Sean C. Capparuccia

30 May 2026

Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-3, 26-27; 2:1-2; Psalm 25; Ephesians 1:3-14; John 3:14-21

Following Pentecost, the next Sunday on the liturgical calendar is Trinity Sunday. And this makes sense because Pentecost is the day that the promise of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled and so now all three Persons of the Godhead have been made manifest.

The Father created the world and made man in perfect communion with Himself – and man spoiled it and brought sin into the world.

The Son came to make an atonement for sin – and man either accepted Him or rejected Him.

The Spirit was poured out on those who accepted Him – and man was brought back into communion with God.

          And so, the Trinty is fully revealed to us, or fully manifested to us.  But what is the Trinity?  Even after the formulation of our understanding of the Trinity as an essential of the Christian faith, it is still not easy to explain. And there are some who still say, “The word Trinity is not in the Bible so why should we believe it?”  Of course, that argument is so illogical that it doesn’t really need to be answered, although we will talk a little about how the Trinity is certainly implied in many biblical texts.[1]

          Another thing that I want to keep in view here is that the concept – the truth – of the Trinity is important to understand for any Christian, for sure, but it needs to be from the standpoint of how it affects our faith, not so much as an academic exercise in splitting hairs. 

          So where do we begin? I think we should begin with the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4.  This little verse is foundational for the Jewish faith as well as ours. In it we hear the words: Shema, l’Isarel, Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai echad. “Hear, O Israel (or “Listen up, Israel), the Lord (Adonai) our God (Eloheynu), the Lord (Adonai) is one echad).”  Definitely worth memorizing.

          The Lord is one. You’ve got to remember now that this here in Deuteronomy was part of the Pentateuch, the first five books of Moses. Think about this for just a moment. We had the Flood which wiped out everybody except Noah and his family. Then as the world began to re-populate we find that sin did not drown with all the sinners, it still lived on in the hearts of even the godly. Eventually the immense population was right back to doing evil and worshipping created things – like the sun and moon and rivers and mountains and big strong men and beautiful women – instead of God.  And if you look in Genesis 10 you can see the line of Noah, through his son, Shem, traced until we get to Abram exactly 367 years after the Flood.

Now just as a little exercise in math, let’s say we take just Shem and his line and the one son that is named there in Chapter 10. So, Shem, Arphaxad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, and finally Abram: 10 generations. And let’s say each of these sons had five children, which really isn’t many; I’m guessing most people had at least a dozen kids. So just these 10 generations comes to just shy of 2 million people having five kids each. With an average of ten kids it comes to 500 million. So it isn’t like the population here was a just a few thousand people. Populations can grow pretty fast even without immigration. Millions of people and they’re all doing right in their own eyes, ignoring the God who made them and worshipping themselves and everything around them.

Then God calls Abram. “Leave your country and worship only Me” (Gen. 12). Abram, who is then called Abraham, has Isaac (Gen. 21), who has Jacob (Gen. 25), whose named is changed to Israel (Gen. 32). Jacob has 12 sons and eventually they all end up in Egypt… you know the story. For 430 years children of Israel lived in Egypt; at first as immigrants and eventually as slaves.  Keep in mind now that since the Flood and after the Tower of Babel, the people in the land of Egypt were multiplying as well. Lots of people. Many generations are passing by and hundreds of years. Think of what America has done in just 400 years!  So Abraham was told to follow God – the one and only God. Then 720 years later, his descendants are led out of Egypt, where they’ve spent 400 years in the midst of pagan idol worship and nature worship. And God says to them, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one!” Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai echad. He is not many – as they worship everywhere else, but He is one.

But, and I hope you noticed this, in the reading from Genesis 2, we heard the words that God spoke to Himself on day six of creation, saying, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness” (Gen. 1:26-27). Wait a minute! Is there only one God or isn’t there? Some have tried to explain that God was talking to the angels but that isn’t right, we are not made in the image of angels. At least not most people…. Maybe a few are. Like grandkids.  Scripture plainly says that we are made in God’s image (Heb. 2:7; Lk 20:36) as Gensis 5:1 says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him…”  Nor is it the royal “we” as kings and queens and important people tend to do when they speak of themselves in the plural.  And really, this was customary in many authors up until the mid-1900’s. Nothing wrong with it, but that isn’t what God was doing here.

Here is what is called the pluralis majestatis which is, at its root, “the truth that lies at the foundation of the trinitarian view…”[2]  We see here, in the words that the Holy Spirit laid on Moses’ heart as he wrote this, an aspect of the truth of who God is. Now if Moses was writing this purely out of his own will, do you not think he would have used a singular pronoun here? That would have made a lot more sense in connection with Adonia echad, wouldn’t it?

