The Trinity: A Metaphor

I have a simple way to understand the Triune nature of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) by relating the roles and relationships among the Three-in-One using a metaphor of the working relationship between an architect, a draftsman, and a construction contractor.

• Father (God) - Architect/Conceiver/Designer

• Son (Jesus) - Draftsman/Detailer

• Holy Spirit - Contractor/Builder/Executor

Imagine that God works in his own private office. He is a genius of geniuses and designs the most beautiful and perfect houses. Outside his office is the small cubicle of his draftsman, Jesus. Jesus and God are essentially one. When God imagines a plan, He communicates the vision perfectly to his Son.

Jesus is the author of Creation. What God envisions (perfect Creation), Jesus drafts and details, assembling blueprints of every detail, spanning the minutia of the smallest subatomic particle to the overarching breadth of the entire universe. But let’s use a house metaphor for simplicity, focusing on the idea that man (yes, that includes you) is the crown jewel of all the God created through Jesus.

God created you as the most unique house, and Jesus drew up your blueprints. But wait? Who built you? The Holy Spirit — the construction contractor. However, in the beginning, something very bad happened. 

God originally only imagined two houses — Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were built of precious and indestructible materials. They would last forever and ever. One day, on Eden Street, the mailman, Satan, came by to deliver mail. He put a letter in the mailbox of Even’s front porch. The letter read:

“Your home warranty has expired. If you desire for your house to remain in perfect condition, you must remit payment of your holy soul to Paradise Lost University (PLU). In return, you will be granted an architecture degree, and when you become an architect . . .’ (as only God can be) . . . “your home warranty will never lapse again.”

Eve got her architecture degree to PLU and told Adam to do the same so that he could also be like God. So Adam sold his soul immediately. Then the chaos set in.

The mailman showed up and said, “I have cursed all that God conceived of.” Adam and Eve (as houses) immediately turned from indestructible materials to frail wood being eaten by termites. After that, every house that begin to rise up around Eden Street copied the blueprints of now-rickety Adam and Eve (that includes you — your house/body). Jesus’s perfect original blueprints were corrupted, but God had a good plan to revitalize the neighborhood.

God came out of his office (very unusual) and saw Jesus, distraught, in his cubicle. Jesus said, “Father, I do not understand. My blueprints were perfect. God said, “Yes they were, my Son, but I’m giving you a job reassignment. Don’t worry. It will only last 33 years. I need you to go to the  neighborhood (Earth) and show man how to rebuild their houses. Oh, and kill that rotten mailman while you’re there.”

“Yes, Father.”

So Jesus went to the neighborhood. Everyone’s houses looked like crap! Every single person thought himself to be an architect like God, but they all designed all kinds of ramshackle additions. Jesus was very humble and plainspoken dealing with these houses. We would say things like, “Brother, your bathtub does not belong on your roof.”

As Jesus spoke wisdom into the dilapidating, self-designing houses, some would not listen, saying, “Who is a better architect that I. Surely it is not you who has the blueprints of the Kingdom!” But some houses saw the Draftsman and proclaimed, “It is you, the Holy Draftsman! Please help me make myself more in the image of what your Father the Architect had planned for me!”

Jesus said to these broken houses, “Very well. I will send my Contractor (the Holy Spirit) to you to help rebuild you. The Contractor will advise you for the rest of your days in this neighborhood. Slowly you will regenerate from the inside. Unfortunately, brethren, you will always be rickety and will surely one day rot away, but the Contractor will help you become like me.”

So the houses that believed Jesus were then visited by the Contractor, who did perfect work and was very honest. The Contractor told the houses, “I will improve you. I will turn you from a house into a home. Until the day the Holy Architect scraps all this and redesigns everything to be perfect again, I’ll be working with you. I’m going to transform you from the misconception that you are an architect, and you will begin to become more and more like a draftsman, more like Jesus the Draftsman. You see, God has many great plans in store for his Creation. He is and will always be the only true Architect, a genius of geniuses, but his plans require that he have many more draftsmen. After this neighborhood is destroyed by fire, God will redesign all of you, but the work I started in you will remain and grow stronger.”

Still, some of the houses hated Jesus and believed all that rubbish the mailman sent about the home warranty lapsing. One day, as Jesus was visiting houses and giving his blueprints to the Contractor, he wandered into a dark alley. A few very haunted houses conspired with each other and whispered, “When Jesus walks inside one of us, collapse on him and kill him!” And so it was.

Jesus fell down and dropped his blueprints, which unrolled across the ground. There were no drawings on those blueprints, only a logo for Paradise Lost University. You see, the neighborhood unbelievers thought that the mailman had won. Little did they know that Jesus had gone back to be in his cubicle, right alongside God. When he got there, he said, “Lord, it’s time to upgrade.”

“Very well, my Son, here’s the one and only license for JesusCAD.”

Jesus installed JesusCAD and said, “Right on time, Father, my hands were getting tired from doing all your drafting with pencils and pens.”

Jesus opened JesusCAD. His very first JesusCAD drawing was already drafted!

God said, “Jesus, when did you draw this?”

Jesus said, “You already know. You know every plan that comes to pass.”

Together, they marveled at the drawing, which depicted the perfect, revitalized neighborhood that the Contractor would build fully in the age to come (after Revelation) and indeed was already at work building in the still-corrupted neighborhood.

Jesus continued, “As you know, Father, I drafted this as my blood was shed on the ground. The haunted houses thought I earned my degree from Paradise Lost University. They gave my “final” blueprint to the mailman so that he believes I’m not back at work with you here today. And, of course, the mailman will never suspect that you conceived of JesusCAD from the very beginning, even before he existed.”

“Father,” he said with finality, “IT IS FINISHED!”

And so, in the age to come, all the houses that work with the Contractor will be their own versions of JesusCAD, working intimately with the Great Architect on the New Earth to bring about the always-exciting, never boring, awe-inspiring, neverending and infinite riches of the plans that God has conceived for us as once-again holy, indestructible, and indescribably immaculate houses. Forever and even, Amen.

P.S. God and Jesus will leave the office and come to dwell with the sons of God and brothers of Jesus in the New Neighborhood.