TRINITY SUNDAY

The early church fathers made it clear that to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, you must believe in the Trinity. It is a mystery revealed in time, in human history, recorded throughout the pages of the Bible. We can strain all we like, but what we know of God, Who He is and what He is like has come to us by God revealing it to us in His Word. We can thus know God truly, but never fully know Him as He is in Himself…eternal and infinite. We bow before Eternal revelation and mystery.

The ”Shema”, the Hebrew declaration of Who God is does not contradict the revelation of One God in Three Persons. “Here, oh Israel, the Lord (Adonai is in the plural) our God (Elohenu is in the plural), the Lord (Adonai is in the plural) is One (Echud does not mean singular but One)”. Rabbis would say that the words here are in the plural to denote the fullness of Diety. I couldn’t agree more!

In Genesis the Lord God declares, “Let Us make Adam in Our image, in Our own likeness.” Adam is created by God, perfectly, but God said, “It is not good (Tov) that Adam should be alone.” Adam was NOT wandering around the Garden of Eden feeling lonely. He was in perfect fellowship with the Eternal Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But, to reflect and display the image of God, the likeness of God, there had to be community reflecting the Eternal Community of the Trinity.

God separates the aspects of His character into two complementary beings we know as male and female. Strength and power, tenderness and mercy, these are all aspects of God nature and character. We would call, traditionally, some aspects as more “masculine” and others more “feminine”. God is neither male nor female, but Spirit, but in the overflow of love in creation coming from the Eternal Triune God, humanity bears His image together.

God states that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be united to his wife an the two shall become one (Echud…the same Hebrew word describing the oneness of God). It is in the Sacrament of marriage that the mutuality of self-giving, self-sacrificing love, honoring one another, loving that lays its life down Life and Love of God is meant to be displayed.

Every other religious system (that is, “man-made”) demands sacrifice in order to get the gods to care for you…if you get the ceremony right. Every religious system KNOWS that things are “out-of-whack” and need to be put right, so they try very hard to make things right. The problem is that what is broken and spiritually dead can not repair itself of give itself the life it is devoid of!

Christianity is radically different from them all in that it is God the Son, Who is sent by God the Father in the Power of God the Holy Spirit, Who sacrifices Himself to rescue us from sin and death. Believing Him, we are given a new heart and a new spirit and are able to love God and become fully human once again. We can be alive with the Life of God as He intended…as Adam and Eve knew life before the “fall”.

Man owed an infinite debt for our refusal to believe God, take Him at His Word and thus live. Humanity was and is incapable of expunging the debt. Man owed what only God could pay, so God the Son, through Whom all things were created, becomes a creation, fully man. Jesus Christ became the man worth an infinite number of human beings, for the Creator is worth more than an infinite number of His creations. Jesus Christ was not just a man, He was THE man, fully human and fully God at the same time. He could thus pay the price to redeem humanity and to take away sin, not merely cover it over. In Jesus’ death on the cross, He knew infinite suffering; the horror of the sin that had separated humanity from God. His was the death-of-deaths. No one has ever died as Jesus died; no one ever could have but Him.

His resurrection from the dead, His transformed humanity, flesh and bone, bearing the marks of God’s covenant with us in His hands, His feet and His side, proved that He is God, the Eternal Son. His resurrection proved that sin has been dealt with, not in part, but the whole! We can come home again. If we will but believe Him, we are given the power of a New Life.

God, the Eternal Holy Spirit comes to live out within the believer that life of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit’s power. God makes us one with Himself. The power to follow God comes FROM God, not from ourselves. The power for obedience to God’s Word, for repentance, for self-denial, for sacrificial love, for compassion (to suffer with) for others, for mercy, for joy, for peace, for kindness, for goodness, for humility, for patience, for self-control…it all comes from God, Himself. It becomes our heritage and inheritance because He lives His Life within us.

A salvaged life, a restored life, a life being transformed to look more and more, day by day, like the One Who died and rose again for us is not just possible, but is God’s designed plan. It is because He lives in us to live through us to affect His salvation in every dimension of life, every aspect. The Almighty and Eternal God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is committed to finish in us what He begins in us when we believe Him. He unites us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, giving us eternal life that nothing can separate us from.

How’s that for Good News?