I do not think I am over exaggerating when I say that everyone wants to be a part of community. Everyone wants friends and loved ones that they can trust through the good and bad. Beyond just our physical families, we want to be a part of a larger family. We want those around us to be close to us, to be one with us, so to speak. This message of unity is taught to us on televisions in shows where there are different characters and settings but often the constant is that they are in a place where “everyone knows your name.”
Even our U.S. government is built on this principle. We might be republican or democrat, black or white, protestant or Catholic, straight or gay, but we are all Americans. We are all one people. We are all one family.
But are we? Are we all one family because we all join together and call ourselves that? Does getting together a group of diverse rock stars to sing “We are the World” while swaying in unison, smiling and hugging each other, really make us one? Are we one because we live in the same city or neighbourhood as others? Are we one because we go to Sunday morning worship at the same church?
Well, in a sense we are. All men are connected together. That is why Adam’s sin affected us all. Surely physical families are one through biology. But can we have a much more radical unity? Can we all be brothers and sisters together in one family? Can I, a middle aged and middle class American male, claim that I truly have a sister who I have never met and is living in the slums of Bangladesh? Truly holding hands across America will not create this radical unity that so many of us desire. But neither can our government or even our churches. So is it possible? And if so, who or what can bring about this unity? What can show us the way to a new family of peace and love?
One word: trinity. Let me begin that although we might be able to use the Trinity as a social paradigm that is not how the Trinity brings us into a radical unity with God (Father, Son and Spirit) and with each other. The doctrine of the Trinity is not primarily meant to show us the way we can develop unity through diversity or diversity through unity in our families, neighbourhoods and cities. The Trinity is primarily a doctrine about God. God is Trinitarian. There is only one God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
The apostle Paul as a Jew knew and rigorously believed in the Shema (Deut. 6) which starts, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Paul had this message hid in his heart. He “binded (the Shema) as a sign on (his) hand” and (It was) “as frontlets between (his) eyes” (Deut 6:8). He took this teaching, as all Jews, VERY seriously. However, Paul also states in Ephesians 1, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom . . . ” Paul does not now reject that God is one. Through Christ and his message, Paul now knows and has experienced the one God in three persons (Father, Son, and Spirit).
Possibly the most famous passage explicitly teaching the doctrine of the Trinity is the Great Commission. “And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them inthe name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28: 18-20). Note in this passage that believers are baptized into the ONE name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The baptism of Jesus was also explicitly marked as an event of the Trinity as “the heavens were opened to him (Jesus), and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him (Jesus); and behold, a voice (the voice of the Father) from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Space is too limited here to go into more detail on how Scripture teaches that God is Trinitarian. The main point of this devotional is not to prove the Trinity. It is to show why the Trinity matters to us beyond just intellectual assessment. How does a cognitive and experiential knowledge of the Trinity, the three in oneness, affect my daily life and spiritual walk? I want to demonstrate in this devotion one key way by focusing on how the Trinity is one.
Remember that in our lessons from the House of David for the month of October, we focused on the unity of God. We focused how we are to worship only one God. There was a match between the god Baal and the real God of the Bible to prove which one was/is the REAL GOD of the universe. Even though the prophets of Baal yelled at their god, prostrated themselves, and even cut themselves in devotion, Baal remain silent and unmoving. There was no answer.
When it was Elijah’s turn, he upped the stakes by asking the altar to be drenched in water and a moat dug around the altar and filled with water. God was not silent. God came down to the place of meeting and made Himself known. He proved that HE was the one and only God. All other gods were idols. However, mankind including the Jewish nation, continued to reject God again and again for false idols whether those idols were other gods like Baal, or money, or security and comfort.
But again, God was not silent. God came down and dwelt with man. The Logos who is the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity became a man. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Even though mankind was stubborn and rebellious in our sin and idol worship, God came to save us from ourselves. The purpose of the incarnation was to save mankind for the glory of God. There was none righteous, not one (Romans 3) until the Messiah and Savior of us came. Christ became one of us to save us. He paid the price for our unfaithfulness on the cross while being the faithful one that we could not. It is through the forgiveness of sins purchased by Christ on the cross and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us that we can be reconciled back with the Father. Jesus’ resurrection is proof that we can believe that he is the Son of God who has come to make us sons of God (Acts 17:31). The Holy Spirit brings us to life through regeneration and gives us the power to accept the salvation from the Father, purchased by the Son. “For through him (Jesus) we both have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).
Jesus came not just to make us no longer enemies of God, “but to all who did receive him (Jesus), who believed in his (Jesus) name, he (Jesus) gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). We are not only justified. We are also adopted. “In love he predestined usfor adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:5-6). So we can be in a family that is radically one in unity. But it is not through wishing or a work of our own. It is through the Trinitarian work of salvation through which we become truly one in the family of God. Thus Paul could call the diverse group of Christians in Ephesus to unity because, “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4: 4-6).
So I, a middle aged and middle class American male, can claim that I truly have a Christian sister who I have never met and is living in the slums of Bangladesh. I do not have to create a new community or nation through the works of my own hands. Christ did the work as he was called to do by the Father. The Spirit calls me to radical belief and obedience in Christ. Christ is our brother through whom the woman in Bangladesh, each one reading this paper, and myself can be one. We have a Father who not only knows us by name but knows each hair on our head and which ones have turned grey. We are known even better than we know ourselves.
But the salvific work was not meant to be hidden behind church walls as the church revels in the blessings we have. It was meant to be broadcast to the world. We have already seen that the world is looking for this unity, this family that only God, the one God in three persons, can bring. Let’s take it to the streets and proclaim the good news on our roof tops. Think of how you can proclaim to those you see every day that the salvation of God is near. There are those who have never experienced even the blessing a good human family life can bring. What good news it is that they can be reconciled to a Holy God and be adopted sons in the family of God! Pray that the Holy Spirit may guide you to those in need of this message today. “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (II Cor. 13:14).
