One way to understand the Trinity is by using the analogy of the sun in the sky. God the Father is like the body of the sun, Jesus is like the light, and the Holy Spirit is like the heat. The Holy Spirit draws us to Christ, and as we see the light of Jesus, we can see the Father. The sun analogy helps us understand that the three Persons of the Trinity are distinct, yet united as One God.
I also want to talk about a passage that most of us don’t use to show how Jesus talked about the Trinity. This is a great example of how studying the Word of God can give us a better understanding of Christian theology. Jesus is being tested by the religious leaders prior to Him being crucified.
MARK 12:32 The scribe said to Him, “Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM.
a scribe repeats from Deuteronomy 6:4, saying God is One and the only one. By his response, the lawyer seems to imply that Jesus’ claim to being the Son of God contradicted this commandment. The Pharisees intended to use Jesus’ own words to trap Him. But the Bible goes on to declare that the Creator God exists in the form of Three Persons named the Father, Son and Spirit. Together they are God, not three separate gods. And the Bible has always represented God as Three and also as One, even from the opening verses of Genesis. Jesus has consistently reflected this tension in His teaching, as He has called Himself God and the Son of God. At one point He says He is the great I AM, meaning God, and elsewhere He spoke of doing the Father’s will.
So when Jesus claimed He was God and also the Son of God, they thought He was contradicting Deuteronomy 6:4 And that’s why this scribe pointedly reminds Jesus that God is One and there is no one besides Him, which leads Jesus to respond with a question of His own.
Matthew 22 41-45
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son, is he?” The son of David,” they replied. He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Having made his point to Jesus, the scribe returns to the group of Pharisees, and Jesus turns to the group and asks them a question.
When Jesus asks these men who the Messiah will be, they correctly answer he will be the son of David. Jesus says you are correct, but then He asks how David refers to this future descendant he never knew as “Lord? “Jesus is referring to the great Messianic Psalm 110, in which David writes.
We see in v.1 David calls this future son his Lord, and that makes no sense to a Jewish way of thinking.
David wrote that Yahweh (the Lord) says to Adonai (the Messiah), sit at my right hand…
So, God directs this future Messiah to have the position of greatest honor above anyone else; the right hand of God, but in Jewish society, a father was always greater than a son. So, in human terms, a descendant of David couldn’t be David’s Lord or superior, and that was the conundrum Jesus asked these men to solve. In v.45 Jesus asks them how can David call this future Messiah “Lord” if the Messiah descended from David?
None of these men were able to answer the question, because it requires understanding that the Messiah was the Son of God. In human terms, Jesus was a descendant of David and therefore David would have been a superior of Jesus, but Jesus wasn’t merely a human descendant of David as the religious leaders had assumed. He was God incarnate, divinity and humanity in one.
And the answer is in the text where we read in v.43 Jesus said that David wrote psalm 110 “in the Spirit.”
In other words, David was directed by the Spirit of God to write these words, which means that God revealed this truth to David and self-evidently, the Spirit had not revealed them to these men in that day.
And did you notice that in this short passage, Jesus has affirmed the Trinity itself?
In v.44 Jesus points out that David wrote of the Father speaking to the Son and placing the Son at His right hand. That statement clearly reveals that God is a Father and a Son
And then a verse earlier in v.43, Jesus said this truth was revealed to David through the third person of the Godhead, the Spirit, once again, the Bible teaches Father, Son and Spirit…three Persons but One God. I love to see verses like this and when we understand the context of what was happening, we truly can get a deeper understanding of God’s word.