And yet we also see right here in the very first verses a shadow of the Trinity: God created the heavens and the earth; the Spirit – or ruach as we discussed last week – hovered over the waters, and the Word was spoken.  This is just the truth of Scripture, the implication, if you will; it wasn’t completely seen for what it is until much later.

We also see this implied plurality in passages where we see the phrase “the Angel of the Lord.”[3] Whenever we see the “Angel of the Lord,” we see a physical manifestation of God, also called a theophany.

And so what are we to make of this plurality? What is it a plurality of? It’s not a plurality of gods. Technically, the Trinity is three hypostases, or “three concrete and distinct trinitarian persons who share a single divine essence” or ousia.[4] In a sense, this hypostasis is what makes you, you. You think of yourself as you are right now. But what if you lost an arm, God forbid. You’d still be you. Think of who you are with everything not essential stripped away. Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

In fact, when attempting to explain what the Trinity is, it is helpful to explain what it isn’t.  Looking at the little diagram printed in our bulletin you see symbols that we are all familiar with. The triangle, three distinct and equal sides forming one triangle. Sometimes we see this with a circle in the middle that says “God,” and each of the points says, “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” Then the words “IS NOT” is written on the sides of the triangle and the word “IS” is written  between the points and the middle. So, the Father IS NOT the Son, who IS NOT the Holy Spirit who IS NOT the Father and yet all three ARE God. 

Another symbol is the triquetra which shows the perfectly equal trinitarian relationship but has a continuous arc showing the eternity of the Godhead. It also creates three “fish” which are symbolic of Christ.

And the three interwoven circles are, of course, what the GMC uses as its symbol; the circles representing the unity of the Godhead, and a cross in the middle representing eternal life in Christ.[5]

All beautiful symbols of our faith but none of them completely adequate to explain the utter complexity of our God. And the word hypostases doesn’t really help, either. “Persons” was the word that made more sense to our ears over the millennia. But is God a “person”?

Back in 1979 there was a court case that centered on whether God was a person or not. A man who was convicted of arson was being interrogated in the room with the two-way mirrors when his interrogators took a break. The room was now empty, but of course, the cops were all there on the other side of the glass listening. The man prayed, “Oh, God, let me get away with it just this once.” There was a law that stated that “a private communication that has been intercepted is inadmissible as evidence against the originator of the communication, unless the originator OR the person intended to receive the communication gives express consent.” In other words, if I tell someone something privately, even if others can hear me, it cannot be used against me in a court of law. Well, at first the court agreed and said that this communication was between him and God and therefore not admissible in court. But the prosecution appealed and it was overturned because, in that court’s opinion, at least in this case, God is not a person.[6] What do you think?

But as I said, most of what we know of the Trinty is based on what it is not. So, just to keep things moving along I’m going to give you a few heresies that exist regarding the Trinity. First, you all have heard of the explanation by using a three-leaf clover for the  Trinity. Well, this is called partialism, which is a heresy which says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not distinct persons of the Godhead, but are different parts of God each composing one-third of the Divine.[7]  And technically, this is also true for the triangle, because a side of the triangle, or a point or angle of the triangle is not the triangle itself. Without all three sides, a side of a triangle is just a line. And yet the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Wholly and completely.

Another popular heresy is called modalism which teaches that God is not three distinct persons but that He reveals himself in three different forms. So, to say that the Trinity is like water which comes in solid, liquid, and vapor is modalism. Or one that people say all the time is that the Trinity is like a man who is a son, a husband, and a father – three modes of the same person. Nope, it’s a heresy.

Another is Aryanism which states that Christ and the Holy Spirit are merely creations of the Father and are not one in nature, or of the same substance, with Him. In other words, God is the Father, and He made Jesus to come to earth to show us the way to live, and then created the Holy Spirit to live in us after Christ ascended. Perhaps at first hearing you think it makes sense, and yet it is absolutely not correct. In fact, it is heresy; a born-again Christian can not believe in this.

So what do we believe? Well, in the 5th century, after much debating over what is and what isn’t, the Church Fathers came up with the Athanasian Creed which was written to leave no room for heresy. Most liturgical churches hold to this creed except John Wesley didn’t like it because it talked about people going to hell, and Wesley liked to keep that part of Scripture on the down low. Anyway, it states,

Whoever will be saved, shall, above all else, hold the catholic, or universal faith. Which faith, unless everyone keeps it whole and undefiled, will perish eternally [go to hell].

