
God is One. God exists in three persons. This is the mystery of what theologians have called the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I will not endeavor to bring you a full discourse on the Trinity here. Rather, I’d like to point out how this mind-bending theological truth is significant in our conversation on relationships.
It’s a wonderful study to look through the Scriptures and to take note of the unique roles each of the persons of the Godhead (theological term for the Trinity). God is One, however we see a wonderful working together between the persons of the Trinity—the Father working together with the Son, and with the Spirit.
A quick and fruitful study would be to go through the gospel of John and take note of God’s work in each of the three persons of the Trinity.
At the beginning of human history, God created human beings “in His image” (Genesis 1:26-28 NIV).
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:26-28 NIV).
This is a foundational idea as we consider the blueprint and purpose of humankind. At the core of this truth is that God exists as a unified community of three. And, in His wisdom, God has made us to most fully reflect Him when we are living and behaving in unity with other believers.
In fact, later I’ll show that Jesus even prayed for this to be fully true in the Church that would be birthed by His disciples.