LIFE IN THE TRINITY

God does not want to remain hidden within his own divine life. He is eager to show himself so that he may enjoy fellowship with us. That is what God has always wanted and what he gave himself to through Jesus, his Son.

However, we cannot see the light of God’s glory in the face of his Son. Our minds are darkened. Nevertheless, in sheer grace, God has opened himself to us personally. By his Spirit, he has shone his light into our darkened minds and opened the eyes of our hearts to see his own beauty. Jesus came into our world as the light of God showing the glory of God with a human face. Now the Spirit comes into our hearts showing the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus his Son.

Through Jesus and by his Spirit, God opens his own inner life as a triune communion of joyful love. And, by his Spirit, God also opens us to himself so that we can enjoy communion with him within his own inner circle of love. He actually gives us entry into the inner fellowship of his own life. And so, through his Son and by his Spirit, God creates an open two-way relation between himself and us. Truly, God opens himself to us and opens us to himself.

God chose Israel to be the one nation for the many. They were greatly blessed as God’s treasured possession. Within this special covenant relationship, their calling was to be God’s blessing for all nations. They were God’s royal priesthood representing God to the nations and the nations to God. However, when the time fully came, an Israelite was born who is THE one for the many. His name is Jesus and he is the ultimate royal priest who represents God to all and all to God.

Jesus is himself the one for the many as the ONENESS of the divine and human. The eternal purpose of God is to give himself to humanity in love. And Jesus makes actual that eternal purpose among us. He is both Divine and Human joined together as one person in the deepest union and communion. So he is who God always wanted to be: God with us and for us as one of us. He is also who God wanted us to be: Humanity with God in union and communion.

Before the world was made God elected his own Son to be the one in whom God and humanity would be united. And in the man Jesus that divine election moved into time. Within our history, he brings God and humans together in himself as the God-human. Indeed, Jesus is the mystery of God’s will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth (Ephesians 1:9). In Jesus that eternal purpose moves into time becoming actual among us.

David Cartledge made the following changes to the “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (John 14: 6)” [edit] Post on 2 November, 2022 at 16:22 UTC

Content

Jesus says, “I am the Way”. He does not say, “I show the way”. He is himself the way. He is God’s way to us. Through him, God comes to us in lowliness to reconcile us to himself. But here, Jesus is speaking specifically about being our way to his Father. We come to the Father only through him. He opened the way for us in himself and returned to his Father taking us with him into God’s holy presence as the new and living way. Truly, he IS the Way.

Jesus says, “I am the Truth. He speaks the truth and does the truth AS the truth in human flesh. Jesus is in himself the true God and the true man and the true oneness of God and humanity. In that way he is the truth who encounters us personally as the truth by the Spirit of truth. Jesus really IS the truth and if he (the truth) sets us free we are free indeed.

Jesus says, “I am the Life”. He came to give life in fullness and he is that life as the living God. He is also the life as the risen God-human who is alive for ever more as one of us. As the Spirit brings us into living union with him we share in the life that he is. We pass from death to life so that we walk with him in newness of life. We live in him as our life and he lives in us as our life. Indeed, As Paul tells us, he is our life and when he appears we shall appear with him in glory sharing in the life that he is with his Father in the Spirit (Colossians 3:2).

Jesus is true God and true man in one person. This living union is dynamic. He continually expresses his total oneness with the one he calls Father in the presence and power of the Spirit. He continually expresses his total oneness with sinful humanity in the presence and power of the Spirit. He is God moving dynamically towards humanity in love. He is humanity moving dynamically towards God in love. He deliberately enters into active and living solidarity with his fellow humans to bring us back to God in himself. This why his Father sent him into the world as one of us.

Jesus’ eyes were constantly on his Father doing only what he saw his Father doing. All his works of compassion towards needy humans were done in total dependence on his Father. He continually lived in his Father as his Father lived in him. So, all his works were the works of his Father by the Spirit.

Though he lived and moved in constant oneness with his Father He also lived and moved in total oneness with his fellow humans. He gave himself to be baptised along with sinners in the Jordan to identity totally with them. He also gave himself in a baptism in blood on the cross identifying totally with us in suffering, desolation and death. And yet, he was always at rest in his Father’s love as he served his Father to gather us into his communion with the Father.

In union with the Father’s dearly loved Son we are dearly loved children. Within this relationship, we do not do what God wants so that we can get him to act favourably towards us in some way. That sounds like God has made a contract with us. He agrees to do good to us if we do what is good in his eyes.
This is a mistaken idea that we easily slip into. Instead, we must see clearly that God has not entered into a legal contract with us. He has rather bound us to himself in a covenant of love. And within this covenant relationship, we are his dearly loved children enjoying family love.

