The Threeness of the One God

1921

By Rev. E. J. Pace
Director of Missionary Course, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago

TEXT — The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. — 2 Cor. 13:14

In the familiar words of the apostolic benediction, so called, without which no assembly of Christians seems fittingly dismissed, reverberates the supreme fact of the Christian revelation, namely that God exists a trinity of persons in a unity of nature. It is one God, and yet there are three persons; not three Gods, nor yet three manifestations of the one God, as the religion of the Hindoos, but three persons, each distinct from the other two, and yet bound to both by mutual bonds of complementary life and love relationships.

We grant there is mystery here. But where in this universe will we encounter no mystery? When we can explain one of the manifold mysteries that are locked up in a single drop of water, or in one beam of light, we will then demand an explanation of this, the profoundest mystery of all, the tri-unity of the one Godhead.

So, let it be repeated, we have here a fact of revelation, and of the Christian revelation, mind you, a fact which, while not opposed to reason, nevertheless transcends reason. Science unaided never could have discovered it; and yet when once the fact is revealed, lo, even science comes laden with presumptive evidence from myriad sources; and not only so, but the artist from his palette, and the musician from his keys, all of them come bearing united testimony that underneath all the phenomena of nature, as well as all the harmonies of both light and sound, lies the number three.

Every schoolboy knows how with three primary colors — red, yellow and blue — he can make any other color. Indeed, every imaginable tint or hue in the universe is but the blending of these three undivided colors. And it does not take long for the lassie at the piano stool to learn that all the infinite range of possibilities in the harmony of sound results from the blending of three primary triads of notes. The scientist in his eager search for unifying laws cannot get less than three categories in which to cast all physical phenomena. These three categories are substance, form and force. And how strikingly suggestive these three! For what have we in substance but the Father? What have we in form but the Son, who is the "express image of the Father's substance (Heb. 1:3); and what have we in force but the Spirit, by whose power all effects in creation and redemption are wrought!