Theology: The Triune God

God’s triune nature is an essential part of who God is and how He relates to man. All of God is eternal. Every attribute, every nature, every part of His being is eternal. Scripture proclaims in Jeremiah 10:10 “But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God, the eternal King.” Also consider, Habakkuk 3:6, “His ways are eternal.”


When we speak of God the Father, the first person of the Trinity , we are speaking of an eternal Father. Therefore, for God to be a Father to man, He must first have always been a Father by His eternal nature. He was a Father before creation to the eternal Son, Jesus. If God became a Father because He created then He would have become something He had not been. This is impossible. For God never changes for He is never lacking anything. He has always been perfect in His eternalness. He spoke a great reality when He told Moses that His name is “I AM.” He spoke of His eternality, His completeness. Thus, for God to be a Father, He has always had a Son who was of the same substance of Himself, being fully God. The Son had to also be eternally the Son. He didn’t gain Son status, for He always existed as the Son of God. Jesus said to the Pharisees, “before Abraham was born, I Am” (John 8:58). If one denies the eternal God nature of the Son, then the Father nature of God is denied as well. One cannot exist without the other. John 17:24 says that God loved Jesus before the creation of the world. The Holy Spirit is also eternally binding the love of God to the love of the Son and is our Counselor, because He has eternally been thus. Romans 5:5 reads “God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.”


To break this down in a natural analogy, man gains his identity in relation to other people. A father becomes a father when he has a child. A wife becomes a wife when she gains that identity in relation or in reference to having a husband. Without a husband she is not a wife. Without a child, a person is not a parent. A human woman, contrary to popular sentiment, does not become a mother because she loves her pet like a child. Her pet is different from her and not her offspring. God did not become a father of mankind because He created mankind. He always is a Father because He always has a Son. He is a Father to mankind because He is first a Father to the Son of God.


God is a personal God because He has relationship within the Trinity. He doesn’t gain His personal nature from His creation. If there is no interpersonal God being such as the Christian God, there can be no personal God to creation. In fact, if God was this cosmic static entity with no persons of the Trinity He could not be self-existing. He would then not even be God at all for He would need something else outside Himself to sustain His identity. The finite creation cannot lend the framework to support an infinite God. God’s identity has to be secure before creation or separate from creation. He must be self-referencing. He must be His own identity framework. Thus any religion that posits a non-relational God cannot logically support the existence of God. Moreover polytheism fails to be a foundational system of belief for each of the many gods would have to be finite for you cannot have more than one all powerful God. It isn’t logically possible. Thus multiplicity of gods lends itself to finiteness of gods and that is not an adequate foundation for they would be in need of a self-evident eternal God themselves.


In conclusion, the nature of God being: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, is essential belief about who God is and how we can have a personal relationship with Him. For without His personal nature within the Trinity there would be no personal relationship between Him and all creation.

Eternal Love Effectuates Eternal Good

God’s love is the foundation of which flows His goodness. Jesus said that loving God and loving people as we love ourselves are the greatest commandments that keep all others. When we are properly related to God and in proper loving relationships with people we treat them the way they ought to be treated. We live the way we ought to, because we love. When one person loves another properly they are good to them. A loving Father is good to his children. Even in rendering punishment upon a child, he is good for he punishes because He loves the child. Real love includes being able to render correction, rebuke, or punishment.


God is good, because God loves. His goodness is an extension of His love. God’s attributes are eternal. Were they not eternal, He would not be God for God’s nature must be complete in and of Himself: self evidently. If God depended upon anything outside of Himself, He would not be God. Love is actualized through relationships not in isolation. We don’t actualize loving someone when we are not in relationship with that person. To know the love of a parent for a child, you must have a child in which you love as a parent loves a child. To know romantic love you must have an object of that love. Therefore for Him to love, He had to love before He created. He didn’t begin to love once He created the world. He always loved. He always was a personal God. That’s why the doctrine of the Trinity is so essential. For God to love mankind, He had to first love interpersonally the Son of God. Who is begotten of God versus created by God. For God to be a personal God, He had to be interpersonal eternally versus gaining His personal nature with reference to creation. Once again, every attribute of God must be eternal. God loves because He eternally loves the Son and the Son eternally loves the Father. God is the ultimate Father to mankind because He gains His fatherly identity through His relationship with the Son. The Holy Spirit is the agent of His love which binds the Father and the Son and who is given to each person who is in relationship with the Father through Jesus. Jesus said that the greatest act of love is to lay down your life for your friend. Jesus, while we were yet sinners, laid down His life for man. Jesus was purposed to do this before the creation of the world. Before we sinned, He was still going to lay down His life to bring mankind into holiness that is only found in God. Man was made dependent upon God. But the only way we could attain holiness is through God providing that to us by an extension of His grace to us which comes through His greatest act of love and that is sacrificing Himself for us. We were not made equal to God for the created cannot be equal to the Creator, thus to be brought into His holiness He had to elevate us by grace through His supreme act of love which is in Christ work on the cross. Jesus coming to give His life for man was not God’s back up plan because mankind messed everything up. It was still purposed to be. However, when man sinned, Jesus’ sacrifice included His forgiving us our sins.


