Why We Believe in the Trinity

Scripture: Mark 1.9-15; Genesis 9.8-17


After 9-11 happened, President Bush made a statement about Christianity and Islam. I know why he made it – he was trying to stress our commonality and unite people faith against terrorism. He said, “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.”

Well, yes and no. But mostly no. Christians and Muslims are monotheists, that is we believe that God is One. But Christians are different monotheists.

We are Trinitarians. Ask a Muslim if they believe in a God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and they would most emphatically tell you no. In other words, Allah, and the God of the Trinity are very different. The God of the Koran in many respects bears very little resemblance to the God of the Bible.

Some have accused Christians of making up the Trinity. If you’ve ever had conversation with Jehovah’s Witnesses at your door you probably have heard this. The Trinity is our attempt to account for the God who meets us in Scripture. In other words, the Trinity is a scripturally-based doctrine. God is revealed to us in the Old and New Testaments as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the beginning, Genesis 1, The Holy Spirit is moving over the deep, the Chaos, the Void. And the Word of God, which we understand is Jesus the Son, (John 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God) begins to create by speaking, by declaring, “Let there be Light!” And it was so.

God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are together creating. In verse 26 of chapter one, we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image.” Let us. . .

Who is God talking to but Himself, the three persons of the Trinity in this divine conversation?

In Mark’s Gospel we are given the scene of Jesus’ baptism, and here, like at the Creation, we are given a glimpse of the Holy Trinity and that divine community and relationship. Jesus is coming up out of the water and the heavens are torn open and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. (the Son and the Spirit) And then an audible voice speaks from heaven, “You are Beloved, my Son, with you I am well pleased.” The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

This is a pattern, that the Father honors the Son, the Son obeys the Father, the Spirit testifies to the Father and the Son, and does the work of the Father and the Son. In John 5, Jesus tells people, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.”
Jesus obeys the Father. Likewise, Jesus only ever does things by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Notice, immediately after Jesus baptism, the Holy Spirit drives Jesus (casts him out, ekballow) into the wilderness to begin the next step of God’s acting and working in the world. Jesus first public sermon begins, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me. . .” The Baptism of Jesus is His anointing. Jesus is creating a New Way of Life, a New Kingdom through the power of the Spirit. In fact, Jewish word, Messiah, simply means, “anointed one.”

St. Augustine says that the voice came from heaven for our ears, and the Spirit looked like a dove for our eyes. Jesus didn’t need these signs – we do. Jesus baptism is one of those moments where the Trinity shines through and we see clearly this relationship and community of Love. The fabric of heaven is torn open and “what is up there comes down here.”

Sigmund Freud once said that religion was something man made up to make life easier. He called religion, and Christianity in particular, “a helpful illusion and projection.”

But ask you, if religion were a projection of our our needs and fears, would we project this God?

The Trinity is mysterious and complicated. It can’t be fully explained. That doesn’t mean there are signs and metaphors for Trinity in the creation.

The Trinity is like the actor, the play, and the playwright all in one, In the words of John Wesley, “These Three are One.”

The reason the modern world tried to turn its back on the God of Christianity is that He came in a form we found difficult to worship – God came as a Jew. Even, and especially, Jews found that difficult is accept.

The Trinity is a rebuke to a modern world that would make a god in its image, even one that it would disbelieve. Every time we make up a god of our choosing, we sin against the Trinity. Which person of the Trinity are we likely to sin against? Do we sin against the Father? He is not a distant, aloof God – a god that made the universe and then stepped back and just let things run their course – or a heavenly grandfather whose only hope is that everyone have a good time and get enough sleep. These gods are sins against the Father. What about the Son – how did we sin against the Son? We try to cut Jesus down to size. We expect him to do therapy for us. We expect him to protect us from any trouble or pain. Name it, claim it. No blessing left untapped.

Jesus went to his hometown, soon after he started his public ministry, and the people there wanted to know why he wasn’t performing all the miracles they heard he had done in other towns. Jesus said to them, “There were widows and lepers in Elijah’s day, but he helped only two.” Jesus just wasn’t concerned with what the people thought he should do. He wasn’t compelled by what they thought they needed.

Jesus had bigger fish to fry. He had to do the will of the Father. Jesus was caught up in the life and will of the Trinity. And in many ways, the Christian Life is our lifetime of training in obeying and giving honor to the Trinity – it is our time to be caught up in this life and relationship.

I don’t know about you, but if I pay attention, I can find about a hundred examples a day that I most value independence rather than community and conversation. I fail to share with my wife not only everyday, routine stuff, but important stuff as well. Conversations that I should initiate, I don’t. My marriage would be better if I were more the person God intends for me to be.

I was at the National Pastor’s Convention last week. Jennifer and I went to an evening worship session and a man in his sixties maybe, sat down next me. Almost immediately he turned and smiled and introduced himself. Soon Jennifer and I were enthusiastically engaged in conversation with this pastor from California. We talked about what God was doing in our lives. Admittedly, he was easy to talk to and it was a safe environment in which to talk, with a lot of common experiences between us. But I wonder why I don’t readily and easily engaged with other people like that in the course of my regular day. If the love of God and the Good News of Jesus Christ is so important to me, why don’t I try to share it more often with the guy in the coffee shop or the new neighbor down the street? I’m finding priorities that need to change. I find these every time I see how God is and then look at how I am.

The Trinity is everything we are not. Holiness, Love, Relationship, Constant Conversation. The Trinity is a rebuke to individuality and hierarchy.
Why did God create the world? Because God loves to talk. God loves to be in relationship. That’s who God is. Trinity. Even on a day of utmost sacrifice and pain, Good Friday, we hear the anguished conversations between the Son and the Father and the Spirit.

Shouldn’t this change our picture of God? Don’t you know that God wants to talk to you? The whole point of the Cross and those anguished conversations is so God might have a relationship with you! Remember the Old Testament story of Eli and the boy Samuel. How Samuel doesn’t know really who God is, but God starts speaking to Samuel and Eli helps him understand and answer. Eli taught Samuel to answer this way:

“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3.9-10)

Let that be our prayer today. Speak, Lord, your servant is listening. You’re servant is participating in the conversation you are trying to have with us. The Trinity is not some dry, dusty, doctrine that we have to do mental calisthenics to accept or to shut off our minds to accept. The Trinity is a relationship we fall in love to experience.
The Trinity is our name for reality. As Charles Wesley wrote, “We are transcripts of the Trinity.”


We can’t be transcripts, love letters, by ourselves. Together, we are God’s conversation made visible in the world. In other words, we are the Church. Let the Church hear the Lord’s invitation to come and eat with Him!