The divine author of the universe knows you intimately and wants to be known by you. He is a personal God who is, and was, and forever will be in a perfect, harmonious triunity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is sufficient. He is complete. And, he doesn’t need us. But out of an overflow of God’s perfect love, he created us.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4: 7-12
Our God that IS love created us out of an overflow of his loving, triune relationship to bear his image, to glorify him by putting his great love on display. In Psalm 19:1, David proclaims, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” But just in case we missed God’s revelation in creation, God the Son “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). However, Jesus was not Plan B in the story of redemption. Jesus, “was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Pet 1:20-21).
Friends, when we think on God’s triune love and reflect on each person of the Trinity and his role in creation, revelation, and redemption, we see the Gospel. In The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything, Fred Sanders writes, “the gospel is Trinitarian, and the Trinity is the gospel. Christian salvation comes from the Trinity, happens through the Trinity, and brings us home to the Trinity”. It is by faith that Christians believe in the Trinity because no one has ever seen God. And it is by grace through faith that we are saved. We spend so much time getting tangled up in trying to figure out how the Trinity works that we lose sight of what God has already done. The mystery we should spend time contemplating has already been revealed to us – the Gospel! God the Father loved us so much that he sent God the Son down from heaven to restore a relationship that we destroyed AND offer those who believe in him everlasting life. As if that wasn’t wondrous enough, God sent (and sends) the Holy Spirit to up residence inside believers to help them become more like him. If that’s not the perfect picture of love, I don’t know what is! And that is the image we should see when we reflect on the Trinity.
This post is part three in a three-part series in partial fulfillment of the requirements for ST5102GA, Trinitarianism.
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