Extract

Part of the great inheritance that the church has received from Israel is the conviction that there is one—and only one—God. In numerous places and in various ways, the writers of the New Testament books reaffirm this bedrock confession of the old covenant people, “The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). To this great confession of monotheism, the New Testament adds two vital affirmations. First, the God-breathed New Testament maintains unequivocally that Jesus is the one and only true way to knowing God. Second, there is the deep conviction that to know the one true God is also to know him as three Persons. It is none other than Jesus who leads His people along this pathway when He commands His disciples—and, through them, the church—to baptize believers into the one divine “name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19). Here we find the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit coordinated in such a way as to imply their equality and their distinctness as Persons, but mention is made only of the singular name of the three, a distinct indication of their unity.