LIFE IN THE TRINITY

Paul tells us that “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Spirit which has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). Paul is speaking about God’s love for us rather than our love for God.  We know this because he goes on to speak about God’s love for us, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Together, we know that we were once God-rejecting sinners.  Even so, we know we have been deeply loved.  And we know this not as mere deduction, but in living experience.  For the very same love is poured into our hearts by God’s Spirit.  And so, we can live confident of our belonging rather than in fear and bondage (Romans 8:15). Furthermore, we know that nothing, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:35–39). God has loved us, loves us now, and will love us forever.  

In Rom 8:28 we hear about our love for God.  “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” Such human love toward God is a response towards the One who showed his love for us through Christ’s death for the ungodly. We who once were God’s enemies now belong to his community of love.  We receive God’s love, return his love and show his love to one another.

May this become more and more a living reality in the Spirit.  For God has destined us to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family (Romans 8:29).

The good news is all about Jesus, the one who loves.  Jesus loved us so much that he entered the depths of the human situation to rescue and redeem us. Truly, he loved us and gave himself freely and fully for us.  And now, as his community, we are to love one another as he has loved us.

This love is communally expressed in reciprocal relationships: “Through love be slaves to one another” (Galatians 5:13), and, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Paul envisages communities in which the fruit of the Spirit is expressed in loving communal relations. Within the Community of God, love is supreme. 

True love is revealed in Jesus.  He modelled life in an intimate love relationship with his Father by the Spirit. He also loved others giving themself to them and for them. However, we do not just imitate the love of Jesus as we admire it from a distance.  The Spirit of God’s Son moves in and among all to form Christ in us. As the Spirit of God’s Son lives in and among us, he enables us to love as Jesus loved us.  Jesus loved each one of us by giving himself for each one of us.  And now he lives in each one of us so that we no longer live but Christ lives in us. He lives in each one to produce his own self-giving love as he is formed in us.  This Christ-like love is the mark of God’s community through his Son in his Spirit.

The good news is all about Jesus, the one who loves.  Jesus loved us so much that he entered the depths of the human situation to rescue and redeem us. Truly, he loved us and gave himself freely and fully for us.  And now, as his community, we are to love one another as he has loved us.

This love is communally expressed in reciprocal relationships: “Through love be slaves to one another” (Galatians 5:13), and, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Paul envisages communities in which the fruit of the Spirit is expressed in loving communal relations. Within the Community of God, love is supreme. 

True love is revealed in Jesus.  He modelled life in an intimate love relationship with his Father by the Spirit. He also loved others giving themself to them and for them. However, we do not just imitate the love of Jesus as we admire it from a distance.  The Spirit of God’s Son moves in and among all to form Christ in us. As the Spirit of God’s Son lives in and among us, he enables us to love as Jesus loved us.  Jesus loved each one of us by giving himself for each one of us.  And now he lives in each one of us so that we no longer live but Christ lives in us. He lives in each one to produce his own self-giving love as he is formed in us.  This Christ-like love is the mark of God’s community through his Son in his Spirit.

God has acted through his Son and by his Spirit to create a community that is now hidden with Christ in God. Indeed, Christ is their life. In union with Jesus, we are called to be different in the way we find our identity and worth before God and one another.  

God expresses his grace towards us without regard to worth.  He accepts all freely as they are and not as they should be.  Christ died for the ungodly and the ungodly may be gladly received and renewed. People may assess the worth of others in terms of race, status, gender, wealth etc. Within God’s new community, all these grounds for competition among people have no significance. Our worth is found in who we are in Christ.  Our identity is a gift received, not a status inherited or achieved. 

God’s Spirit creates and energises the community as well as each member. So the Spirit’s primary manifestation is communal life, not individual ecstasy. To be “in Christ” is to be in relationship with people in whom Christ dwells through his Spirit. It is to share an identity that is always shaped in relation to others within the bond generated and sustained by the Spirit. 

We may slip into thinking about the “fruit of the Spirit” as individual qualities.  However, the fruit is not primarily about my individual virtues, but our communal life.  As the Spirit moves within the community we relate to one another in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”. A decisive break with the past has taken place. He has already been crucified.  His previous life is now over.  Once he lived as a man under the law striving to keep the law.  Now, he no longer lives as that man.  He now lives as a new man with an entirely new orientation. And yet, it is not Paul himself who lives, but Christ who lives in him. The new life is not humanly generated by human effort or because of human merit. The Spirit of Christ gives the new life as Christ living within him.

We also have been crucified with Christ. Life in Adam under the dominion of darkness  is over.  We have also been raised with Christ into newness of life.  And now we live by the Spirit of Christ expressing our new life as we keep in step with the Spirit. This new life in the Spirit is worked out in the new community.  We have all been crucified with Christ.  Christ lives in all of us.  We are his new community expressing his life together on the public stage. And as Christ’s new community, in the Spirit, we enjoy freedom and the sure expectation that we and all creation will be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God through Jesus, who is alive and reigns with his Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus did not come into the world simply to “save” individuals.  He came to create a new community that lives and moves in union with him by the Spirit. In the new community, we don’t live from a centre in ourselves but from a centre in Christ.  We become part of the new community by simply trusting in Jesus, and that is how we continue living in him.  We always fix our eyes on the one we are united to so that we live and move with him, through him and for him.  And we do so as each one in the community says, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”.  However, we do not simply enjoy Christ living in each of us as individuals.  We are his body, in the Spirit, and “From him (Christ) the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:16).

