Recently, I was at a funeral for my aunt in a small country church in Minnesota. As the pastor was sharing the gospel to the room of family and friends, there was a statement that gave me pause. He said, “For someone to have a relationship with God, they must first have a relationship with Jesus.” 

The passage shared at the funeral was John 14:1-6. He was correct that the only way to have eternal life is through Jesus because he is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but by Him. My concern with the pastor’s statement is that it makes it sound like Jesus is only a conduit to God, and not God himself.  

It is incredibly important for Christians to speak correctly about the Trinity because it can be easy to make heretical statements. The book that I have reviewed is called Beholding the Triune God: The Inseparable Work of Father, Son, and Spirit.  

This book is 126 pages and written by Matthew Y. Emerson and Brandon D. Smith. These two authors are part of the Center for Baptist Renewal and are committed to classical theology and the proper teaching of the Trinity. 

This book takes the reader through the major doctrines of theology such as creation, salvation, sanctification, justification, and revelation, helping the reader see how each person of the Trinity is working. The authors show how this work is not separate from the other persons of the Trinity but it is as one work.

In the introduction the authors list some common statements that have been said about the crucifixion, such as, “The Father poured out his wrath on the Son. The Father turned his face away. The Father abandoned his Son.” 

These are true statements but we need to properly explain them so that we are speaking about the Trinity correctly. Because the Son is also God and the Father and Son are inseparable, we would say that the Father poured out his wrath on the Son in his humanity. Likewise the Father turned his face away from Jesus’ humanity in the crucifixion.  

All works of God are performed by the God that is inseparable. Creation, salvation, sanctification, crucifixion – the Father, Son and Spirit inseparably are working together.  

Authors Emerson and Smith do a great job bringing the reader back to proper trinitarian language as they discuss critical topics. “It is this same one God–Father, Son, and Spirit–who calls his church together and feeds them with word and sacrament, who governs the world and brings rain on the just and the unjust, and who will, on the last day, remake what He has made and dwell with his people forever in the new heavens and the new earth.” pg 5.  

This book drives worship of the triune God through exalting all members of the Trinity and the work that is done by one God.