The doctrine of the Trinity is essential to the existence of God. If God were not a Trinitarian Being He could not be, for a being to have an identity, he has it relationally to another. If God was this cosmic static entity with no persons of the Trinity He could not be self-evident. He gains identity from Himself because He is a personal being. Thus any religion that posits a non-Trinitarian God cannot theologically support the existence of that God. Moreover polytheism fails to be a foundational system of belief for each of the many gods would have to be finite for you cannot have more than one all powerful God. It isn’t logically possible. Thus multiplicity of gods lends itself to finiteness of gods and that is not an adequate foundation for they would not be eternal.


In conclusion, God, being perfect, loves perfectly and eternally and all ethics and morality derive from the goodness that flows from His love. This is why Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor and that the second hinges on the first. When we learn how to love God and to experience His love and compassion for us we are enabled to love our neighbor the way we ought. This is why I have repeatedly advocated that morality is not about following the letter of the law, but about the fulfillment of the law which is love. When we are filled up with God’s love we can love others the way we ought to and we do good by them as a byproduct of that relationship with God.


God loves mankind and His love is actualized and experienced through the Holy Spirit who draws all men unto Himself. God is loving us even when we rebel against Him. All the consequences for sin is to bring about our restoration unto Him. It is all for our good even when it doesn’t feel so good at the time. Hebrews 12:11 “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Even when God is allowing us to reap the consequences of our unrighteousness it is for our redemption.


The end product of a community of people who live lives of love is a beautiful picture. John Lenon asked the world to imagine a world with no religion. In reality, we need to imagine a world where God’s love is known by people and lived out through people. A world of people who live like Jesus lived would indeed produce a utopia. Imagine just a city of people who are living like Jesus. There would be no crime. The jails would be empty. There would be no hate. People would treat each other with kindness. They would always do good for their fellow man. God is calling us to such a way of living and it is possible through Christ.


However, there will always be those who will refuse to live as a part of the Kingdom of God. So even as this community of believers matures into this society built on love those outside of this society will be living lives in opposition to this reality. Hence the world will become darker and darker (more vile and destructive) and the church community brighter and brighter (more pure and glorified) until the day Christ comes for His Bride the Church.

The Triune God

“In the beginning, God . . .” The first four words of the Bible commence thusly. When Moses asked God who he should say sent him to Pharaoh, God said, “I AM”. Unquestionably contained in those two words is the transcendence of the living God. In all times God is I AM. He has always been and always will be. He is complete in and of Himself. The infinite cannot gain identity in reference to the finite, but only within the infinite. Therefore, the triune God (The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) finds identity self referentially. To put it another way, The Father can only be the Father because of His Son and the Son can only be the Son because of His relationship with the Father. For instance, I cannot be a Wife without my Husband. I cannot be a Daughter without a Mother. In contrast, Islam never refers to God as a Father and cannot do so because Jesus is seen as simply another prophet in a long list of prophets, and not God. The only way God can be our Father is because He first gains that identity with reference to God the Son (Jesus). Therefore it is essential theology for the Son (Jesus) to be God.

Other religions often speak of a god that has no such ability to exist because they merge their idea of the gods (pantheism) with nature instead of God being a complete being apart from nature. If God needs finite nature to find identity, He is not God.

To proceed to add the fifth word of the Bible to our discussion “In the beginning, God created. . .” For God to be God He must be uncreated. Jesus said, “before Moses was, I am.” The Jews picked up stones to stone Him for such blasphemy because they knew that statement contained His claim to be uncreated while at the same time referring to Himself as I AM.

If God is uncreated then “the beginning” is the beginning of creation—this is our beginning. God lovingly created mankind in His image. He impressed His likeness into mankind. It would follow that we would need to know God to know ourselves and our purpose in this world. Humans have so many great questions regarding our existence and we try so many different ways to find the answers when the only answer for created beings is found by knowing the Creator. The Creator is the Answer. Only He can give meaning to the question and at the same time be its Answer.