Christianity Is Christ

Transcribed Extract: The Mathematics of the Trinity

[The Three Persons of the Trinity at Jesus’ Baptism] All together. Acting together. Acting inseparably, as they had done when then created the world in the first place. And God spoke. And the Word made it happen. And the Spirit descended and made it all come to pass. That’s the beginning of Matthew. Then if you didn’t understand how it all adds up, how Three go into One, right at the very end of the book…. Jesus risen from the dead; resurrected from the dead; breaking all the rules of nature in the process…. Jesus alive from the dead claiming authority in heaven and on earth. And in Matthew’s Gospel ‘heaven’ always is a euphemism for ‘God’. The “kingdom of God” in the other Gospels is the “Kingdom of heaven” in Matthew’s Gospel. Heaven is where God is; heaven is God’s throne, and so on. All authority in heaven means all authority as God and all authority on earth in his human life as Jesus. All authority. He sends the church out to do what the church should do – make disciples, baptizing people, teaching them. Baptizing them ‘in the name’ – singular – in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And we discover that early on in the New Testament, the Divine Name, the Name that was named in the Old Testament, the Name of God, the singular God is singular – he is one God – and yet you can also describe three Persons in one God. That’s a mathematical conundrum that you are not going to solve in your lifetime. “Jesus says to the crowds, ‘How can he be David’s Lord and David’s son. How do you work that out?’”