The Triune God
As Christians, we embrace a historic formula about God’s being. We say, “God is One in essence and three in person.” In other words, God is triune; He is a Trinity. This means there are three persons within the Godhead. These persons are understood in theology as distinct characters. The differences among the three, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are real differences but not essential differences. In other words, there is only one essence to the Godhead, not three. In our experience as human beings, each person we meet is a separate being. One person means one being, and vice versa. But in the Godhead, there is one being with three persons. We must maintain this distinction lest we slip into a form of polytheism, seeing the three persons of the Godhead as three beings who are three separate gods.
We see in Scripture that the Spirit shares in the Trinitarian works of creation and redemption. Genesis 1 shows that the Father commanded the world to come into being. The New Testament tells us that the agent through whom the Father brought the universe into being was the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1: 3). However, the Spirit also was involved in creation: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1: 2). Out of this energizing work of the Spirit, life was brought forth. Most importantly, redemption is a Trinitarian work. The Father sent the Son into the world (1 John 4: 14). The Son performed all the work that was necessary for our salvation— living a life of perfect obedience and dying to make a perfect satisfaction (Phil. 3: 9; 1 Cor. 15: 3). But none of these things avail for our benefit until they are applied to us personally. Therefore, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the world to apply salvation to us (John 15: 26; Gal. 4: 6).
The role of the Holy Spirit chiefly and principally in the New Testament is to apply the work of Christ to believers. Do you know who the Holy Spirit is? Do you understand the Holy Spirit in terms of a personal relationship? Or does the Spirit remain for you a vague, misty, abstract concept or an illusive, amorphous force? Forces in and of themselves are impersonal. But the Holy Spirit is not simply an abstract force. He is a person who empowers the people of God for the Christian life.
