God is the ultimate and most sublime mystery in all existence. No being has ever equalled Him in majesty and sovereignty and no being ever shall. God’s greatness is not relative or proportional but infinitely and transcen­dentally great. What we know of God in this life from a study of the Bible is accurate and true but vastly less than what is in heaven to be yet known of Him. In this life ‘we see through a glass darkly.’ The knowledge of God which awaits His people in the life to come is vastly greater than what the most learned of scholars have attained to here below. In heaven God’s children will see Him ‘face to face’ and enjoy Him to the uttermost forever.

All our knowledge of God in this life must be drawn prin­cipally from the Bible. There is knowledge of God to be known from the created universe. This knowledge is suf­ficient to render all persons guilty who seek to suppress it in their minds. However the knowledge of God to be ob­tained from a study of the natural world is not sufficient to bring us as sinners to know and love Him, as we ought to do. Therefore our knowledge of God must be learned prin­cipally from what God tells us in the Bible. It is what we learn from Scripture, either explicitly or by good and nec­essary inference that must be allowed to shape and con­trol our formulation of the doctrine of God. What is drawn from other sources will tend to mislead our minds and so cloud our understanding with a measure of idolatry.

Defining the Holy Trinity⤒🔗

1. There is one essence or substance of God shared equal­ly by the three Persons of the holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
    
2. Each of these three Persons is God but there are not three Gods but one only.
    
3. The names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit belong to the Persons necessarily and are not the result of God’s plan of redemption.
    
4. God may be thought of in two ways. We may think of God as He is in Himself; and we may think of Him as He is related to the world He has created. It is customary to refer to God in this first sense as the Ontological Trinity (refers to the existence); and in the second as the Economic Trinity (refers to their work).
    
5. Within the Ontological Trinity there are the following properties special to each Person. The Father eternally begets the Son; the Son is eternally begotten of the Fa­ther; the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and from the Son. These properties belong to the eternal and necessary existence of God. They have no begin­ning and they will have no end.
    
6. The Son of God and the Spirit are, like the Father, of themselves (the technical term which we use to ex­press this truth is ‘autotheos’). The Son and the Spirit do not owe their origin or their being to God the Father. Like the Father, they are eternal and uncreated.
    
7. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the Son of God. In respect to His personal property of Sonship He is of the Father and in Scripture has the designation of the ‘only-begotten Son.’ In respect of His deity He is of Himself God.
    
8. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. In that He is the Holy Spirit He proceeds from the Father and the Son. In that He is God He is of Himself God.
    
9. Whilst our definitions of God must always conform to the evidence of Scripture, our terminology may legiti­mately include words which are not found in Scripture. These words, such as the term ‘Trinity,’ are used as nec­essary technical terms to convey accurate scriptural teaching about the being of God. Such technical terms are not wrong, in that they enshrine concepts which are entirely scriptural.
    
10. The Persons of the Godhead eternally indwell one an­other. The Father indwells the Son and the Spirit. The Son indwells the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit in­dwells the Father and the Son.
     
11. The technical term which we use to designate this mu­tual indwelling of the persons of the Godhead is the term ‘Circumincession.’
     
12. The three Persons of the holy Trinity each love one an­other and delight in one another. Each Person per­fectly and fully knows the other two persons. When in Scripture one Person refers to another it is with the utmost honour, respect and affection. For example, the Father refers to Christ in these words: ‘This is my be­loved Son in whom I am well-pleased.’ Christ says: ‘My Father is greater than I.’ The Holy Spirit ‘shall not speak of himself … he shall glorify me’ (John 16:13-14). The Spirit does not speak of Himself but of Christ.
     
13. For the purposes of redemption these three blessed Persons have each a work of their own. We are now referring to the Economic Trinity.
     
14. The Father’s work is to send the Son and to call the elect and to adopt them as His own dear children.
     
15. The Son’s work is to become incarnate of the Virgin Mary, to fulfil the Moral Law, to die for us on the cross, to rise from the dead, to ascend to heaven in order now to intercede for us and at last to come again to take believers home to glory.
     
