God’s own life is a ceaseless activity of free and loving communication. The beginning and end of this communicating is triune communion. The Father communicates with his Son in the love of the Spirit. The Son communicates with his Father in the love of the Spirit. This personal, dynamic and relational communicating is unveiled to us dramatically in the Jesus story. We often hear Jesus communicating with the one he calls Father in love. In one place Jesus says, “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.” (John 5.20). In love, the Father showed Jesus what he was doing to heal a lame man. Jesus saw what the Father was doing and in love for the Father moved into action to do what his Father was showing him. This communicating in love was going on all the time during Jesus ministry.

In another place Jesus says to his Father, “you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17.24). God does not, therefore, become love in the events that make up the Jesus’ story. These events rather show us what God has always been as a communion of love. In eternity, out of the fullness of his love, the Father showed his Son all he was going to do in and through him by the Spirit. And in love, the Son saw what his Father showed him and gladly responded with a resounding YES!

Showing and seeing in the love of the Spirit are two aspects in an ongoing communication between Father and Son in the Spirit. Both in eternity and all through the Jesus story we see that “God is a communicative being” (Jonathan Edwards).