We have reason to praise God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He has done everything to bring us to our eternal home.

Imagine a father who got his little boy all excited by telling him that he would take him to Disney World for a whole week. All the boy had to do was solve a puzzle that the father would give him. Then the father placed in front of him a mathematical problem that even the most gifted mathematician has never been able to solve. What a cruel way to treat a child! Wouldn't you expect the child to be angry with his father, as well as disappointed and frustrated?

Well, our heavenly Father is not a cruel God. He is not interested in setting before us impossible puzzles to solve—such as the Trinity—just to watch us wrestle futilely with the problem. Our God is interested in seeing to it that the crown of his creation spends all eternity with him. He is interested in our knowing where our everlasting salvation lies, and for that reason he reveals his nature as the triune God. It wouldn't even be necessary for us to know that God is triune, except that it helps us understand and appreciate our salvation.

THE TRIUNE GOD IS TOTALLY INVOLVED IN OUR SALVATION

The Father has done whatever was necessary so that the price for our sins might be paid. Listen to the prophet Isaiah: "Yet it was the LORD'S will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand" (Isaiah 53:10). And again, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6).

As it was the Father's will to send his Son to this sinful world, so the Son was willing to be sent and to carry out the task set before him. " 'My food,' said Jesus, 'is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work' " (John 4:34). When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he made it clear that it was the Father's will that had to be done. He would have it no other way.

In the upper room on the night before Jesus' death, Philip asked Jesus to reveal God the Father to the disciples. Jesus told him, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). With these words Jesus wasn't telling the disciples that he was the Father and the Father was him. He was telling them that what they needed to know about the Father was clearly revealed in him. In him, they saw the Father's will to save, his compassion and pity for the lost, and his love for sinners. In Jesus, all believers receive an intimate knowledge of who the Father truly is.