Trinitarian Unity in Communion
The word communion might bring to mind the Lord’s Supper that Jesus instituted before his death and has been practiced by Christians ever since (Luke 22:7–23; 1 Cor. 11:17–34). For now we will discuss the idea of communion more generally. Here is a simple working definition for communion in Christian theology: the sharing of fellowship among God and his people.
The eternal communion of Father, Son, and Spirit is the grounds for our communion with him and one another. Our triune God, simple and perfect for all of eternity, has always been the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Scriptures witnessed to the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Spirit long before these events were made manifest in time and space. The Father did not “become” a Father at some point in time when he decided to create the Son with some unnamed heavenly mother. No, this would insinuate that the Father changed at some point, which would deny Scripture’s claim that God cannot change (Mal. 3:6). Further, this would insinuate that the Son was created, which would deny Scripture’s claim that he is the Creator, not a creature (John 1:1–3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 13:8). Rather, the Father and the Son shared a communion of love with the Holy Spirit in all eternity—indeed, “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).
If God truly is one (Deut. 6:4), then we cannot treat the persons as a “team” of disconnected beings or three “members” of a “divine dance.” This way of speaking hints strongly at three divine beings who are one only by virtue of agreement or a unity of will.
This is basic anti-Trinitarian Mormon theology. Instead, it’s more fitting to speak the way the Bible speaks: “God is love” (1 John 4:8). This verse is simple and yet packed with rich Trinitarian theology. God is love. He’s not a collection of entities or beings who simply love one another, however deeply, which leads them to work together as some sort of heavenly taskforce. He doesn’t love sometimes and not love other times. He doesn’t wrestle between fluctuating emotions. No, it’s much deeper than that—unfathomably so. The best we can make sense of this is to say with John that Father, Son, and Spirit just are the one God who exists in an inseparable communion of love. God loves us as an outflow of his very nature—the one who loves perfectly and eternally.
This one God who is love exists as three persons who fully and truly are the loving God. Do the three persons love one another? Yes. But we say this only insofar as the Scripture gives us language to distinguish the persons from each other. However, if we exaggerate the oneness, we deny that there are three persons who exist in a perfect and pure life of inseparable, mutual love. Moreover, if we exaggerate the threeness, we deny that there is one perfect, simple triune God who just is love, and replace him with something like three Gods who, like humans, choose to love one another only under the right circumstances or due to certain impulses.
God loves us as an outflow of his very nature—the one who loves perfectly and eternally.
Trinitarian Distinction in Communion
God is love, and the three persons exist in an eternal communion of that love. God the Father is love. God the Son is love. God the Holy Spirit is love. God’s love is not a cookie jar any of the persons can reach into when they need an emotional pick-me-up, but rather a divine attribute that belongs to each person as the one God.
That said, we should not deny that there is a real distinction between the persons and a mutual love that exists between them. The Father wasn’t lying when he said at Jesus’s baptism, “This is my beloved Son” (Matt. 3:17). He didn’t start loving the Son at some point in history, but, again, they shared this love before the foundation of the world. And this love overflows to us in the missions of the Son and the Spirit. Drawing on Ephesians 1:3–14, Daniel Treier helpfully shows four ways the communion between the Father and the Son—the filial communion—relates directly to our communion with the triune God via the divine missions: (1) Christ’s multifaceted communion with God leads to our sanctity and faithfulness; (2) our election is in Christ; (3) we are adopted as sons and daughters through the Son; and (4) the Christ-centered nature of the passage reveals the full integration of our salvation through our own communion with God, reassured by the work of the Spirit in us.1 For our purposes here, the point is clear: the single, perfect, pure communion of love between the persons is poured out on us, as we are loved by the Father because of our union with the Son, whom the Father loves. The love of God is poured out on us by the inseparable work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Returning to 1 John 4, we can see the distinction of the persons even within this one love of God that has been graciously offered to us:
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (1 John 4:9–16)
The Father has a love for his Son that he wants to give to us. The personal distinctions are clear in the sending language: the Father is the sender and the Son is the sent one. This could imply that God’s love is like a package that the Son is merely delivering on his behalf. But, again, it’s much deeper and richer than that. Jesus says elsewhere, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and “All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you” (John 16:15). Only God can pour out God’s love. Only God can give to us the grace and mercy that only God can give. This is why we can say without hesitation that Father, Son, and Spirit are truly the one God, because they alone bring us into their loving communion. As John says in the various passages above, we love one another because we have received the love of God through our union with the Son and the Spirit.
Notes:
- Daniel J. Treier, The Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2023), 50–54.
This article is adapted from Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit by Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith.
Matthew Y. Emerson (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is coprovost and dean of theology, arts, and humanities at Oklahoma Baptist University. He is also a cofounder of the Center for Baptist Renewal and has authored several books, including The Story of Scripture: An Introduction to Biblical Theology and He Descended to the Dead: An Evangelical Theology of Holy Saturday.
Brandon D. Smith (PhD, Ridley College, Melbourne) is chair of the Hobbs School of Theology and Ministry and associate professor of theology & early Christianity at Oklahoma Baptist University. He is also a cofounder of the Center for Baptist Renewal and host of the Church Grammar podcast. He is the author of several books, including The Trinity in the Book of Revelation and The Biblical Trinity.
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