It’s time to think. This week we’re starting a six week series on tough theology topics. This is not easy business. We’ve chosen some of the most complex and most difficult theological issues of our era. Each week, we’ll give you a handout as a guide to further research. I encourage you to take this home and look up some of these articles and deepen your understanding. So buckle up. It’s time to think about some of the deepest stuff in Christianity.
Today is Trinity Sunday, so we starting our series with the heart of Christian theology - the Trinity. To help us get started on the right foot, I want us to read one of the most important Biblical texts on the Trinity:
Matthew 28:16-20.
16 Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him—but some of them doubted!
18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Thomas Oden says that all Christian theology is basically an extended commentary on our baptisms. We are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to understand and to live what that means.1
To be honest, I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the theological concept of the Trinity. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Trinity - God. And on one hand, I love thinking about all of this deep stuff. I love thinking about the inner workings of the Trinity, how the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Spirit, and how there are diversity and hospitality in the heart of God. But, on the other hand, sometimes, I have a hard time with the doctrine of the Trinity. I wish we had something easier. I wish it was easier to explain God and to understand God. As someone, whose job includes a lot of explaining God, something easier than the Trinity would be ... easier.
For example, I remember studying a 900 year old symbol of the Trinity. This symbol expresses two fundamental truths about the Trinity. First, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct, separate, not the same persons. Second, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same God, one, united, the same essence. Now, on one hand, I say, “Oh, OK, that makes makes sense.” But on the other hand, I kind of feel more confused the longer I look at this. How does this all work? Is ... Is not ... Is ... Is not. I feel like I should be picking petals from a flower. He love’s me. He’s God. He’s not the Spirit. He’s God. ... Aaahhhh.
Sometimes, I want to just give up trying to understand. Sometimes, I just want to say, “Look here’s God. God loves you. Let’s just talk about that, OK?”
But I find some encouragement to keep thinking and keep digging into theology from what might seem like a strange place - science. Lots of subjects are hard. Our world is a complex, multifaceted place. We are little bitty beings trying to understand a vast universe. It makes sense that our little bitty brains will have a hard time with this great big world - not to mention the God who made the world.
Here’s a great example - light. Have you ever thought about what light is? This week, I went to www.howstuffworks.com and did a little research on light. “Light is at once both obvious and mysterious. ... You might think scientists know all the answers, but light continues to surprise them.”
Ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians -with great names like Pythagoras, Epicurus, Euclid, and Ptolemy - were the first to create theories of light. (What do you think Sarah? Any winners? Wouldn’t it be great to have a little Ptolemy running around?) They recognized pretty easily that light travels in a straight line, like a ray. Arab scholars developed these ideas using glass to make lenses and mirrors to work with light.
In 1690, a Dutch astronomer named Christiaan Huygens published the undulatory theory saying that light functions as a wave. However, that hung around as an unproven and disputed theory for a hundred years until an experiment by Thomas Young, an English doctor, who did physics on the side. Young, and other scientists after him, discovered that while light does function as a ray, it is actually a very special kind of wave - a type of electromagnetic wave. The wave theory really helped the scientists understand light. They figured out that color and strength of light depends on its wavelength and frequency.
But good old Albert Einstein just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He resurrected an old theory by Isaac Newton that light is actually a particle. The basic idea is that light carries energy somehow. That’s how we get sunburns or can collect solar power. That energy must be traveling in or on something. Einstein said, those are the particles of light.
So if you put all of this together, you have light as a collection of electrically charged particles that move in a wave formation in a what is basically a straight line like a ray. Got it? Not really? Kind of?
That’s OK. Here’s the basic point. Light has been around, a long, long time - since, Day 1, when God said, “Let there be light.” And yet, we’re still trying to understand exactly what it is. The best scientists in the world can only say, “Well, it’s kind of like this ... and this ... and this.” Now, just think about that for a minute.
[9*] If we have slowly, over time come to understand light - as ray, and wave, and particle, then that can also help us a little as we try to understand God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How can light be both wave and particle? We don’t really know. We can’t fully explain it. But it is. We see that it is, so we try to explain it. How can God be both Three and One, One-In-Three? We don’t really know. We can’t fully explain God. But we see that God is Three-in-One. The Bible doesn’t really leave us with any other options. The Bible teaches God as Father, Son, and Spirit - one God. That’s just how God is, so we try to explain it.
