Our lives as human beings, as husbands and wives, as disciples of Christ, as members of Christ’s Body, the church, and as neighbors, will reflect what we actually believe about the Trinity, not what we say we believe. Many Christians live as “functional unitarians,” never denying the propositions of one God in Father, Son, and Spirit, but not quite realizing that Father, Son, and Spirit matter for persons. We can’t relate to others unless we know what relationships are made to be. Life without the Trinity will be fractured, stressful, and empty.

We will only try to tease out rather than totally untangle all the implications tonight. But because we become like what we worship, we need the Trinity. To the degree that we live Trinitarianly, we will be joined together, joyful, and loving.

We are limited and challenged in this effort due to our finitude. We cannot understand everything about the eternal, infinite God. But “the most strategic decision we ever make is the decision of what to emphasize” (Sanders, 15). So let us consider what the Trinity means. What does it mean that our God is Triune?

1. Communion with Other Persons (that are not us)

The Trinity means eternal community, a communion or fellowship with between persons that is intimate and giving, not distant/unapproachable or demanding/greedy.

Have you ever considered God before Genesis 1:1? “In the beginning God (was).” God is the eternal “I AM”; He always has been; He never began.

God minus creation would still be God, but God minus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would not be God. (Sanders, The Deep Things of God, 70)

So what was He doing all that time? Was He bored? Was He lonely?

One provocative translation I’ve heard is, “In the beginning was community” (Douglas Jones). We certainly must not think, “In the beginning was Me.” God always has been in relationship. His being is personal, Tri-personal. He didn’t learn how to relate to others after creation. He has never been alone. That’s who He is, not something added. That means that eternal life is Trinitarian. Eternal life is shared life, not individual life.

That’s why “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). When God made man in His image, He made man and woman; He made more than one, and both equally in His image. Why did Solomon say, “Two are better than one…a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9, 12)? Because we are made in the image of a relating God.

God made us for fellowship, with each other and with Himself. What happened at the fall? Separation from God and separation between Adam and Eve. The separation in fellowship is also called death. But “this is eternal life, that they might know You and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Life is fellowship.

So Father, Son, and Spirit were not bored by themselves. The Scottish preacher Robert Leighton said,

It is most true of that Blessed Trinity, each is to the other a theater large enough. (quoted in Sanders, 96)

The Trinity was delighted in one another. Then they made man in Their image to know and enjoy a similar communion.

that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (1 John 1:3)

Life, when we find it in our homes or on our street or with fellow worshippers, is not uninterrupted bachelorhood or Internet church in your pajamas or any sort of extended isolation. The Trinity means that God is not distant or antisocial, He is eternal community. The Trinity created us, as His image-bearers, for relationship, for communion with other persons that are not us.

2. Unity among Other Persons (who are not like us)

The Trinity means diversity with equality, unity that is harmonious, not merely uniformity or sameness.

R.C. Sproul described the work of ancient Greek philosophers who struggled with the problem of “the one and the many.”

How, the philosophers wondered, can we make sense out of so many diverse things that are part of our experience? Do we live in a universe that is ultimately coherent or ultimately chaotic?…In fact, the very word universe combines the concepts of unity and diversity—-it describes a place of great diversity that nevertheless has unity. (What Is the Trinity?, 13-14)

The reason for a world of variety and diversity that is not chaos is due to the nature of the Creator. The three Persons exist with diversity in function but equality in being. They are not like each other in Person but united in Being.

One god in three persons—every person is the entire deity and yet no person exists as the deity for itself without the other two. (Martin Luther, quoted in Culver, 105)

No person of the Godhead exists only for Himself. Like our God, you do not exist for yourself. And like God, differences do not need to cause conflict.

The three persons are never in conflict of purpose, never jealous over another’s position or specific work, never prideful over one’s own position or work, and they are always sharing fully the delight in being the one God and accomplishing the unified purpose of God. (Bruce Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 20)

The Spirit has never written in His journal about being bitter that the Son gets the name that is above every other name. The Father has never been angry that He had to stay in heaven and let the Spirit hover over the face of the earth.

Consider a few examples of this principle, starting with marriage. We do not say that men and women should be the same or do the same things. Husbands and wives are not interchangeable. We also do not say that men are better or that women are superior. We say they are equal, and not because we desire to be politically correct, but because we are Trinitarians. Trinitarians know that husbands can be the head and wives are co-image bearers and co-heirs of the grace of life. Understanding roles within the Trinity helps authority and submission within marriage to be a dance, not a duel. See Doug Wilson’s version here.

Second, consider what the Trinity has to do with the church. Why can the members of the Body be different and united, without competition?

If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Corinthians 12:17-20, 24-26)

It’s not just fact that we’re different yet connected; it’s better because we’re different and connected!

Trinitarians appreciate and exult over diversity; mixing the right multiples together produces complement, a completeness or perfection that wasn’t otherwise possible. Unitarians are cookie cutters; everyone must play the same instrument. Unless the other person looks like them and talks like them (uniformity), something must be wrong (usually, we figure, in the other person). Unitarians are always stressed, because they are always needing the other person to change OR they are always competing with the other person for superiority and power. There can only be one person in the first chair, one person who is esteemed.

Modalism doesn’t work any better. A modalist marriage is one where the husband and wife take turns at the top. They know that they are equal, but that means, in practical experience, that only one can be at the top at a time; they just alternate. The same problem happens in the church with different members. Every part is trying to be the same/top part.

The Trinity means diversity and equality, individual roles and responsibilities without individualism. The Trinity created us to be different and simultaneously glorious; no one’s shadow gets in the way.

