What is it about the Trinity that you don't understand?

 

Understanding the Holy Trinity is not that difficult really. Let's see if we can do so together.

God, Our Father in Heaven, is a living Creator God. He is a Spirit. He has always existed and He created humanity as well as the whole Universe and what is in it.. 

As a loving Creator He wished to communicate with His creations - us; and to make sure we know that He loves us and cares for us. 

He did so by contacting receptive people, with clear minds and leadership skills, who could "receive" His messages when in prayer and relay them to us. People like Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and all the prophets who have taught us about God, about His commandments, and how we are to live our lives in order to please Him and to spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

But humanity is stubborn and would not listen to the prophets and the Word of God. Time and again they failed, got it wrong, and in sinning they further distanced themselves from their loving Father.      

So, when the time was right, God decided to visit us Himself, in person, so that we get to see Him, know Him, and experience His love personally.

To do so God had three options.

He could have appeared in human form as a man descending from Heaven on a cloud perhaps. Or just appear in person out of nowhere. Various apparitions here and there. He could have shown us His power by turning water to wine, walking on water, calming the sea, healing people and raising them from the dead. He could have shown His powers and omnipotence like a Superman figure perhaps. 

We would have been amazed, astounded, and we would have obeyed His commandments through sheer fear and terror of this omnipotent Being. Hardly the act of a loving Creator God, is it?

God could have appeared on earth as a vulnerable little baby. Born of a man and a woman and slowly grow up amongst us; teaching us through His guidance and examples. Sharing His love with us as we witnessed His power and greatness. But then, He would have been no different to the many prophets before Him; and we would have treated Him just the same as we did the prophets. At best by ignoring Him, or at worst by putting Him to death.

So God decided to come amongst us as a baby conceived of Deity and humanity through the Holy Spirit. 

This is the mystery that many have difficulty in believing. A human baby born of a human virgin through the Holy Spirit. But once we get over our difficulty and accept it as fact as taught in Scripture we can then move on to understanding the Holy Trinity. 

We can either stubbornly decide not to believe, and in doing so we get stuck and cannot move further forward. 

Or we can decide to accept that we do not understand yet we believe without understanding. In pure faith, step in the dark, no proof or evidence; we accept the concept of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one Deity. They have always existed as Spirits. One God in three persons.

Now we move forward to the next step. 

Through the Holy Spirit and a human woman, a baby is born and is named Jesus. 

It is obvious from an early age that He is different. He is knowledgeable. He lives life differently from His contemporaries. He is caring, loving and merciful. He teaches love and forgiveness to everyone. He portrays that love through His healing miracles and by raising the dead. 

He calls Himself the Son of God and refers to God in Heaven as His Father - Our Father. 

Many are scandalised by this claim, and they feel threatened by Him to the point where they put Him to death.

Three days later He is raised from the dead. 

Now this bit is very important. He was not raised from the dead by Peter, or any of His disciples, or by any other human being. No human has ever claimed to have raised Jesus from the dead. 

He was raised by God His Father so that He may be honoured by God; and so that God, and Jesus, are glorified in the eyes of humanity. 

Jesus was raised from the dead by God. 

What is also important is that once raised, in human form, and witnessed by many; Jesus, the One who called Himself the Son of God, remained raised. He did not die ever again. 

When Jesus raised Lazarus, Jarius' daughter and others, they eventually died again. But He never died a human death again. He conquered death and conquered evil once and for all.

When the time came for Him to ascend to Heaven, His disciples were distraught, confused and heart-broken. Is that it? God sent His Son, He lived amongst us and is now gone up to Heaven. Is this the final chapter?

But Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples and live "within them" - within their souls. 

To be one with them. The unity of the Spiritual Deity and the human soul as happened at Pentecost.  

Over the years, this particular miracle of Pentecost has been side-lined and perhaps deliberately obfuscated to destroy any credence in its reality.

But the fact remains, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity, can and does descend on certain people and change their lives. This was not a once-off event that happened to the disciples of Christ a long time ago. It does happen today, and I have witnessed people who possess the Holy Spirit. 

However, today's society has grown hard of heart. People are more ready to believe that the devil can possess an individual against his will; than to believe that we can invite the Holy Spirit into our soul through earnest prayer and faith ... if we want to.

And that's the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three persons in one.

As for you; you have a choice to make. You can either believe ... or not!