Is God love? (1J 4. 8). These three words could hardly be more vibrant. They look alive, adorable and as welcoming as a crackling fire. But what about those other three words, “God is Trinity?”No, they have little effect: it looks cold and boring. Everything is perfectly understandable, but Christians must see the reality behind what can be boring language. Yes, the Trinity can present itself as an unpleasant and irrelevant dogma, but the truth is that God is love because God is Trinity.
Diving into the Trinity is an opportunity to savor and see that the Lord is good, so that you can win and renew your heart, because it is only when you understand what it means to God to be a Trinity that truly feels the beauty, overflowing goodness, and grace of God that captivates the heart. If the Trinity were something we could take away from God, we would not relieve him of an uncomfortable burden; We would take him away precisely from what is charming, because God is Trinitarian and, being Trinitarian, can be so good and so desirable.
I want to show you how
The foundation of our faith is nothing less than God Himself, and every aspect of the Gospel is Christian only to the extent that it is the expression and action of this God, the God of the Trinity. I could believe in the death of a man named Jesus. ; He could believe in his bodily resurrection; I could even believe in salvation only by grace; but if I don’t think God is Trinitarian, then I’m just not a Christian. We’ll see that in the scriptures.
John wrote his Gospel, telling us, “These, however, were recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you can have life in his name” (Jn 20:31). It would be an admirable mission statement for any evangelist: to see someone reach the true Christian faith. But even the most fundamental call to believe in the Son of God is an invitation to the Trinitarian faith. Jesus is described as the Son of God, your father. And he is Christ, who is anointed with the Spirit. When you start with the Jesus of the Bible, he is the Trinitarian God you obtain.
The name: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is a window into the eternal and essential existence of our God. In John 17:24, Jesus prays, “Father”? You loved me before the foundation of the world, and this is the God revealed by Jesus Christ; before creating, before governing the world, above all, this God was the Father who loved his Son in his Holy Spirit.
The Father loves His Son in a very special way, which we can see if we look at the baptism of Jesus:
When Jesus was baptized, He immediately left the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw that the Spirit of God descended like a dove, coming upon him. And behold a voice from heaven that said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am very happy. ?(Mt 3, 16-17).
Here the Father declares his love for his Son and his complacency in his Son, and he does so when the Spirit rests upon Jesus, because the way the Father makes his love known is precisely by giving his Spirit. In Romans 5. 5, for example, Paul writes about how God spreads his love in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in giving him the Spirit, the Father declares his love for the Son.
In other words, talk about him? Trinidad? It is only a way of speaking of the God revealed in Jesus, the God we find in the gospel. The Trinity is not the product of abstract speculation, because when Jesus, the Son of the Father, anointed by the Spirit, is proclaimed to the God of the Trinity.
Why did the Father send us the Son? Part of the answer is our fall and our sin; part of the answer is that God loved the world, even in our rebellion (see John 3:16). This, in itself, is quite impressive, but later in the Gospel of John. Jesus speaks of an even more primitive and powerful reason. As he prayed to his Father, Jesus said:
“Only father, the world did not know you; but I knew you, and they also understood that you sent me. I’ve made your name known to them and I’ll do it again, so that the love you loved me with can be in them, and I’m in them. ?(17: 25-26).
In other words, did the Father send his Son to make himself known?Doesn’t that mean I just wanted to download? Some information about himself, but the Father’s eternal love for the Son could be in those who have come to believe in him, and that we can enjoy the Son as the Father enjoys eternally. This is a salvation that no other god could offer, even if he wanted to: the Father rejoices so much in his eternal love for the Son that he wants to share it with all who believe. In the end, the Father sent the Son because the Father loved the Son very much and wanted to share this love and communion [i] with the Holy Spirit. The Father’s love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his Son.
In relation to the Father, therefore, it is not a question of spreading blessings from afar, and his salvation does not imply that he is kept at bay; we are not simply afflicted by compassion and forgiven by our Creator, but pours everything out. his blessings upon his Son and then sends him to participate in his glorious fulness. The Father loves us so much that he wants to involve us in the communion of love he enjoys with the Son in the Spirit. we can know God as he really is: as Father, in fact, we can know the Father as our own Father.
John 1:18 describes God the Son as eternally in the womb or knees of the Father No one would dare imagine it, but Jesus declares that his desire is for believers to be with him there (17:24). That is why the Father sent him: that we, who reject him, may we be returned?and returned not only as creatures, but as children, to enjoy the abundant love that the Son has always known.
J. I. Packer says
If you want to judge how much someone understands Christianity, find out how much he thinks he is a child of God and that he has God as his Father, if he does not think that he inspires and controls his worship, his prayers, and his whole vision of this. Does that mean you don’t understand Christianity very well?
Indeed, when a person deliberately and confidently calls the omnipotent “Father,” he demonstrates that he has understood something beautiful and fundamental about who God is and his salvation. And how that restores our hearts to him!Because the fact that God the Father is satisfied, and even rejoices in sharing his love for his Son, and being as well known as our Father, reveals how infinitely funny and kind he is.
Knowing God as our Father not only makes our vision of Him wonderful, but gives us the deepest comfort and joy. To be the son of a rich king would be good; Being loved by the emperor of the universe is beyond words. Obviously, the salvation of this God is even better than forgiveness, and certainly safer. Other gods may offer forgiveness, but this God welcomes us and embraces us like his children, never for Not offering me any kind of relationship, “he loves me, he really loves me”, so I have to try to keep in his favor by behaving impeccably. No, but did he give power to everyone who received it?Become children of God, that is, those who believe in His name?(Jo 1:12). Jesus gives us the security of enjoying God’s love forever.
What is the form of your faith?In the end, it all depends on how you think God is. God runs everything.
What God will be yours? Without Jesus the Son, we cannot know that God is truly a loving Father. Without Jesus the Son, we cannot know God as our loving Father. But, as Martin Luther discovered, through Jesus we can know. that God is our Father, and we can look at his father’s heart and feel how He loves us without limits, it would warm our hearts, making them incandescent.
[i] In Trinitarian theology, communion is the loving and eternal relationship that the three people of the Godhead have between them. From all eternity, every person of the Godhead loved and was loved by others. In our redemption, only by grace, we participate in this communion. We are adopted by God the Father, receiving the same love that he had eternally for God the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit (John 17:20-26).