How Can God Be One God and Three Persons?

God is one in being and three in persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One God, not three gods

Deuteronomy 6:4 confesses, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

Christians do not mean that God is one person who changes masks or roles. God is one divine reality—one eternal, undivided God.

• The Father is God.
• The Son, Jesus Christ, is God.
• The Holy Spirit is God.
• Yet the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.

They are distinct persons, not separate beings.

What “person” means here

A person is not one-third of God.

Each person fully possesses the one divine nature: the Father is fully God, the Son is fully God, and the Spirit is fully God. God is not divided into parts.

The Father eternally begets the Son; the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father (and, in Western Christian confession, from the Father and the Son). These are eternal relations within God, not events where God became Trinity later.

Why Christians confess this

Jesus is baptized: the Son stands in the water, the Father speaks from heaven, and the Spirit descends like a dove (Matthew 3:16–17).

Jesus commands baptism “in the name”—singular—“of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

The Trinity is not a math puzzle we solve. It is God’s own life as he has revealed himself: the one God who saves us through the Son and brings us into fellowship with himself by the Holy Spirit.