The Humility of God – The Trinity

“God eternally exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; each person is fully God; there is one God.” That is how Wayne Grudem summarizes that fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, the Trinity. How it can be true that God is both three and one is a mystery, something that we take on faith. It defies human reasoning and presses the boundaries of human language. It should humble us and drive us toward belief, because, after all, who would believe in a God they could fully understand?

Some Muslims accuse Christians of being polytheists (tritheists, to be exact) because of the doctrine of the Trinity. We are not. Ancient polytheists could have never understood the Trinity because the gods and goddesses of their various pantheons were wicked, juvenile, selfish, arrogant and proud. There could be no perfect relationship between any of those gods, much less a good one! But we see, in the Godhead, a perfect relationship of three distinct, but united, persons. This relationship can only exist if the relating of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is rooted in humility.

The Son submits to the Father, doing only what he sees his Father doing. The Father sends the Spirit, reminding the disciples of the words of the Son, speaking only what he hears. The Father elevates the Son, putting everything under his dominion. There is, here, no self-aggrandizement. There is no selfish ambition or grab for power. There is submission, restraint, and an economy of words. All three speak with one voice. At the heart of the Trinity, where the Father, Son and Spirit relate to one another, there is a dynamic humility being exercised without which divinity would be an impossibility. God is because he is humble. If he were proud, he would be the devil. If one of the members of the Trinity were to become proud, all creation would fly apart at the molecular level and all matter would be destroyed. (I’m speculating, of course!) But that will never happen because God is fundamentally humble, and he does not change.

In his book King’s Cross, Tim Keller talks about the love that exists within the Trinity – a love that is self-giving and other-glorifying. The Father, Son and Spirit willingly give love and glory to one another. “The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are pouring love and joy and adoration into the other, each one serving the other. They are infinitely seeking one another’s glory.” This love, which we call agape, is the evidence that there exists within the very being of God an infinitely deep well of humility. Without humility, agape love is impossible.

 If we want to partake in God’s life, both in this life and in the age to come, we must be humble. We are most like God when we are humble, engaging in acts of self-giving and other-glorifying love, most of which will be beneath the “dignity” of our position. I believe that the eternal plan of God is to spread this self-giving, other-glorifying love (which flows from this infinite well of humility) to humanity. God created humans to extend the “divine dance” from three to infinity. He is currently preparing the Church as the Bride of Christ, made suitable for marriage to Jesus.

So then, our responsibility is to discipline our hearts to learn humility. Some of the enemies of humility are:

A Sense of Entitlement
Prejudice of any Kind
An Us/Them Mentality
Inability to Truly Listen to Others
The Need to be Right
Narcissism/Arrogance/Pride

What are some of the enemies of humility that are alive and well in your heart? What do you think you can do to discipline yourself to be humble?