What's the big deal about the Trinity?

Often we may wonder, how big a deal is the Trinity, really? Sure the early Christians spent lots of time debating and clarifying what the Bible teaches. But when you hear or read some of the technical discussions, we might easily wonder if it is all too esoteric. I was reflecting about this again recently, and these are some of the things I think really are a big deal about the Trinity...

• In the well-known verse, John 3:16, we are told that, "God so loved the world, that he gave  his only Son", with echos of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. If the Father and the Son were not distinct persons, what would this really mean? It is because of the real love between the two real persons, the Father and the Son, that we understand the magnitude of his great love for us. If we remove the distinction of persons, or if Jesus is only a human, or something else sub-God, we gut the gospel of its greatness, and the good news is not nearly quite as good as it should be.
• In another classic quote from the apostle John, John 1:14 tells us that "the Word became flesh". Or as we realize concerning Jesus from the apostle Paul, as he expresses it in Philippians 2:6-8, that "being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross". If Jesus is something less than God, then the great humility which we should see in the incarnation leading to Christ's "foolish" death, becomes so much less humble than we really should see it to be, and again we rob the real gospel of its real power.
• And as others have pointed out, that God is fundamentally plural, means that he is also fundamentally relational, and it makes so much more sense that, fundamentally, "God is love" (the apostle John again, 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16). God was not just potentially loving, but there have always been others within the Trinity whom God could and did actively love. Isn't it a really big deal that not just power or authority (or whatever else) is fundamental to who God is, but (and perhaps more so) that love really is fundamental to who God is? No wonder that love is part of the DNA of God's universe, and why love is such a big deal in human (= made in God's image) relationships.

I suppose there are other things that could be said. Nonetheless, it wouldn't have been too long ago that I couldn't have even articulated the above things. And I think those things are a pretty big deal. Plenty big enough. So yes, the Trinity is a big deal :)