As a Christian, it is easy to focus upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. After all, we believe that if Christ had not been born, suffered, died and raised to new life then we would be lost in our sins. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”
For this reason, focusing on Jesus Christ is a natural part of being a Christian. But we cannot forget that Jesus is not the only person in the Godhead. One of the most difficult Christian doctrines to comprehend is the Trinity. This is the belief that there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and that these three persons are one God.
This doctrine is important because each person of the Trinity has a role in our salvation. We see the work of the Father throughout Scripture. He is the one who called Abraham to follow after him (Genesis 12:1-3). He is the one who credited Abraham’s faith as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). The Father is the one who sent the Son (5:36-37). The Father is the one who draws us to salvation as Jesus himself testifies in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”
The Father’s work began before the world began. We read of this in Ephesians 1:3-4, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” These words of the Apostle Paul are amazing because they tell us that the Father is active in salvation.
The Son is also active in the work of salvation. It was the Son who accepted the task given to him by his Father. The one who was eternally God came down and was found to be a man. Jesus humbled himself and was obedient to his Father even to the point of death upon the cross (Philippians 2:5-11). We know that this was not something that Jesus went through without feeling. In the Garden of Gethsemane he was in agony to the point of sweating drops of blood (Luke 22:44).
Jesus was born of a virgin and lived a life of poverty and suffering. In the end, one of his disciples, named Judas, turned him over to be beaten and killed. Jesus was crucified upon a cross of wood. Paul tells us why it is that Jesus suffered thus, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Apostle Peter gives further instruction, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).
This is why Christians love Jesus. He died for our sin so that we might live for God…both now and in the age to come. He has gone before us and is our anchor and promises that those who trust in him will be saved (Hebrews 6:19).
But what of the Holy Spirit? What is the Spirit’s role in salvation? To be certain, the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity does not draw attention to himself but, instead, gives attention to the Father and the Son. But the Spirit does work in our salvation. Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:13-14 that we are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit and that the Spirit “is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
The Spirit prays for us when we do not know what to pray (Romans 8:26). The Spirit is our comforter and our helper who is always with us (John 14:26 and John 15:26). Jesus tells his disciples in John 16:7, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all active in our salvation. The Father calls, the Son redeems and the Spirit seals. This is why Christians are baptized into the name (singular) of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is also how we pray: to the Father, by the power of the Spirit in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ.
