LIFE IN THE TRINITY

In the Jesus story we see the Father loving his Son in the Spirit. We also see the Son loving his Father in the Spirit. Jesus reveals God to us as a Triune communion of love. Furthermore, when we fix our eyes on Jesus, we see the love that God is within himself moving towards us desiring communion with us.

God does not have to do this. There is nothing lacking in God that makes him say, we really must add to our circle of love. The more the merrier, lets expand the communion. No! There is nothing lacking within the circle of love that God is within himself. The communion of Father and Son in the Spirit is a fullness of shared life and love. He doesn’t have to move towards us seeking communion with us in order to fulfil himself. On the contrary, rather than lacking anything, the communion of Father and Son in the Spirit is so full that it simply overflows towards us.

Furthermore there is no obligation on God that drives him towards us in love. He doesn’t express his love to us because he ought to do so. God is not under a law that obligates him to go out of himself to include us within his own communal life and love. No, the overflow of love comes from within himself. He is an infinite fountain of self-giving love that overflows from the inner depths of who the Triune God is. God loves us freely. And he loves us this way simply because he IS love.

As God gives himself to us in love he wants our love in response. But can we ever return God’s love out of ourselves. We are always turned in on ourselves if left to ourselves. It is impossible for us to return God’s love.

However, God doesn’t give himself to us in Christ and say there’s, my love for you now you must respond to that love out of yourselves. No! In union with Jesus, he takes us into his own Triune communion of love. And within that communion of love we share in the two-way movement of love. God’s love moves towards us from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. Our love for God moves in the Spirit through the Son to the Father. The Spirit loves both Father and Son and our love arises from the Spirit’s life and love within us. It is our love expressed from our own hearts with our own will, but it is our love that moves from the life and love of the Spirit.

Looking honestly at our own love, we have to admit that we seem far away from all this. Even our best efforts to love are stained with self-interest. However, in union with Jesus, our love is offered to the Father THROUGH Jesus. And so, even though our love in the Spirit is lacking, the perfect love is always offered to the Father in our name through Jesus. We take seriously the call to love God in the Spirit, but we do not despair over our own lack of love. For Jesus offers his perfect love to the Father as our love.

The God who is love gives himself to us seeking fellowship with us. He wants to be ours and he wants us to be his. But we mustn’t think that this fellowship as a “something” that God wants us to enjoy. No. In joyful love, God gives HIMSELF to us. He opens himself to us and in opening himself to us he shares his own life with us – the life of love in communion. Thomas Torrance writes, “God has opened himself to us…and established an intimate two-way relation between himself and us and us and himself, making himself accessible to us and giving us entry into the inner fellowship of God’s own life”

The living God is not a solitary being. From all eternity he has lived in relationship. We even say that he has lived as relationship. At the centre of the universe is not cosmic power or force. No, at the centre of the universe is relationship. From all eternity the living God has been a communion of three persons mutually indwelling one another. Furthermore, from all eternity the three have wanted to include us within their own communion of joyful love. And now they have actually drawn us into their own circle of love.

I have to say this communion is the very reason for my existence and for yours and for every other person who lives or has ever lived on this planet. God always wanted a large family like his Son who would share with him in the communal life of God. And that is where we now belong.

The God’s of grace seeks and finds us through Jesus by the Spirit. We respond in joyful faith as those who are found. And God is also joyful in finding us because his love has reached its goal. His joy meets our joy and our joy meets his joy. And as we go on finding the God who finds us, we taste afresh his joyful love in ever new ways.

The God of Grace does not allow us any boastful self-righteousness. We are to boast only in him. In living encounter with the God of Grace we see clearly that all is of God and we are called to simply trust in him. As Karl Barth says, “The God of Grace demands of us that we trust only in his grace, and live only by his grace — and by his grace really live”. Who among those engaged in religious self-effort ever rejoiced in this message of free grace?

As we rejoice in free grace, we are no longer driven by guilt, but rather drawn by grace into joyful living for God. We have been found by the joyful God and our joy in being found moves us evermore towards God as the living centre of our lives. We want to please him by aiming to do his will in all areas of life. And we gladly acknowledge his Lordship over us as we continually find the One who continually finds us. That is true freedom!

Once we lived only in ourselves and for ourselves. The things of this world filled our own personal world. We lived without God. Then “strangely” we began to seek God until we found him. And having found him, we saw that the seeking and the finding began with God. We were seeking him only because he was seeking us. We found him only because we were found by him.

That finding does not mark the end of our seeking. We go on and on seeking ever more deeply the reality of God in our lives. We are always seekers. We misunderstand this continual seeking if we think of it as a special art possessed only by those who are “super-spiritual”. We are rather aware that it is only he whom we seek who has, again and again, made us seekers. We go on seeking because THE Seeker wants us in communion with himself. He wants us to share in his own Light and Life and Love. With this aim in view, he goes on and on seeking us as he speaks with us, and acts in us.

As seekers of THE SEEKER, we rejoice that the One whom we seek allows himself to be found by us. That’s why we go on and on asking and seeking and knocking. He tells us to seek so that we may find. And when we find we are not aware of our own ability to seek and find. We are rather aware of the seeking of THE SEEKER and his indescribable joy in finding us.

