The New City Catechism — Week 3
Question — How many persons are there in God?
Answer — There are three persons in the one true and living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are the same in substance, equal in power and glory.
Trinitarian doctrine is a part of God that orthodox Christendom has affirmed since the very early years of the church.
The Bible teaches that the One God of all creation exists in three distinct persons— Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. All three persons of God exist in communion with each other and are equal in substance, power, and glory. Each have their role within the Godhead and work to achieve God’s will in Creation.
Each person is active and working from the very beginning of history, and it is through the lenses of the New Testament we see this more clearly. In Genesis 1 we see all three persons active in the creation account—God the Father is speaking, the Spirit of God is hovering over face of the deep, and as the author of Hebrews tells us, the Son creates all that is created.
We also have the Godhead speak to themselves when creating man in God’s own image. In Psalm 45 the Psalmist speaks of the throne that belongs to Christ. Isaiah 63 tells how Israel rejected & grieved the work of the Holy Spirit. And in Isa 48:16 we have Jesus speaking of his soon mission to earth accompanied by the Holy Spirit.
But that’s not all—in the New Testament, we have at Jesus’ baptism, the Son being baptized by John the Baptist, the Father God speaking, and the Holy Spirit descending, and then right away Jesus being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.
Those are just a few examples of all three persons of God presented in the Bible together at once. Many people wrestle with trying to wrap their mind about how One God can exist in three persons, but for us it should be something we should embrace. We live in a world where people believe they should know the answer to every question and when they are found absent, a quick internet search gives them what they need. But that is not the case for the personhood of God.
God’s nature is inherently mysterious, and we should be okay with that. We are limited in our grasp of the universes and God, and we should be okay with that. There is day in the future that has been prepared by God, made possible by the Son, and guided to by the Spirit if we trust in the promises of the Word of God. God is beautiful and mysterious and in many ways uncomprehendable. Embrace the God of Salvation, embrace the mystery, and trust that one day we will see our God face to face and know him better than we know him today.
2 Corinthians 13:14 (ESV)14The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.