God: The God Revealed in Jesus Christ – a Booklet

An Introduction to Trinitarian Faith

To download a copy of this booklet click a link: PDF / ePub / mobi. It is also available in Welsh, Swahili and Chinese.

If we want the most accurate picture of God, we don’t need to look any further than Jesus Christ. In Jesus we meet God as God really is. Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father.

“He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
“He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Hebrews 1:3).
“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
“No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18).

Through Jesus’ words and actions, we hear and see what matters most to every human being—that God the Father loves us. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). There is no “if this” or “except for that” – no matter what we have done or what we are currently doing, he loves us. He doesn’t necessarily like what we are doing, but he loves us.

John continues, “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him” (verse 17). The apostle Paul tells us, “While we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Even at our worst, God loves us. Out of his love and his commitment to save us, the Father sent Jesus. Jesus did only what the Father wanted him to (John 5:19); Jesus shows us the attitude of the Father toward us. The Father is like his Son.

Trinitarian-based

Jesus is God’s self-revelation to the world. God has come to us by sending his Son into our world. God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) was reconciling humanity to himself. “While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10). He is at peace with us, not anxious to punish.

The God we worship through Jesus Christ is the Triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity is central to how we understand the Bible and all points of theology that flow from it. Our theology begins with an essential “who” question: “Who is the God made known in Jesus Christ?”

Trinitarian faith is based on the doctrine of the Trinity (the biblical teaching that there is one God, who is eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Furthermore, it involves a Christ-centered understanding of who God is.

Jesus is the center of our faith and our love for God. “No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27). Jesus is the unique Word of God to humanity and the unique word of humanity to God (John 1:1-14). As the representative of all humanity, Jesus responded to God perfectly.

Jesus is the key to understanding Scripture. He said to a group of religious leaders in John 5:39-40: “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

Jesus, who is the focus of Scripture, is our only source of salvation. We seek to understand the Bible by first understanding who Jesus is. He is the basis of our faith—for he alone is the self-revelation of God.

Relationship-focused

Trinitarian faith is relational. Even before creation, there was a relationship of love between the Father and the Son (John 17:24). Even before Jesus came, the Father loved humanity. His love for us is the reason he sent Jesus to save us. Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, has become one with us in our humanity to represent us before God (John 1:14; Ephesians 1:9-10, 20-23; Hebrews 2:11, 14).

Human beings turned away from God and distorted their relationship with God. But Jesus shows us what the Father’s attitude toward us has always been. He does not want us to be condemned, but rather, he wants us to be rescued from what we have done.

In Jesus, God has renewed our relationship with him. As we respond to God’s call, he comes to live in us by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9-11). In Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, we are God’s treasured children, adopted by grace (verses 15-16).

Jesus told his followers to welcome people into a right relationship with God by “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). We are connected to the Triune God.

Christian life is primarily about four kinds of personal relationship:

the relationship of perfect love shared by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit from all eternity,
the relationship of the eternal Son with humanity, given physical form when the Son became human in the person of Jesus,
the relationship of humanity with the Father through the Son and by the Spirit, and,
the relationship of humans with one another, in the Spirit, as children of the Father, expressing the love that God has given us.

Who is Jesus?

“Who are you, Lord?” was Paul’s question on the Damascus Road, where Jesus met him (Acts 9:5). Paul spent the rest of his life sharing the answer with everyone who would listen. The answer is the heart of the gospel and of Trinitarian theology.

The Son of God, who is united to the Father and the Spirit, is now also joined to humanity because he became a flesh-and-blood human being (John 1:14). We summarize this by saying that Jesus is both fully God and fully human. He is both divine and human; he is the mediator between God and humanity forever (1 Timothy 2:5). He did not stop being a human when he died, or even when he returned to heaven. It continues forever. His body was brought back to life (and changed for the better!) and he went into heaven in that body. He will return bodily, just as he left (Acts 1:11).

As the One who is both God and human, Jesus is the unique meeting place of God and humanity. Through Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and return to heaven, God and humanity were given peace, and we have been made new (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). In Jesus Christ God reconciled all humans to himself (verse 19). As the Lord and Savior of all humanity, he has opened the way for everyone to be in God’s family.

A new creation

The miracle of the Incarnation is not something that happened “once upon a time,” now long past and simply affecting one person, Jesus. What he did brought about a new creation in human life (verse 17). But this spiritual reality is now hidden – hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3), and we still experience the results of evil that occur in this world, and the results of our own sins.

In the Incarnation, the eternal Son of God entered time and space and took on our human nature. The Creator became part of creation. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, not as an outside agent, but from the inside, in his humanity.

