LIFE IN THE TRINITY

Jesus is God with us setting us free from the power of sin and death.  In him the power of sin is undone.  His death is the death of death forever. Yes, Jesus, the Father’s Son, is God with us making our cause his own.  He is God with us overcoming the powers that ruin us.

Jesus is also man with God.  He is the one man who represents the many with God. As Man with God he rises to new life and is exalted to the Father’s right hand.  And he lifts us up with him to share in his life with God.  We are lifted up out of our existence in sin and death into the new life of the risen Christ so that we are now hidden with Christ in God.  In this way we share in the life of the Triune God, through Christ, who is man with God for us.

God is always with us in Christ and we are always with Christ in God.

God is living, moving, relating triune life and love. We may say this because in the story of Jesus, God “happens” among us in dynamic relationships, full of movement and energy.  In this story, God is not an abstract, motionless “being”.  He is not a static divine unity, but a dynamic tri-unity of life and love. In Jesus, the Triune God of love happens among us in all his “livingness”!

In the Jesus’ story, we see this “livingness” from beginning to end.  As Jesus was baptised, the Father responded personally, “this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased”.  And the Spirit came on Jesus enabling him to live before the Father as the beloved servant-son.  So Jesus went on in love for the Father accomplishing the Father’s work always trusting in his Father in the enabling of the Spirit. This took him to the dark abyss of death on the cross offering himself by the Spirit to the Father he loved. And when Jesus was dead and buried, the Father vindicated him by raising him into new life through the Spirit.  Truly, the story of Jesus is a Triune “happening”.

Take a moment to gaze on the beauty of God’s “livingness” in the Jesus story.

While contemplating this beauty consider also that as we live in Jesus and he lives in us we participate in the Triune “livingness”.

Jesus was a lowly man who enjoyed a unique relationship with the God of Israel. He called this God “Father,” and he understood himself as the Father’s servant-son.  His entire life was an expression of faithful service to his Father ending in his obedience unto death on the cross.

As the Father’s servant-son, the Spirit came to Jesus, from the Father, and remained on him leading and empowering him to live and die in willing obedience to his Father.

Jesus served his Father in the presence and power of the Spirit and he now continues to serve his Father in and through us in the presence and power of the same Spirit.
 

God reveals himself uniquely in the event of Jesus. He is the Father’s Son serving in the power of the Spirit. The Father’s Son laying down his life, in the Spirit, according to the will of His Father. The beloved one raised by the Spirit of His Father and so declared Son of God in power.  We might say that in Jesus the Triune God happens among us.  God is who he really is in this happening as God with us and for us.

With Jesus in full view, we do not have an abstract and static concept of divine being. We rather have a dynamic view of who God is in the happening of Immanuel, God with us. God has come among us to be with us as human.  He has come to take us back to himself where we belong according to his own purpose.  Doing so, not be sending some agent to do what he wants, but by coming himself in lowliness.  This is who God is.  God with us as he really is in this event.

In the Jesus story, God happens among us as Father, Son and Spirit in a dynamic communion of love.