Once, we were all lost: without God and without hope in the world. There was no possibility at all that we would ever move towards God in order to find him. Nevertheless, the God of grace moves towards us in Jesus in order to find us when we could never find him. And he is full of joy as he finds us. This is the joy of the Shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one that was lost. We, in turn, respond joyfully as we are found by God. We don’t rejoice in our own ability to find. No! Through Jesus, the God of grace has found us and so we rejoice with him.

Jesus, the Shepherd, finds us through the Spirit. He brings Jesus to us as the Shepherd who is joyful in finding us. He brings us to Jesus as the sheep who are joyful in being found. And so, the Spirit shares in our joy and the joy of heaven over one lost sinner who is found. This joy in the Spirit is to mark the flock of Jesus that is moved to ongoing seeking. We want to enter ever deeper into the joyful love that seeks and finds us.

As we do so, we discover that God is a triune circle of joyful love. In sheer delight, we know the joy of the Shepherd who leaves all to find us and who is joyful in finding us. In gladness, we know the joy of the Father who runs to embrace the one who was lost and is now found. And we know all this in the overflowing joy of the Spirit who draws us into the joy of the Father and Son who find us.

Jesus is alive and he encounters us personally by his Spirit.  In this encounter, we are aware of the fullness of his love and our own lack of love.  For the more the sun of divine love shines within us the more we feel our own inability to truly love.  And yet, fully exposed before him, we know that he wants us.  Yes, we are sure that we belong to him as those deeply loved by him and that nothing can ever separate us from him. Aware of our lack of love, we are amazed that he still wants us. 

As those who belong, we continually seek him as the One who has already loved us.We seek him that we know more of his love.  With Paul, we kneel before our Father asking that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen us with power through his Spirit in our inner being… together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. 

As we prayerfully seek him, we are aware that it is only he whom we seek who has again and again made us seekers. So we rest in the love of God in Jesus and yet also reach out evermore to know, ever deeper and ever fuller, the love that is beyond knowing. 

We are called to love our Lord Jesus as we love no other. We are to love him as those who are deeply loved by him. We give ourselves to be with him as the one who is always with us in love. We give ourselves to be for him as the one who is always for us. We give ourselves to serve this Lord who has served us. We give ourselves to obey the Lord who works within us all that is pleasing to him.

Of course, we always fall short in these attempts to love our Lord. We cannot even dream about offering our own love as an adequate response to his love. Nevertheless, God’s Spirit brings Jesus to us as the one who never stops loving us. Even though our love for him fails, again and again, he goes on loving us and giving himself for us and to us. The Spirit also points us to Jesus now exalted in the Father’s presence as the one who always sympathizes with us in our weaknesses. Before his Father, he constantly intercedes for us as the man who truly loves God and us. And so, by the Spirit, we are assured that Jesus goes on loving us even though we can never be anything but unworthy and therefore undeserving of his love. We are sure that we are fully accepted and grasped by his true love. And this love for the undeserving draws us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices and holds us there.

Karl Barth points us to the Lord as Servant. He was in the form of God but made himself nothing taking the form of a servant. As a servant, he was obedient even to death on the cross. And it was in that death that he served us bringing an end to the old age in which we once lived as slaves under the dominion of darkness. Therefore, God highly exalted him giving him the name above every name. He did so, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend confessing him as Lord to the glory of God the Father.
Therefore, Barth also points us to the servant as Lord. As this Lord, he freely encounters us by his Spirit. And in the encounter, we confess him, Lord, by the Spirit. Now we are free from all the “lords” that once reigned over us. We are free to no longer serve sin. We are free to no longer live in bondage to Satan’s wiles. We are free to live for our true Lord serving only him in the Spirit to the glory of his Father. This is true freedom and true life.
The Lord who became servant is now the servant who is highly exalted as Lord. Nevertheless, he still serves us as he lives in us by his Spirit. He came into the world, not to be served, but to serve giving his life for us that we might live. And now he wants to transform us into his own cross-shaped likeness. He does so as the Lord who still serves.

Jesus, our Lord, set us free from all the dark powers that once ruled over us. He rescued us to live under him and with him and for him as our one true Lord. As our only Lord, he wants us to love. Following his resurrection, Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” He asks us the same question. He wants to know if we love him as those he has rescued to live under him. He also wants to know if we love one another as he has loved us. He is the risen Lord who now reigns supremely over all and what he wants to know is do you love me? Think what that means.

However, our Lord Jesus doesn’t simply stand over us giving external orders. We are in Jesus and he is in us. He lives in us as the one who rules over us. In this way, he works in us what he requires from us. An external “law,” would result in driving us into duty so that we become “weary and heavy-laden.” But when we live in Jesus as he lives in us, we are not burdened by the fact that love is now demanded of us. We are glad to walk in love under, with and for the one who has loved us. And we are glad that he now gives himself to us living his own way of love in and through us. As we walk with him in his way of love we know that we have no future apart from him, and therefore no future without love.