Next, let’s look at a brief history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Some people mistakenly say that the doctrine of Trinity is not in the Bible. Some even say that the doctrine of the Trinity was an invention of corrupt church leaders in the 4th century to maintain religious and political control as the church gained power with the Roman Emperor Constantine. However, both of these critiques are historically inaccurate - untrue. The Doctrine of the Trinity has passed through four basic stages: Founding the Paradigm, Disrupting the Paradigm, Reworking the Paradigm, and finally Working with the New Paradigm. (A paradigm is a basic way of thinking about something.)
First: Founding the Paradigm. The first basic task for the Old Testament was to convince God’s people that there is only one true God. In the ancient world, lots of people worshiped lots of gods. Even if you only worshiped one god, you still believed that there are other gods out there. It’s just that your god is the best - or at the very least yours.
The first step for Israel seemed to be simply believing that Yahweh was the best God out there. This is largely seen in God freeing Israel from Egypt with the 10 plagues which were like a cosmic battle with Egypt’s gods.
Then, the rest of the Old Testament is working toward establishing the belief that Yahweh (the Hebrew name for God) is not just the best God. He’s the Only God. All of the other so-called-gods are just fakes, phonies, idols, statues. Yahweh is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the Giver and Taker of life, the One True God. The classic statement of Israel’s faith is in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Here, O Israel, the LORD our God is one Lord.”
However, even within this first stage, the Bible often talks of God with a mysterious plurality. Even in that verse, the classic statement of God’s oneness, the word for “God” is plural, so that it reads literally: “The LORD our Gods is one Lord.” And listen to the creation story.
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day" and the darkness "night."
And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day. ...
26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God said, “Let us make humans in our image.” When God appeared to Abraham in Genesis, God appeared to him as three men (Genesis 18). This was the inspiration for Andre Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity. At several places in the Old Testament there is a mysterious plurality. Sometimes, the subjects and verbs seem intentionally mismatched - as if God is saying, “We is God.”
So even within the Old Testament, we have the foundation of the paradigm for the doctrine of the Trinity. First and most importantly, there is only one God. God is absolutely one. The world is not composed of competing teams of gods who are doing battle in our midst. There is one God - one and only one. However, when Israel struggled to speak of this God, or when God spoke to Israel, sometimes, unexplainably the singular God seemed to have a mysterious plurality of being.
Enter Jesus for Stage 2: Disrupting the Paradigm. Jesus came to the most monotheistic people on the face of the earth. Israel believed in one God, only one God. And yet, amazingly, mysteriously, when the people of Israel met Jesus, they met God. Jesus did things only God could do. Jesus said things only God could say. And people who had been trained from infancy to worship only the One True God - these fiercely monotheistic people, fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
Then, the situation got even more complex and more beautiful with Pentecost. Peter gives a summary of the action: “God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this. Now he is exalted to the place of highest honor in heaven, at God’s right hand. And the Father, as he had promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, as you see and hear today” (Acts 2:32-33). So the Father raised Jesus from the dead and lifted him to the highest heaven, and the Father gave Jesus the Spirit to give to the disciples. And all of this is an experience of God.
This was amazingly disruptive for a monotheistic people. They believed in only one God, so what were they supposed to do with this Father, Son, and Spirit business?
As far as the doctrine of the Trinity goes, most of the New Testament does two things. First, it serves as a witness of how the disciples experienced God as Father, Son, and Spirit. Second, it proclaims that all people everywhere can have this same amazing experience. The New Testament tells the story of the Trinity’s action and preaches that it can be repeated. For the most part, the New Testament doesn’t try to answer all the detailed theological questions. They were too busy trying to keep up with God’s amazing activity. They were just like, “Woah, Jesus did this, and then the Spirit did that, and this is awesome. You’ve got to get in on this. God can change your life too!”
Stage 3 was Reworking the Paradigm. If God is one, then what’s up with the Father, Son, and Spirit? If God is one, then how can Jesus be God? Was Jesus actually a human who became God or was Jesus God from the beginning? Eventually the questions had to be answered. And sometimes, they were answered in the wrong ways. As the church began to give answers as to how all of this Father-Son-Spirit stuff works, they realized that some answers are better than others. And some answers are downright dangerous for the life of the church. Some people started saying that Jesus was not actually God - just very much like God. Other people said that Jesus was not a real human - just human in appearance.
However, it’s important for us to note that throughout that 400 years, the overwhelming witness and worship of the church was to one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The question was not if Jesus is God or if the Holy Spirit is God, but how. How can there be one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit?3
It took almost 400 years to sort out all the questions. The most definitive statement we now have on the doctrine of the Trinity is the Nicene Creed, which we read earlier today. This was established in a series of councils throughout the 4th century.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ...
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light
true God from true God...
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified. ...
