How Does the Trinity Work? Father, Son & Holy Spirit

The Trinity is one of the most important and most difficult doctrines of the Christian faith. What does it actually mean when we say that God is one God who eternally exists in three distinct persons?

In this episode of Q&A with Pastor Charlie, we take a closer look at the Trinity and unpack the difference between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. What do these terms mean, and how do they help us understand who God is and how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit work?

We also explore how the Trinity is revealed throughout Scripture, from creation to the baptism of Jesus to the work of salvation, and discuss how this understanding fits within historic Southern Baptist theology and the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.

The Trinity may be difficult to fully comprehend, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to understand it. Join us as we dig deeper into one of the foundational truths of Christianity.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

All right, welcome back to another episode of the QA with Pastor Charlie Podcast. This week we got a question sent in talking about the Trinity, which is big and confusing on its own, but they're asking about a few terms that are discussed within the theology of the Trinity. And they want to talk about the economic Trinity, the Ontological Trinity, and then where these things fall within the Southern Baptist doctrine.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

All right. Well, uh, I have to admit, when I saw this question, I I was familiar with the terms, but had to do a little bit of refreshing my memory on exactly what these terms meant, uh, because you know they're not terms that we just typically discuss just in our caught casual conversation about the Trinity. But one of the things that made me happy about this question is someone's digging deep. They're trying to understand, wrap their mind around this doctrine. And I think this is what we need to do as students of the Bible, as followers of Christ, is try to do our best to wrap our mind around hard things like the Trinity. And the Trinity is one of those doctrines, those understandings that we have that really, I think maybe sometimes troubles us the most because we try to come up with ways to describe it, explain it. And they all fall woefully short because we don't have anything else like the Trinity. And so we come up with examples or, you know, or ways to try to explain it, describe it, but again, they just eventually fall short because God is different. He's he's something far beyond our comprehension, but yet at the same time has revealed himself in a way that we we can understand things. Uh, as far as the question at the very end about, you know, where it fits into Baptist beliefs, doctrines, things of that nature, I would encourage anyone to take a look at the Baptist faith in message 2000. Uh, that is our document that we as a church hold as a statement of faith about specific things like the Trinity. And so you can find that online, and I would direct anyone's attention there to get an overall glimpse picture of what as Southern Baptists we believe. And the thing that I do like about the document is it's I think specific where it needs to be specific. I think there's latitude where we need to have latitude. But then underneath it, there are scriptural references to show the reason that we hold these beliefs about things. And I think at the end of the day, for me who's been a Southern Baptist my whole life, uh, the bottom line is what does the Bible say? What does scripture say? And a Southern Baptist, our desire is to be faithful to the scriptures. We see these scriptures as authoritative. And so our interpretation tries to come, and I think does, from our convictions and beliefs about what the Bible says. But back to the question about the Trinity. So ontological versus economic, and I think it's terms that we use to help us understand the difference between who God is in the Trinity versus how the Trinity functions and how the different parts of the Trinity operate. Now, when we're talking about the Trinity from our perspective, we're talking about one God who has eternally existed in three distinct persons. So we don't have three separate gods, but instead we have one God, but he operates, reveals himself, and exists in three different persons. So you're like, well, there's three gods. No, that is the reason of the we call it the Trinity, the triune God. Uh the word Trinity is not found in Scripture, so it's not one of those words that the Bible just says, here's Trinity, here's the definition, here's what it is. It's a word that we have formulated to describe and explain what we see functioning and operating in the Bible. How God has, we know, is one. Scriptures are very clear about that. We know that God is infinite and eternal. He's existed for forever, will always exist. We know that he is sovereign over all things, yet he operates and reveals himself and is three distinct persons within that one triune God. So when we're talking about the Trinity, we're talking about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And here's what we would say that God is one, and God is, as silly as this might sound, God is God, because God the Father is God, God the Son is God, God the Holy Spirit is God. All three of them are God, all of them are equal in deity, they're equal in value, they're equal in worth of worship, but yet again, they manifest themselves. And so that would be the ontological explanation of the Trinity, that we're simply saying that, and simply uh, you know, I use that term loosely, clearly, simply saying that God is one God who's always existed in three distinct persons who are each God yet are one. Now, when we talk about the economic part of the Trinity, we're we're talking about how they function, the roles that they play. And what's interesting is while we would say that all three of the parts of the Trinity are God and they're all God and worthy of worship, they work in a hierarchy, if you will, of how they function. So we always see that God the Father is the one who's orchestrating, speaking, decreeing, willing things to happen. And then we see the Son underneath him being an agent that's working in that and accomplishing his will. And then we see the Spirit of God at work, applying and working in that. So let me just give you some examples of I think how we see that. We're working through the book of Genesis, and so we see in the Genesis narrative, while the word's not there, the Trinity at work. Now, how do we see that? Well, it's not as explicit as I as we would like it to be, but here's what we know the Bible tells us that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Well, who is God? He's the Trinity, distinct three persons but one God. Well, God is speaking things into existence. We see that the Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the waters. At the same time, while we don't see it in the Genesis passage, what we do know later is that the Bible tells us in both Hebrews and Colossians that Jesus, the second part of the Trinity, the Son, is the agent by whom God is creating all things, and all things in him are held together. He's sustaining creation. And so we see that triune work there in the creation. We see it at different parts, for instance, at the baptism of Jesus. So we see Jesus, the Son, is who is incarnated in humanity, is being baptized, but at the same time, we see the Father speaking, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. And then we see the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove in that moment. So again, all three are God, all three are operating separately, but but they're one God together. One of the best ways I think we can see it and understand it is in the work of salvation. So we know that salvation is God the Father's plan to restore, redeem, and reunite humanity to himself because of our sin. Well, we see that it's God the Father who, according to Scripture, chose those who are going to be saved through the doctrine of election. We see that it's God the Father who planned this act of redemption that the Son is operating in and being subservient to. Uh, and then we see that Jesus, the Son, is the one who's accomplishing it. He's the one who comes and takes on human form. He's the one who surrenders and submits to the authority of God, is obedient, where we couldn't be obedient, where he takes our sin and shame upon him and dies in our place and is resurrected. And so he's the one that accomplishes it. We see clearly in the Bible that the Spirit of God is the one who convicts us of our sin, convicts us of our need of a Savior, and then is the one who regenerates our hearts, and is the one that applies that salvation to us and seals us for the day of redemption when once and for all we're reunited with God. So these are all just pictures that we see throughout the Bible of how the Spirit of God, or excuse me, the Trinity functions in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so these are terms that we've developed ontological, economic, and there's other ones as you study. I would encourage people, you know, uh to pick up a good theology book. Uh Grudham has a good one. And if you want to dig deeper into like what all the Bible says about the triune God and work, just start there and just kind of begin to unpack, look at all the different passages of scripture. Another simple way to do it would be to get out of concordance and just look at the times that God speaks about the Father, or the Bible speaks about the Father, speaks about the Son, speaks about the trin uh spirit, and begin to like let that kind of shape your mind to a full understanding. That being said, it's one of those difficult doctrines that I think we struggle to explain, not necessarily to accept, but just to wrap our minds around because it is such a complex but important doctrine as we as we're trying to know God and understand God.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah, that's good. If you have more questions like these, we would love to answer them. You can send them to questions at firstmore.com via email, and we'll see you guys next Friday.