Western Christianity has tended to minimize, or perhaps a better way of saying it, overlook the pre-imminent significance of the doctrine of the Trinity. We have tended to focus primarily on the doctrine of the cross, substitutionary atonement, salvation, and resurrection, and rightfully so. Those are all central doctrines of the Christian faith. However, if we don’t rightly understand the significance of the Trinity then those other doctrines will remain somewhat incomplete in our understanding.

The idea of a God who exists as One God in Three Persons is unique to Christianity. No other religion or faith system has this view of God. The reason that is important because only a God who exists in perfect community and love within Himself can have Love at the core of His being. John’s statement that, “God is love,” can only make sense within the context of the Trinity. If God has always been, and He existed before anything else existed, then you have to answer the question of, “Who, or what, was He loving before anything else existed?” For God to be love He has to have always been a loving being, and if there was no object for Him to love, or be loving towards, then He would lack the framework to understand what love is.

See, Allah is a uni-personal god of Islam. Allah can be power. He can be truth. He can be creator. But, Allah cannot be love. He could have a mental concept of love, but that kind of god cannot know love on a personal level. God existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit means that He not only has a mental concept of love, and a personal knowledge of love, but He is the source and embodiment of love.

This is ‘ginormously ‘ important because Genesis tells us we have been made in the image of this God. Which gives purpose and definition to who we are as individuals, why we need to be connected to God and others, what sin is, what reconciliation means, and ultimately what Jesus accomplished through his life, death and resurrection. It gives a context for marriage, community, the treatment of material possessions, generosity and giving, etc. For example, God said it wasn’t for Adam to be alone, and in response to that problem the answer God brought was another human being, a female, who was just like Adam in her humanity and yet different than Adam in her sexuality. This was a representation of the Trinity. The Trinity also helps us better understand God’s commandments and why violating them is sin.

If God was unipersonal then the commandments will be interpreted as a list of rules, or moral bars, that we are to obey or keep. And God becomes some grumpy, old man, however benevolent we may interpret Him to be, who’s keeping a close eye on our lives to see if we can be good enough at keeping those rules. The Gospel then becomes about a highly disappointed God who has to judge our failure to jump over that moral bar and fortunately Jesus stepped in and took our place instead. Now, there are aspects of truth in that, but a proper understanding of the Trinity fills in the gaps and gives us a more complete picture.

If we are made in the image of a Triune God, a God who is love, then to say, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” isn’t just God saying we better not step out on Him, it is God saying we are not to seek our identity, value and worth in anything other than God’s love for us. We are not to make any graven images in an attempt to represent God because He has already made us to bear His image in loving community with one another. We are not to bear false witnesses because lying is typically an attempt to look better than you are or avoid punishment for wrong doing, both of which are trusting in the love and acceptance of creation rather than Creator. And on and on we could go. Being made in the image of a God who is Love, a Triune God, gives proper context to all of that.

Then, the Gospel, Jesus the Son stepping out of his culture and into ours, to enter into our world, to touch the lepers, to heal the lame, to raise the dead, to forgive sins, to bring in the outcast, to perfectly bear the image of the Father, and then willingly sacrifice Himself to pay the penalty to forgive sins and demonstrate His unconditional, steadfast love to heal our brokenness and bring us back into the image-bearing purpose for which we were made as well. The Gospel goes beyond just the idea of penal substitution, though it does include that, into a restoration of vocation and purpose, not just about us going to Heaven but about Heaven coming back to earth in and through us, His image bearers, as we unconditionally love not just one another, but even our enemies.