In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Jesus’ death applies to all humanity (past, present and future). Even before we die physically, we are given new life—made alive with Jesus in his resurrection.

Christ’s incarnation and atoning work brought renewal to who we are. In him, God has reconciled to himself every human being, even those who lived before Jesus came. This does not mean that Jesus forced God to change his mind about us. Even before Jesus came, God loved us, and that is why he sent his Son to us.

God knew that we were going to sin even before he created us, but he created us anyway because he loved us. He knew that he could fix the problem, and Jesus was part of the fix, but it had to be done at the right time in history. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Galatians 4:4). It was a sure thing. He could count on it, even before it was done.

Jesus, the second Adam

In Romans 5, Paul explains what Christ accomplished on behalf of all humanity even before anyone believed in him. Jesus Christ died for people who were still:

“weak” and “ungodly” (verse 6).
“sinners” (verse 8).
“enemies” (verse 10).

God accomplished his great work for us out of his “love for us” even while “we still were sinners” (verse 8). The result was that even “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (verse 10).

Paul compares Jesus to Adam, the first human. Just as Adam was the beginning of ordinary humanity, Jesus is the beginning of the new humanity. But the results are much different! Adam disobeyed, but Jesus was faithful even to his death. He was tested to the limit, and he remained faithful. This was not just for himself, but for the new humanity he was bringing about.

What Jesus Christ accomplished as the second Adam reverses what the first Adam did. Through Christ, as the new head of all humanity, “the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many” (verse 15). Jesus shows us the grace of God.

Using the imagery of a court case, Paul tells us more about what Christ accomplished for humans:

The gift “brings justification” rather than condemnation (verse 16). Justified means to be declared to be in the right – we are accepted by God.
“Those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (verse 17). We are counted as righteous as a gift, not because we earned it, but because Jesus did.
“One man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (verse 18). Jesus’ righteousness enables everyone else to made righteous.
“Through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (verse 19). Through Jesus’ faithfulness, we are made righteous, set right with God.
“Grace abounded” so that “grace might also reign through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (verses 20-21). Grace rules – grace has the victory!

God did all this for us before we were born, before we even had a chance to respond. The result of what Jesus did for humans affects the past, the present and the future. Paul says, “much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (verse 10). Jesus brings God and humanity together in peace.

In Ephesians 2:5-6 we read that those who trust in Christ share in his life, death, resurrection and return to heaven. Jesus has not just done something for us, he has done something with us by including us in all that he did. In these verses, Paul explains:

When Jesus died, we died with him. The penalty of sin has been paid.
When Jesus came back to life, we rose with him and we now belong to him. We are made alive, given new life.
When Jesus ascended into heaven, we also ascended and were seated with him at the Father’s side. That’s where we belong.

All this comes from God’s grace (verse 8) and is experienced through faith—the faith of Jesus that he shares with us by the Spirit.

Everything God has done in Christ shows us the mind, heart and character of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is on the side of his people and all his creation. God is for us, desiring our salvation, even before we respond to him. He has given us all peace and eternal life in union with himself.

For all humanity

As Jesus made his way into Jerusalem for his final Passover with his disciples, the crowds shouted: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!” (John 12:13).

Shortly thereafter, he proclaimed his impending death to those who went up to the Temple to worship. Jesus called to the Father: “Father, glorify your name!” A voice then thundered to the crowd: “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again” (verse 29).

Jesus told them the voice was for their benefit and that God’s judgment on evil had come so that the prince of this world would be driven out (verses 30-31). He also said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (verse 32). Jesus conquered evil in order to attract all people to himself. The apostles believed that Jesus died to redeem us all:

2 Corinthians 5:14: “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”
Colossians 1:19-20: “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
1 Timothy 2:3-6: “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.”
1 Timothy 4:9-10: “This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance… we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.”
Hebrews 2:9: “We do see Jesus, who…suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”
1 John 2:2: “[Jesus is] the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

These passages show that Jesus died for all humanity, that is, in their place and on their behalf. Jesus did for us, as one of us, what we could never do for ourselves. This is what is meant by the vicarious humanity of Jesus (the word vicarious refers to a representative substitute).

In our place and on our behalf

Throughout the book of Hebrews, Jesus is depicted as our great High Priest, representing all humanity, providing on our behalf a perfect response to God. He is presented as the one who stands among us, in the midst of the congregation, and who leads us in worship (Hebrews 2:12-13). He represents us as our older brother. He has become one of us, sharing our very nature, learning obedience, being tempted as we are, but overcoming that temptation perfectly (Hebrews 2:14-18; 4:15).

