How Can God Be Three and One?

The short answer: Christians believe there is one God who exists eternally as three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That isn’t three gods, and it isn’t one God wearing three masks. It’s beyond us, but it isn’t a contradiction: God is one in one sense and three in a different sense.

A friend who is a Muslim, or a Jehovah’s Witness, or just curious, asks you straight out: “How can one plus one plus one equal one? Do Christians believe in three gods or not?” Many Christians freeze, mumble something about a three-leaf clover and change the subject.

You don’t have to. The Trinity is a mystery, but it isn’t nonsense, and it wasn’t invented to make things complicated.

Where the idea came from

The first Christians were Jews. Every day they prayed, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). They would have died rather than worship more than one God.

Then they met Jesus. He forgave sins, which only God can do. He accepted worship. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Yet He also prayed to the Father, so He wasn’t simply the Father under another name.

Then the Holy Spirit came. When Ananias lied to the Spirit, Peter told him, “You have not lied to men, but to God!” (Acts 5:4).

So the early Christians had a puzzle on their hands. They believed in one God. They had met the Father, the Son and the Spirit, and each was fully God. They didn’t invent the Trinity to solve a maths problem. They used it to describe what God had shown them about Himself.

You can see all three together at Jesus’ baptism: the Son in the water, the Spirit “descending like a dove and resting on Him”, and the Father’s voice saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” (Matthew 3:16–17). And Jesus told His followers to baptise “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Notice: one name, three Persons.

What it doesn’t mean

It doesn’t mean there are three gods who get along well. There is one God.

Nor does it mean that one God takes turns being the Father, then the Son, then the Spirit, like an actor changing costumes, or water turning into ice and steam. At the baptism, all three were there at once, and the Son was talking to the Father, not to Himself.

That’s why most illustrations break down. The clover, the egg, the water: each one ends up suggesting something Christians don’t believe. It’s better to admit that God is unique. Nothing in creation is quite like Him.

Is it a contradiction?

It would be a contradiction to say God is one God and three Gods, or one Person and three Persons. Christians don’t say that. They say God is one in His being, what He is, and three in Persons, who He is. One What, three Whos. That’s hard to imagine, but it isn’t illogical.

In the fourth century a popular teacher called Arius said the Son was a very great created being, but not truly God. The church met at Nicaea in AD 325 and said no: the Son is “true God from true God”, of one being with the Father. They saw that if Jesus isn’t fully God, then God hasn’t really come to save us Himself.

Why it matters

The Trinity isn’t a dusty puzzle. It tells you something wonderful. The Bible says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). But love needs someone to love. Before the world existed, who did God love? The Trinity answers that. Jesus prayed to the Father, “You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Love didn’t begin when God made us. It was always flowing between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

And your salvation is the work of all three. The Father sent the Son. The Son died for you. The Spirit comes to live in you. Paul’s blessing gathers it up: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you” (2 Corinthians 13:14).

Think about it: If God has always been a community of love, what does that suggest about why He made people, and why we are made for relationships?

Go deeper: The Key Teachings of Athanasius of Alexandria — when Arius taught that the Son was a creature, Athanasius held out for decades, against emperors and councils, for the Nicene confession that the Son is of one substance with the Father, because only God can save. Start with chapter 9, “Of One Substance with the Father”.