New City Catechism Question 3 with Nate Claiborne

In this episode, Nate Claiborne discusses Question 3 from the New City Catechism:

How many persons are there in God?

There are three persons in the one true and living God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are the same in substance, equal in power and glory.

Nate draws on Kevin DeYoung's insights, which you can find in the commentary on the app, to help grapple with the doctrine of the Trinity and its practical importance for us as Christians

Chapters

• 0:15 Understanding the Doctrine of the Trinity
• 15:56 Understanding the Trinity and Its Implications

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome to another episode of the All of Life podcast. I'm your host, Nate Claiborne. Today we're talking about New City Catechism. Question number three how many persons are there in God? The longer answer, the one that we will recite together on Sunday, is there are three persons in the one true and living God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. They are the same in substance, equal in power and glory. The shorter version doesn't actually trim too much out. It says there are three persons in one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and while that is easy for me to just read it to you and tell you what it says in terms of what it means, though, there has been a lot of ink spilled, to put it mildly, to try to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. I'm going to say this, though just at the top I cannot explain the doctrine of the Trinity to you. I confess it to be true and I believe it to be true, but I don't entirely comprehend how there can be three persons in one being.

Speaker 1: 1:21

There's a bit of a paradox there. There's a bit of a mystery to it. It's not unlike the mystery of we talk about. Jesus is 100% God and 100% man and those two things, how they fit together into his one person. It's a bit mysterious. Another mystery that we deal with as Christians is we think about God is totally sovereign, meaning he's in control of the entire universe, and yet I am able to make choices that are, from my point of view, free choices. I can kind of decide what I want to do today, and I can decide what I want to wear or what I want to eat for lunch. I know not everyone gets to make those kinds of choices. I'm just using the choices I get to make, and I am free and God is in control, and somehow those two things are both true at the same time, and so we kind of get some of that.

Speaker 1: 2:19

With the doctrine of the Trinity. It seems to claim two things at once, but they're not a contradiction, they're not something we can fully unpack and explain. I'll give you an analogy a little bit farther on, but I want to start here, though, with something author and pastor Kevin DeYoung says. He says the doctrine of the Trinity is the most important Christian doctrine that most people never think about. It's absolutely essential to our faith, and yet for many Christians it just seems like a confusing math problem and even if we can figure out what Trinity means, it doesn't feel like it has much bearing on our lives or much relevance to us. So that's, I feel like we might resonate with that, whether it's the confusing math problem part of it. A lot of us are confused by math. It's been a long time since I've had a math class and that's probably for my own good and well-being.

Speaker 1: 3:15

But the question of relevance is really significant, as we've just been starting this series of podcasts. We not only want to talk about the theology or the meaning maybe, of some of these catechism question and answers, but we do want to talk about why is it relevant? Or what does it mean for our discipleship as Christians? What does it mean to follow Christ and to believe these things? We also want to talk about how does this make us a counterculture for the common good? I realize that language. It might be harder to grasp than it needs to be, but it's just. How does believing something like this make us different, but different in a way that is helpful to the people around us, not different in a way that is difficult for the people around us? So hopefully, as we keep talking a little bit more. We're going to keep coming back to Kevin DeYoung's quotes and some of the things he says here to kind of help unpack this for us.

Speaker 1: 4:14

But as we're thinking about the Trinity, it's famously, as he says, not found in the Bible. So as you're reading your Bibles and maybe you're doing the reading plan with us, you're never going to come across the word Trinity. But we use that word to capture a number of things that are true, and there are actually seven statements that go into the doctrine of the Trinity and we saw them in the answer to the question. But I'm just going to list them out here. The first is God is one and there's only one God. So we don't worship multiple gods, we just worship the one true and living God. The second statement is that the Father is God. The third statement is the Son is God. And the fourth statement is the Holy Spirit is God. So we confess that there are three persons Father, son, holy Spirit who are God, but we also confess these are the last three statements the Father is not the Son. They are not the same person. The Son is not the Spirit. They are not the same person. And the Spirit is not the Father. They are not the same person. So there are three persons Father, son, holy Spirit but there is one God. And Kevin DeYoung says if we get those seven statements, then we've captured the doctrine of the Trinity, at least what it means when we say there is one God and three persons. Again, that's not something that we can fully understand or comprehend, but it is something we can confess and believe to be true, because the Bible tells us that it's true.

