--- schema_version: "1.0.0" id: "the-faith-that-holds:en:chapter-3" work_id: "urn:systemstheology:book:the-faith-that-holds:chapter:chapter-3" book_id: "the-faith-that-holds" chapter_id: "unit-2-who-is-god" chapter_slug: "chapter-3" title: "Unit 2: Who Is God?" book_title: "The Faith That Holds" language: "en" source_language: "en" translation_status: "source" authors: ["Systems Theology"] editorial_owner: "Systems Theology" editors: [] review_status: "not_specified" reviewers: [] content_version: "content-21305442707d" content_hash_sha256: "21305442707da8e5ecacbf41c9fa76508c31047bf4ec58d6437aba7eb52ca494" published_at: "2026-07-15T21:14:45.000Z" modified_at: "2026-07-15T23:50:19.254Z" canonical_url: "https://systemstheology.com/library/the-faith-that-holds/chapter-3/" markdown_url: "https://systemstheology.com/research/books/the-faith-that-holds/en/chapter-3.md" license: "All rights reserved; research use subject to the Use Policy" license_url: "https://systemstheology.com/use-policy/" correction_url: "https://systemstheology.com/library/the-faith-that-holds/chapter-3/#chapter-comments" --- # Unit 2: Who Is God? Question: Who is God? Answer: God is the one true God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, perfect in love, holy in truth, and the source of all life. ## Read - Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV): the Lord is one. - Matthew 28:19 (NIV): baptism is in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. - John 1:1--18 (NIV): the Word was with God, was God, and became flesh. - 2 Corinthians 13:14 (NIV): grace, love, and communion are named with Christ, the Father, and the Spirit. - Revelation 4--5 (NIV): worship belongs to God and to the Lamb. ## What the Answer Means Christians confess one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. They are personally distinct, rather than three masks worn by one person, and they are not three gods. The three persons do not divide God into three beings, three centers of deity, or three competing wills. Father, Son, and Spirit possess the one undivided divine life, essence, will, power, glory, and action. Their personal distinction is real, but everything God does toward creation is the work of the one God: from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. The Father sends the Son. The Son becomes flesh for us and for our salvation. The Spirit makes Christ known, gives life, and brings us into communion with God. Christian prayer and salvation have this shape: to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Creation therefore does not fill a lack in God. God is perfect life and love before anything exists. Prayer is personal address rather than speech thrown toward an unknown power. Holiness is life with this God. No creature masters the Trinity. Begin with what Scripture gives: the Father sends, the Son gives himself, and the Spirit gives life. Worship can begin before explanation is complete. ## When God Feels Far Away Some people will understand the words and still feel that God is far away. That can happen for many reasons. A person may be grieving. A church may have made God sound harsh or vague. A prayer may have seemed unanswered. Shame may make God feel dangerous. Depression or exhaustion may make everything feel distant. A child may ask where God is and not know how to hear an answer that cannot be touched with a hand. The doctrine of the Trinity gives that person a true place to stand when feelings are thin. The Father is not absent, because he sends the Son. The Son is not a distant idea, because he becomes flesh, suffers, dies, rises, and brings us to the Father. The Spirit is not a mood we produce, but the Lord and giver of life who helps weak people pray and makes Christ known. So when God feels far away, begin with the God who has come near rather than the strength of your feelings, and say: > Father, I come to you through Jesus Christ. Holy Spirit, help me pray when I feel far away. That may be all you can say, and it is enough for a beginning. Parents, teachers, and pastors can use the same path. When a child or new believer says, "I do not feel God," give them a short way to pray before explaining the whole doctrine: the Father hears, Jesus is near, and the Spirit helps. Christian faith is not held together by how near God feels in one moment. It is held by the God who gives himself to us: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ## The Prayer Beside the Bedroom Door A child stands in the hallway after bedtime and says, "I prayed, but I do not think God heard me." The parent has no speech prepared. There are dishes in the sink. The child should have been asleep twenty minutes ago. Still, the question has come, and the question is not a delay tactic this time. Her voice is too small for that. "What made you wonder?" the parent asks. "I did not feel anything," she says. "I said the words and it was just quiet." The parent sits down beside the bedroom door. He does not try to manufacture a feeling for her. He also does not unload the whole doctrine of the Trinity into the hallway. He gives her a path she can use again. > Feelings can be quiet. God is not gone when feelings are quiet. We come to the Father because Jesus opened the way, and the Holy Spirit helps us pray even when we do not know what to say. Then he asks, "Can