Trinity Sunday 2026
messenger dox
Call to worship:
pastor michael champoux
OT:
Gen 1.1-3
NT:
Matt 28.18-20
Baptism:
pastor Shane Sluka
song:
Grace alone
historical reading:
pastor andrew loginow
Athanasian creed
song:
holy, holy, holy
New member covenant:
dr. brett eckel
Confession & Pardon:
dr. brett eckel
Tithes & offerings:
pastor Bobby owens
song:
king of kings
Sermon:
dr. al loginow
Trinity Sunday 2026
Introduction
There is a conversation that comes up in our house time and time again. As we’re discussing Jesus, or the gospel, or God – anything pertaining to our Christian faith – one of our kids, usually one of the little girls, will land on the question of Jesus and God – Is Jesus God or is He God’s Son? How can he be both? If you have kids and you talk to them about the gospel, I’m sure you’ve had similar conversations in your home. Or maybe you’re newer to Christianity and the doctrine of the Trinity is confusing to you – don’t worry, you’re in good company.
The doctrine of the Trinity is possibly the most difficult of all Christian doctrines; it shorts our cognitive circuits. Along with the doctrine of Christ, the early church spent the most time developing and defending the doctrine of the Holy Trinity from Scripture. That’s why a day like today is so important – today is Trinity Sunday, the final week of this trilogy of holy days inaugurating ordinary time. Two weeks ago, we celebrated Ascension Sunday and last week Pentecost. We celebrate Trinity Sunday every year because the Trinity is the foundation of Christianity. John Webster says there is“…an important sense [in which] there is only one Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in its inward and outward movements.” Barth said, “The doctrine of the Trinity is what basically distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God as Christian.”
NT Wright said, “The doctrine of the Trinity is not only the best we can do in speaking of the one God, but also the foundation of Christian spirituality.” All of Christian faith and practice can be boiled down to the Trinity – who God is and what He does. The way we speak about God is crucial and for 2,000 years when speaking of the Trinity, the church has used the language of one God in three persons. On this Trinity Sunday 2026 let us think carefully about the revealed identity of our God. Let us behold our God is His beauty and mystery. Let our hearts be captivated with His simplicity and complexity.
One God
Let’s start with the confession that we believe in one God. The Bible reveals that there is only one God. This is no clearer than in Deuteronomy 6:
Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one. You shall love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children.
Historically this pericope has been called the שְׁמַ֖ע (Heb, “hear”) and is used in Jewish liturgy to this day. This uniqueness of God is all over the Bible; one spot we see it recapitulated is James 2.19: You believe that God is one; you do well. James is one of the oldest NT books so from the beginning, Christianity inherited monotheism. The Greek μόνος, means, “the only entity in a class— ‘only one, alone.’” And, of course, the Greek θεός, “God.” He is the one God, the only God. He is the “only entity in a class.” He’s completely other. Ontologically speaking there are only 2 types of being in existence: there is (1) creator and there is (2) creature. God is the only creator, and everything else is creature, creation. We must confess that there is one God. To confess anything else is outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity.
There is one God who is the creator and sustainer of the universe. He created us and he saves whom he wills. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He is holy and he is love. We believe in one God.
It is important that we know, understand, and believe that there is only one God. This is not merely academic. This is intensely practical. There is only one true God and we can know him. We don’t have to wonder. We don’t have to be unsure. We can know and worship the true creator who has revealed himself in his Word.
Three Persons
But it is not enough to believe in God. Monotheism is essential, but it falls short of the glory of God. Judaism and Islam are monotheistic, but they lead to hell. Orthodox Christianity is Trinitarian. We believe in 1 God in 3 persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Along with James, Galatians is one of the earliest NT books. In Galatians 4, under the inspiration of the Spirit, St. Paul writes:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God (Gal 4.4-7).
The earliest of Christian writings not only taught one God, but also three persons.
And how we talk about God is important. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit. Q 25 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Since there is only 1 divine being, why do we speak of 3: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?” The answer, “Because that is how God has revealed himself in his Word: these e distinct persons are 1 true eternal God.” C.S. Lewis astutely notes, “Naturally God knows how to describe Himself much better than we know how to describe him.”
We must also rightly describe each person of the Triune Godhead in relation to one another. The Westminster Confession of Faith (2.3) states: “the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” The Greek fathers used the phrase περιχώρησις, literally “a proceeding around.” The Western church translated it into circumincessio.
