God's Nature: Threeness in Oneness

Aloneness.  I can’t imagine anyone who’s never dealt with aloneness.  It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, married or single, a teenager or elderly.  It’s one of the things we all have in common.

When I was a teenager I felt really alone.  I went to school, worked each week at an assisted living facility, ran a small lawn care business, worked around our family’s farm, spent time with my family, and went fishing, hunting, and camping, mostly by myself.  As I did all these things I had a nagging feeling, just wishing some guy from the church would just call me and spend some time with me.  

After a while, I did invite myself into a friendship with a couple guys in the church. We began to spend time with each other outside of the Thursday night men’s prayer meeting.  On Monday nights we spent time building unity through a very time honored tradition in the mountains of North Carolina. We watched the completely real sport of professional wrestling.  Some of you might call it “wrestling” but it is more accurately pronounced “wrastling.”  It may have seem silly from the outside looking in but it was important to me.

Throughout the whole Bible we see that God has provided solutions to this need that all of us have.  He’s provided a relationship with Him, a relationship with others in the church, marriage, and friendships in general.  But a friendship with God is foundational to all the other relationships.  In 1 John 1:3-4 it says, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.”  God is giving us an invitation to be in fellowship with Himself and with the other believers.

This morning I want to address what the Bible says about a quality of God, which is threeness in oneness.  And I want to show what it means to be invited into relationship with a God that is three in one.  I’m not going to address whether or not the Bible is an accurate text telling us what God is really like.  We’ve already covered that.  I want to move on and address what the Bible actually says about our subject this morning. 

One of the best things you can do in reading the Bible is to make correct observations about what the Bible says.  The moment you and I start adding to what it says or taking away from what it says then we get in trouble in our interpretations.  There are many times that I have misunderstood what Miriam wanted.  For example, the other day we ate breakfast for supper.  She had placed the soggier bacon on a paper towel, then placed another paper towel on top of the bacon.  She then placed the crispy bacon on top of the paper towel that she had just laid down.  I didn’t see her do all this.  I thought there was only one layer of bacon with the crispy bacon on top of the soggy bacon.  She likes crispy bacon and I like the soggier bacon.  She told me that the crispy bacon was on top.  So, I didn’t want to not eat her crispy bacon because I was being gracious and considerate.  Not knowing that there was soggy bacon underneath the first layer of paper towel, I pulled the crispy bacon off the top of the pile and grabbed the bacon that was underneath it.

One responsibility a Christian has to God’s Word is being humble towards it.  We don’t add anything to what is said and we don’t take away anything either.  We make conclusions from what is actually said.  At times, we have to define what certain things mean.  Like what does “underneath” mean?  Does it mean that there is crispy and soggy bacon separated by a paper towel?  Or does it mean there’s only one layer of bacon in which the crispy and soggy bacon are layered on top of each other?  Understanding what the Bible actually says can help us understand what it means.

We don’t have to fit the verses into our preconceived ideas of what God is like.  Just let the Bible speak for itself.  There are some things about God that we have a more full understanding.  And other things we have less of an understanding.  One of the marks of a mature Christian who is serving the church comes out of 1 Timothy 3:9: “They (deacons) must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.” (emphasis added).  The NASB translates the verse as, “but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.”  There are some things about our faith that’s mysterious.  And that’s okay.  But not everything about Christianity is mysterious.  God has revealed Himself and the gospel very clearly.  So, let me share observations of what the Bible as a whole says about God being three in one.

First, we’ll see that God is three persons.  Second, we’ll see that each person is fully God.  Third, we’ll see that there is one God.

God is three persons.  From the very beginning of the Bible we see a hint of there being more than one person involved in creation: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1).  At this point we don’t know much.  But we do know that there is “God” and there is also “the Spirit of God.”  Later in Genesis 1:26 it says, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…’”  Who is the “our” he is referring to?  It can’t be referring to angels or any other created thing because Genesis 1:27 clarifies who the “our” is: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.”  He didn’t create man in the image of angels or anything else other than Himself.  He created people in His own image.  If you just started reading the Bible and Genesis 1 is your only source of understanding what God is like, then you only have a vague picture of there being multiple persons who each are called God.  We would just know that there is a God who creates and there’s also another person at creation who is called “the Spirit of God”.  We would also know that this “God” refers to himself in the plural by saying “our”.  In the New Testament, John 1 opens in a similar way as Genesis 1.

In John 1 Jesus is called “the Word”: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” (John 1:14)  The chapter describes “the Word” as a separate person from another person who is called “God”: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” (John 1:1-2) Not only is Jesus being called “God” but it also says that He was “with God”.  This shows that there are two separate persons each being called “God.”

In John 16:7 Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit, which is the “Counselor” when He says, “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away.  Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”  One person will leave, then another person will show up.  There are other verses that show that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are distinct persons but I want to move on the next observation.

Each person is fully God.  Peter clearly communicates that Jesus is God by saying, “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those through the righteousness of our God and savior Jesus Christ have a received a faith as precious as ours…” (2 Peter 1:1).

In Acts 5:3-4 we see that the Holy Spirit is referred to as God, “Then Peter said, ‘Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?  Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold?  And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal?  What made you think of doing such a thing?  You have not lied to men but to God.’”  Since they had lied to the Holy Spirit that meant they were lying to God.

In Romans 1:7b we see the Father being referred to as God, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”

The last observation is that we see that God is one:  “Hear O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” (Deuteronomy 6:4).  Romans 3:29-30 states the same thing, “Is God the God of the Jews only?  Is he not the God of the Gentiles too?  Yes of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.”  The NASB translates verse 30 as saying that “God...is one.”  The ESV translates it as saying “God is one…”  The Bible states that “God is one” and it also makes various statements that would say something like “There is one God.”  Many theologians would say that it may be that both of those statements aren’t saying the same thing.  To say that “God is one” is saying that God is unified even though being three persons.  To say that “There is one God” is saying that though people worship many different gods, there is only one true God that we should worship.  Maybe there’s some overlap in the meaning.  But in any matter, Deuteronomy 6:4 is very clear in that “the LORD is one.”  He is unified.

Are there other places in the Bible where it talks about two or more people being referred to as “one”?  In Genesis 2:24 it says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,  and they will become one flesh.”  In Genesis 11:6, in the story of the tower of Babel, “The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.’”   These are examples of two or more persons being called “one”.

So, what exactly is God inviting us into in 1 John 3 when He says we can have fellowship “with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ…”?  If there are three persons then there must be some kind of interaction between them.  One interaction we see is in John 17.  This is the place where Jesus is praying to the Father right before He went to the cross.  We don’t have a lot of examples in the Bible of what exactly Jesus prayed to the Father but in this instance we do.  John says of Jesus’ prayer, “I in them and you in me.  May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:23)  The Father loved us even as He loved Jesus.  That’s something amazing to think about.  A perfect, obedient Son would be easier to love than loving me.  But even though we weren’t perfect, and never will be, He still loves us like He loves His only Son.