The Trinity Explained
- Dr. John Brock
- Aug 12, 2009
In preparing for our Questions series, we got some questions that I wanted to avoid like the proverbial head-cold. There weren’t many I wanted to avoid more than I wanted to dodge this one.
It is very hard to comprehend the Trinity, how do you explain to your child that Jesus and God are one, but Jesus sits on the right hand of God?
Don’t you people have any easy questions on your mind? Couldn’t you have asked about the transubstantiation / consubstantiation views of the Lord’s Supper? It would have been easier than this one. In fact, my first response when I read it was, “good luck with that – let me know how it turns out.” However, I’ve made a commitment and a conscious effort not to avoid the tough questions so here goes.
The Bible never actually uses the word “Trinity”, but it does teach us that we serve a “triune” God. Jesus referenced all three persons of the Trinity in John 15:26. “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me…” In Deuteronomy 6:4, the Scripture says, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” In Genesis 1:1, the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to capture this truth about God like this. “In the beginning God [Hebrew word “Elohim” is plural] created [a singular verb] the heavens and the earth.”
Teaching abstract concepts to children is difficult because thinking like that is a skill most of them have not mastered. They think in very concrete terms. Just explaining the simple plan of salvation to them requires putting eternal concepts in concrete terms. That is why I use some easy-to-understand visuals God has allowed me to develop over the years to communicate with them.
Please don’t misunderstand. The Trinity, just like the plan of salvation, is not really abstract. Our God is real. He is not a concept. However, we are trying to explain a God we’ve never experienced with our physical senses to a little person for whom those senses are the main way they’ve connected with their world. That can be extremely difficult.
To whoever submitted this question let me say that I wish I had an easy or a perfect answer for you. There just isn’t one. Someone once said something like this. “To try and deny the Trinity, a man is in danger of losing His soul. To try and explain the Trinity, he is in danger of losing his mind.” There are some things about our God that are bigger than we can get our finite minds around. You’ve probably heard me say before that I’m okay with that. In fact, I want and need God to be bigger, stronger and smarter than I can fully understand. That means I have to live with some unanswered questions about life and some mysteries about God, but I’m at peace with that because He is big enough to trust. Your child has given you a great opportunity to help him/her understand how awesome our God is. It is okay to say, “I will try to help you understand that, but because our God is so much greater than we are, it won’t be a perfect explanation.” This is a teachable moment; don’t miss it. In seizing the moment, however, remember that your children are not short theologians. Don’t expect them to understand everything. They come to Christ the way He said we all have to come – in childlike faith.
The other thing you need to remember is that God is greater than human language can describe. In fact, we have to be careful not to let our attempt to describe God make us guilty of diminishing His glory. Having said that we do live in a triune universe and illustrations are all around us. Commentator John Phillips in his commentary on the gospel of John has been as helpful to me as anyone. Allow me to paraphrase what he said. There is space, matter, and time. Each of those aspects of our universe is also triune. We describe space in terms of length, breadth, and height. Time is pictured as past, present, and future.
I tried to write one or two other ideas I’ve heard used over the years, but because they sound so trivial, I couldn’t even bring myself to finish describing them. However, let me give you one more. Someone suggested water as an illustration. I’ve been told that if you consider the properties of water scientifically the analogy breaks down, but because of some things about God’s creation and His use of water in Scripture, I may be more comfortable with this than some of the others. Just as God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, water exists as liquid, solid (ice), and gas (vapor).
You may be able to think of other ways of communicating these things to a child and if you do, pass them along to me. I’d love to read them. The main thing is to be as simple and concrete as possible and to make peace with an inadequate explanation. You might as well because “inadequate” is the only kind of explanation we have.
