Trinity

This week we’re looking at God the Trinity because we’re celebrating Trinity Sunday. We won’t be looking at one specific passage, but picking different verses that talk about God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Today’s study is quite long and complex, so if you’re able please have a look at the notes, passages and questions before your session and choose what is best for your group.

Icebreaker

Q – Have you ever tried to understand something and you just don’t get it?

Jeremiah 33:2-3

“This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it – the Lord is his name: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”

As we approach the theme of the Trinity, we need to be aware that we are trying to describe God, a being that is way superior to us, more complex, a being that is eternal, timeless and infinite. We have to acknowledge this and have the humility to recognize that we probably won’t understand how He functions and the dynamics in the Trinity completely. Our faith is a faith based on revelation, based on God revealing to us who He is and making himself known.

Q – Do you think there is a degree of mystery in our Christian faith? What do you think is mysterious and what is known (i.e. revealed to us by God)?

The Bible doesn’t have a passage that explains the Trinity as we know it and is expressed in the Creeds. There are many references to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in the Bible, the interaction between the persons in the Trinity, but it’s never properly explained. This brought many controversies in the early Church as some thought there was one ‘person’ but with many faces, but still the same person. Others thought that Jesus was a different being but not really God, like the Jehova’s witnesses today, others thought these were three gods, like the Mormon’s today (they actually believe in many gods). The early Church had councils to look into this, trying to confront unbiblical ideas of how God is and were able to express it in the concept of the Trinity: One God with three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three persons in community, yet still being one being, one God.

Q – Would you like to discuss this concept as a group? Have you come across these different views of how God is?

John 3:16-17

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Q – What do we learn about the God the Trinity in this passage?

Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, ‘I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?’

Jesus replied, ‘Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’

Q – What do we learn about the God the Trinity in this passage?

Romans 8:14-17

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Q – What do we learn about the God the Trinity in this passage?

We usually think of the Trinity as God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The issue is that when we mix God the Trinity with God the Father, we lose sometimes the distinctiveness of the Father.

Q - It’s relatively easy for us to think of how Jesus is and how the Holy Spirit is, but can we do the same with the Father without falling into talking about the whole Trinity?

Q – Could you think of some characteristics of each person in the Trinity? How are they and what we seem them do on Earth? (Eg. Jesus is the good sheperd, the Spirit fill us and changes us, the Father affirms us)

As we look at God the Father’s interactions with Jesus we can discover more of Him as a person. He is always affirming and acknowledging Jesus. We also find in parables like the prodigal son his heart for his creation, his children. I’d like us to finish this study which I realise has been complex, looking at the Father. God the Father is represented as a parent figure, both father and mother, who cares for and watches over his children.

Q – Do you find it hard seeing God as a Father? (Sometimes when we haven’t had good parent figures in our lives it’s difficult to see God as a father in a positive way)

Q – What to admire about God the Father’s heart? What does it produce in you?

The loving Father is also the great affirmer. Before Jesus had started his ministry, he said “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased”. That’s what we can infer he says of all of us as well.

Q – Do you feel loved and affirmed by God the Father?

Prayer

Henri Nouwen (The return of the prodigal son) “Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation. I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of. While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there. As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future. I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, 'grace is always greater.' Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son.“

Let’s thank God for who He is and receive his love and affirmation, we are loved, we are his children.