“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.'” Genesis 1:26
In the fourth century, a pastor in Alexandria named Athanasius spent the better part of his adult life in exile. He was removed from his position five times by five different Roman emperors. His offense was insisting that the Son of God is of the same substance as the Father, fully God and fully co-eternal, against the teaching of Arius, who held that the Son was a created being. Athanasius stood at the center of the controversy that produced the Nicene Creed in 325 AD, and he spent the decades that followed defending its language at great personal cost. The phrase he fought for, homoousios (“of the same substance”), was a single Greek word. He believed the identity of God was worth getting right, because what the church proclaimed about salvation depended on it. If the Son who died for sinners was less than fully God, the atonement would be insufficient. If the Spirit who indwells believers was less than fully God, the presence of God in the church would be something less than God declares.
Trinity Sunday asks the church to do what Athanasius spent his life doing: to think carefully about who God is and to worship the God who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This week’s passages trace that revelation from the opening verses of the Bible to the closing words of a pastoral letter. In Genesis, God creates through his Word and his Spirit, and a mysterious plural appears at the creation of humanity. In Psalm 8, David marvels at the place God has given human beings within this creation. In Matthew 28, the risen Jesus speaks the triune name over the church’s mission. And in 2 Corinthians 13, Paul names all three persons of the Trinity as the source of the church’s daily life together. The God who said “let us make” at the beginning of the story has been revealing who the “us” is across the whole of Scripture.
Genesis 1:1–2:4a
The God Who Creates Together
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (1:1–2)
The creation account gives us God acting through speech and Spirit simultaneously. God speaks and creation happens: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (1:3). The Spirit of God hovers over the deep before anything is formed. Word and Spirit are present together at the origin of everything that exists. John’s Gospel will later identify this creative Word as the eternal Son: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).
At the climax of creation, a first-person plural surfaces: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (1:26). The text offers no explanation for the “us.” The identity of the plural remains an open question at this point in the biblical story. But the raw material is here: a God who speaks creation into being, a Spirit who broods over the waters, and a self-reference that implies a community within God’s own being. Humanity is made in the image of this God, crowned with dominion over everything that has been created. The whole account is declared “very good” (1:31), and God rests. The story begins with a God who is already more than a solitary figure, already creating through Word and Spirit, already pointing toward a fullness of identity that the rest of Scripture will unfold.
Psalm 8
The Wonder of Being Known
“What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (v. 4)
David looks at the night sky and asks the question Genesis 1:26 provokes. The God whose name is majestic in all the earth, whose glory stretches above the heavens, has crowned humanity with glory and honor and placed all things under human feet: sheep and oxen, beasts of the field, birds, fish, everything that passes along the paths of the seas (vv. 5–8). This is Genesis 1:28 turned into worship. The dominion mandate becomes a reason to praise the God who granted it.
The psalm sits on Trinity Sunday as a meditation on what it means to bear the image of a triune God. The God who said “let us” is a God whose identity involves relationship. Humanity, made in God’s image, was designed for relationship from the start: with God, with one another, and with the creation entrusted to our care. David’s question (“what is man that you are mindful of him?”) carries an implied answer: we are the creatures this God chose to crown with glory and appoint as stewards of everything he made. The author of Hebrews will take this psalm further, applying the language of dominion to Jesus, the true Son of Man, who fulfills the role humanity failed to carry (Hebrews 2:6–9). On Trinity Sunday, Psalm 8 bridges the creation account in Genesis and the commission in Matthew: the God who made us in his image is about to send the risen Son of Man to restore us to the purpose for which we were created.
Matthew 28:16–20
The Name Revealed
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” (v. 19)
The risen Jesus meets his eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee. Some worship. Some doubt. Jesus addresses them all. He declares that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, and then he issues the commission that will define the church’s mission until his return: make disciples of all nations, baptize them, teach them.
