“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1)

 Here Paul calls us to imitate the God who is love by walking in the way of love.  But we can only respond to this call as “dearly loved children”. Only as we know the depths of God’s love for us can we begin to love as He loves us.  And we do know God’s love because it has been demonstrated in God’s Son who gave himself up for us.  Furthermore, the same love has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit. Let us, then, settle for nothing less than knowing God in love through the Son and in the Spirit aware that we can never get enough of it.

Everything else that is required of me in life-my love of God, myself and others-all flows out of my personal knowing of God’s extravagant love for me in Christ by the Spirit. With the Son before me and the Spirit within me I am now called to live as a dearly loved child and walk the way of love. And yet not I, for Christ himself lives in me loving in me and through me as the one who loved me and gave himself for me.

God our Father always delighted in His Son, and the Son always delighted in His Father.  The two delighted in one another in the delight of the Spirit. And the Father created us so that we might share in the delight of Father and Son in union with the Son by the Spirit. Our Father desired a beautiful creation filled with the delight of Father and Son in the Spirit.

 We humans rejected the Father’s loving intention for us, but He persisted.  He sent his Son to become one of us so that in union with the Son, by the Spirit, we might be included in the Father’s love for the Son.  And the Father delights in our inclusion loving us just as He loves His unique Son, Jesus. 

The Father’s Son desired to serve His Father in this way because he too delights in our inclusion.  For  just as the Father delights to include us in His love for the Son, the Son delights to include us in his love for the Father.  The Father’s Son always wants to share with us the same love he has ever shared with His Father.

We sometimes speak about receiving Christ into our lives.  But  the good news is that the Father’s Son receives us into his life that we might share in the delight of Father and Son in the Spirit.  With Christ we now delight in the Father’s pleasure in the Son and the Son’s pleasure in his Father as the Spirit opens their happiness to us.  And we delight in the gladness of Father and Son towards us as we participate in their love in the communion of Spirit.

Did God create us because he was lonely, unfulfilled, bored or under compulsion?  Or did God make us and all things simply because He wanted to out of the overflowing fullness of His own inner life?

Well, our God is  a triune communion of love. An eternal circle of love in which there is fullness of joy in the happy relationships of the three.  And in celebration of their shared fullness there was overflow in creating all things. For within the happy triune circle there was a free desire to create those who would be included within the contented communion of love and joy.

But humanity chose to reject this gift going the way of independence.  We wanted to live our own way apart from God.  But the triune communion did not give up on their purpose.  Together they said we love them so much that we refuse to exist without them.  We will go after them and bring them back into the fellowship that we enjoy together.

The triune One did not have to restore us.  There was no external necessity imposed on Him.  He did not restore us to rescue himself from sadness over our plight.  He did not restore us to rescue himself from some lack within himself.  No!  God restored us to communion with Himself out of his own fullness.  The fullness of love and joy within the triune Communion overflowed in coming after us to restore us to the eternal purpose of communion within the triune circle of love. It was all an expression of freedom out of fullness. 

Our God is three persons mutually indwelling one another in other-centred love. Within this communion of three persons, there is one purpose born out of the self-giving love of the three.  And the three persons move indivisibly as One to achieve this single purpose.

What is the One purpose shared by the three? We can state the purpose in a single word-inclusion.  The three want to extend the communion of love to include us.  They are fully satisfied within the Triune communion.  They do not need to move beyond themselves in order to gain fullness.  Nevertheless, they do not want to live within themselves and for themselves.  They rather want to open up the Triune circle to include others.

Together the three decided that the Father’s Son would become human so that in union with him we might be included in the Triune Communion of love.  And all things were created through Christ and for Christ so that in Christ we humans might share in the Son’s love relationship with the Father in the Spirit.  Yes, the One purpose arising out of the Triune communion, before time, is our adoption into the Son’s relationship with the Father so that in the Spirit we might participate in the Triune Communion of love.

If we want to understand who we are and why we are here, then we must begin with the One purpose of the Three.  This single purpose holds the answer to the “why” of creation, the “why” of your life and mine.

When we say God is Love we may focus first on God’s love towards us.  But should we not rather focus first on God as love within himself?   Our God is love because He is three persons in love relationship.  In the gospel story we see the Presence of the One God in the dynamic and loving action of the three towards us but also towards one another. The Father loves the Son and always gives Himself to the Son in the Spirit.  The Son loves the Father and always gives Himself to the Father in the Spirit.

God’s action among us in Christ is the profound demonstration of the love that He is within Himself.  He does not act in love towards us because He needs someone to love.  He acts freely out of the fullness of love that He is within himself. We must not, therefore, even suggest that God created the world so that He might have others to love, or that the Father sent the Son to redeem us so that He might once again have others to love.