This trust in Christ plus nothing is expressed in love as we keep in step with the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ creates these Christ-centred communities to live out of the new life the Spirit gives.  In the Spirit, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. We see his communion of love with the Father in the Spirit.  We see the love of Jesus as he gave himself for us.  And we aim to be attentive to his command to love one another as he loved us.  So, we are unified by the Spirit of Christ in our pursuit of love as we see it portrayed by Jesus. What counts in this new community is faith expressed in love

The Father sent his Son into the world to break the tyranny of sin over us.  He did so, to bring us into the circle of his communal life. We participate in this community as we are baptised into Christ sharing in his dying and rising in newness of life together (Galatians 3 7).  The Father also sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts enabling us to experience his communal life together as Abba’s children. That means our communal life is more than a good idea.  In the Spirit, we share together in God’s communal life of joyful love. 

In this new community, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28). In NT times, people were counted worthy according to these social distinctions.  Males had more value than females and free more than slaves.  And Jews felt they were of more value than Greeks. But in the new community, these have no place in giving worth.  People have worth simply because of Christ plus nothing. We are wholly taken up with Christ as all and in all. Fully attentive to Jesus, we are freed from traditional, hierarchical systems of worth. 

Jesus radically undercuts all our reckonings of worth and gives the only worth that counts. And so, in his new community, we rethink human identity and worth.   We see each one as Abba’s son and daughter in Christ dearly loved and highly valued.

God chose Israel to be his covenant people.  Nevertheless, Paul says, that both Israel and the Gentiles were slaves under the domain of darkness (Galatians 4:3).   But God sent his Son into the world to liberate Israel and the world so that we might receive adoption to sonship (Galatians 4:4-6).  The Father’s Son was sent as an Israelite under the law.  He was also sent to participate fully in the whole human plight under the domain of darkness.  He did so, that we may now participate in all his privileges, as sons and daughters of God.  In union with the son, we are adopted as sons and daughters with a new identity as God’s family.  So, our identity is no longer found in who we are in ourselves, but in WHOSE we are as dearly loved children of God.

All this depends on the divine initiative.  God sent his Son so that we might become sons and daughters of God.  And God sends the Spirit of adoption into our hearts so that we might experience sonship as we cry abba Father with Jesus the Son.  In the Spirit alone, we know our true identity derives from outside ourselves and is received as an undeserved gift. So, now, in the Spirit, we are to live attentive to the truth that we are radically known and loved.  And in gratitude, we are to live responsive to this gracious calling of God.  For we know that this gracious calling of God, does not come from ourselves, in any way, but all is received as the pure gift of the Father, through his Son and by his Spirit

God promised to bless Abraham and his seed. He also promised that all nations would be blessed through Abraham and his seed. God, the promise maker, proved to be the promise keeper by coming himself as Abraham’s seed in Jesus (Galatians 3: 16). In this self-giving, God’s promises to Abraham and all the world are an emphatic YES.  And we now enjoy the blessings promised to Abraham in union with Jesus, Abraham’s seed.  

But wasn’t the Law the way to blessing? Sadly not. Paul tells us that Israel and all humanity remain cursed and not blessed under the law. But Christ crucified achieves the the great reversal – the cursed are blessed.  How so? Christ participated fully in the human disaster becoming a curse for us(Galatians 3:13). And now, in union with him, we participate in all the blessings found in him.  In Christ, we are no longer cursed but blessed with every spiritual blessing.  “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14). 

What is striking is that those rescued and blessed are not the righteous few, but the cursed.  We may think that God can’t bless the ungodly under the curse.  But through Jesus, Abraham’s seed, God blesses the ungodly with every blessing.

When Paul preached the gospel in Galatia, some came to know the true and living God.  This happened as they trusted in Jesus alone. Later, these people turned from trusting Christ alone to Christ plus law observance.   

In response, Paul writes, “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” He then asks about their past experience. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? God’s Spirit came into their lives making everything new.  By the Spirit, they came to know the true and living God as their Father.  By the Spirit, God worked transforming miracles among them.  Truly, they knew God as dynamically present among them. And all this happened simply by trusting in Jesus.  They knew nothing about law observance.   And so, they really must continue trusting in Christ plus nothing. 

Paul’s words to the Galatians point the way forward for us.  We are not to invest everything in Jesus alone and then add our own religious self-efforts to move on deeper and fuller.  We must rather continue investing everything in Christ alone.  Each one of us must say, with Paul, I no longer live but Christ lives in me as the one who loved me and gave himself for me.  And as the one who constantly loves me giving himself to me and for me so, that I can give myself more fully to him.  From beginning to end, we trust in Christ plus nothing.