We did not establish this covenant relationship through our responses to God. Only God can create the relationship. Our personal responses create nothing, but God looks for them as we live in union with Jesus by his Spirit. The Spirit joins us to Jesus so that we live and move in union with him. We really do share in his life as we live in him and he lives in us. And within this union, we become dearly loved children who walk in love by the freeing and enabling power of the Spirit. We have been included in the relationship Jesus has with his Father in a transforming and renewing relationship with God—a relationship that calls for our response.

We can add nothing to all that God has done for us once and for all in Jesus. Everything is already DONE. However, the God who has done all for us now calls us to DO whatever he wants us to do. Because God loves us, he desires a response to his love. He even tells us the kind of responses he wants within the relationship he has already given us by grace. For example, the God who has loved us and done all for us calls us to walk in love as dearly loved children. We don’t try to earn his love by loving. We know that we are already deeply loved and so we now aim to live lives of love as God has loved us in Jesus.

All our responses to what God has done for us in Jesus are made possible only because of what God is still DOING within us by his Spirit. At the very core of our persons God is at work within us to freely and gladly will and work for his good pleasure. So, Paul can say, I no longer live but Christ lives in me. Yes, Jesus himself lives his own life of love in and through us, so that we are now able to love with his love.

Furthermore, Jesus not only lives in us, we also live in him. The Spirit has joined us to Jesus lifting our lives into his life. So now, all our imperfect responses are taken into his perfect responses before the Father. In living union with Jesus, we share in the perfect responses that he has made and continues to make for us.

We were enemies of God, alienated from him in every way, but he moved towards us to bring us back home. This reconciliation to relationship takes place in Jesus. As Paul says, “IN CHRIST, God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5: 19 NRSV). Jesus is the true God moving faithfully towards humans to accomplish reconciliation in himself. He is also the true human moving faithfully towards God on our behalf for our reconciliation.

This reconciliation in Jesus, calls for a personal response from us. Having said, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself”, Paul goes on to say, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: be reconciled to God” God himself is appealing to us because he is the relational God who simply wants to be in relationship with us. That’s why he created us. That’s why he sent his Son into the world as human. And so, the reconciling God appeals to us to be reconciled.
However, our personal response to God’s reconciling love is enabled by God’s Spirit. For God sends his Spirit to us personally creating within us a personal response to his reconciling love in Jesus. Through Jesus, God moves towards us in order to reconcile us; and by God’s Spirit, we now move towards God to be reconciled. So, from both the divine and human sides, reconciliation moves from God’s reconciling love. The God who is love wants us in a relationship as his family and does everything in Jesus to have us with himself. And by his Spirit, we respond gratefully in wonder, love, and praise.

The One God exists as three Persons in relationship. This relational God created us for relationship and he comes to us as Jesus to reconcile us for relationship. As Jesus acts as one of us to bring us to his Father, he shows us his Father. And now, he actually includes us in his own relationship with his Father by his Spirit. In this way, we are fully restored as dearly loved sons and daughters who cry Abba Father with Jesus in the Spirit of adoption. So, we are drawn into a relational knowing made possible by the God who is himself a communion of joyful love.

We are not passive in all this. We are given the freedom to respond as God’s Spirit opens us to freely receive God’s love and to live into his love. We do not have to make the first move by making ourselves ready to respond. God doesn’t move towards us only when we first move towards him. The God of Grace moves towards us freely in the overflow of his love for us. And, by his Spirit, his grace also moves from within us to respond. It is our response, and yet it is a response that is a free gift of God’s Spirit in Jesus. For it is the Spirit of God alone who draws us into a relational knowing of the relational God in Jesus. We might say that Grace meets Grace for relationship.

In the Old Covenant, belief in the One God was relational rather than merely rational. It wasn’t just a theoretical acknowledgment that there is only One Supreme Being. The daily repeated Shema says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut 6:4 NRSV). To know the One God is to love him totally and to serve only him.

As a devout Jew, Saul of Tarsus loved and served only the God of Israel as the one who is in a class of his own. However, after the risen Jesus encountered Saul, (now known as Paul), he explicitly and continually spoke of his relationship with the risen Lord Jesus in the same exclusive way. And he urged other believers to turn from idolatry to love and serve the risen Jesus as the only true Lord.

We also come to know Jesus as the one true God as he encounters us bringing us into a relationship with him. That means grasping who Jesus is does not depend on our own ability to grasp the message concerning him. It rather depends on our being grasped by Jesus as he encounters us personally by the Spirit. And so, we do not come to know the One God as a mere object of intellectual knowledge, but only in Jesus as he moves towards us personally, dynamically, and relationally.