John 14:1-21 – We Believe in One God in Three Persons
Introduction
Last week we were looking at God being the Creator and Sustainer of all things. God made all things out of nothing, simply by the power of his own word: the vast reaches of space with its billions of galaxies and trillions of stars; the tiny creatures that you can only see through the microscope and the even tinier atoms from which all things are made. And God made us – you and me – and he loves us. All of creation is an expression of God's love and care for us.
WOW! These truths fill us with Wonder and motivate us to Obedience and Worship.
But what is God like? What can we say about the character of this God whom we worship?
People have many different views of what God is like. But we can only know what God is like – only know God – as he reveals himself. And God has revealed himself – made himself known – through the Scriptures and supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this series based on the Nicene Creed, we are looking at something of who God is and what he has done for us. And this morning we are looking at the fact that there is only one God but that God consists of three persons: God the Father; God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This is what we call the doctrine of the Trinity.
Now we need to begin by acknowledging that our minds cannot comprehend the being of God. Nor can we understand how one God can exist as three persons and remain one. But this should not put us off. If our minds could comprehend the being of God then we would be God, and God would not be God.
Nevertheless, we believe that there is one God in three persons because this is what God has revealed concerning himself in the pages of Scripture.
And this is a distinctive aspect of Biblical Christian belief. It distinguishes Christians from the other great Abrahamic religions of Judaism and of Islam, as it distinguishes Christianity from many of the cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses.
It is a truth emphasised in our Anglican liturgy. Many prayers and collects, addressed to God the Father, will end with words like these: "… through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever."
So, let's look at together on what the Bible teaches about our one God in three persons.
A Paradoxical picture
Most attempts to picture what our triune God is like, turn out to be misrepresentations. The picture is sometimes used of a three-leaf clover – one leaf but three elements to it. This fails because Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not three parts of God. Each person is the Godhead in all his glorious fulness.
All pictures are inadequate, but you may find the following diagram helpful; it was a favourite of mediaeval theologians and may help us to understand what the Bible teaches on this aspect of God.
This diagram depicts what we believe concerning our God: The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Spirit is God. But the Father is not the same person as the Son, nor is the Father or the Son the same person as the Holy Spirit. There are three persons who are each God, but there is only one God.
This reflects, I believe, what God has revealed of himself in the pages of Holy Scripture. Let me try outline what the Bible teaches on this theme by means of seven propositions:
1. There is only one God: In Isaiah 44:6-7, for instance, God declares of himself:
“This is what the LORD says –
Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty:
I am the first and I am the last
apart from me there is no God"
This and countless other Scriptures assert that there is only one God. All other supposed gods are at best idols and at worst demons.
2. God the Father is God: So in Matthew 6:9 Jesus teaches us to pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…" and in John 20:17 Jesus tells Mary Magdalene, "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God."
3. The Lord Jesus is God: I would encourage you to look at the notes for Life Groups that go with this series to see the full weight of evidence on this point, but here let me remind you to the opening verses of John's Gospel where he writes: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." Jesus, the Word made flesh is fully God and shares the full character of God the Creator.
4. Jesus is not the same person as the Father. This is evident from Jesus' words to Mary Magdalene in John 20:17 that we quoted earlier, but is also clear in the Bible reading we had from John 14 earlier in which Jesus says that: he is going to the Father; he is the only way to the Father; he is in the Father and the Father is in him etc. Jesus and the Father are separate 'persons' with an intimate relationship to each other.
5. The Holy Spirit is a person, not an impersonal force: Again, consult the Home Group notes for more on this, but in John 14 that we read, Jesus says that with his departure he will "ask the Father and he will send you another advocate/counsellor who will be with you for ever." The Holy Spirit is a person able to minister to the disciples just as Jesus has ministered to them.
6. The Holy Spirit is God. In Acts 5:3-4, the Apostle Peter tells Ananias that he has lied to the Holy Spirit yet with the next breath he tells him "you have not lied just to human beings but to God." The Holy Spirit is God and is spoken of as active in creation and in the work of redemption.
7. The Holy Spirit is not the same 'person' as God the Father or God the Son. We read earlier in John 14:16 that Jesus says, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – the Spirit of truth." Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to each other as separate 'persons'.
Our Triune God existed from all eternity as a community of three persons in one God. Our minds cannot comprehend this but it is what Scripture teaches and this is what we believe and confess.
Let me say a little more about the relationship of the three persons of the Godhead. God is love and the community of the Trinity is a community bound together in love for one another.
The community of love that is our Triune God is an open community.
Creation is an outpouring of the love of our Triune God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God creates because he loves and he loves all that he has created. It is as if the love of God cannot be contained within the persons of the Godhead but creates a world, a universe, that it also might experience and know the love of God.
And the love of God is expressed in the single-minded work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our redemption. The Father has loved us and sent his Son into the world for us (John 3:16). The Son loved us and gave himself for us (Galatians 2:20). The Holy Spirit pours out God's love in our hearts enabling us to know that we are owned as God's beloved children (Romans 5:5). We need to be careful to see that Father, Son and Spirit are united and of one purpose in our redemption. We may not picture God as an angry Father who is placated by the sacrificial work of Jesus, his Son. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of one heart, mind and purpose in our redemption. Redemption is the united work of the Triune God by which we are brought back within the embrace of God's love.
So we experience God as a loving Father who is for us; a loving Saviour who gave himself for us that we might be reconciled to God; a Spirit at work within us enabling us to feel and know the love of God in which we are embraced for all eternity.
How should this truth shape our lives?
As we were reminded last week, we were created in the image of God. We who have come to know God in Christ have been redeemed in order that this image may be renewed in us. What does this mean in the light of what we have been looking at this morning concerning the Triune character of our God?
God is a community of 'persons' united in purpose and in love. That community is an open community, reaching out to embrace others in the love of the Godhead.
If we are to reflect the image of God, we are to be a people united in love for God and for one another. Jesus calls us to be one as he and the Father are one (see John 11:22-23). We are to be a people united in mind and purpose (Philippians 2:1-5). We are to be a people marked by this unity of mind and love even in our created diversity. And we are to be an open community, always reaching out to draw others into the embrace of the love of our Triune God.
This is the purpose for which we have been redeemed. This is our calling. Let us strive with all the energy our God supplies to become ever more fully the people Christ calls us to be?
Peter Misselbrook: Christ Church Downend – 28/9/2025