Difference in function does not indicate inferiority of nature. (James White, Forgotten Trinity 66)

A third example of this principle is the grace of harmony. Consider this extended section from Michael Reeves’ book, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith.

Christianity has always had a special love affair with music. The Scriptures are shot through with music, as is life in the church. John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet, tried to explain why it should be so in his “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” (Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of church music):

From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony
This universal frame began.
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high, “Arise ye more than dead!”
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And music’s pow’r obey.
From harmony, from Heav’nly harmony This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason [octave] closing full in man.

Dryden’s words find echoes throughout the Christian world: C. S. Lewis had the Christlike figure of Aslan sing Narnia into existence in The Magician’s Nephew; his friend J. R. R. Tolkien imagined the creation of the cosmos as a musical event in The Silmarillion; and in the eighteenth century, George Frideric Handel set Dryden’s ode to music so you can actually hear melodically how, after a dramatic silence and void that reminds one of Genesis 1, the overflowing joy of the heavenly harmony bursts out.

It is from the heavenly harmony of Father, Son and Spirit that this universal frame of the cosmos—and all created harmony—comes. To hear a tuneful harmony can be one of the most intoxicatingly beautiful experiences. And no wonder: as in heaven, so on earth. The Father, Son and Spirit have always been in delicious harmony, and thus they create a world where harmonies— distinct beings, persons or notes working in unity—are good, mirroring the very being of the triune God.

The eternal harmony of the Father, Son and Spirit provides the logic for a world in which everything was created to exist in cheerful conviviality, and which still, despite the discord of sin and evil, is so essentially harmonious. (Reeves, 58-59)

A few pages later Reeves writes about Jonathan Edwards who:

was an ardent lover of music. One of his favorite words was harmony. Declaring that the Father, Son and Spirit constitute “the supreme harmony of all,” he believed, like Bach, that when we sing together in harmony (as he often did with his family) we do something that reflects God’s own beauty.

[Edwards:] “The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other, is by music. When I would form in my mind an idea of a society in the highest degree happy, I think of them as expressing their love, their joy, and the inward concord and harmony and spiritual beauty of their souls by sweetly singing to each other.” (Reeves, 60)

The Trinity reveals “a unity that is not redundancy.”

Unison achieves a kind of unity, but without texture and with built-in redundancy. With unison, you have several voices singing the same melody. And while unison has its own beauty, there is in harmony a kind of glorious unity with texture and complexity that is simply lacking with unison. The unity achieved through harmony avoids redundancy, for every voice matters, and every part contributes its unique sound. (Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance, 135)

We learn from the Trinity how to be united to and appreciate those who are different than us, in the marriage union, in members’ unity, and in musical harmony. The Trinity means unity among other persons who are not like us.

3. Love of Other Persons (who may or may not be lovely)

The Trinity means intimate love that is true, holy, and mainly proactive rather than disingenuous, sentimental, and mainly reactive.

”God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). He has always been love and He didn’t create in order to finally be able to express it to someone. He has always been expressing it. When He created, He expanded and shared His expression of love, but love always was in the Trinity. Solomon referred to the Son’s place with His Father at the foundation of the world.

When he established the heavens, I was there;
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
(Proverbs 8:27-30, ESV)

We should think when we say “Father and Son.” It’s okay to talk about Jesus as the Second Person of the Trinity, but don’t leave it at the technical level. The Persons of the Trinity love each other with hesed—steadfast, loyal love. They love each other with agape—committed, devoted, serving love.

Unless God is love, what would we be good for?

If, for example, God weren’t about having us know and love him, but simply about having us live under his rule, then our behavior and performance would be all that mattered. (Reeves, 99)

The first and greatest commandment is to love God because that’s who God is and we were made to enjoy intimacy with Him. The second greatest commandment is to love one another because we were made to reflect the Trinity. That’s why the repeated instruction to husbands is that they love their wives; that’s what image-bearers of the only true God do.

God does not love the concept of “relationship” without knowing the name of the person He’s relating to. The thought of relationship comes from relating, not visa versa. Similarly, we don’t come to love a “force,” but God in three Persons. We also shouldn’t get stuck loving the idea of “neighbor,” but not actual neighbors.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour…That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbour. The duty towards humanity may often take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable…But we have to love our neighbour because he is there—a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. (Chesterton, Heretics, 80)

We Christians love to talk about LOVE but we do not want to wash the dirty feet of our friend. We are dualistic lovers, not those who love so much that we get dirt under our fingernails. The Trinity means love of other persons who may, or may not, be lovely.

Conclusion

What does it mean to be “godly”? It means more than thinking clean thoughts, or saying Bible verses in our heads. Being godly means being like God in communion, unity, and love.

The Trinity is a revealed and relevant doctrine, the eternal Three-in-One is truth and life. Our failure to worship a Triune God results in practical day to day failures. Sin messes up Trinitarian life.

• Rather than Trinitarian community, sin makes us selfish and isolates us; it separates us from relationships and fellowship; it makes us lonely and fractured. Sin reflects a distant, hermit god.
• Rather than Trinitarian appreciation for diverse but equal persons, sin makes us proud (and stressed); we exult in our uniqueness instead of serving and partnering. Sin reflects a authoritarian, tyrant god.
• Rather than Trinitarian love, sin makes demands and writes laws; we base love on performance rather than person. The best we can do without love is co-exist in the same room without punching each other.

Sin is why we need the gospel. The gospel overcomes sin to reconcile us to God and to each other, to humble us and help us show honor to one another, and to give us new hearts that can love.

[I]n the triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, the beauty behind all beauty and the joy behind all joy. (Michael Reeves, 62)