we say it together?" > Father, hear us through Jesus, and help us by your Spirit. The child repeats it twice. The second time she says the last words more slowly: "Help us by your Spirit." "Can we put that by my bed?" she asks. So the parent writes the prayer on a scrap of paper and lets her tape it beside the light switch. It is crooked. She presses the top corner again because she wants it to stay. The next morning, before school, she points at the paper and says, "Can we pray that for Mason too? He gets scared before spelling." The scrap of paper did not solve every fear in the house. It gave the child one true sentence she could carry into her own fear and then hand toward someone else's. Prayer does not depend on making God feel close. Prayer depends on the God who has come near in Christ and helps weak people by the Spirit. Ordinary believers need that kind of doorway too. When words feel thin, pray: > Father, receive me through Jesus. When you are ashamed, pray: > Jesus, bring me to the Father. When you have no words, pray: > Holy Spirit, help me. Those prayers are not shortcuts around doctrine. They are doctrine becoming prayer. The Father receives. The Son brings us near. The Spirit helps the weak. The faith holds because God himself holds us. ## When the Word Father Is Hard For some people, the word Father is hard before it is comforting. Some hear Father and think of warmth, steadiness, delight, and home. Others hear the same word and remember absence, anger, silence, manipulation, disappointment, or a house where love had to be earned. Christian teaching does not need to rush past that history. At the same time, the Church receives the name Father because Scripture gives it to us. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to the Father. The Son reveals the Father. The Spirit brings us into the cry, "Abba, Father." (Romans 8:15 (NIV)) Earthly fathers do not define God. They are meant to receive their goodness from him. When a human father fails, God is not made less Father. The sign has failed; the source has not. If the word is hard for you, begin with Jesus. Watch the Son speak to the Father. Watch him welcome children, touch the unclean, confront evil, weep at a tomb, give himself at the cross, and rise from the dead. The Father is not hidden behind Jesus as someone less merciful. The Son makes the Father known. Leah did not start by saying the word easily. In small group, the leader asked everyone to pray, "Our Father," and Leah's throat tightened before the second word. She had reasons. The room did not need every detail. What she needed first was not pressure to feel differently, but a way to stay with Christ truthfully. After the group, she told the leader, "I want to learn this, but I cannot pretend the word is simple for me." The leader did not correct her feelings. He opened John 14 and read Jesus saying, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9 (NIV)) Then he said, "For now, do not force a feeling. Look at Jesus and let him teach you who the Father is." For several weeks Leah prayed a smaller sentence: > Father, help me know you through Jesus. Some nights she said the sentence with her jaw tight. Some nights she could say the first word without flinching. She did not let harm define God, and she did not pretend harm had left no mark. She began with the Son who makes the Father known. You do not have to force warm feelings, but you can pray truthfully: > Father, I believe you are not like the harm I have known. Help me know you through Jesus. Or, when the word itself feels difficult: > Father, this name is hard for me. Keep me near your Son while I learn. Honest faith can begin there. Parents and leaders need care here. The fatherhood of God calls earthly fathers to humility, tenderness, truth, mercy, justice, and repentance. It never gives harshness, control, distance, or adult pride a holy cover. A father who sins can confess: > I was not showing you what fatherly care should look like. I was wrong. God is not like my sin. That kind of apology may teach more truthful theology than a long lecture. The Trinity heals broken signs by bringing us to God as he truly is. Father, Son, and Spirit are not religious code words for human power. They are the living God who gives himself to us. Let Scripture teach you slowly. Let trustworthy believers pray with you without forcing an emotional response. Let the name Father be filled, not by the worst human example you have known, but by the Son who reveals him and the Spirit who brings you home. ## Practice Pray this slowly each day: > Father, receive me through your Son and form me by your Holy Spirit. Then name one way each part of the prayer matters: - Father: I am received, not abandoned. - Son: I come through Christ, not through my own worthiness. - Spirit: God is forming love, truth, and holiness in me. ## Questions for Conversation - Why does it matter that God is not lonely, needy, or incomplete? - What changes when prayer is coming to the Father through the Son in the Spirit? - Which mistake about God do you hear most often: vague force, three gods, one person wearing masks, or something else? Watch for this. God is neither a vague force nor three gods nor one person changing masks. Christians confess the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.