The Trinity isn’t some abstract truth. It’s life-changing. It’s important because we’re meant to know God. It’s also important because it humbles us, shapes our Christian lives, and brings us into the community that existed before time.

“The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult and perplexing to us,” wrote R.C. Sproul. No kidding! As Tim Keller once said, the doctrine of the Trinity overloads our mental circuits.

And yet it’s crucial that we understand the basics about the Trinity. For one thing, understanding what God reveals about himself is important. But the Trinity also makes a difference in how we live as Christian men.

The Trinity holds two biblical truths at the same time.

• First, God is one. “Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There are not multiple gods; there is only one true God.
• Second: this one God is three persons. We see this in a number of biblical passages. For instance, Jesus told us to baptize people “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Paul ended one of his letters, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14). Throughout the Scriptures, you see the three persons of the Trinity at work.

God is one in essence and three in person. As the New City Catechism explains, each person is “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” As an old hymn puts it, “God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!”

It seems contradictory at first, but it’s what Scripture teaches. It’s not contradictory; it’s just beyond our understanding.

Kevin DeYoung says that there are seven statements that capture the biblical teaching of the Trinity:

1. God is one. There’s only one God.
2. The Father is God.
3. The Son is God.
4. The Holy Spirit is God.
5. The Father is not the Son.
6. The Son is not the Spirit.
7. The Spirit is not the Father.

“If you get those seven statements, then you’ve captured the doctrine of the Trinity—what it means when we say there is one God and three persons,” he says.

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