The baptismal formula is the moment in Scripture where the “us” of Genesis 1:26 receives its full content. The singular word “name” governs a threefold identity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God who created through Word and Spirit in Genesis 1 now sends the church into the world under a name that identifies all three persons. The commission carries the full weight of the triune God behind it. And the closing promise reaches all the way back to Eden: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (v. 20). The God who walked with his creatures in the garden now promises his presence through the Son who holds all authority, by the Spirit who empowers the mission. The doctrine of the Trinity here is a commission, an identity given to the church as it enters the world. Every baptism performed in this name carries the full reality of who God is into the life of a new believer.
2 Corinthians 13:11–14
The Triune God in Daily Life
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (v. 14)
Paul closes a letter to a congregation that has given him more trouble than any other. Corinth was divided, argumentative, and resistant to his authority. He has spent thirteen chapters correcting, rebuking, pleading, and defending his apostleship. And then he ends with the most complete trinitarian benediction in the New Testament.
Each person of the Trinity is named as the source of something the Corinthian church desperately needs. Grace comes through the Lord Jesus Christ. Love originates with God the Father. Fellowship is sustained by the Holy Spirit. Paul places this benediction at the end of a letter filled with conflict because the triune God is the answer to the church’s dysfunction. The community that aims for restoration, comforts one another, agrees with one another, and lives in peace does so because the God of love and peace is with them (v. 11). The Trinity here is pastoral. The God who created the universe in Genesis 1, who commissioned the church in Matthew 28, now holds a fractured congregation together through grace, love, and fellowship. The doctrine of the Trinity has moved from cosmology to commission to the daily experience of believers trying to live together faithfully.
One God, Three Persons, For All of Life
Athanasius spent forty-five years defending the identity of God because he understood that getting the identity wrong would distort the core tenets the church believed about salvation, worship, and mission. The readings for Trinity Sunday trace the same conviction across the whole canon. The God who created through Word and Spirit, who crowned humanity with glory and dominion, who sent the risen Son to commission the church in his triune name, and who sustains the church’s life through grace, love, and fellowship is one God in three persons.
The practical application of the Trinity shapes every facet of the Christian life. When you pray, you pray to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit. When you are baptized, you are baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When you gather with other believers, you are held together by the grace of Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit. When you go into the world to make disciples, you go under the authority of the Son who holds all things, sent by the Father who created all things, empowered by the Spirit who sustains all things.
The Trinity is the grammar of the Christian life. Every act of worship, every prayer, every act of service flows from and returns to the God who said “let us make” at the beginning and who promises “I am with you always” until the end.
Points to Ponder
1. Genesis 1:26 uses the plural “let us make man in our image.” How does the communal nature of God’s own identity shape the way you understand what it means to bear his image?
2. The psalmist marvels that God is “mindful” of humanity. How does the knowledge that the triune God, the God who created galaxies and sea creatures and mountains, is attentive to you personally affect the way you begin your day?
3. Jesus speaks the baptismal formula in the singular “name” while identifying three persons. What does your own baptism mean to you when you consider that you were baptized into the identity of the triune God?
4. Paul’s trinitarian benediction names grace, love, and fellowship as the gifts of Christ, the Father, and the Spirit respectively. Which of these three do you most need to receive today? Which do you most need to extend to someone else?
5. Athanasius endured exile five times over the identity of God. What would it look like for you to take the doctrine of the Trinity as seriously in your worship, your prayer, and your relationships as he did in his public defense?
A Prayer
Father, we worship you as the source of all creation, the one who spoke the heavens and the earth into being and declared everything you made to be very good. Lord Jesus Christ, we worship you as the eternal Word through whom all things were made and the risen Son who holds all authority in heaven and on earth. Holy Spirit, we worship you as the one who hovered over the waters at creation and who sustains the fellowship of the church today. One God in three persons, we confess that your identity surpasses our ability to comprehend, and we thank you for revealing yourself as Father, Son, and Spirit across the whole story of Scripture. Give us grace to live in the name which we have confessed and into which we have been baptized. Give us love that reflects the love you have shared within yourself from eternity. Give us the fellowship that holds your people together across every division. Send us into the world under the authority of the Son, in the love of the Father, and in the power of the Spirit. Amen.
Concluding Verse
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” 2 Corinthians 13:14
Josh Cehulik 