In the gospel story we do see the One God moving together in self-giving love towards us.  But they do so as three persons moving dynamically out of the self-giving love they are within their own Triune life.  There has always been within God a movement of love between three persons.  Each of the three is always with the others and towards the others and for the others in mutual self-giving.   We are glad to see God as love towards us, but what God is towards us flows out of  the Love He is within himself.  All three persons give themselves freely and fully to us as the overflow of their self-giving love within themselves.

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Irenaeus of Lyon

The Father’s Son united himself to us by becoming fully human.  The Spirit of the Father’s Son joins us to the Son so that we are in him as he is in us.  We are one with Christ and he is one with us. We are so very deeply one with Jesus that we are never to think of ourselves as isolated from him in any way. Martin Luther says,

“by faith you are so cemented to Christ He and you are as one person, which cannot           be separated but remains attached to Him forever and declares:  ‘I am as Christ.’               And Christ, in turn says, ‘I am that sinner who is attached to Me, and I to him’”.

In this living union, we are not deified, as if our humanity were now mixed or intermingled with Christ’s deity.  No, in union with Jesus, we remain fully human with our humanity lifted up into the life of God and filled with the life of God.

In union with Jesus, we are actually more authentically human because we  become the humans God always intended us to be. God always wanted to be in relationship with others who would be united to Him sharing in his own life.  And so, as we live in union with God in Christ by the Spirit, we become more authentically human.  We become the humans that He intended all along.  Humans in union with the human fully alive in God, with God, to God and for God.

The Father’s Son united himself with us by becoming human. The Spirit of the Father’s Son unites us personally to the Father’s Son so that we share in all that he is with his Father.  Without becoming divine ourselves we now share in the very life of the Triune God in the Son and by the Spirit.

The same Spirit who unites us to the Father’s Son now indwells us as the Son’s own presence deep within us.  That means we do not observe God from afar as those isolated from him.  By the Spirit we are in the Son and the Son is in us just as he is in his Father and his Father in him.  Both Father and Son make their home with us by the Spirit.

Within this living union and communion we know Who God is.  And in knowing Who God is we know who we are.  Or should I rather say we know whose we are?  For in union with Christ I come to know God as the One to whom I now belong.   I am His home; He is my home. Finding my true home in him I find myself for I now know whose I am.  And I  rest in Him as one who belongs. This is true peace and happiness

Adam was created in the image of God, but he was only a type of the one who is the image of God – Jesus. He is the true image of the invisible God. The Father’s Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.  In him the invisible God is made visible.  In Jesus, we can now see what God is actually like.

Jesus is also the true human image.  There are all sorts of ways that we may define humanity.  But true humanity is defined in just one way-Jesus.  He is the human. So Jesus is the true divine image as the true human image.  For he is the One who is both authentically divine and authentically human. 

We are called to imitate Jesus so that we become like him and image him in the world.  Does that mean we simply observe and imitate isolated from him through our own efforts?  That would be anything but good news!  It would simply throw us back on ourselves and our own powers of accurate observation and perfect imitation.  We would know nothing at all of the  life-giving communion with God that enables us to image Him as we are transformed into Jesus’ likeness.

We are in union with Jesus for he lives in us as we live in him. And within this living union he encounters us personally in the Spirit so that we gaze on his glory.  In this living encounter we are transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.  Only in this way do we imitate him so that we image him to the glory of His Father.

We do not approach the knowledge of God in Christ with mere rational thinking defining, debating and disputing.  Rather, in lowliness of mind we open ourselves in wonder before the mystery of Christ.  We do not strive for mastery in our knowledge of God in Christ.

We tend to speak of knowing in terms of “grasping”. We grasp a thing when “we’ve got it.” And if we have grasped something, we take it into our possession so that we can do with it what we want.  We have gained mastery over the object of our knowing.

But we know God, not as we “grasp” him mentally, but as He encounters us personally drawing us into His own Triune life in Christ by the Spirit.   We know God, not as we make Him our property, but rather as we are transformed through love as participators in His Triune life in the Son by the Spirit. In fellowship with Father and Son in the Spirit we know not through gaining mastery over the mystery of God.  We simply gaze into the mystery as God makes Himself known though Jesus in the Spirit.

As we do so, we may articulate something of who He is, but we are always aware that we are expressing the inexpressible.  For He is more to be worshipped in sheer wonder than rationally defined and debated and disputed.  Jurgen Moltmann reminds us that we know the Triune God in wonder only as far as love and participation reach.