Week Fourteen-Day Five: Trinitarian

We began Day Five of last week by saying this:

“Trying to be in relationship to God is complicated. We have to live in a constant tension between two diametrically opposed truths. On the one hand, it is very, very difficult to know God … On the other hand, God longs to be known and has made Himself available to us and knowable by us.”

We could have said that on every Friday of the last fourteen weeks, couldn’t we? And this is as true of His Trinitarian nature as it is with any other aspect of His being. This just brings us back to the quote from Augustine that we encountered yesterday as we opened: “There is no subject where error is more dangerous, research more laborious, and discovery more fruitful than the oneness of the Trinity (unitas Trinitatis) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

This aspect of God is so complex and so mysterious that God only unveiled it over time. He did not make Himself fully known as three-Persons-in-one-Being originally to be sure, but He did give hints. These hints can be found throughout the Old Testament.

In fact, on page one of the creation account we hear God say, “Let us make man in our image.”[1]

Other indications of the distinction of individual Persons within the Godhead are found throughout the Old Testament. For example, we find an allusion to the Father in the One whose face cannot be seen by Moses in Exodus 33.

“¹⁸ Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ ¹⁹ And the LORD said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. ²⁰ But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’”

We see the unique person of the Spirit represented in the pillar of fire and the cloud which led the descendants of Israel through the desert after they left Egypt recorded in Exodus 13.

²⁰ After leaving Sukkoth they camped at Etham on the edge of the desert. ²¹ By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night. ²² Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people. 

And in the third chapter of the book of Daniel we find an implication of the Son in the story of three men who are sentenced to be burned in a furnace by the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar. He throws three men into a fire. After a few minutes four men are seen walking around in the fire unharmed. The King, himself an unbeliever, claims that one looks “like a son of the gods.”

²⁴ Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, “Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?”

They replied, “Certainly, Your Majesty.”

²⁵ He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

²⁶ Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!”

So Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego came out of the fire, ²⁷ and the satraps, prefects, governors and royal advisers crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them.

²⁸ Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God. ²⁹ Therefore I decree that the people of any nation or language who say anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way.”

³⁰ Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

There’s more. Look at these passages and see if you can find a suggestion of one of the Persons of the trinity.

• Deuteronomy 32:6
• Job 33:4
  • Genesis 16:7-14

⁷ The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. ⁸ And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

⁹ Then the angel of the LORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” ¹⁰ The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

¹¹ The angel of the LORD also said to her:

“You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. ¹² He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”

¹³ She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” ¹⁴ That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

Obviously, as we have seen, what is hinted at in the Old Testament is brought into full view in the life of Jesus. The Son appears in the flesh. He speaks of the Father as a Person other than Himself and yet fully one with Himself. He does things that only God should do and he refers to Himself in ways that are clearly blasphemous unless …

BEFORE YOU START YOUR DAY

1. I do not believe God is silent.After all, John called his good friend and the second Person of the trinity “the Word”.Pray that He will speak to you today and show you glimpses of His Trinitarian nature.