Speaker 1: 5:55

A great example, I think what we'll see here in a few Sundays, is when we baptize people. We use Matthew 28,. We use the baptismal formula that comes from the Great Commission, when Jesus is ascending to heaven and he tells his disciples go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them. And then he says in the name singular, so just one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. And so we're going to hear this when we have baptisms on Sunday. You'll notice, if you're paying close attention, that we baptize people in the name, the one name of the three persons Father, son, holy Spirit. So there is a unity, there's one name and there's a diversity, there's three persons. So that's really what we're trying to capture with the doctrine of the Trinity is that the Bible talks about the Father being God, it talks about Jesus being God and it talks about the Holy Spirit being God, but it is also fiercely I'm going to use a bigger word here monotheistic, and all that means. Mono means one. If you've been to Disney, there's a mono rail. It's a train that rides on a single rail, and theist is the person that believes God exists. So we are Christians, we are monotheists. We believe in one God.

Speaker 1: 7:35

Coming back again to Kevin DeYoung, he explains here. He says we don't believe in many gods or a pantheon of gods pantheon just a fancy way of saying a bunch of gods. Think of the, the Greek and Roman myths, of all these different gods. We have a modern version of it today, it's called the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where they're not granted, they're not really gods, but those stories function for us very much, like the stories of Zeus and Hermes and these other Greco-Roman gods functioned in the ancient world, the world that the Bible was written in. So we only believe in one God, not many, not a pantheon, just the one, and this God expresses himself and exists as three persons.

Speaker 1: 8:20

And that language of persons is important. This early church, wrestled with the appropriate language and persons, speaks to the personality of the three members of the Trinity and also to their relationship with each other. So that's one of the things that is captured here. It's not just three persons who happen to be there in relationship with one another. We get that relational language with father and son. So that's significant here. It's also significant as Diyong says one is not the other, but they're equal. They're equal in rank, equal in power, equal in glory, equal in majesty. And then he talks about the verse that we just read just as Jesus sends out the disciples to go baptizing the name of the father, son and the Holy Spirit, we see this doctrine of the Holy Trinity woven throughout the scriptures. So this catechism question is capturing a very important truth from Scripture. We see it in our, we'll see it on family worship Sundays when we have baptisms.

Speaker 1: 9:31

It does make us distinct. We believe in one God. Other religions believe in multiple gods or they believe in a God that is just one. It's not a Trinitarian, if I can use that word God. Muslims believe in the one God, allah, and he is not a Trinity, he's not a father, he doesn't have a son, he is just a single entity. And the reason Christianity is different, among other things, in the way that they understand God, is because of the Trinity.

Speaker 1: 10:04

So, again, I know I'm relying a lot on Kevin DeYoung he's almost a co-host in this sense but one of the things he says is when you have a triune God, you have an eternality or an eternal type of love. So love because God has always existed, love has always existed. If you have a God who is not three persons, like what we were just discussing very briefly about the Muslim conception of God, he has to create a being to love something, to be an expression of his love. But father, son and Holy Spirit existing in eternity have always had this relationship of love. So love is not a created thing. God didn't have to go outside of himself to love. Love is eternal. And when you have a triune God, you have fully this God who is love.

Speaker 1: 10:58

And so that's going to be really significant for us as Christians that we worship a God who is love, not a God who can love, but who is, at his very being, love. And that's possible because there has always been a father, son and Holy Spirit in relationship, in this loving relationship with each other for all of eternity, and out of that overflow of love for one another, they freely choose to create a world, to then show that love to the world, and so that encourages us, even in our formation and even as our attempts to be different for our neighbor's benefit is. We worship a God who loves because he can, not because he has to, and he it is part of his nature to love, that's true, but he didn't have to create us to begin with. He didn't have to create the world. He chose to create us and I talked about that in a couple of podcasts of God's free choice to create the world that he then shows his love to, and so that encourages us in our own loving of our neighbors. We are able to freely choose to love our neighbors. I know that maybe that doesn't work exactly the way I just stated it right now, but there is a sense in we love others because God first loved us and God has loved himself Father, son, holy Spirit for all of eternity. Another way this is important and again D'Young is helpful is that there's nothing more important than knowing God. And so to know this God, who is love, is going to help us in our discipleship efforts, help us in the way that we relate to our neighbors.

