LIFE IN THE TRINITY

We do not discover what God is like by drawing on our ideas.  Nor do we gain this knowledge from a teacher. No! We come to know God because he became present to us through the activity of his Spirit. This Spirit, who searches the “depths of God,” revealed Jesus to us so that we came to know God through Jesus. 

We may speak about our journey towards God. However, we must first turn this around to emphasise God’s journey toward us.  In the person of Jesus, God came to us as one of us. And now he comes to us personally through this Spirit, gathering us into his family. In this journey, God finds us where we are and discloses what he is like through Jesus and in his Spirit.  So a Trinity of divine persons is working together to draw us into the life of God.

The only way we grasp the truth about God is for God to grasp us telling us again and again what he is like. Why? Because God is The Truth and is in charge of the truth.  Furthermore, as broken and fractured beings, we have no capacity in and of ourselves to find the truth about God. God alone shares himself with us.

The Living God is still speaking.  He is not simply the God of the past, but the God who is present here and now by his Spirit. And only by this Spirit, who searches the depths of God, do we come to know God. Therefore, with Paul, we keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better (Ephesians 1: 17). 

When the risen Jesus encountered Saul on the road to Damascus, Saul asked, “Who are you, Lord?  The answer was, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”  Following that encounter, Saul knew that Jesus is indeed The Lord God of Israel.  So later he could write, “…there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8: 6). 

By the Spirit, we confess Jesus as Lord.  So, we affirm Jesus as the Lord God of Israel.  However, turning that around and affirming God AS Jesus is more than a little helpful.  The word God has many different meanings as people put their own ideas into it.  But when we affirm God as Jesus, we see God as he is unveiled to us through this man.  It isn’t simply God in this human, but God as this human. We really need to let this sink in.

In light of this, we now understand that there is simply no God hiding behind Jesus waiting to be found.  No divine being is more real or true than Jesus. When we see Jesus we see God. So, as the Nicene Creed emphasises, the Son is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. From now on, the answer to every question about God is Jesus. Jesus is God and he reveals who God is and what he is like.  If you want to see what God is like you look at Jesus. 

Saul of Tarsus was a zealous Jew who seemed to think that God called him to severely punish those who were hindering God’s righteous purposes.  That meant he was ardently opposed to Jesus and his followers. However, a very different God met him on the road to Damascus. This God came to Saul declaring love for those Saul once hated. Indeed, in this encounter, God also showed that he loved Saul even as he was filled with hate and murder.  

This encounter transformed Saul.  He now loved what he once hated. The one Saul hated most was Jesus but now this hated Jesus meets Saul embracing him with love. In this encounter, Jesus also called Saul to share his love with the Gentiles.  How could Saul do this?  Naturally, Saul hated the Gentiles and only wanted to tell them how God hated their ways and was bent only on punishing them severely. Nevertheless, he is now called to tell the Gentiles how much God loved them and wanted them. This revelation of love was unexpected and involved a massive reorientation. He was moving wholeheartedly in one way, and then suddenly he was heading in a radically different direction. This shift happened because God intervened dramatically in a revelation of the risen Jesus changing everything.  

The unveiling of Jesus to Saul on the road to Damascus made everything new.  He now had a new understanding of who God really is through the unveiling of Jesus by the Spirit.  He entered into a new way of living: sharing in Jesus’ communion with the Father by his Spirit.  And also, a new vocation: sharing in the mission of Jesus in the Spirit on behalf of the world and the whole cosmos.

When I first came to faith, I knew very little about God. However. in my journey, I soon became serious about knowing who God is and what he is like.  I realised that I needed to think hard about who God is. So, I read books on knowing God. However, I did not see that I needed to think first about how we know God.  I failed to see that the way we know God determines the kind of knowledge we have of him. So what is the right way of knowing God?  Where do we find out what God is really like? We continue using our minds to discover who God is and what he is like. Nevertheless, we must humbly accept that we are not in charge of knowing God. Knowledge of God begins with God’s desire to make himself known and it happens as God unveils himself through Jesus and by his Spirit. We come to know God in living encounters as those now known by God.  

Knowledge of God is relational and given relationally as he encounters us through Jesus and by his Spirit. And our knowing grows ever deeper from inside the circle of our life within the Triune Communion and not from without?  Within that communion, we pray with Paul that we may have power, 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.

Are we able to discover who God is by our own reasoning?If you ask people about God, they may say, I think God is… In their own minds, they decide what God is like or even if he exists.  That isn’t where we should begin.  God has shown us what he is like by unveiling himself through Jesus and his Spirit.  That means we always begin by saying, God is like Jesus.  

Through Jesus, God unveils himself showing who he is as Love. In love, the Father’s Son came to us as a human person.  He participated freely and fully in our human plight, going down to the very lowest place on the cross. He faithfully walked towards the cross in self-giving love for us.  In this dark event, God unveils himself showing who he is as Love. 

How do we come to know this truth of God as Love? Jesus tells us that he is the way and the TRUTH and the life. He is the truth about God because he is the true God.  He is the truth about us because he is the True Human.  We come to know him as the truth as he encounters us personally by the Spirit of Truth.  And so, this truth is personal.  The risen Jesus comes to us in personal encounters as the presence of God with us and for us as one of us. We do not know the truth in this dynamic way constantly and perfectly.. Far from it! The point is that Jesus is the truth coming to us personally by the Spirit of truth

Through Jesus, we see that divine persons are persons in relation. They are who and what they are in distinction from and yet in relation to one another within the one communal being of God. The Father is different from the Son and the Spirit.  And the other two persons are different from the Father and each other.  Each person is different and has distinct characteristics.  And yet the differences do not divide them as separate individuals.  In their differences, the three are interrelated with one another. 

Does that change the way we see ourselves as persons?  Should we no longer consider ourselves individuals apart from other persons?  I think so. Jesus shows us that persons are who they are in relation to other persons. That means we should not consider people as individuals who may form relationships.  We are who we are in relations. That means we are called to depart radically from all forms of individualism.  For example, we no longer see the church as a gathering of individuals who come together so that each individual can be blessed and depart to live his or her individualistic life more fruitfully.  The church is essentially a communion of persons in union with Jesus and in him sharing personal communion within the Triune Communion.  Father, Son and Spirit are who they are in in their communal life.  And they have opened up their communal life to include us. And in this communion with the Triune God, we share in his communal life as a Spirit-enabled and Spirit-led communion of persons.  We are definitely not a mere collection of individual believers who come together for the good of the individual.

So often, Jesus speaks about himself, not by pointing to himself, but by drawing attention to his relationship with the Father.  We see him constantly relating to his Father in the Spirit. In this way, he opens the life of God to us as communal. He shows that God is not an individual.  Nor is he a cluster of three individual persons. He is a communion of three persons mutually indwelling one another as One.  The three persons are different but do not live and move as separate individuals. 

But what is a person? We think we know what a person is because we are persons. So the three persons in the One Being are persons just like us. But isn’t that the wrong way around?  Shouldn’t we rather begin with God as he has made himself known through the unique person, Jesus?  In him, we see what a person is.  Jesus is who he is as Son in relation to his Father. The Father is who he is as Father in relation to his Son.  We also are persons in relation to other persons.

In union with Jesus, we share in his communion with the Father by the Spirit.  And within this communion, we learn what it is to be a person.  Indeed, within this communion, we become persons in the way the relational God intends us to be. T. F. Torrance refers to Jesus as the personalising person who personalises us by the personal Spirit.  He does so, as we share his communion with the Father in the Spirit.  In union with him, we become more and more persons in relation to God, one another and all creation. 

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.