God's Revealing of Himself Through the Trinity

Excerpted with permission from The Joy of the Trinity by Tara-Leigh Cobble. Copyright 2024, B&H Publishing.

Have you ever fumbled through your house in a power outage, bumping into walls and bruising your shins on the coffee table? You easily navigate your way around that furniture on a daily basis, but with the lights off, it can be more of a challenge. Many of us who have spent time in church or in Scripture keep bumping into the Trinity but aren’t able to identify or describe it clearly. There’s a good reason for that. Through most of the Bible, it may seem as though God doesn’t say a lot about the Trinity—at least not directly.

I borrowed the darkened house illustration from B. B. Warfield, who said the Old Testament is like a furnished room that is dimly lit, and the New Testament is where God flips on the light switch. (1) This is especially true where the Trinity is concerned. The Trinity ”furniture” has been there all along, sitting in the same spots, and the New Testament light just reveals where the furniture has always been.

It’s not as though God was being cruel in the Old Testament. He wasn’t trying to bruise any shins. He knows relationships work best through progressive revelation, a gradual revealing of more and more information over time. In healthy relationships, we don’t expect to share or learn everything the first time we meet someone. This is how Scripture describes God’s relationship with humanity. He didn’t reveal His whole plan for His people at one time. Instead, He used different means at different times, patiently giving us more information piece by piece as He moved through the process.

Despite God’s progressive revelation, you and I have most likely suffered from another problem: We’ve been living in this furnished, lit house while wearing blindfolds. We’ve bumped into some things here and there; we’ve sat on them and trusted their ability to hold us up. Perhaps we’ve even occasionally gotten a glimpse of the room layout when we tilt our heads at just the right angle. But we haven’t actively explored what He progressively revealed. Now is the time for us to take our blindfolds off and let the light of Scripture show us the beauty and design of this house we’ve been living in.

(Another problem we’ve suffered is running into false ideas about God’s trinitarian nature that were never true of Him to begin with!).

Much of what we know about the Trinity wasn’t revealed until the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God’s first priority was explaining to His people that He is ONE God—the one true God. Polytheism was rampant among all the other nations, and God wanted to redirect the hearts of His people to the truth, so He repeated this theme throughout the Old Testament. In fact, to both ancient and modern Jews who rely on the Old Testament, the most important Scripture is generally regarded to be Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” God is one. This doctrine stands out as the most important doctrine of the Old Testament, the heart of monotheism (the belief in one God—as opposed to polytheism, the belief in many gods). But this verse points to far more than just the fact that there is one God—it points to His preeminence as the one true God. He is singular in His essence and superior in His being.

Since the ancient Jews were surrounded by polytheistic nations, the Old Testament writers spent a lot of effort establishing there is one true God. Only then could God begin to introduce more complexity about Himself: He is one God who consists of three Persons. In the next steps of His progressive revelation, God sent His Son to earth to dwell among the people and then sent His Spirit to dwell within His people. Here’s how Hebrews 1:1-3 puts it:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

God’s process remains obscured to someone who only reads the Old Testament. To see the Trinity in the Old Testament, you have to read it through the New Testament lens. But make no mistake: God had been dropping hints about the Trinity since Genesis 1.

There’s one important thing we must note when it comes to Scripture’s progressive revelation: it is not corrective revelation. When God reveals something new, He doesn’t negate something He previously revealed. He builds on and expands what He has already revealed. For instance, read Genesis 1:1-2 and John 1:1-3:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. (Gen 1:1-2, emphasis mine)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. (Jn. 1:1-3, emphasis mine)

Do you see it? At the start of the world’s story,  we see hints of the Trinity—God’s Word and His Spirit were the means God used to do His work of creation. God was doing one work—creating the universe—through what we only later come to understand as His three Persons.

And don’t forget that mankind is part of the universe that our triune God created. Evidence of the  Trinity’s presence is as clear in the creation of humans as it is in the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Just read Genesis 1:26 and notice the “our” language. If you’ve ever wondered who “our” is in this passage, it’s the Trinity!

Look back at the John 1 passage above. Remember that the Bible presents Jesus Christ as the Word of God (John 1:14, Rev. 19:13-16). So when we put the pieces together, we realize that the pre-incarnate Christ was present in creation, as described in Genesis 1, as was God’s Spirit, who “was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). When the New Testament points to the Spirit, His actions are described with similar fluttering, wind-related words, helping us see He is the same Person who was present and active at creation. The Old and New Testaments work together to help us better understand what God has been saying all along about His presence and activity in our world.

In our journey to know God better, we’ve now covered the fact that God is a revealer. He reveals his nature—a nature that is triune.