The God We Confess: One in Essence, Three Subsistences

Text: Deuteronomy 6:4-5; Galatians 4:4-7 LSB

Introduction:

Throughout the history of the Church, false teachings about the Holy Trinity have arisen and continue even today.

• Modalism denies the personal distinctions within the Godhead by teaching that God is one person who merely appears as Father, Son, and Spirit.
• Arianism denies the full deity of the Son and the Spirit, claiming that the Father alone is truly God while the Son and the Spirit are lesser beings.

Main Message:

Because of Christ and through His Word, we, as His Church, have been granted knowledge of the God we worship—the Triune God. This knowledge shapes our fellowship and guides our love for one another, both as we live and gather together as His Church.

I. The One God Who Revealed Himself to Us

Note: The Shema of Israel is the earliest recorded confession of faith in the Bible. It boldly declares that there is only one true God, the God whom His people are called to love, trust, and obey.

• The Shema is not just Moses giving orders. It is God Himself calling His redeemed people to stop, to gather, and to listen—to confess together that the God who pulled them out of Egypt, who kept them even when they were faithless, is Yahweh alone. No rivals. No substitutes. No other gods.
• When Israel confessed the oneness of God, that confession did not end with them. Through the fuller and clearer revelation in Christ, we as Christians also confess this same God.
• The Shema doesn’t contradict the Holy Trinity; rather it affirms it. The same God who declared, “Yahweh is one” has made himself full known in the redemptive history— not as a different God, but as the same God, now revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit.
• [1689 BCF 2.3] In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit, of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided: the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son; all infinite, without beginning, Therefore but one God, who is not to be divided in nature and being, but distinguished by several peculiar relative properties and personal relations; which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on Him.

II. The Three Persons Who Keep Us

Note: The God whom we confess—one God in three persons—does not merely inform how we properly adore Him or shape the pattern of our worship. He is also the God who loves us and faithfully keeps us.

• The Father is the one who starts our salvation. He chose us in Christ before the world began and decided to make us His children, not because of anything in us, but because it pleased Him to do so.
• • Key verses: Eph. 1:4-6; Gal. 4:4
• The Son carries out the Father’s will. By becoming man, obeying the Law, dying, and rising again, He secured our redemption. In Him, our sins are forgiven and we are brought into God’s covenant family as sons.
• • Key verses: Eph. 1:7; Gal. 4:5
• The Holy Spirit makes this salvation real to us. He dwells in us, unites us to Christ, seals us as God’s own, assures us that we belong to Him, and enables us to live as God’s people together in the Church.
• • Key verses: Eph. 1:13-14; Gal. 4:6-7

Sin To Mortify:

Individualism – detaching oneself from the fellowship and communion of your local church.

Gospel Cure:

Communion with the saints – be actively involved in the life of the church, for this is the very expression of the love of the Triune God: to love your God and to love His people.