Theologian Thomas Torrance explained it this way:

Jesus steps into the actual situation where we are summoned to have faith in God, to believe and trust in him, and he acts in our place and in our stead from within the depths of our unfaithfulness and provides us freely with a faithfulness in which we may share…. That is to say, if we think of belief, trust or faith as forms of human activity before God, then we must think of Jesus Christ as believing, trusting, or having faith in God the Father on our behalf and in our place. (The Mediation of Christ, p. 82)

Jesus is the one who, as we respond, perfects our faith and makes us holy (Hebrews 12:2; 2:11; 10:10, 14). He acted as one of us “in our place” or “on our behalf” (Hebrews 2:9; 5:1; 6:20; 7:25, 27; 9:7).

The response of faith

So how do we personally share in all that Christ has graciously done for us? How can we personally participate and be in communion with God who has, already, reconciled us to himself? We do so by trusting in him—by having faith that he, by grace, has accomplished for us all that is needed for our salvation. In short, we say we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8).

Does this mean that we are saved by a faith that we work up? Does our salvation depend upon how great and sincere our repentance or our faith is? No, for salvation would then be dependent on something we do rather than dependent upon grace alone.

The good news is that our salvation does not depend on what we do—it does not depend on the strength of our faith or our repentance. It depends on the strength of our Savior, it depends on his faithfulness. He died for us. The gift has been given; our repentance and faith are simply responses to what God has given us. They are the way we accept and receive the free gift. Jesus has done everything necessary for our salvation from start to finish, so even our responses of repentance and faith are gifts of sharing in Jesus’ perfect responses for us as our faithful mediator.

As Thomas Torrance explained, “if we want to think of faith as a human activity, then we must think of Jesus as having done that for us as well. Just as he died for us, he lived righteously for us.” As our representative, he presents to God a perfect response on behalf of all humanity. We are saved by his obedience (Romans 5:19)—and that includes his faith. Our salvation rests on Jesus—the perfect foundation.

As our High Priest, Jesus takes our responses, perfects them and gives them to the Father, all in the Spirit. As our mediator (1 Timothy 2:5), he ministers both from God to us and represents us in our relationship to God. So we join him in his response.

The role of human choice

What God has done in Christ to reconcile us to himself calls for a response. We are urged to accept him, to welcome and receive him. We do so by trusting in him and what he has accomplished for us. The Holy Spirit enables us to freely welcome the truth and walk in it. But God does not force us to accept the truth of his love for us. A love that forced a responding love would not be loving. God’s love then calls for our decision to freely receive and freely love God in return.

Our choice is to either affirm or deny the reality that God loves us and has made every provision for us to be his children. Denial of this truth has consequences, but it will not change the reality of what God has done for us in Christ and thus who we are in Christ. Human beings choose to accept who Christ is or attempt to live in denial of who he is.

Real freedom is found in God, as theologian Karl Barth reminds us:

The real freedom of man is decided by the fact that God is his God. In freedom he can only choose to be the man of God, i.e., to be thankful to God. With any other choice he would simply be groping in the void, betraying and destroying his true humanity. Instead of choosing freedom, he would be choosing enslavement. (Church Dogmatics IV.1, p. 43)

So what is our place in all of this? We choose to accept Jesus and all he has to offer or to reject him. Through the Spirit, God the Father is calling all people to place their trust in Jesus with a thankful and hopeful heart, and to share with other believers in the Body of Christ, which is the church. As we celebrate together in communities of faith and worship, our lives are transformed.

Personal response

Jesus called people to repent and believe (Mark 1:15). The early church continued this message, calling people to repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38) and to be changed (3:19).

Our response is important. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:17 that “those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the free gift of righteousness [will] reign in life.” Abundant and freely given grace calls for us to receive it in faith. In Romans 5 Paul weaves together 1) elements of the reality accomplished by Christ on behalf of all humanity and 2) our response and participation in that relationship and reality. We must take care not to confuse what is true in Jesus for all humanity with each person’s response to that truth.

God’s gift is offered to all in order to be received by all. It is received by having faith in what God in Christ through the Holy Spirit has done for us. It is by faith in the grace of God that we begin participating in the relationship Jesus has restored, and start receiving the benefits included in that relationship.

We do not “decide for Christ” in the sense that our personal decision causes our salvation. Rather, we accept what is ours already in Christ, placing our trust in Jesus, who has already perfectly trusted for us in our place. When we accept the grace of Jesus Christ, we begin to participate in God’s love for us. We begin to live according to who we really are, as the new creation that God, prior to our ever believing, made us to be in Christ.

Some people find it helpful to explain this using the terms objective and subjective. An objective truth is a reality, whereas our understanding of and response to that reality is subjective. There is a universal, or objective, truth about all humanity in Jesus, based on the fact that he has joined himself to our human nature and turned it around. But there is also the personal, or subjective, experience of this truth that comes as we surrender to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and join with Jesus Christ.