This simple statement, able to be printed on a single page, is the collection of 400 years of reflection and study and arguments and ponderings and prayers. This is the most compact and most thorough statement of who God is - the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. All orthodox Christians everywhere agree on this.
Stage 4: Working with the Paradigm. Now that the paradigm is set, we don’t have to “reinvent the wheel.” We don’t have to start all over - every time we try to understand God. God is One, yet God is One-in-Three and Three-in-One. Now part of our job is to keep thinking and keep explaining and keep drawing. But our most important job is to keep experiencing the Trinity - to keep being transformed by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
We can understand all history and theology through the lens of the Trinity.
In shorthand, the Father made us; the Son saves us; the Spirit sanctifies us - One God. The Father loves us; the Son frees us; the Spirit guides us - One God. The Father created; the Son redeems the fallen creation; the Spirit recreates - One God.
These categories are not perfectly separate. Jesus also loves, and the Spirit also creates, and on and on. However, this is pushing us into the great mystery of the Trinity again.
If you feel overwhelmed, don’t freak out. It’s important for us talk about this. It’s important for us to try to understand and to grow in understanding. But we don’t have to fully understand.
We still don’t understand everything about light. Is it a ray, or a wave, or a particle, or all three? I guess it’s all three, but I don’t really understand it. But I can still sit outside and enjoy the sun on my skin. I can see that my skin turns red after a day in the sun. I still know how to turn on a light. I can still use a fiber-optic cable for internet. Do I understand everything about the sun or electricity or fiber-optics? No way. Can they enrich my life? Absolutely. Do I see that they are true? Absolutely.
You don’t have to understand everything about God to experience God. Listen to Paul’s closing words to the church in Corinth:
2 Corinthians 13
11 Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet each other with Christian love. 13 All of God’s people here send you their greetings.
14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Come to the one true God. Submit yourself to the Maker of the Universe. Let the Father love you. Let the Son save you. Let the Spirit sanctify you, restore you, and lead you all the days of your life. You may not understand how it all works, but it works, and it can work in you. If you feel lost, get lost in the Trinity. Let the Father, Son, and Spirit transform your life and wrap you into the mission of healing our world. You will never regret it.
Matthew 28:16-20.
16 Then the eleven disciples left for Galilee, going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him—but some of them doubted!
18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Thomas Oden says that all Christian theology is basically an extended commentary on our baptisms. We are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to understand and to live what that means.1
To be honest, I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the theological concept of the Trinity. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Trinity - God. And on one hand, I love thinking about all of this deep stuff. I love thinking about the inner workings of the Trinity, how the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Spirit, and how there are diversity and hospitality in the heart of God. But, on the other hand, sometimes, I have a hard time with the doctrine of the Trinity. I wish we had something easier. I wish it was easier to explain God and to understand God. As someone, whose job includes a lot of explaining God, something easier than the Trinity would be ... easier.
For example, I remember studying a 900 year old symbol of the Trinity. This symbol expresses two fundamental truths about the Trinity. First, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct, separate, not the same persons. Second, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same God, one, united, the same essence. Now, on one hand, I say, “Oh, OK, that makes makes sense.” But on the other hand, I kind of feel more confused the longer I look at this. How does this all work? Is ... Is not ... Is ... Is not. I feel like I should be picking petals from a flower. He love’s me. He’s God. He’s not the Spirit. He’s God. ... Aaahhhh.
Sometimes, I want to just give up trying to understand. Sometimes, I just want to say, “Look here’s God. God loves you. Let’s just talk about that, OK?”
But I find some encouragement to keep thinking and keep digging into theology from what might seem like a strange place - science. Lots of subjects are hard. Our world is a complex, multifaceted place. We are little bitty beings trying to understand a vast universe. It makes sense that our little bitty brains will have a hard time with this great big world - not to mention the God who made the world.
Here’s a great example - light. Have you ever thought about what light is? This week, I went to www.howstuffworks.com and did a little research on light. “Light is at once both obvious and mysterious. ... You might think scientists know all the answers, but light continues to surprise them.”
Ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians -with great names like Pythagoras, Epicurus, Euclid, and Ptolemy - were the first to create theories of light. (What do you think Sarah? Any winners? Wouldn’t it be great to have a little Ptolemy running around?) They recognized pretty easily that light travels in a straight line, like a ray. Arab scholars developed these ideas using glass to make lenses and mirrors to work with light.
In 1690, a Dutch astronomer named Christiaan Huygens published the undulatory theory saying that light functions as a wave. However, that hung around as an unproven and disputed theory for a hundred years until an experiment by Thomas Young, an English doctor, who did physics on the side. Young, and other scientists after him, discovered that while light does function as a ray, it is actually a very special kind of wave - a type of electromagnetic wave. The wave theory really helped the scientists understand light. They figured out that color and strength of light depends on its wavelength and frequency.
