God smites this Servant, who is God. How can God be smiting God? He can’t, unless you have the Trinity. The Trinity drives the atonement. This moves us to the New Testament, and to be sure, the Trinity holds together the events and theology of this testament. In the Gospels, Jesus pleases the Father (Jhn 4:34) as He is driven by the Spirit (Matt 4:1). God the Father and the Spirit uniquely testify to the Son (cf. Matt 3:16-17; Heb 2:4). The life of Christ falls apart without the Trinity. The triune God also drives the mission of the church.

The doctrine of the Trinity is embedded in the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. It is ingrained in the very fabric of Scripture. The Trinity drives redemptive history, and studying these stories gives us a fuller picture of how the triune God accomplishes our hope.

The Trinity in the Old Testament

This begins at the beginning. In Genesis, we have God making the world, the Spirit hovering over the water, and God speaking to create. In this, we can observe God the Father and the Spirit, as well as even the Son as the Word which God speaks (cf. Ps 33:6; Jhn 1:1-2).

We again see the plurality of the Godhead at creation when God says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Note not only the plurality, but also the parallelism. God made man—“male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). The plurality of the godhead becomes the basis for plurality within humankind, male and female. In fact, this is confirmed in Genesis 11. The next time God says “let us” do something, it’s at the Tower of Babel where language is confused. The triune-ness of God is associated with and the basis for relationships, communication, and all that happens therein.

Later in Genesis, God delivers messages to Hagar and Abraham via the angel of the Lord. We come to understand this figure as God because He speaks as God in each of these situations (Genesis 16, 18). At the same time, however, He is distinct from God (the Father) for He is sent by God to speak. This tension of being distinct from God, yet God, is part of the foundation for the Trinity. The Trinity is involved in the formation of the people of God.

The Trinity is not only involved in Genesis, but also in the Exodus and the wilderness wanderings. Exodus 14 records how God looks down from heaven through the angel of the Lord in the pillar of cloud (Exod 14:24). However, that angel is already identified as God Himself (Exod 13:21). How can God look through God? The Trinity explains this. The triune God is involved in the Exodus deliverance.

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