We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Most Beautiful Truth
Image by GlasgowAmateur via Flickr
Jesus was God incarnate. Yet he continually referred to, and prayed to, God the Father as someone who was distinct from himself. He also continually referred to, and claimed to be empowered by, God the Holy Spirit as someone distinct from himself. And yet Jesus, along with all Jews of his time, believed there is only one God.
Put all of this together and you arrive at the revelation that the one true God somehow exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is, in some profound sense, eternal loving community. This is what is traditionally referred to as the Trinity, and while this term is never used in the New Testament, one finds evidence of the communal nature of God throughout the New Testament.
To me, this is the most beautiful and profound truth revealed in the NT. In fact, I’d argue it’s the most beautiful and powerful concept in all of history! For the doctrine of the Trinity magnificently expresses the truth that God is love (1Jn 4:8,16). Love isn’t merely an attribute God has. Nor is love merely an activity God does. Love is what God eternally is.
Love can only exist between persons, which is why only a God who eternally exists as a community of persons can be said to be love in and of himself. A God who existed as a single consciousness in the midst of absolute nothingness before creating the world could not be said to be love. Love could not be the essence of this solitary God. This solitary God would need to create other persons in order to begin to love. But this is not the case for the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ.
The Trinity is the only view of God that can claim that God never started loving and that God will never stop loving, for this is the only view of God in which God is intrinsically and eternally loving—whether he decides to create a world outside of himself or not.
The revelation that God is triune is the revelation that love is not merely a verb that God does; it’s the noun that God is. God always does the verb because God always is the noun. God is and always has been love. And therefore God is and always has been loving.
Category: General
Tags: God, God is Love, Jesus, Love, The Holy Spirit, Trinity
Topics: Trinity
Related Reading
When God Endorsed Polygamy
We often find God acting as if he supports things we know, by other means, that he does not. For example, though his ideal was monogamy, it’s clear in the biblical narrative that, once God decided to permit men to acquire multiple wives and concubines, he was not above bearing the sin of his people…
Where is Human Free Will in the Bible?
The Bible is emphatic on its teaching that humans possess free will and are capable of originating evil. Notice, for example, that in the very first chapter of the Bible God commands humans to be fruitful and exercise dominion over the animal kingdom and the earth (Gen. 1:26). The fact that God must command us…
Enemy Love
Rob Hogeslag via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus shared the story of Paul Keane who offered his own burial plot to Tamerlan Tsarnaev if his family could not find a cemetery that would accept his body. You’ll remember that Tsarnaev was one of the men who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings and…
Loving Enemies in the Day of ISIS
The following excerpt from Myth of a Christian Religion discusses Jesus’ command to “turn the other cheek.” Whatever our response to the persecution of Christians in the world, we must take this passage seriously. While this excerpt does not tell us exactly how to respond, it can be used to shape our attitude and stance…
Jesus’ Different Kind of Nation
God called Abraham to form a unique nation by which “all peoples of the earth will be blessed.” The unique call of the descendants of Abraham was to become a nation of servant-priests whom God would use to reunite the nations of the world under his loving Lordship. The vision of a reunited humanity is…
The Risk of Love
The most basic and yet most profound teaching of the Bible is that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8; 16). He is revealed to be a God who is triune—Father, Son and Holy Spirit (See Mt 3:16; 28:19, Jn 14:26; 15:26)—who’s very essence is an eternal, loving relationship. He created the world out of love…