Finding Joy in the TrinitySýnishorn

God’s Unity

If you’ve ever studied the Old Testament, you may have come away thinking something along these lines: Why is God so angry in the Old Testament? I like the New Testament better. God is so much nicer after Jesus shows up on the scene.

If you’ve had similar thoughts, you’re not alone. I’ve had them too. But when we pull God and His actions out of context, as we’re often prone to do, it’s easy to misunderstand His character. If we divide Him into three Persons without remembering He is ONE, we may begin to assign certain temperaments to the Persons of the Trinity (i.e. the Father is the angry one, Jesus is the nice one, and the Spirit is the weird and/or mysterious one). The good news for us is that this is theologically impossible. Much to our relief, ”Old Testament God” isn’t as unlikable as we’ve believed Him to be. For all of us who have ever felt that way, Scripture is here to set us straight and invite us into something much more beautiful and winsome. Whew!

Contrary to popular thought, God doesn’t undergo a personality transplant at the end of the Old Testament. When we follow the storyline of Scripture, we see a God who created mankind out of an overflow of love, who clothed Adam and Eve before they even repented, who rescued the Israelites out of slavery and then led them as they established a functioning society, joyfully choosing to set up camp in their midst and repeatedly forgiving them, blessing them, and reminding them He was sending a Messiah to rescue them. This is the heart of God evident in the scope of the Old Testament’s metanarrative. All along He dropped hints of what was coming, and then He delivered on His promise!

When we read Scripture as a whole, we see His oneness throughout, which helps us maintain this doctrinal balance: Each Person of the Trinity indwells the other two. We can’t emphasize one Person of God over the others. It’s vital to view them holistically, or we’ll be led into heresy. But the Trinity doesn’t mean God is divided into three parts like pieces of a pie. Each Person of the Trinity fully possesses/is the complete divine essence. The word we use to describe this is consubstantial—regarded as the same in substance or essence.

The Persons of God aren’t only united in their essence, but they’re united in their purpose as well. And this divine, eternal unity is inseparable. God has always been One, and He has always been Three. He didn’t become this way to serve some kind of purpose or function; it is who He is and how He is.