In the Name

Why it matters

Jesus said eternal life is knowing God: “that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3) Who Jesus is, and who the Holy Spirit is, is who God is.

There is one God

• “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” (Isaiah 44:6)
• “One God and Father of all,” (Ephesians 4:6)

The Father is God

• “for him hath God the Father sealed.” (John 6:27)
• “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,” (1 Peter 1:2)

The Son is God

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) “All things were made by him;” (John 1:3)
• Thomas: “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28)
• “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever:” (Hebrews 1:8)
• “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” (Colossians 2:9)
• Foretold: “his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God,” (Isaiah 9:6)

The Holy Ghost is God, and a person

• Peter to Ananias: “why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost,” (Acts 5:3) then “thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.” (Acts 5:4)
• “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)
• He speaks: “the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.” (Acts 13:2)
• He guides and teaches: “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:” (John 16:13)
• He can be grieved: “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God,” (Ephesians 4:30)

The three are not the same person

• The Son prays to the Father: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5)
• The Son sends the Spirit from the Father: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father,” (John 15:26) “he shall testify of me:” (John 15:26)
• “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter,” (John 14:16)

Hints in the Old Testament

• “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:” (Genesis 1:26) and “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2)
• God says "us" more than once: “Behold, the man is become as one of us,” (Genesis 3:22) “Go to, let us go down,” (Genesis 11:7) “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8) Lesson 1 points here from its seeming contradictions.
• “and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me.” (Isaiah 48:16)

Explanation, not Scripture these are hints, read in the light of the New Testament; Jews read Genesis 1:26 other ways.

A second story: Pentecost and the promise

On the night before he died, Jesus promised the Comforter (John 14:16; John 15:26). At Pentecost “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost,” (Acts 2:4) and Peter preached that Jesus, “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.” (Acts 2:33)

The Son, at the Father's right hand, pours out the Spirit: all three in one verse.

“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age,” (Hebrews 5:14)

How it has been denied, and the answer

Site note, not Scripture those named above are named for what they teach, from their own words, so you can know the teaching when you meet it. Speak to them as Peter says: “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:” (1 Peter 3:15)

Hard questions

• "How can three be one?" Explanation, not Scripture: not three Gods who are one God, and not one person who is three persons, but one God in three persons. Every picture people use falls short: water, ice and steam is really the "masks" error above. The lesson does not need a picture; it needs the verses, and it lets God be greater than our pictures: “there is no searching of his understanding.” (Isaiah 40:28)
• "If Jesus is God, why did he pray to the Father?" He “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:” (Philippians 2:7) As a man he prayed; as the Son he shared the Father's glory “before the world was.” (John 17:5)
• "Jesus said, my Father is greater than I." He did (John 14:28). The same Gospel says they sought to kill him because he was “making himself equal with God.” (John 5:18) And Paul: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:” (Philippians 2:6) Explanation, not Scripture: greater in his place as the one sent, equal in being. A seeming contradiction to practice on (Lesson 1).
• "Did Jesus ever say he was God?" “I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30) His hearers answered, “thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” (John 10:33) Also “Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) (Lesson 2). And in his prayer before the cross: “glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5) He shared the Father's glory before anything was made.
• 1 John 5:7. “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” (1 John 5:7) History: this verse is in the King James, but it is missing from nearly every Greek copy before the 1300s; it came into the printed Greek in Erasmus's third edition (1522), which the King James translators used (Mounce, Zondervan Academic). The Trinity does not rest on this verse; every point above stands without it: “the Word was God.” (John 1:1) and “And the Word was made flesh,” (John 1:14)