But good old Albert Einstein just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He resurrected an old theory by Isaac Newton that light is actually a particle. The basic idea is that light carries energy somehow. That’s how we get sunburns or can collect solar power. That energy must be traveling in or on something. Einstein said, those are the particles of light.
So if you put all of this together, you have light as a collection of electrically charged particles that move in a wave formation in a what is basically a straight line like a ray. Got it? Not really? Kind of?
That’s OK. Here’s the basic point. Light has been around, a long, long time - since, Day 1, when God said, “Let there be light.” And yet, we’re still trying to understand exactly what it is. The best scientists in the world can only say, “Well, it’s kind of like this ... and this ... and this.” Now, just think about that for a minute.
[9*] If we have slowly, over time come to understand light - as ray, and wave, and particle, then that can also help us a little as we try to understand God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How can light be both wave and particle? We don’t really know. We can’t fully explain it. But it is. We see that it is, so we try to explain it. How can God be both Three and One, One-In-Three? We don’t really know. We can’t fully explain God. But we see that God is Three-in-One. The Bible doesn’t really leave us with any other options. The Bible teaches God as Father, Son, and Spirit - one God. That’s just how God is, so we try to explain it.
Next, let’s look at a brief history of the doctrine of the Trinity. Some people mistakenly say that the doctrine of Trinity is not in the Bible. Some even say that the doctrine of the Trinity was an invention of corrupt church leaders in the 4th century to maintain religious and political control as the church gained power with the Roman Emperor Constantine. However, both of these critiques are historically inaccurate - untrue. The Doctrine of the Trinity has passed through four basic stages: Founding the Paradigm, Disrupting the Paradigm, Reworking the Paradigm, and finally Working with the New Paradigm. (A paradigm is a basic way of thinking about something.)
First: Founding the Paradigm. The first basic task for the Old Testament was to convince God’s people that there is only one true God. In the ancient world, lots of people worshiped lots of gods. Even if you only worshiped one god, you still believed that there are other gods out there. It’s just that your god is the best - or at the very least yours.
The first step for Israel seemed to be simply believing that Yahweh was the best God out there. This is largely seen in God freeing Israel from Egypt with the 10 plagues which were like a cosmic battle with Egypt’s gods.
Then, the rest of the Old Testament is working toward establishing the belief that Yahweh (the Hebrew name for God) is not just the best God. He’s the Only God. All of the other so-called-gods are just fakes, phonies, idols, statues. Yahweh is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, the Giver and Taker of life, the One True God. The classic statement of Israel’s faith is in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Here, O Israel, the LORD our God is one Lord.”
However, even within this first stage, the Bible often talks of God with a mysterious plurality. Even in that verse, the classic statement of God’s oneness, the word for “God” is plural, so that it reads literally: “The LORD our Gods is one Lord.” And listen to the creation story.
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light "day" and the darkness "night."
And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day. ...
26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” 27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
God said, “Let us make humans in our image.” When God appeared to Abraham in Genesis, God appeared to him as three men (Genesis 18). This was the inspiration for Andre Rublev’s famous icon of the Trinity. At several places in the Old Testament there is a mysterious plurality. Sometimes, the subjects and verbs seem intentionally mismatched - as if God is saying, “We is God.”
So even within the Old Testament, we have the foundation of the paradigm for the doctrine of the Trinity. First and most importantly, there is only one God. God is absolutely one. The world is not composed of competing teams of gods who are doing battle in our midst. There is one God - one and only one. However, when Israel struggled to speak of this God, or when God spoke to Israel, sometimes, unexplainably the singular God seemed to have a mysterious plurality of being.
Enter Jesus for Stage 2: Disrupting the Paradigm. Jesus came to the most monotheistic people on the face of the earth. Israel believed in one God, only one God. And yet, amazingly, mysteriously, when the people of Israel met Jesus, they met God. Jesus did things only God could do. Jesus said things only God could say. And people who had been trained from infancy to worship only the One True God - these fiercely monotheistic people, fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).
Then, the situation got even more complex and more beautiful with Pentecost. Peter gives a summary of the action: “God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this. Now he is exalted to the place of highest honor in heaven, at God’s right hand. And the Father, as he had promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, as you see and hear today” (Acts 2:32-33). So the Father raised Jesus from the dead and lifted him to the highest heaven, and the Father gave Jesus the Spirit to give to the disciples. And all of this is an experience of God.
This was amazingly disruptive for a monotheistic people. They believed in only one God, so what were they supposed to do with this Father, Son, and Spirit business?
