Holy, Holy, Holy

Brian Edgar once said, “To know God is to be in love; where there is no God, there is no love. Hinduism has karma , Islam has law , Buddhism has the eight-fold path , and secularism has self-improvement , but it is only Christianity which dares to say that we find our salvation and the meaning of life in God's unconditional love. Love is the answer to the most fundamental questions of human existence.” It is important to notice that love is a relational word. One person who has always been alone cannot conceptualise love, experience love, give love or receive it in any way at all. The Bible, however, states categorically, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).

The implications of this regarding the nature of God are profound. It means that somehow, intrinsic in the very nature of God, there are more than one person to His identity. The next few verses that follow indicate there is one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a unity of three coeternal Persons. “We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:13, 14).

It is not enough to say that God the Father first created Jesus as His Son and then sent Him as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. No created being, however, majestic and sinless he may be, can become a solution to the sin problem in a created universe. Sin is a cosmic problem focusing on the character of God, and it takes God Himself to take the initiative and atone for sin.

Nor is it acceptable to say that the Holy Spirit is only an impersonal force or the influence of God on our lives. It takes God Himself to reveal Himself to us. Not only are such beliefs unacceptable, they also are blatant contradictions of Scripture.

It is true that the word trinity never occurs in Scripture and that the church spent time clarifying this teaching in the early centuries. But it is also true that what is implied in the terms “Trinity” or “Godhead” saturates Scripture and was accepted, not only in the thinking and writing of the early church, but the whole corpus and spectrum of the body of Christ down through history.Christian

The reality of the Trinity is the only thing that gives humanity hope in chaotically self-destructing world. When Jesus suffered and died on the cross grappling with being forsaken by His Father, we begin to understand the magnitude of evil, injustice and suffering in our world.ShemaHear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one

God has not, however, just appeared to us in a Trinitarian fashion because it became necessary for Him to save the world after sin entered. It is an outworking of what He has always been in His true essence.May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all