The Trinity: A Holy Mystery

`

The Trinity: A Holy, Loving Mystery

 Who can tell the mystery of a rose
resplendent and so soft
upon a stem studded
with stinging thorns
and yet with softest petals
with such a lovely fragrance
both butterflies and bees
delighted ascend?

Who can tell the mystery of a bee
or a butterfly, who can tell?
One buzzes with his
bustling, busy wings
just to fly to her hive
while one fairly floats
on the air like some
glorious dream?

Who can tell the mystery of a cloud?
Ask a scientist and he will
explain when we look up
in the sky
we are seeing
a mass of water droplets
or frozen crystals
suspended in
the heavens above.

Ask a wide-eyed child or a child grown-up
and they will list the wondrous
images they can see as they
look up while
lounging in the grass:
maybe a hippopotamus
or a rhinoceros
or a moose
or even a goose.

Who can tell the mystery of a gem?
How long does it take to form
their color and their
clarity,
some so clear
and some so deeply
hued they shine
and sparkle
like a star?

Who can tell the mystery of a gem?
How do they become so hard
they remain
beautiful
as they were when they
were cut and
polished
fit for a
royal crown?

Who can tell the mystery of the Trinity?
Only God who is, who was,
who is to come.
Theologians
may do their
best and preachers
give us helpful
hints but never
succeed.

Who can tell the mystery of the Trinity?
God tells us in His Word
what we can now
understand—
He alone is One
but in true
fellowship
He is Three—
He is Love.

Sometimes mysteries seem a bother when we are impatient to get to an easy answer for some vital question; and yet such questions demand much more than simple, easy-to-speak answers. God in His Perfect Wisdom and in His Holy Word often forces us beyond such surface answers, driving us ever deeper in our faith and dependence on Him and only Him. Who can fully describe the beautiful mystery of a rose? Who can fully describe the fascinating mystery of a cloud? Who can fully describe the geological mystery of a precious gem? We can certainly ponder. We can certainly research. We can certainly debate—and in doing these we can discover partial answers—but in the end we simply take and enjoy these mysteries as they are—profoundly beautiful, fascinating, and historical. God alone holds the mysteries of the world in His hands, and these include the mystery of the nature of His Being as demonstrated in the Trinity.

The Trinity is never named in the Bible, and yet the reality of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit clearly fills the story of God’s Love from the Creation of Heaven and Earth to the Cross and moving forward to the Creation of New Heaven and New Earth. Thousands of scholars and theologians have struggled with the challenge of explaining in human terms the nature of the Trinity, but not one has succeeded. God’s full nature in the Trinity remains a mystery; Most probably this is according to God’s purpose. He is high and exalted and holy (clearly and fully more than we will ever be). He does reveal His nature in Creation. He does reveal His trinitarian nature in His Written Word. He does reveal His trinitarian nature in Jesus, the Incarnation. He does reveal His trinitarian nature in the power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of believers. He has continually throughout history made Himself and HIs power and love known to individuals and nations. Yet, He arranges His relationships with these individuals and nations as He demands faith and obedience while we grow in wisdom and understanding when it comes to heavenly matters.

God is so much greater than are we, He deems best how to reveal Himself to us. We know He is perfect; and so, in history and in the Word, He certainly purposefully and perfectly opens our eyes to His Nature in Creation:

Creation itself witnesses to the mystery of the Trinity. Beautifully, we see God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit united in the act of making the Heavens and the Earth. While no person can presume to understand the divine design and purpose in Creation, we all can agree with Scripture that each of God’s Three Persons shaped and formed and produced our Universe:

From Creation and throughout the working out of His Eternal Gospel Plan, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, have been active together in moving us as His beloved children toward receiving and being transformed by His Eternal Love. The Son Incarnate as Jesus has lived and died and risen up victorious to establish the gift of mercy and grace revealing eternal mercy. And ultimately the Holy Spirit comes as a gift to empower and direct us as we grow into our relationship daily walking in God’s eternal way for us. 

Paul put it this way in Ephesians 2:18 as He explained we come to the Father through the Son, in the Spirit.

His words provide an excellent demonstration of the Trinity at work. All of us do, indeed, have this opportunity: We can, ourselves, enter fellowship with the Father, through the prompting and the invitation of the Holy Spirit, because of what Christ the Son has done for us in His sacrificial death on the Cross, and in his Victorious Resurrection—the two together defeating the power of sin and death over us. 

How fitting it is when we pray this blessing upon each other as we conclude worship together.Here is such a beautiful summation of the mysterious but eternally actual reality of God graciously interacting with us as His children in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus voices for His disciples, then and now, the ultimate task we are given—going among all nations, sharing with His Eternal Gospel Plan, and baptizing them because of their faith, into His Kingdom in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

T

May we each and every one of us, individually, yet united mysteriously in the perfect Love of Father, Son, and Spirit, faithfully and obedient live for Him.