When Scripture declares ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty’ (Isa 6:3), it is not simply giving God a threefold emphasis for dramatic effect. Many biblical scholars have seen in this triple declaration a hint of the Trinity — the holiness of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God’s holiness is not an abstract divine attribute but the perfect life of the triune God: three Persons in one essence, existing in eternal communion of love.
This means that God’s holiness is not solitary but social, not static but dynamic, not cold but relational. The holiness of God is the holiness of the Trinity — a holiness defined by perfect love, perfect fellowship, and perfect harmony between the divine Persons.
Trinitarian Holiness in Creation
From the beginning, the involvement of the Trinity in creation points to the communal nature of God’s holiness. ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters’ (Gen 1:1-2). Then God speaks — and John’s Gospel tells us that this Word is none other than the Son: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him’ (John 1:1, 3).
The creation itself reflects the relational holiness of the Trinity. When God says, ‘Let us make mankind in our image’ (Gen 1:26), the plural points to the divine plurality-in-unity. And the image of God in humanity is itself relational: ‘male and female he created them’ (Gen 1:27). The holy God creates for relationship because the holy God exists in relationship.
The Son’s Holiness in Incarnation
The incarnation reveals that the holiness of God is not threatened by contact with creation but can enter into creation redemptively. When the angel announces to Mary that she will bear the Son of God, he declares: ‘The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God’ (Luke 1:35).
Here we see the Trinity at work in the incarnation: the Father sends, the Spirit overshadows, and the Son takes on human nature. The result is not a compromise of divine holiness but its perfect expression in human form. Jesus is ‘the Holy One of God’ (Luke 4:34) precisely because in him the holiness of the Trinity becomes incarnate.
The Spirit’s Holiness in Sanctification
The Holy Spirit’s very name connects him to the holiness of God. He is not merely the Spirit who happens to be holy; he is the Spirit whose special work is to make holy. In the Spirit’s work of sanctification, we see the holiness of the Trinity extending to believers, drawing them into the divine life of holiness.
Paul prays that believers would be ‘strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith’ and that they would ‘be filled with all the fullness of God’ (Eph 3:16-17, 19). This is Trinitarian sanctification: the Spirit strengthening, Christ indwelling, and the Father filling. Our holiness is participation in the holiness of the triune God.
The Cross and Trinitarian Holiness
The cross reveals the deepest truth about God’s identity-holiness. Here we see not a conflict within the Trinity but perfect harmony in the work of salvation. The atoning work of Christ is not something that happens external to God, but falls within his life and being. The Father sends the Son (Rom 8:3), the Son offers himself (Eph 5:2), and the Spirit enables the sacrifice (Heb 9:14). The holiness of God is not violated by the cross but vindicated by it.
On the cross, the holiness of the Trinity is displayed in its hatred of sin Tthe Son bears the wrath of God, and in God’s love for sinners the Father gives up his Son, the Son gives up his life, the Spirit enables both. This is not three Gods working at cross-purposes but one God working in perfect unity for our salvation.
Because the atonement is an act by Jesus Christ, who in his divinity is ‘of the same substance as the Father’, it is also an act of all of the triune God. Therefore, in the unbroken fellowship of the three Persons in this event, we must also think of the atonement as something happening in God, not outside of him at a distance, so to speak. God himself has taken our rebellion, our filth, our punishment, our hatred and alienation, and exhausted it completely in the depths of his own most holy being and actions.
Called into Trinitarian Fellowship
The goal of salvation is to bring us into the fellowship of the Trinity. Jesus prays, ‘that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us’ (John 17:21). Our sanctification is not just moral improvement; it is being drawn into the holy life of the triune God.
This is why Paul can speak of believers as those who have ‘fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord’ (1 Cor 1:9), who have access to the Father ‘by one Spirit’ (Eph 2:18), and who experience ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’ (2 Cor 13:14). Christian holiness is Trinitarian holiness — not primarily following rules or achieving moral standards, but living in communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.The holiness of the Trinity is not a doctrine to be analyzed but a life to be shared. The God who exists in perfect love calls us into that perfect love. The God who exists in holy communion invites us into that holy communion. This is the wonder of the gospel: the holiness of the Trinity, which might seem to exclude us because of our sin, actually includes us through the work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are called not just to be holy like God, but to be holy with God — participants in the divine nature, members of the divine family, sharers in the divine life.