God's Threeness Sermon Ideas
God's threeness is personal. God the Holy Trinity consists of three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The glory of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is its declaration that ultimate reality consists of three persons united as one holy God, each of them God only with the other two. We can celebrate God's threeness in prayers, liturgies, and sermons.
What does the Bible say about God's threeness?
Use these prefiltered searches to craft sermons and prayers, offer pastoral care, or plan worship services around the theme of God's threeness.
Divinity and distinctness of God the Father
- Luke 10:21, Lord of heaven and earth
- John 14:26, the Father sends the Spirit in the Son's name
- Romans 1:7, God our Father and the Lord Jesus
- 1 Corinthians 8:5–6, one God and one Lord
- 2 Corinthians 1:3, the Father of our Lord
- Ephesians 1:1, the Father of our Lord
Divinity and distinctness of Jesus Christ
- John 1:1, the Word was with God
- John 1:18, Jesus is close to the Father's heart
- John 17:20–22, Jesus was sent by the Father
- John 20:28, Thomas believes Jesus is God
- 1 Corinthians 8:6, one God and one Lord
- Philippians 2:5–7, Jesus was in the form of God
- Colossians 2:9–10, Jesus embodied God
- Hebrews 1:3, Jesus is the reflection of God's glory
Divinity and distinctness of the Holy Spirit (or Advocate, or Paraclete)
- Mark 3:29, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit
- John 14:26, the Father sends the Spirit
- John 16:8, the Advocate will come
- Romans 8:15–16, the Spirit bears witness
Triadic formulas: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
- Matthew 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
- Acts 2:38–39,"Peter said to them, `Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.'"
- 1 Corinthians 12:4–6,"Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone."
- 2 Corinthians 13:14,"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you."
Sermon ideas about God's threeness
One God, three divine persons
A sermon on God's threeness can point out that the Bible identifies and distinguishes three divine persons while insisting on one God. "One God" does not mean there is only one person in God (one thinker, speaker, lover, doer). "One person" is standard modalist heresy—that is, the heresy that there are three modes of being in one person.
Not masks or roles
A sermon on God's threeness can also point out that person in early Latin Christianity did not mean masks or roles as in dramatis personae. Tertullian's analogy is that Father, Son, and Spirit are three persons in God as, for example, multiple monarchs—such as a father and a son—may administer a single monarchy. Novatian observes that the Father and the Son are as plainly two persons as are Paul and Apollos.
The Bible and classical Christianity
"One God" in the Bible and classical Christianity may mean any of the following:
- One Father, as in 1 Corinthians 8:6
- Johannine oneness exhibited by the Son and Father, who are "in" each other and "one" with each other, united by their common will, work, word, knowledge, love, and glory (this is roughly the meaning in later centuries of one "substance" or "essence" in God; it's the sum of those properties shared in common by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that constitute them as divine persons).
- One holy Trinity
So the tension within the Christian doctrine of the Trinity consists in honoring the distinctness of three persons, each divine by the same attributes as the other two, while also worshiping one God.
Implications of God's threeness
In theological anthropology, how shall we construe the image of God in humanity? Where is a place in it for harmony, intersubjectivity, mutuality, reciprocity, fellowship? Human with-ness and in-ness can reflect the three-personed unity within God. It is striking, for example, that the "restoration of the image" texts in the New Testament (Ephesians 4:24–32; Colossians 3:9–17) are in wonderfully communal contexts. The overcoming of estrangement and alienation from God and humanity that is the heart of righteousness is, in Pauline perspective, both the graceful accomplishment and goal of the Christian community.
In our fellowship and koinonia, in such seemingly homely endeavors as telling each other the truth, in doing such honest work as will help those in need, and above all in that love that "binds everything together in perfect harmony," we not only demonstrate that we are members one of another, but also that we as community, we in the plural, constitute the restored image of God.
In ecclesiology we note that, in John 17:20–26, Jesus offers a rudimentary social analogy of the Trinity in the new community, of whom Jesus prays that "they may be one as we are one." Or, to move to Pauline ground, our "membership one with another" is a pale reflection of the superlative intratrinitarian membership (1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 4). The social God calls out a people to be a witness, agent, and model to the nations.
The Christian community that is established by the self-giving events of Christ and under the sponsorship of the Spirit is called once more to be witness, agent, and model of the divine life-giving. Old and new people of God, old and new covenants, are called and constituted by the self-giving of God. For just as the missions of the divine persons extend the intratrinitarian relations into the sphere of broken human life and habitat, so the people of God are called in turn to do the work and minister the love that is at "the inner heart" of the trinitarian mystery.
Thus, a sermon on God's threeness can say that the summit of church membership is being membered with others—not only by common love or loyalty for the same Lord, but also by having the divine mind, the servant mind, the deferring-to-others mind. Membership in the church implies the high goal of imitating the divine life by glorifying and exalting others and so doing by "taking on the form of a servant."
What Augustine says of the physical body of Christ may then be properly extended to the church: Even the communal body of Christ is a sort of sacrament, a visible sign of an invisible reality.