1John 5:7 "And there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one"
Matt 28:19 "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost"
The Trinity is first of all important because God is important. To understand more fully what God is like is a way of honoring God. The doctrine of the Trinity says that there is only one God and only one divine nature but that this one God exists in three Persons. That is a great mystery.
And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." (Matt. 3:16-17)
SOME SCRIPTURES THAT SHOW THAT GOD IS ONE
- "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!" (Deut. 6:4)
- "I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God." (Isa. 45:5)
- There is no God but one. (1Cor. 8:4)
- Jesus said: "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30)
- "He who has seen Me has seen the Father." (John 14:9)
- "He who beholds Me beholds the One who sent Me." (John 12:45)
- If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. (Rom. 8:9)
- "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit." (Matt. 1:20)
- And the angel answered and said to her [Mary], "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)
- [Jesus speaking to His disciples] "And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you." ... "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him." (John 14:16-17, 23)
FACTS ABOUT THE TRINITY
1. The Trinity is not belief in three gods. There is only one God, and we must never stray from this.
2. This one God exists as three Persons.
3. The three Persons are not each part of God, but are each fully God and equally God. Within the Godhead are the unfolding of God’s one, undivided being into three interpersonal relationships such that there are three real Persons.
4. God is not one person who took three consecutive roles. The Father did not become the Son and then the Holy Spirit. Instead, there have always been and always will be three distinct persons in the Godhead.
5. The Trinity is not a contradiction because God is not three in the same way that He is one. God is one in essence, three in Person.
6. All three Persons of the Trinity are unmade and uncreated [ie. not creatures], but differentiates them in that the Father is sourceless, the Son begotten by the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Father is the Father because he has the essential property of not being caused to exist by anything else. The Son is the Son because he has the essential property of being caused to exist by God the Father [this is what being ‘begotten’ means]. The Spirit is the Spirit because he is caused to exist by an uncaused divine person (the Father) in cooperation with a divine person who is caused (the Son) to exist by the uncaused divine person acting alone [this is what it means for the Spirit to ‘proceed’ from the Father and the Son
7. each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one Person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others.
Nothing could be more relevant to your life than the doctrine of the Trinity. For life is meaningless to you unless you know life’s meaning. And the meaning of life, the ultimate purpose of life, the greatest good, the supreme value, is love. And the doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation for that, because it means that love ‘goes all the way up’ into ultimate reality, into the very essence of God. The doctrine of the Trinity means that God is love. Divine existence is the ideal of all personal existence – to be fully oneself, but only in dependence upon, and in adherence to, another in the communion of unity. God is the perfect prototype of that which all love between persons tends to achieve – absolute unity and yet distinction – to be one with the other, not by losing one's identity but by perfecting it, even at the very source of one’s being. God is love = God is trinity.
God the Father and God the Son necessarily co-operate in causing the existence of God the Holy Spirit, whose existence is therefore necessary but dependent upon both Father and Son. God the Father necessarily causes the existence of God the Son – whose existence is necessary but dependent upon the Father. The three divine individuals taken together form a collective source of the being of all other things. 'There is only one God' means that the source of being of all other things has to it this kind of indivisible unity. The Holy Spirit depends upon him [the Word] to minister to his person not only existence but wisdom and rationality and righteousness, and all other qualities which he possesses.
In the beginning, God The Father said "Let there be light" and there was light. (Gen 1:1-3) The Word of God (who would later take the form of man as Jesus Christ) brought light to be. The power of God (the Holy Spirit) activated by the Word of God brought light to be. God who spoke, the Word of God and the power of God brought light and everything else to be. The power of God depended on the Word of God to be spoken by God to perform the work of creation. God, his Word and his power are one and the creator of all things.
GENERAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD THE FATHER, THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT
Absolute Attributes I.e. characteristics which are peculiar to Him and that are not shared with any being.
1. Eternal Ps 90.2
2. Immutable Malachi 3:6
3.Omnipresent I.e all present Ps 139:9
4. Omnipotent I.e. All-powerful Jer 22:27
5. Omniscient I.e All knowing Ps 94:11
6. Self-existent John 5:26 I.e. He does not depend on any source of life
7. Sovereign Daniel 4:35
Moral attributes of God
1. Holy 1 Pet1:15-16; Matt 5:48
2. Truth Deut 32:4; Titus 1:2
3. Righteous and Just Gen 18:25; Romans 3:25-26
4. Merciful Micah 7:18; Matt 5:7
5. Love Deut 7:6-8; I John 4:16