Chapter 6
What Difference Does it Make?
Why put so much emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity? What if a person has faith in a personal God, views Jesus as the highest of all created beings, believes He died for sinners and arose from the grave, and is trusting in Christ for salvation? Isn’t that faith adequate for salvation? Yes it is, but that person will believe in the Trinity when it is presented to him. It is one of the most basic and most life-related teachings of the Bible.
To underscore its importance, we will see how it impacts the most well-known verse in the Bible:
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. 3:16).
If you don’t believe in the Trinity, you would have to say that this verse teaches that God sent the first created being to die that we might be saved. But why is sending one created being (even the first one) to save other created beings such a big deal? What makes that a supreme demonstration of God’s love? It’s nothing more than God sending one of His creatures to save others.
But if you do believe in the Trinity, you accept this verse as a declaration of a breathtaking truth. It tells us that God loves us so much that He, in the Person of Jesus Christ, came to share our pain and provide salvation at great cost. The apostle Paul declared that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). This statement makes Calvary the supreme manifestation of God’s holiness and love.
We often speak of what Jesus suffered on the cross. But what of the Father? What of the Holy Spirit? If a mother and father suffer as they watch their child endure pain, why not the Father and the Holy Spirit? The relationship of the Persons within the Godhead is closer than that of family members.
We have a triune God who has shared, and still shares, the pain of His creatures. He who chose to create and give His moral creatures freedom to sin, and thus bring pain and death into His world, also chose to share our suffering and sorrow.
We serve a God who in Christ suffered for us, a God who in Christ conquered death for us, a God who in Christ understands our pain, a God who because of what He did in Christ will someday bring all of His children into a world where there will be no more suffering, death, or tears.
The Allah of the Muslim faith isn’t this kind of God. The Jehovah portrayed by Jehovah’s Witnesses isn’t this kind of God. Only the triune God of the Bible can be this kind of God.