These categories of objective (universal) and subjective (personal) truth are found in Scripture. For one example, in 2 Corinthians, Paul starts with the objective nature of salvation: “All this is from God, who reconciled [past tense] us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (verses 18-19).

Here we find an objective truth that applies to all—God has already reconciled all to himself through Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. Paul then goes on in verses 20-21 to address the subjective truth: “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

How can all be “reconciled” already and yet some need to “be reconciled”? The answer is that both are true. All are already reconciled in Christ—this is the universal/objective truth—but yet not all embrace and therefore personally experience their reconciliation with God—that is the personal/subjective truth. God has a gracious attitude toward all people, but not everyone has responded to his grace. No one benefits even from a freely given gift if that gift is refused, especially the gift of coming under the grace of God in Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit.

A second example of objective/subjective truth is found in the book of Hebrews where the author states in a straightforward manner, “For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened” (Hebrews 4:2) The benefits of a relational reality such as salvation can only be subjectively (personally) experienced when received by faith.

So while Christ is Lord and Savior of all, has died for all, and has reconciled all to God, not all will necessarily be saved. Not all will necessarily receive Christ who is their salvation. Not all will necessarily enter into their salvation, which is eternal union and communion with God as his beloved children. Some may somehow “deny the Savior who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1). While Scripture teaches the unlimited scope of Christ’s atoning work, taking away the sins of the whole cosmos, it does not offer us a guarantee that all will necessarily receive the free gift of grace.

No explanation is given as to why or how this rejection of grace could happen. But rejection is presented as a real possibility, one that God has done everything needed to prevent. If there are those who reject Christ and their salvation, it will not be due to any lack or limit of God’s grace. So we, sharing in the very heart of God, can also be those “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

What is our Christian mission?

Jesus’ life and ministry provides the motivation for every aspect of our life, including our participation in mission and ministry with Jesus. The love of Christ compels us to take part in what Jesus is doing in the world through the Spirit. Out of love we declare the gospel and invite all people to receive and embrace it. In doing so, we hope what is true of them already in Christ will be experienced by them personally in faith. Like Jesus, we desire all to participate and receive all the benefits of Christ now. Then they, too, can join in Jesus’ ongoing mission to draw others into a living relationship with their Lord and Savior. What greater joy and privilege could there be?

Our participation now in Jesus’ love and life bears good fruit and personal joy that stretch into eternity. As we welcome the truth of the gospel, we can’t help but worship our Lord and Savior!

Key Points of Trinitarian Theology

Following are some basic precepts of the theology presented in this booklet.

The Triune God created all people through the Son of God, who also is known as the Word of God.
We were created so that we could participate in the love relationship enjoyed by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We are enabled and qualified to participate in this relationship of love through Jesus Christ.
The Son became human, the man Jesus Christ, taking on our human nature.
He did this to reconcile all humanity to God through his birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension.
The crucified, resurrected and glorified Jesus is the representative and the substitute for all humanity.
As Savior and Lord of all humanity, Jesus now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he draws all people to himself by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In Christ, humanity is loved and accepted by the Father.
Jesus Christ paid for all our sins—past, present and future—and there is no longer any debt to pay.
The Father has in Christ forgiven all our sins, and he eagerly desires that we receive his forgiveness.
We can enjoy his love only as we believe/trust that he loves us. We can enjoy his forgiveness only when we believe/trust he has forgiven us.
When we respond to the Spirit by turning to God, believing the good news and picking up our cross and following Jesus, the Spirit leads us into the transformed life of the kingdom of God.

Recommended Resources for Further Study

To study Trinitarian theology in greater depth, we recommend the following resources:

GCI articles

Grace Communion International has hundreds of helpful articles that address Christian belief and practice. Here are articles that unpack key aspects of GCI’s Trinitarian, Christ-centered theology:

GCI video programs

Speaking of Life. This online program presents short messages by Dr. Joseph Tkach, GCI president, and Dr. Greg Williams, GCI vice president, on biblical topics from a Trinitarian perspective.
You’re Included. This online program presents interviews with Trinitarian theologians and authors.

Books

Michael Jinkins, Invitation to Theology (InterVarsity, 2001; 278 pages)
Darrell Johnson, Experiencing the Trinity (Regent College, 2002; 112 pages)
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperCollins, often reprinted; 225 pages)
Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010; 256 pages)
James B. Torrance, Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (InterVarsity, 1996; 130 pages)
Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Helmers & Howard, 1992; 144 pages)

Author: edited 2026

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