16. The Spirit’s work is to give to Christ all needed strength for His ministry on earth, to regenerate the elect, to sanctify them in this world and so prepare them for heaven, where they will be with God in glory eternally.
     
17. The soul of each believer enters into glo­ry at the moment of death. There is no delay in point of time between a believer’s death and his, or her, entrance into glory.
     
18. The body and soul together of each believer will enter into heaven after the Resurrection and the Judgment. We refer to this as the Intermediate State of the be­liever.
     
19. At the Judgment each believer will receive praise and commendation from Christ, who will welcome us into glory. Believers will then take their places in the eter­nal world of heaven. We refer to this as the Eternal State of the believer.
     
20. Christ’s love for believers is a special love arising from the fact that they are His Bride, whom He has loved with an everlasting love and for whom He has paid the extremely great price of His own blood and sufferings while on the Cross.

Privileges and Duties of Christian Believers←⤒🔗

1. Christians have a relationship with each Person of the Holy Trinity. We are sons of the Father, disciples of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit.
    
2. Believers make up Christ’s Church and are referred to in Scripture as His Bride, bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh.
    
3. Those who have Christ as their Saviour have also God as their Father and the Spirit as their Comforter.
    
4. Prayer is usually made to the Father, through the Son as Mediator, and in the Spirit. However prayer may be made to all three Persons of the Godhead.
    
5. Our first and supreme duty is to love the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
    
6. God is to be worshipped only in the ways which He has commanded in His Word; to worship God in any way not commanded by Him in the Bible is vain and idola­trous.
    
7. We are to receive the Bible as the inspired Word of God and as the only rule of faith and life.
    
8. It is our happy and blessed duty to meditate on this holy Trinity with affection and gratitude, especially for the gospel of saving grace.
    
9. We are to trust in God and to rely on Him to supply all our needs both temporal and eternal.
    
10. We have the great honour of serving this holy God for the short time that we are on earth.
     
11. The ultimate joy we have as believers will be to see and to be with this blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in heaven forever.
     
12. We refer to this glorious sight of God as the ‘Beatific Vision.’ The beauty of God is infinite and surpasses all created beauty. The sight of God will ravish the hearts of believers forever in glory.
     
13. The blessed vision of the Triune God, together with a full enjoyment of His love to us in Christ, will be the chief source of our endless happiness as believers in the world to come.

Lessons We are to Seek to Learn from the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity←⤒🔗

1. To make it our great aim in this life to walk in fellowship with these three holy Persons.
    
2. To pray without ceasing to God to car­ry us safely through this short life and to sanctify our experiences here on earth so that they might be profitable to us and to others, espe­cially in matters of salvation.
    
3. To obey the will of the Holy Trinity as that will is re­vealed in holy Scripture, especially to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour and to keep care­fully God’s Moral Law in public and in private.
    
4. To seek to make known the truth of God to as many persons as possible so that they also may share with us the blessings of the gospel of Christ.
    
5. To foster fellowship with those who share our pre­cious faith, even though in this life we do not yet all see eye to eye in all things, and to promote love and joy among one another in this sad and fallen world.
    
6. To remember that the Persons of the holy Trinity cannot fail to bring to pass all that they have prom­ised in Scripture and that as Christ, our great Head, is alive from the dead forevermore, so we who are believers shall soon be with Him in glory.
    
7. In this way we may and ought to soften to our own minds and to the minds of our Christian brothers and sisters that natural fear of death, which tends to terrify us. This we should do by reminding ourselves that to be with Christ is far better than life in this present world.
    
8. Let us then ever remember that as Christians we were once in a state of sin but are now redeemed by Christ; that we are now in a state of grace and are soon to be taken out of it at our death; and that after death we are to pass from a state of grace to a state of glory, which is the most blessed state of all.