In ancient times many people believed there were many gods.  Usually their gods had different levels of power.  They usually also had a certain area or realm of the physical world (including parts of our lives) which they controlled.  Often these gods competed with each other for the attention of mankind.  There was usually a supreme god but they usually just had a little more power that the others.  The Bible, (both I the Old and New Testaments (the two major divisions of the Bible) gives a very different picture of God.   The Israelites were told to have no other gods (Exodus 20:13) and they were told to fear God and serve only him (Deuteronomy 6:13).  Jesus repeated this verse when the Devil tempted Jesus to worship him (Luke 4:7).  James told his readers that it was a good thing that they believed that there was only one God and noted that even demons believed this truth (James 2:19).  In Genesis 1 we see that God is credited with creating all there is.  In Genesis 3 we see the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, had a friendship with that same God.  Throughout Genesis we see the story of that God’s involvement with mankind and specifically with the family of one man, Abraham and a specific group of his descendants called Israelites (See “The Twelve” and “The Old Testament Connection” for more about that).  In Exodus 3:14 we see one of those descendants, Moses, meeting basically face to face with God and being given a mission to do.  At that point Moses asked God for his personal name as a sign of authority as he did what he was given to do.  That name was 4 letters in the Hebrew language, YHWH (in Moses day they did not write down the vowels).  The Israelites had so much respect for God that they would not say his personal name and often they would substitute the word lord or god fro the personal name.  In many English translations the translators still follow the same practice and use an all capitals LORD or GOD when they come to those four letters.  The four letters are a form of the verb “to be” and that is why some translations use “I AM WHO I AM” in Exodus 3:14 since that is what the word God spoke to Moses meant (See “What’s in a Name” for more on names in the Bible).  Without the vowels we can only guess at how the name is pronounced so different translators have come up with basically two “translations” of God’s personal name, Jehovah and Yahweh.  The belief in only one god is called monotheism.

In Isaiah 9:6-7 we see a prediction of a coming ruler for the Israelite people.  He is called Eternal Father and Mighty God among other things.  This promised future ruler came to be called “messiah” in the Jewish culture.  As we have seen during our reading in Isaiah this promised king is also called the “shoot and branch of Jesse (David’s father)(Isaiah 11:1).  In the New Testament Matthew goes through a whole lineage from Abraham through David to Jesus who he tells us is the Christ (Matthew 1:6-16).  The word Christ in Greek has the exact same meaning as the Hebrew word messiah.  So Matthew, an Israelite or Jew, tells us that Jesus is the messiah, the promised coming king from David’s family who is identified in Isaiah as the Eternal father and Mighty God.  For serious Jews it  would be unthinkable to say that a person was God, let alone Might God.  In Matthew 1:23, Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus was created in her through the power of the Holy Spirit.  He then tells us that this is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prediction in Isaiah 7:14.  That promised son is linked in Isaiah with the child in 9:6-7 and the shoot in Isaiah 11:1.  In Matthew’s time the devoted Jews were fiercely monotheistic.  In Luke 2:25-32 there is the story of a devoted Jewish priest named Simeon.  He had a vision from God in which he was promised he would see the person who would bring comfort to the nation of Israel, probably a reference to the descriptions of the messiah found in Isaiah 9.  When Jesus was brought to him for dedication he declared that the vision he had was fulfilled, and then called Jesus a” light to the Gentiles [non Jews] and the glory of Israel”.  This was probably a quote from Isaiah 9:4.  In John 1:1 John identifies a person he calls “the word”.  He also tells us that the word was with God and was God (kind of weird thing to say, but we will see what that might have meant shortly).  In verse 14 John then tells us that that “Word” became flesh.  According to John 1:15, 29-30 this “Word” was Jesus.  Also in John 1 we see John the Baptist (not the same John who wrote the book)  telling the religious leaders that he was a fulfillment of a prediction by Isaiah to prepare the people for the “LORD” (Isaiah 40:3).  So John the Baptist was actually identifying Jesus as Yahweh.  The religious leaders asked John if he was the Messiah and he told them he was not.  He then told him someone greater was coming after him, someone who was greater because he existed before him, Jesus.  Interestingly John was several months older than Jesus.  Finally in John 8 Jesus is in a very hot conversation with the religious leader of his day.  In John 8:56 he claimed to have been seen by Abraham.  The Jews told him it was impossible because he wasn’t even 50 years old.  His answer to them was that before Abraham was born “I AM”.  What he said is the Greek equal of the Hebrew “YHWH”.  The leaders understood what he was saying and grabbed stones to kill him, as the Law of Moses commanded.  Jesus words, the words of others, and his actions all indicate that Jesus is Yahweh of the Old Testament.  But Jesus also identifies his “Father” as God (See John 10:30-33).  In those verses Jesus claimed that he and the Father were one.  In John 14:8-9 Jesus told his followers if they wanted to see God the Father all they needed to do was look at him.  Later in that same chapter he identified someone called the Spirit of truth as another of the same kind as him (and the father).

These and many other verses tell us that Jesus is God, the Spirit is God and the Father is God.  Because the Bible clearly tells us there is only one God the early Christians struggled with how this all worked out.  For some the solution was that God existed in different forms at different times, sometimes the Son (Jesus), sometimes the Father, and sometimes the Spirit, this idea was called Modalism. On different occasions in the New Testament we see Jesus and either the Father or the Holy Spirit or all three existing at the same time.  At the baptism of Jesus we see the Father speaking from Heaven and the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus (Mark 1:9-13).  In Hebrews 1:13 we see God the Father having Jesus sit beside him while he subdues their enemies.  So we see that although all three are identified as God that they are all different persons. In the early 200’s AD Tertullian a Christian scholar used the word Trinity to describe the relationship between Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.  In the early years of Christianity the churches would get the leaders together to try to figure out some of these hard ideas. In 325 AD at one of theses meetings the church leaders all affirmed that all three were God, were different persons, but one essence or being.  Three persons, one God.  The reality is a mystery but that is the conclusion they came to after considering all of the scriptures.  Some believers like the term “Tri-unity” instead of “Trinity” but the idea is the same.  It is interesting that in the very first Chapter of the Bible that God said (to whom you might think), “Let us make man in our image”.  Also the word for God in Hebrew is “Elohim”, it is a plural word that can also mean angles or judges, or idols (gods).  But that doesn’t change the fact that wne it is used of the one true God it remains a plural.  It appears that God the father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit were talking among them selves when they were creating the first man.  The Trinity is a mystery but also a reality.

Finally it is important to understand that although they are all God and all agree they seem to have different functions.  And also God the Father seems to be the final authority, but only by agreement.  Jesus said to the Father, “Not my will but yours”.  Indicating that his human side would rather avoid dying on the cross.   It also appears that Jesus was guided by the Holy Spirit rather than acting on his own divine authority (Isaiah 11:1-2).  This is not because he has less authority but because the three persons of the one God have decided to act this way with respect to each other, they have taken on different roles in their combined existence (See Philippians 3:5-7 where Jesus chooses to limit his use of his personal divine power).