AboutTrinity

The Trinity

• God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ and outpouring of the Holy Spirit reveal God as Father, Son and Spirit, at the same time transcendent over the world, acting in history, and present in the world. This revelation in history discloses what God truly and inherently is, for it is God’s self-revelation. It is the revelation of the one true and living God, who alone is to be worshipped and adored.
• The Father speaks, and Christ is the Word that is spoken. The Son is eternally generated by the Father, Light of Light, God of God. In him the fullness of deity dwells. Through him the Father made all things, reconciles us to the Godhead, and saves us from sin and death. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God eternally proceeding from the Father through the Son and operating in and through the Son, who sends the Spirit into the world to give life, renew, sanctify and guide.
• God is one and the same being, yet threefold: one in three and three in one. The one indivisible God who said, ‘I am who I am,’ has always existed and will always exist in three distinct and different but inseparable ways of being, which we call Persons. Each is wholly and fully God, the same in majesty, glory and power, but distinguished by a different relation to the others. They exist eternally with, for, and in one another; yet all retain their identities in personal relationship with one another. They constitute a living communion of mutual self-giving, so that God’s being is essentially relational and there is no solitude or self-centredness in the eternal Trinity; instead holy love is, and always has been, at the very heart of the Godhead.
• All outward action of the Godhead begins with the Father and proceeds through the Son in the Spirit. Though God the Father particularly is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, God the Son the Revealer and Reconciler and God the Spirit the Giver of Life and Sanctifier, all three share together in the creation and preservation of all things, the revelation of God’s truth, the reconciliation and redemption of humankind, and the renewal and perfection of creation. For all three are one in being, nature, will and work, the same in goodness, justice, love and mercy.
• The Father is revealed by the Son through the Spirit, and no one comes to the Father except through the Son and in the Spirit. No one comes to the Son and confesses him as Lord unless drawn by the Father and moved by the Spirit.
• In condescending to be known by us God yet remains transcendent, holy and mysterious. God’s triune being is a mystery that we can now know only dimly and in part, but are to adore eternally.

(From the UPCSA Confession of Faith: The God who Redeems; The Trinity)