolutely true through His physical resurrection from the dead, and through the witness of His Holy Spirit. I do not understand the nature of God. That is because I am trying to bring God down to my level. He is not me, He is not a man, He is Almighty God, and He says about His nature and other things hidden in Deuteronomy 29:29 "The secret things belong to Yehovah-our-Elohim, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this Law." He has not given us infinite knowledge and understanding about His infinite Nature.  He cannot because we are finite. However, what He has done is reveal to us that He is only one God of one essence manifested in Three Persons. After I contemplate on that for a while, like in the cartoons, after my finite brain freezes up like my computer does at times, I have to bonk myself on the side of my head and wag it back and forth and I still come up empty with understanding and only stand in aw at the mystery of God. All I can do on this side of heaven is accept by faith what He has revealed to me about Himself and recognize that He has given me more than sufficient witness and evidence that it is true whether I understand it or not.

I have done much study on this issue in the past and would like to direct you to these links on my website which lists all information I have on the Trinity on my website. In the first link below I go into Scripture and show how the Father is called God and Yehovah, the Holy Spirit is called God and Yehovah, and Jesus is called God and Yehovah. In the second and third links I list scriptures on the Trinity, and in the fourth link are listed other links which give the historical background and teaching about the Trinity all the way back to Adam. Also in this fourth link are other links about the Nature of God and evidence of Jesus’ Divinity and humanity in Scripture.

• The Nature of God

• Trinity in the Scripture

• Bible Passages on the Trinity

• The Trinity Is One God

When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses recorded the following about this event.

"Then Yehovah rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Yehovah out of heaven." (Genesis 19:24)

Moses says here that Yehovah, Jesus who manifested Himself physically to Abraham in the Old Testament, who revealed to him He was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, rained fire from Yehovah who was in heaven, the Father. Did you know that while Jesus was on earth He was limited as a man to only minister to one person at a time?  However, now that He is back in heaven, through the Holy Spirit He is able to minister to everyone all at once at the same time. While still a man on earth Jesus said about the Holy Spirit in John 16:7-11, and 13-15,

"But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper [Holy Spirit] shall not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you no longer behold Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world [Satan] has been judged." (John 16:7-11)

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you."

Now that Jesus’ humanity is in Heaven, He can minister to anyone of us at any time through His unlimited Holy Spirit. That is what He meant when He said it was to our advantage that in His humanity He departed, because now through His Holy Spirit He can minister to all of us individually according to our need at the same time. However, in Heaven you can have a visit of Jesus at any time while He visits with millions of others at the same time. That is because His glorified body doesn’t have the limitations it had as a finite man on earth. Another mystery and aw of God. I have a degree in electronic technology. I know something about the complexity of computers, I designed computer circuitry, I know how it works. God knows everything about everyone of us at the same time and without confusion and understands it perfectly. A supercomputer is an electron running around an atom in comparison to God’s infinite intellect. Jesus said about himself in John 5:20-23,

"For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and greater works than these will He show Him, that you may marvel. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, in order that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father, he who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him."

In this passage Jesus reveals His Divine Nature and that He is God. First, He reveals His infinite intellect. He states that the Father shows Him all things. Only an infinite mind can contain infinite knowledge and know all things. Second, He states that just as the Father gives life and raises the dead so He too has this ability. Only God has the ability to give life and raise the dead. Jesus said in John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who creates-life, the flesh profits nothing." Third, He states that the Father has given all judgment to the Son. Why? To reveal to us Jesus’ true nature. Only God who knows all things can judge righteously, so God the Father gives the judgment of the universe to Jesus so His true nature will be revealed so all will recognize that Jesus is God and as a result give Him equal honor and recognition as we give to the Father. The Father does this so we will know and recognize who Jesus truly is: infinite God in the flesh.

God is infinite, but through Jesus we are able to relate to God for the moment on our level in a finite way. No one relates to all of who God is all at once at any given time. We cannot because we are finite and He is infinite. So God took on a human nature also so we could relate to Him on our finite level. We will spend eternity on our level learning a little bit at a time about who God is, and God has provided us a way to do this at our level through the man Jesus Christ.

In my many years of walking with Jesus I have experienced the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit personally and individually. The Holy Spirit and the Son on a daily level. The Father, as the Father chooses, and only on special occasions. Jesus relates to me as God, brother and friend. Once when I encountered the Father I fell on my face and trembled. Once Jesus manifested himself to me, I saw him standing before me. It came at the end of an eight month battle against my person morally. I was with a friend in the mountains going fishing. We drove up Friday night and I was just crawling into my sleeping bag when Jesus appeared to me. I thought to myself "This is cool!" Then I asked Jesus why He was appearing to me. He did not speak to me verbally. He just brought to my mind a verse in the Bible in Matthew 5:8. It states "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Sincerely in Jesus,

Dale P. Kruse
Pastor Evangelist