Categories
Meditations

Knowing that Our Triune God is Love

All of God’s character and attributes perfectly and eternally exist none greater than the other. Yes, God is holy, light, and good; and yes, God’s holiness is seen through His love and his love seen through his holiness. Yet, for us humans, created in God’s image, made to exist in community, love is the attribute that so often resonates in our hearts.

God, when inaugurating Christ to His mission, introduces the relationship as loving Father to obedient Son.

  • Matthew 3:17 “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased! Hear Him!”

Jesus, when he clearly wanted to explain God, didn’t refer to Him first as creator, king, judge, fire, or ruler—all of which are true. Jesus perfectly reveals God as a loving father.

  • The Father loves the Son and shows Him all he does! (John 5:20)

Our Lord then showers us with this love when he prays to the Father:

  • Father…in this relationship of I in the believers and they in me….the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me! (John 17:24)

John revels in this wonder writing, almost in amazing “Look at the great love the Father poured out on us: that we should be called the sons of God!” (1 John 3:1). Christian, let your heart join in the resonating song that the triune God is love (1 John 4:8)!

Categories
godhead Meditations

Knowing that Our Triune God Is Good

Parents have bad days. I might say “My dad had his rough spots, but he was a good dad.” Our God, on the other hand, wants us to know that only He is perfectly good. The Son says:

  • No one is good except God alone (Luke 18:19)

Jesus makes a connection that most of us haven’t thought about. Goodness is more than not evil. An unhelpful person is not evil. He might not kill the poor but the person who gives for the poor does better. He might be unhelpful because he lost his job. We don’t know how we’ll act in future situations. For someone to be top-of-the-line good, he or she can’t ever stop being perfectly good. If we manage to do good every single moment, we still die and there ends goodness!

rshow that our trinitarian God is perfectly and unchanging good:

  • God is perfectly light absent darkness and our fellowship with the Father and Son (1 John 1:3,5)
  • Every good gift comes from the Father of lights who has no variation or shifting shadow and he gave the Son and another comforter like the Son (the Spirit: who convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment) (James 1:17; John 3:16; 16:7-11)

Be happy and be in awe Christian! We are in a relationship with the God of no rough spots, who alone is good, and his love endures forever!

Categories
godhead Meditations

Knowing the Triune God in Relationship

When God wanted to be clearly known, He describes Himself in a relationship. These four passages stand out.

  • Hebrews 1:1-2 Though God spoke in many ways…in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son
  • Matt 11:27 No one knows the Father except the Son…
  • John 5:20 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand
  • John 17:24 Father…you loved Me before the foundation of the world

God is, within Himself, in an eternal relationship of Loving Father to Given Son with the Living they they  of Life between them. Careful: don’t start making lessons of God from your relationship with your dad. That’s taking your situation and creating a picture of God: The Bible called this making an idol!

Rather, know that God in all of His fullness and creativity, decided to speak like how we speak to babies who don’t understand. Sometimes you say “goo-goo-gaga” and sometimes you draw a stick drawing. God created the human relationship of Father to children so that it reflected something, not perfectly, of the greater eternal relationship in the Godhead.  One where Jesus is considered “only begotten of the Father” ( John 1:14) yet uncreated (John 1:1-3).

Now , consider these three passages:

  • John 20:17 I (the Son Jesus)  go to my Father and your Father, my God, and your God.
  • Romans 8:14-17 We cry Abba Father through the Holy Spirit
  • 1 John 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God

Be happy! Consider that in this relationship with the triune God, we know “Our Father” by the Spirit and the Son calls us brothers as Our Father calls us His children!

Categories
godhead Meditations

Knowing that The Triune God Needs Nothing

If we understand that God, in all three persons, is also perfect in all his attributes, then we would also understand that he doesn’t need anything. God describes Himself this way:

  • Acts 17:24-25 He doesn’t need temples. He doesn’t need to be served by human hands. He doesn’t need anything. He is the one who gives life to everything.

This means that God, in all three persons, is in Himself and of Himself. He has no moment of needing anything or anyone outside of Himself. God didn’t need companions or relationships or complexity to ponder since He has all of that in Himself in all three persons. In fact, what this tells us is that when God decided to create or give life or give gifts, He did it only because He wanted to.

  • Rev 4:11 You are worthy, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power because you created all things and because of your will they were created
  • Col 1:16 For in Christ, all things were created: all things have been created through Him and for Him
  • Job 26:13 By His breath, or by His Spirit, God adorned the heavens

Be thankful and joyful! We don’t have a weak God who needed toys to keep him busy but rather an all-powerful God who decided, out of His grace and giving, to create others to enjoy Him forever!

Categories
godhead Meditations study

Knowing That God, In All Three Persons, Is Love and Holy and…  

There is a mistake of saying that God is mainly Love or mainly Holy. This mistake tames God in our merely human eyes because we can easily understand people like that—who are mainly loving. What God shows in Scripture is that God, in all three persons, is the glorious definition and perfection of all his attributes.

  • The Father loved the world and gave his Son to satisfy God’s holy punishment of sin (John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; Rom 8:3)
  • The Son only does the things He sees the Father doing so he loved us and gave Himself for us as the one who rightly can condemn sin (John 5:19-20; Eph 5:2; John 5:22; Rom 8:34)
  • The Holy Spirit, as knowing the mind of God by being God, and taking the place of the Son on Earth, creates fruit in the lives of God’s people by creating love, holiness, purity, and godliness (John 14:16; 1 Cor 2:11; Gal. 5:22; 1 Peter 1:16; 1Thes 4:7)

This tells us that God, in all three persons, is: love, holy, truth, light, life, (and so on) all at the same time! There is no person in the Trinity that is love while another is holy, and another is judge. There is no attribute that is more indicative of who God is in His essence, than any other. God is love through His holiness and He is holy through his love and both through His truth and all through His life and life through all. That is a confusing sentence but also starts to reflect the bigness of God.

God is not loving or holy or truthful because there is some concept of love, or holiness, or truthfulness out there in space. God is the definition and example of all His attributes. We can only love or tell the truth or do right or be kind because God, in His essence, known in all three persons, is the meaning of those things! Christian, shudder! Stand back in awe! Shut your mouths in utter wonder! This is the basis of the constant Biblical refrain: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!