“The Father…Son…& Holy Spirit glorify each other…At the center of the universe, self-giving love is the dynamic currency of the Trinitarian life of God. The persons within God exalt, commune with, and defer to one another…When the early Greek Christians spoke of περιχώρησις in God they meant that each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In Constant movement of overture & acceptance each person envelops & encircles the others” – Cornelius Plantinga
C.S. Lewis famously described it this way:
“In Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance…[The] pattern of this three-personal life is…the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.”
The Father, Son, and Spirit have eternally loved, served, and worshipped one another and this gives us insight into creation – God created us not because He was lacking, but because He wanted to share. Jonathan Edwards said that we serve a happy God – the 3 persons of the Godhead have eternally been happy in each other. God did not create us because He lacked happiness, but to share His happiness with us.
And so, our doctrine of the Trinity doesn’t just affect how we think about God it also affects how we think about each other. Our imago dei anthropology is derivative of our Trinitarian theology. Humans are diverse to the glory of God. Men and women are both equally created in God’s image and yet called to different vocations in the home and in the church. All ethnicities are created equally in God’s image, and yet different in so many beautiful ways. God created this diversity to glorify himself and more accurately reflect his identity. Trinity Sunday reminds us of the beauty of diversity in how God made his people.
This earliest of Trinitarian texts in Galatians 4 (1) reveals who God is – 1 God in 3 persons: the Father, Son, and Spirit – but it also reveals (2) what God does, namely God saves us through the gospel. When the fullness of time came, the Father sent the Son born of a woman. Jesus lived a sinless life under the Law, keeping the Law, anointed by the Spirit in His baptism. Jesus died as our substitute, bearing the wrath of the Father on the cross.
The Scripture says that on the 3rd day the Father resurrected Jesus from the dead (Acts 2.24 et al). The Bible also says Jesus takes his life up again from the dead (John 10.17-18), and Romans 8.11 teaches the Spirit resurrected Jesus from the dead. All 3 persons of the Holy Trinity raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. And then Christ gave the great commission, commanding the church to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matt 28.19). Through faith and repentance, we are adopted into God’s family, and He sent His Spirit of His Son into our hearts, so that, like Jesus, we cry, “Abba father!”
You can see the same beautiful gospel in the great benediction from 2nd Corinthians 13.14. The grace of faith and repentance we have in Jesus Christ brings us into the Love of God. The love of God is that community of the Father, Son, and Spirit from eternity past. Being adopted into the love of God, the Holy Spirit creates κοινωνία fellowship – a community working together for a common purpose: the church.
Again, in Mere Christianity, Lewis says,
“That is how theology started. People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic. He made them believe Him. They met Him again after they had seen him killed. And then, after they had been formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well…Consequently, the one really adequate instrument for learning about God is the whole Christian community, waiting for Him together.”
Trinity Sunday reminds us that as the family of God, the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, we are unified in the gospel. God saved us from different political and socioeconomic backgrounds, different ethnicities, men, women, and children. We have diversity in opinion and experience and unity in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we hold to liberty in nonessentials, unity in essentials, and charity in all things.
Illustration
3 whos, 1 what, triangle; AI – apple, water, shamrock (St. Patrick)
How to Understand the Trinity Better
Church – liturgical calendar; songs (dox, holy, holy, holy, there is a redeemer), prayers, sermons (Trinity Sunday, etc.), creeds, classes
Scripture
OT – Gen 1.1-3, 26; 11.7; 18; Ps 110.1; Isa 6.8
NT – Matt 3.13-17; 28.19; 2 Cor 13.14; Gal 4.4-7; 1 Pet 1.2; Jude 20-21
Pray – ask God to give you humility & help understand
Ecumenical creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian)
Westminster Standards
Books – Lewis – Mere Xianity, Keller – Reason for God, St. Augustine – De Trinitate (The Trinity), Joe Thorn – Experiencing the Trinity, Reformation & ESV Study Bible, Systematic Theologies (Sproul, Horton, Berkoff, Bavinck, Calvin)
Conclusion
We worship 1 God in 3 persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And while we will never fully understand the doctrine of the Trinity, we can still have that childlike wonder. When you explain the Trinity to a child they may not understand it but they accept it. With childlike wonder we can embrace and rest in the bigness of God.
Jesus says to come into the kingdom we must have faith like children. That doesn’t mean that we believe untrue things, but that we believe God even when we can’t understand him. Deuteronomy 29.29 says, the secret things belong to yhwh our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. So much of the Holy Trinity is a secret thing; a mystery that belongs to God alone. And yet, in his kindness God has revealed a glimpse of Himself. He is 1 God in 3 persons: the Father, the Son, and the Hoy Spirit. And that belongs to us and our children forever.