God’s Signature: Three in One

God is a three-part Being – Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Each unique and yet All equally God and perfectly aligned in Their will (Luke 3:22). Elohim (the Hebrew word for God in Genesis 1; a plural noun referring to the Trinity) is Creator of all that ever was and that ever will be. Only the fool says there is no God (Psalm 14:1; 53:1), because His three-part signature is apparent in all we observe and know!

Although Genesis 1 describes how God spoke everything into existence with amazing order and creativity, it contains only three instances of the Hebrew word “bara,” translated in the King James Version as “create.” The first refers to God’s creation of the heaven and earth or physical material (v.1), the second to His creation of animal life (v. 21), and the third to His creation of man as a spiritual being in His image (v. 27)

To describe history, or His Story, three questions must be answered: what happened, where and when? In other words, any event throughout the course of history can be explained in terms of matter, space and time. Matter, the stuff everything is made of, exists in three states: solid, liquid and gas. So, for example, a frozen lake in winter consists of solid ice on the surface, but when warmed by the sun it melts to liquid water, and when heated even more, water molecules on the lake’s surface become vapor that enters the atmosphere as a gas.

Space consists of three dimensions: length, width and height, used to describe the size (amount of space occupied) of any solid matter, whether a box or of a building. God’s Word refers to Him using such measures (Isaiah 40:12).  Over the earth’s surface, any position can be specified using three Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates representing latitude, longitude and elevation. No matter how far from the earth one could travel in actuality or in theory, three coordinates could specify any location in space.

We generally think of time as being linear, or having only a single dimension, because it “keeps marching on” and, as of yet, we can only travel through it in a single direction. But time can be divided according to human experience as past, present, and future. As our Pastor and his daughter like to say, “Yesterday is history; tomorrow is a mystery; today is a gift – that’s why we call it the present.”

God’s threefold signature is evident throughout His creation. He created and aligned the earth (Genesis 1:1) and sun, and set them in motion, to give us three natural and observable divisions of time: days, months, and years. He created three sources of light: the sun, moon and stars so that we could measure time in seasons, days, and years (Genesis 1:14-18).

Man at first thought the earth was flat, even though God’s Word describes it as a circle, or globe (Isaiah 40:22). A 24-hour cycle of evening to daylight (Genesis 1:4-5) represents a single rotation of the earth on its axis, so that at any point on the globe, we experience rotation toward and away from the sun as light and darkness, respectively. A lunar month (about 29 days) represents the time between two new moons or full moons as seen by an observer, usually on Earth. As the Moon orbits the Earth, the amount of the illuminated or sunlit portion of the Earth changes according to the changing relative positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, so the monthly lunar cycle requires these three celestial bodies.

God also set the earth in orbit around the sun, with one complete revolution taking one solar year, or about one calendar year. The tilting of the earth on its axis allows different regions on the globe to experience different seasons at different times, as some portions of the globe are tipped closer to the light and heat of the sun, and some portions are tipped further away, causing it to be colder and with less daylight.

On earth, God created three divisions of matter: heaven (sky), land, and seas (Genesis 1:6-10) to house and sustain His creatures. Remember the game of 20 questions where the first question is Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? Despite the vast variety of life and of inanimate matter on this planet, everything physical and tangible that God created can be grouped into one of these three broad categories.

“Minerals” are not elaborated on in Genesis other than the “dry land,” (Genesis 1:10), which would include that precious “dust of the ground” from which He formed man (Genesis 2:7), and the waters and seas (Genesis 1:10), which we now know contain an abundance of salts and other trace minerals that sustain life. Other minerals in the earth often mentioned in the Bible include gold, silver, iron, and precious stones (Job 28:1-2,6; 15-19).

Within the plant kingdom, God brought forth three categories of plants: “grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself.” (Genesis 1:11-12). These describe nonflowering grasses, flowering plants (including those bearing edible seeds and fruits such as corn, tomatoes and berries), and trees (including those bearing edible fruits such as apples and olives), intended by God as food sources for animals and for man  (Genesis 1:29).

Each plant carries God’s threefold signature in its life cycle: seed, growing plant, and mature plant bearing fruit containing seeds that begin a new cycle. God further subdivided the trees into three kinds: one broad category and two unique trees: every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil  (Genesis 2:9).

God described His animal creation according to their three realms of existence: (Genesis 1:20-25): fish, whales, and other marine animals brought forth in the seas; birds and other creatures flying in the sky; and cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth (note the three categories of earth-dwelling creatures)!

And that brings us to the crowning achievement of God’s creation: man, created with body, mind (soul) and spirit as a three-part being in the image of the Triune God! (Genesis 1:26-27). Be sure to stay tuned next week as we discuss the three-part nature of God, and its reflection in man.

Thanks so much to Wendy at Each Card Tells A Story for her Featured Post Award for this post!

© 2012 Laurie Collett