Diversity and Unity in the Trinity
In this video, we describe the diversity and unity of the Trinity. The Trinity is diverse (three persons of the Godhead) and unified (The Lord our God is One).
Diversity and Unity in the Trinity
Kevin Probst
08/03/2025
The Trinity exemplifies diversity (3 persons) and unity (one God)
Consider all the people in your family, community, workplace, or church. You have lived and worked together with these people for many years. Your groups are very, very diverse.
Our distinctive differences are massive. How can we be so different in appearance, in personality, in age, in our backgrounds, and yet be one community, one fellowship of believers, one institution? The cultural and political world out there screams hysterically that if we refuse to accept them, if we don’t believe like them and become like them, then unity is impossible.
God doesn’t demand that we all be the same. He celebrates our differences. Variety is the spice of life, right? And yet we are unified in our belief and commitment to Him. The God we worship is very diverse in Personhood, yet very unified in His essence.
My son, Kameron, recently celebrated his twentieth birthday. We had a rather serious discussion. He was trying to prepare me for the fact that now that he has arrived at 20 years of age, he may see some things differently than I do. I assured him that some essential Christian beliefs about the nature of God, the death and resurrection of His Son, the inerrancy of the scriptures, and His plan of salvation are non-negotiable. However, some non-essential beliefs about politics, music, and culture allow much diversity. It is okay. Expected.
We are diverse. The students we teach are different. The children we rear are different. Some of them are very different. When we become followers of Christ, we don’t lose our distinctiveness. We maintain our distinctiveness while unifying with other believers.
We are created in the image of the Trinity. The Trinity is diverse (3 persons) and also unified (one God)
It has been a common observation through the years that things don’t go well when you deny the Trinity:
Islam denies the Trinity. Diversity is prohibited. All must abide by Shariah Law or suffer severe consequences. All must be the same. Dress the same, speak the same, and follow the same pattern of worship. This is sometimes brutally enforced.
Buddhism promotes unity. Diversity is discouraged. Those who follow Buddhism are taught to abolish their distinctive desires, to set aside and even destroy their god-given appetites and simple pleasures. In doing so, one might finally become one with the universe.
Christianity teaches that diversity and unity can coexist quite well.
How do three persons in the Trinity relate to each other?
They are unified in essence, but they have three distinct roles.
The Father has an authoritative role. He sends forth his only begotten Son.
The Son seeks to please the Father through obedience to his Father. The Son died on the cross, an act by which he purchased our salvation. He completed his mission assigned by the Father. Jesus came to die for our sins.
The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son to give us new life and access to spiritual power.
There is subordination in their roles, in their activities, but there is no subordination in their essence, in their equality. The Son submits to the Father, the Holy Spirit submits to the Father and the Son, and the Father never submits.
There is no subordination in essence. It is not true that Christ is less powerful or wise than the Father. It is not true that the Father and the Son are eternal, but the Holy Spirit is not.
The Son has been eternally obedient to the Father, but that does not make Him any less God.
I have worked as an educator for over forty years. As a teacher, I have authority over my students. That is the role teachers have been given. That doesn’t mean my students are any less human than I am. We all have equal value as humans because we are created in the image of God.
As employees, we are to submit to the authority of our administrators. That doesn’t make us any less human than they; submission doesn’t sacrifice our equality or diminish our value and certainly shouldn’t affect our unity.
As parents, we discipline our children; our authority doesn’t increase our value and decrease theirs.
We are diverse, we are distinct, and we have different roles in the work of the kingdom. No role is less important than any other role.
We learn to live with diversity and live in unity. This is possible because we were created in the image of the Triune God.
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