Thinking about the Trinity is hard, because this conception of God is so foreign to us. We have no categories for thinking this way about God. This is true, not just because we’re intellectually limited, but because of sin.
The Triune God is holy, that is to say, he is utterly distinct from us, particularly in his being love. God is love, because God is Persons who love One Another with Divine Love. This makes God entirely self-giving, ultimately Other-oriented within himself.
God created us in his image, to be in relationships of love with him and each other. That’s the way things are supposed to be. But instead we chose self-love, and broke the world. Now we are individualistic, self-centered beings who cannot imagine true community or divine other-orientation (love). Michael Reeves says, “When I ask atheists to describe the God that they don’t believe in, they describe Satan rather than the Trinity.” We can only imagine God to be like us – maybe bigger and better, but ultimately like us. We remake God in our image. God must be monopersonal and self-oriented, because that’s what I’m like, and anything else is incomprehensible (because, after all, I’m the best thing I know).
So, if we’re going to know God as he truly is – a Triune God of love – he’s going to have to make himself known to us. Robert Letham says, “The whole tenor of fallen man is the pursuit of self-interest, but God actively pursues the interests of the other.” Because God loves the other, even though we have distorted his image in us by our self-love, we have not stopped him from pursuing us. The Father sent the Son to reveal God to us, to reconcile us to himself through his life and death for us. And the Father and Son sent the Spirit to us to put the very love of God right into our hearts, to make us receptive to his Word, so that we can know him as he truly is. God has not left us alone in our self-centeredness. Because God is love, he has come to us and drawn us up into his life of love, even though we were his enemies.
“Adoption” is not merely a metaphor for the Christian’s relationship to God, not just one way among several to think about the relationship. God has revealed himself to be fundamentally Father, Son, and Spirit. Through the Spirit we enjoy the Son’s communion with the Father. By God’s grace, the divine life is opened to us, and we are caught up into it. We are in the very position of the second Person of the Trinity. Adoption into the Son’s place in the Trinity is the ultimate purpose for which we were created and redeemed.
God is eternal in his perfection; there was never a time when he didn’t know everything he would ever do. There was never a time before he loved his people. He has always planned to bring his people into the blessed communion of the Trinity.
The Son prayed to the Father: “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” (Jn 17:22-23)
The “glory” is the Holy Spirit. He is the one in whom we are united to the Son and to one another (Eph 4:3). He is glory because he is the eternal Spirit of love shared between the Father and the Son. The Spirit of Glory is given to us because God the Father has loved us even as he has loved the Son. The goal of all this? That the world may know God’s glory in Christ.
God’s holiness is essentially love-for-Other: three Persons united in and defined by their relations of love for each other.
Thus the *Holy* Spirit, who himself is the love between Father and Son… whose fellowship is with us… by whom the love of God is poured out into our hearts… who brings forth his fruit of love in our lives.
Holy, holy, holy!
Christian churches seem naturally to gravitate in their Worship services toward one of two poles: transcendence or immanence. Churches that emphasize transcendence in Worship promote a sense of the divine, “other-worldliness,” majesty, awe, holiness (in its meaning of being distinct, set apart for God), et cetera. God is exalted as being quite different from anything or anyone in this world. Churches that emphasize immanence in Worship promote a sense of warmth, acceptance, intimacy, familiarity, and the like. God is known as a close friend. It’s easy to take either of these emphases to improper extremes.
In and of themselves, however, transcendence and immanence are both good. God is high and lifted up, and there is none like him. And God has come in the flesh to be a friend of sinners. We need to hold both of these together in worship. We need to be in awe (transcendence) of God’s presence (immanence). We need to be drawn into communion (immanence) with the divine (transcendence). We need a sense of “friendly transcendence” in Worship. We need love.
God is love, Three-in-One, One-in-Three, Being-in-Communion. So, love is divine. Love is holy. This love is unlike anything in this world. What/Who else is love? Love is transcendent.
God is love, three persons living perfectly for Other, always moving toward, always meeting. So love is warm. Love is intimate. This love invades the world. Love makes itself known. Love is immanent.
God is transcendent because he is Triune. God is immanent because he is Triune. In Christ, the perfect revelation of God, we have friendly transcendence. We need Christ, and we have him.
It would seem, generally, that the further down the stream of history one gets away from the origin of something, the more likely one is to lose a clear vision of that something. Think, a long game of “Telephone,” where a thought, an event record, a religion gets passed from one generation to the next. We generally expect there to be decay in the transmission, especially without the use of video/photographic records. We expect the original participants/thinkers to have the clearest understanding, and then things just get foggier and less reliable from there. We expect our children to forget important things that made up our lives, just as we have forgotten important things about our parents. We expect our disciples to have less understanding than we have.
Paul wrote, “What you have heard from me… entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). Our job as disciples is to keep a really long game of “Telephone” going. Of course, we have the written Word of God to pass on to future generations, but the expectation here is that there would be no transmission decay in discipleship. And in fact, the history of the church has actually demonstrated improvement in discipleship in certain ways, especially in theological understanding. Rather than doctrinal concepts getting foggier with the movement of time away from the origin of Christianity, it appears that Christian thinkers have “stood upon the shoulders” of their predecessors and developed a clearer understanding of God’s Word than earlier disciples enjoyed.
Could this be a facet of the true relationality that stands at the center of Christianity? The Persons of the Trinity have known each other perfectly for all eternity. But God created his people at a finite point in time, and welcomes them into a relationship of knowing him that will last forever. We, as individuals, will never cease to grow in our relational knowledge of God. It would also seem that we, as the church, the corporate body of believers throughout history, together are growing in our collective knowledge of God. It’s taking a long time, but his bride is getting to know him better. So maybe, by God’s grace, we can expect that our children and our disciples will actually know the Lord better than we do. There’s something pleasant and hopeful about that thought.
“Worship music” is one element of worship on the Lord’s Day among several (e.g., prayer, confession of faith, giving of offerings, submission to God’s Word, etc.). The congregation sings together to the Lord. Musical accompaniment is meant to engage the whole person—heart, soul, mind, and body (voice)—in singing to God. And, really, it’s not just the person as an individual who is to be thus engaged, but the whole church together.
Yet it is inevitable that, in any particular church, not everyone will be moved by the same music to the same experience of worship. Some will find it easy to pour themselves enthusiastically into most of the songs a congregation sings. Some will find it difficult to resonate with any songs anywhere. Is it a failure of the style or performance of the musical accompaniment, that it doesn’t have universal appeal? Is it a failure of the musicians to consider the tastes of every individual who may be present? Is it a failure of the worshiper to appreciate what constitutes “good worship music”? Is it a failure of the congregation to unite in the Spirit and devote itself fully to praise?
Or is this dynamic an opportunity to join with our spiritual siblings in an element of worship we don’t find entirely instinctive? Is it an opportunity to be stretched and, potentially, to stretch others? Is it an opportunity to question our expectations and resist our consumeristic culture? Is it an opportunity to exalt the love of Christ that compels us to set aside our preferences and commit to something that we may not find entirely gratifying?
1. Fear of dealing with your own soul can make you utterly self-absorbed. You will spend every ounce of energy to feel okay about yourself, to avoid actually becoming okay.
2. In pursuing autonomy, we have made ourselves slaves. But, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” In submitting to him, we find true freedom.
A poem.
~
I am somebody
because
I am lovable
because
I am good enough
because
I can be good
because
I want to be good
because
I have to be good
because
I want love
because
I am not loved
Because
I disbelieve God
because
I despise God
because
I want to be God