And the faith universal is this: that we worship one God in three persons and three persons in one God, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one: the glory equal, the majesty coeternal…”[8]

Then it goes on to say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all three uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, almighty; all three are God but not three gods; all three Lord but not three lords; all are co-equal with one another – “the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He who is to be saved is compelled thus to think of the Trinity.”[9] 

Why is this important? Because we are exhorted throughout the scripture to “keep the faith.” Paul says to Timothy “in the later times some will abandon the faith, and follow deceiving spirits, and doctrines taught by demons..” (I Tim. 4:1).

In Acts 14:22 the Apostles “strengthened the souls of the disciples, and encouraged them to remain true to the faith…”

Paul tells the Church at Corinth to “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith; prove your own selves…” (2 Cor. 13:5).

Jude verse 3 says, “Beloved…., I felt I had to write you and urge you to contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”

Contrary to popular belief, “the faith” is not something that we make up as we go along. It was “once delivered to the saints” in the first century and we still follow it today. “The faith” is something we ought to be contending for, striving for, fighting for, and doing everything we can to preserve it and to spread it.

And why would we want to do that? Because if we love Christ, we love others. Now, Beloved, here is where, as Paul says, we need to really examine ourselves. Do you believe the scriptures or do you not?

They plainly state that the Father purposed that you would be saved. Just as He said, “Let there be light,” He decreed our salvation. The Son made your salvation possible. As the Incarnate Word, He executed the decree of the Father. The Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, made this salvation real and tangible.

Jesus said, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16ff).  The Godhead – in all of its fullness – determined before the foundation of the world that the Son, eternally begotten of the Father, would take on our flesh and redeem from sin all those in the world, not just from the chosen Jews, who would put their trust and faith in Him.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved” (17). When Christ came it was not to judge and condemn. And He is right now, at this moment at the right hand – co-eternally and co-equally – of the Father saving His people. But when He comes again it will be to judge and condemn. He will judge all of humanity and those who did not put their trust in Him He will condemn to hell eternally. We may not like that part, but it is the reality.  

“He that believeth on Jesus Christ is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  This is important because it tells us that there will not be a judgement at the end of the world where God will stack up our good things on one side and our bad things on the other and determine which way the scale goes. If you do not believe in His saving name now you are already condemned. You could have a million and two really good things you’ve done compared to just one little bad thing, not trusting in Jesus, and you are condemned already.  

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (Jn 3:19-21).  Christ is the light; this church, Trinity Church of Waycross, or Magnolia, is a messenger of the light of Christ – evil will not flourish here as long as we preach the truth and live the faith. Darkness will not want to come here and stay. Darkness may come in but it will either give way to the light of Christ or it will leave.

We serve a mighty and awesome God and I think we are truly blessed to have been given the name “Trinity.” Distinct persons, yet in unity.  And though our God is in perfect unity that can never be imperfect, our unity is one worth striving for.

One final thought on the Trinity of the Godhead and that is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in perfect community with each other. It is out of this community and perfect love that God has given birth to His holy Church. When Adam sinned, he didn’t just lose his place in the Garden, he didn’t just lose his immortality, he lost his communion with God. God walked with him in the cool of the evening; He talked with Him. Adam threw all that away. Oh how short-sighted it is to throw away good relationships. It really goes against all good reason. Think of what you would lose for simply stealing out of the cash drawer at work; or cheating on a spouse; for letting your anger get out of control for just a few short moments. Beloved, think of what you could lose simply by not trusting in Jesus Christ.

But because of what Christ did, that communion with God is restored. And now, by the power of God the Holy Spirit, He doesn’t just walk with His people, He lives inside of them. So I don’t know if we’re any closer to understanding the Trinity, but I at least hope everyone walks out of here today knowing that God loves you and wants to be your Father. Hear, O Trinity, Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai echad.

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[1] One can easily see this in Luke 2, the Annunciation. The Father made the decree which the angel Gabriel, as the messenger, announces to Mary; the Spirit comes upon her and she becomes pregnant; with Jesus, the Son Who was given in the Child Who was born.

[2] Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament,  The Pentateuch, 39.

[3] Gen. 16; Ex. 3, et al. The KJV has 64 occurrences of the phrase, although many are the same instance. 

[4] Stanley Grenz, et. al., Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms  (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), “hypostasis.”

[5] From Patricia S. Klein, Worship Without Words (Brewster, Mass:Paraclete Press, 2007),197-198.

[6] R. versus Davie, 9 C.R. (3d) 275 (Canada) cited in Ted LeValliant and Marcel Theroux, What’s the Verdict (NY: Sterling Publishing, 1991), 13.

[7] C.f., “Bad Analogies” by Lutheran Satireon YouTube. A must-see for anyone interested in studying the Trinity.

[8] Athanasian Creed, in part.

[9] Ibid.