Finding Joy in the TrinitySýnishorn

God’s Revealing

Many of us who have spent time in church or in Scripture keep “bumping into” the Trinity but aren’t able to identify or describe it clearly. There’s a good reason for that. Through most of the Bible, it may seem as though God doesn’t say a lot about the Trinity—at least not directly.

Much of what we know about the Trinity wasn’t revealed until the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God’s first priority was explaining to His people that He is ONE God—the one true God. Polytheism was rampant among all the other nations, and God wanted to redirect the hearts of His people to the truth, so He repeated this theme throughout the Old Testament. In fact, to both ancient and modern Jews who rely on the Old Testament, the most important Scripture is generally regarded to be Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” God is one. This doctrine stands out as the most important doctrine of the Old Testament, the heart of monotheism (the belief in one God—as opposed to polytheism, the belief in many gods). But this verse points to far more than just the fact that there is one God—it points to His preeminence as the one true God. He is singular in His essence and superior in His being.

Since the ancient Jews were surrounded by polytheistic nations, the Old Testament writers spent a lot of effort establishing there is one true God. Only then could God begin to introduce more complexity about Himself: He is one God who consists of three Persons. In the next steps of His progressive revelation, God sent His Son to earth to dwell among the people and then sent His Spirit to dwell within His people.

God’s process remains obscured to someone who only reads the Old Testament. To see the Trinity in the Old Testament, you have to read it through the New Testament lens. But make no mistake: God had been dropping hints about the Trinity since Genesis 1.

When the New Testament points to the Spirit, His actions are described with fluttering, wind-related words, helping us see He is the same Person who was present and active at creation. The Old and New Testaments work together to help us better understand what God has been saying all along about His presence and activity in our world.

In our journey to know God better, we’ve now covered the fact that God is a revealer. He reveals his nature—a nature that is triune.

Tomorrow, we will get to know God better by spending some time looking at God’s unity (as it applies to His oneness) and His diversity (as it applies to the three Persons of the Trinity).