Last night at our "Essentials of the Faith" class, we discussed the Trinity and the three summary statements the Scriptures call us to hold when thinking about God:
- God is Three Distinct Persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)
- Each Person is Fully God
- There is Only One God
Each statement is easy to understand in itself, but how do we put them together. No analogy seems to work. So, the question came up on how best to explain the Trinity to our children in a way that is helpful and will not lead them into some form of heresy.
I didn't have much of an answer last night, but here is how Bruce Ware explains it in his book Big Truths for Young Hearts (which I highly recommend).
The closest thing I've imagined to the Trinity is drawing one circle using three colored markers (perhaps red, blue, and green). If you draw the same circle three times, with each color overlapping exactly the previous one, you have one circle. Bu the red line is not the blue line, and the blue line is not the green line. Yet all three lines enclose only one circle. While this illustration may work in a very small part, the truth is that there simply is nothing in our experience that shows us exactly what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches. Nothing quite works to show what it means for God to be one in his nature as the one true God, yet three in Persons as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each fully God. But we should not be surprised at this. After all, the Bible has told us many times that there is no one like the Lord (Exodus 8:10; 9:14; Deuteronomy 33:26; 34:11; Jeremiah 10:6-7). He is the one and only true and living God, and he also is unlike anything or anyone else.