As far as the doctrine of the Trinity goes, most of the New Testament does two things. First, it serves as a witness of how the disciples experienced God as Father, Son, and Spirit. Second, it proclaims that all people everywhere can have this same amazing experience. The New Testament tells the story of the Trinity’s action and preaches that it can be repeated. For the most part, the New Testament doesn’t try to answer all the detailed theological questions. They were too busy trying to keep up with God’s amazing activity. They were just like, “Woah, Jesus did this, and then the Spirit did that, and this is awesome. You’ve got to get in on this. God can change your life too!”
Stage 3 was Reworking the Paradigm. If God is one, then what’s up with the Father, Son, and Spirit? If God is one, then how can Jesus be God? Was Jesus actually a human who became God or was Jesus God from the beginning? Eventually the questions had to be answered. And sometimes, they were answered in the wrong ways. As the church began to give answers as to how all of this Father-Son-Spirit stuff works, they realized that some answers are better than others. And some answers are downright dangerous for the life of the church. Some people started saying that Jesus was not actually God - just very much like God. Other people said that Jesus was not a real human - just human in appearance.
However, it’s important for us to note that throughout that 400 years, the overwhelming witness and worship of the church was to one God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The question was not if Jesus is God or if the Holy Spirit is God, but how. How can there be one God who is Father, Son, and Spirit?3
It took almost 400 years to sort out all the questions. The most definitive statement we now have on the doctrine of the Trinity is the Nicene Creed, which we read earlier today. This was established in a series of councils throughout the 4th century.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth ...
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light
true God from true God...
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified. ...
This simple statement, able to be printed on a single page, is the collection of 400 years of reflection and study and arguments and ponderings and prayers. This is the most compact and most thorough statement of who God is - the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. All orthodox Christians everywhere agree on this.
Stage 4: Working with the Paradigm. Now that the paradigm is set, we don’t have to “reinvent the wheel.” We don’t have to start all over - every time we try to understand God. God is One, yet God is One-in-Three and Three-in-One. Now part of our job is to keep thinking and keep explaining and keep drawing. But our most important job is to keep experiencing the Trinity - to keep being transformed by the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
We can understand all history and theology through the lens of the Trinity.
- The Father is the source of all being, the Creator, the First Lover, the Root of all Love, the Almighty. Out of his love, the Father created goodness in our world and good humans in our world. But we humans walked away from the Father’s love and entered a path of self-destruction.
- The pivot point of history is God entering our world in human flesh. Jesus, God’s eternal Son, became the fully human son of Mary. Through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, fallen humanity was reclaimed, reunited with the Father. Our sins were forgiven. Our course for collective self-destruction was changed. Jesus speaks new life into our broken world.
- Now the Spirit, works to complete God’s restoration project. The Spirit helps us to respond to the Father’s great love poured out in Jesus. The Spirit works in us to reshape us into the goodness of the Father and the Son. The Spirit empowers us to have fellowship with God’s people, to live as witnesses of God’s love, and to participate in the healing of God’s world.
In shorthand, the Father made us; the Son saves us; the Spirit sanctifies us - One God. The Father loves us; the Son frees us; the Spirit guides us - One God. The Father created; the Son redeems the fallen creation; the Spirit recreates - One God.
These categories are not perfectly separate. Jesus also loves, and the Spirit also creates, and on and on. However, this is pushing us into the great mystery of the Trinity again.
If you feel overwhelmed, don’t freak out. It’s important for us talk about this. It’s important for us to try to understand and to grow in understanding. But we don’t have to fully understand.
We still don’t understand everything about light. Is it a ray, or a wave, or a particle, or all three? I guess it’s all three, but I don’t really understand it. But I can still sit outside and enjoy the sun on my skin. I can see that my skin turns red after a day in the sun. I still know how to turn on a light. I can still use a fiber-optic cable for internet. Do I understand everything about the sun or electricity or fiber-optics? No way. Can they enrich my life? Absolutely. Do I see that they are true? Absolutely.
You don’t have to understand everything about God to experience God. Listen to Paul’s closing words to the church in Corinth:
2 Corinthians 13
11 Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you. 12 Greet each other with Christian love. 13 All of God’s people here send you their greetings.
14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Come to the one true God. Submit yourself to the Maker of the Universe. Let the Father love you. Let the Son save you. Let the Spirit sanctify you, restore you, and lead you all the days of your life. You may not understand how it all works, but it works, and it can work in you. If you feel lost, get lost in the Trinity. Let the Father, Son, and Spirit transform your life and wrap you into the mission of healing our world. You will never regret it.
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