Speaker 1: 12:39

But one other counter-cultural thing that I think is really relevant in D'Young highlights but it was even something as I was preparing for this podcast I was thinking about is because there is a unity, there's the one, god, but there's a diversity. There's three persons. The Trinity, or the doctrine of the Trinity, helps us solve a problem that other religions and even other philosophies have difficulty with, which is whether, at its core, reality is one or reality is many. This might be a little too technical for some of us, but the Trinity unites I even use the word unite unity and diversity. The one and the many is a famous philosophical problem, and the Trinity actually solves that. This is the way Kevin D'Young states. He says this is one of the most pressing questions in our world.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Some folks focus almost exclusively on diversity, on the fact that people are so different. You all might be able to relate to that. There's so much diversity out there. There's different nations, different languages, different cultures. But D'Young continues. He says they don't see any common ground. What brings us all together. Others wanna press for complete uniformity in thought, in government and expression. Everything has to be one type of culture, one type of way of doing things.

Speaker 1: 14:04

The Trinity shows us that you can have profound, real, organic unity with diversity, so that the Father, son and Holy Spirit are working in complete union in our salvation. The Father appoints, the Son accomplished, the Spirit applies. We encounter God as fully God and the Father in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and yet their divine work is neither interchangeable nor redundant, and so this is really significant, maybe even more significant than we can unpack right here. But there is a foundational concept in the Trinity that is important for the way we think about the world around us that it's both a unity and a diversity, because it's created in the image of a God who is both unity and diversity. So just in closing, I think we've covered the theology. We've thought about how it's a counterculture for the common good. We've talked about why it's significant for us as disciples to understand or at least to not to understand, to confess the doctrine of the Trinity.

Speaker 1: 15:11

I know sometimes we wanna try to explain things more, just try to wrap our heads around it a little bit better, and so I'm gonna give you the one analogy that it doesn't explain it. I think it just makes it. It's just a different way of thinking about it that I have found helpful. That, I think, is pretty understandable, but you can be the judge of that. And let me know, I'm borrowing this from a writer named Vern Poitras that uses this in one of his many, many, many books. Seems like he's always publishing a new book, and this is just the way I've tried to explain things how something can be three and one, where the three things are not identical but they're also seamlessly united.

Speaker 1: 15:56

And so you've been listening to me on this podcast talk for the last 15 minutes or so, and what's been happening is, as I've been talking, there have been thoughts that have been in my mind that I am trying to convey to you, hopefully clearly, hopefully in a way that you can understand, and I am using words to try to put my thoughts into words. And so there's a sense in which my words are hopefully a exact image, or at least something close to an exact image, of the thoughts that are in my mind. And so I have thoughts, I express them in words, but then you hear my words as sound. The sound of me talking is carried through these waves that then come into your ears, and so the sound waves and the words that I'm speaking and the thoughts that I'm thinking are all not the same thing, and yet they're all, hopefully, united and cohesive in that, as I am trying to get the thoughts that are in my mind to make sense to you, and I'm using words and sound to do that there is a type of revelation that's happening. I'm revealing what's going on inside my mind in hopes that it can also go on inside your mind, and so that is the way I tend to think of what's happening.

Speaker 1: 17:20

In one way, what the Trinity is. God, the Father, is making himself known to us through his Son, who is an exact representation of him, in more in physical form as a human being, and he brings us into relationship and knowledge of his Son through his Spirit, and so his Spirit and his Son are not identical to him as Father, but he is. They are the one God, father, son, holy Spirit, and they each have their divine work that, as D'Young reminds us, is neither interchangeable nor redundant, and so I think that helps us grasp it just a little bit better and yet it is still something that is mysterious and incomprehensible and worthy of our attention and our affection and our worship as we try to make try to follow this triune God and to be disciples of Jesus. So hopefully that's. That helps us unpack things a little bit.

Speaker 1: 18:25

I know this was a little longer than I think. A lot of these podcasts are going to go. Not all of them are going to be digging into what the doctrine of the Trinity means, but there will be some heavier topics from week to week. This was one of them and I hope that as we meditate on this and think about this truth, it prepares our heart for Sunday morning. We'll be back on here again next week to talk about his life.