The biblical truth about God as a Trinity is intended to stir up our affections for our glorious God. It is not enough to know about God in three persons. We should also ask the question: What does it look like to know Him personally as a Trinity?
The Desire for Love
Every human being who has ever lived has encountered a hunger for the Trinitarian nature of God. The very fact that humans relate to one another, crave community, come together in marriage and family demonstrates the truth of this desire. The desire to love and be loved is, at its core, part of what it means to be made in God’s image.
That’s why we have so many movies and TV shows and plays and songs and books written about love. Perfect love remains elusive. We desire it. We crave it. We want to set our affections upon something or someone, and we want to be the object of someone else’s love as well.
We love and are loved because we are made in the image of a God who is love. “Our hearts are restless until they find themselves in thee,” said Augustine. That inner restlessness, that yearning for perfect love, is God-given. We were made for God.
Only Christianity satisfies the craving for a relational God of self-giving love. Islam’s Allah is distant and judgmental. Eastern religions so confuse the personhood of God with creation that it is difficult to see how they are distinct. But in Christianity, we are invited to take part in the ongoing love relationship of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We encounter God in the person of Jesus. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we come to know God.
Indwelt by the Spirit
Consider this: God invites us to partake of the love relationship that He has within Himself! We are invited to join in what some theologians have termed “the divine dance.” There is a mutual indwelling of the Persons of the Trinity that is open to us. Jesus says that He is in us and we are in Him.
The Scriptures teach that when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, the Spirit takes up residence in our hearts. Just like the Son of God took on flesh and walked among us – making His home on earth, the Spirit of God enters our being. We become temples of the Spirit, mirroring the beauty of God’s infinity within the finite nature of our bodily existence.
The Trinity is not some bare doctrine only helpful for proving the errors of Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is a doctrinal truth that represents an experiential reality. We are not only to believe in the beauty of the Trinity. We are summoned to participate in the beauty of the Trinity!
If the essence of God is self-giving love, then participation in the Trinity means we are caught up into the divine dance of love going on from all eternity. We are welcomed into the mystery of holy love.
Tomorrow, I will follow up this post with a reflection on how this indwelling by the Holy Spirit takes shape in our lives.
