Shane Legler

One of our chapel windows bears a seashell on it, and on occasion, someone will ask, what significance does the shell have? Of course, the seashell has a grand story behind it. It is the symbol of Saint Augustine and comes from a legend that tells of Augustine, who wrote a great deal about God’s Triune nature, walking along a beach while attempting to fully comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. As he walked, he saw a boy scooping up the sea water with a shell and then carrying it to pour into a hole he’d dug in the sand. 

As Augustine approached the boy, he asked, “what are you doing?” The boy said, “I’m going to put the sea into this hole.” Augustine responded, “That’s impossible. That hole isn’t big enough to contain the sea.” The boy answered him, “And neither is your mind big enough to contain the mystery of the Trinity.” At that point, the boy disappeared.

This legend illustrates to us that there are mysteries beyond the fullness of human understanding, and quite frankly, we should simply take God at his word and hold these mysteries in wonder. After all, God sent his son and gave us his word so that we might know him. Let us never seek to know about God as a coroner knows about a body. We are to know him as he is; we are to know him as the living God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus did not tell his church to baptize in the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). 

It is not my intent to mine the depths of our understanding of the Trinity in this short article, as such a thought would be ludicrous. Rather, I hope that we might simply know it to be true and truly wonder at it. That God is a compound unity of three persons in one being is simply at the heart of the Christian faith. To deny the Trinity is to deny the faith. This is why all Christian churches affirm the Trinity in their creeds, confessions, and statements of faith. 

As I have aged, I have been strengthened in my own faith by discovering again and again that Christianity is the only religion on planet earth that perfectly fits with and explains the world I can observe. The God proclaimed by Islam is not Triune at all. If you want simple, Islam will give you simple. Yet, such a god could not and is not said to be “love.” Love cannot be had except in relationship. Therefore, any God other than the triune God could not be said to be love himself.

Further, only the triune God revealed in the Bible and declared by his church would ever be sufficient within himself to create us for relationship. How could the God proclaimed by Islam ever say, “it is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18) when he had always been alone? The polytheists have the same problem in that gods spawned by an eternal universe would be at a loss to know what love was, as it would not be sufficient to produce love in them.

Yet, some might say, “the gods come from the gods.” Very well, you must eventually get to the first “god,” who was alone, and aloneness does not know love, and so, cannot produce it. Only the eternal, triune God, was sufficient to make us with the need to love and be loved. Further, it is this God alone who shows us, within his own being and existence, what love actually is. The father, who is the source of all love, loves the son and shows him all that he is doing (John 5:20), and the son imitates the father (John 5:19) and does as the father commands so that the world may know that the son loves the father (John 14:31). The spirit himself proceeds from the father and bears witness about the son (John 15:26).

It is in the relationship of the Trinity that we see love in action, and the father would have us to know his love. Paul ends his second letter to the Corinthians with a blessing, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. This is the love of the father. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit dwells with and in every believer, bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God, and this is his fellowship. 

The God who loves us is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this is the God who we love. In Christ Jesus, we belong to him, and he belongs to us. May he be glorified in us and may all of God’s children arise every day through a mighty strength, trusting upon Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, believing in the Threeness and confessing the Oneness of the creator of creation.

(Shane Legler is the pastor of Powell Church of God.)