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March 1 - March 22, 2020
That is why the Son goes out from the Father, in both creation and salvation: that the love of the Father for the Son might be shared.
just as the
Father decided to include us in his love for the Son, to share it with us, so the Son chose to include us in his love for the Father.
The triune God is an ecstatic God: he is not a God who hoards his life, but one who gives it away, as he would show in that supreme moment of his self-revelation on the cross.
Grace, then, is not merely his kindness to those who have sinned; the very creation is a work of grace, flowing from God’s love.
His very nature is about going out and sharing of his own fullness, and so that is what he is all about.
Apart from the fact that God delights to communicate and spread his goodness, there had never been a creation or redemption.b
It was his overflowing love for the Son that motivated the Father to create, and creation is his gift to his Son. The Father makes his Son the inheritor, the “heir of all things” (Heb 1:2; but see also Deut 32:8-9; Ps 2:8). And so the Son is not only the motivating origin of creation: he is its goal. The Son is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of creation.
Life is something that God has always had, and in creation it is something he now shares with us.
the hope such gods offer does not usually include ever getting to see, know or relate to them. They offer “paradise,” but will not really be there themselves. Why would they want to be involved with creation?
Where Genesis speaks of a good creation and then a fall into evil, Gnosticism imagined first a fall into evil, and creation as the result.
As God is not alone, so a human in his image should not be alone.
if a husband’s headship of his wife is somehow akin to the Father’s headship of the Son, then what a loving relationship must ensue! The Father’s very identity is about giving life, love and being to his Son, doing all out of love for him.
He is, then, the source of all that is good, and that means he is not the sort of God who would call people to himself away from happiness in good things.
It makes all the difference: is this world a desert of mere, grim survival—a workhouse for the gods—or is it the gift of the most kind and generous Father?
The creatures of the triune God are not mere extensions of him; he gives them life and personal being. Allowing them that, though, means allowing them to turn away from himself—and that is the origin of evil.
The Father, Son and Spirit have always been in delicious harmony, and thus they create a world where harmonies— distinct beings, persons or notes working in unity—are good, mirroring the very being of the triune God.
next time you look up at the sun, moon and stars and wonder, remember: they are there because God loves, because the Father’s love for the Son burst out that it might be enjoyed by many. And they remain there only because God does not stop loving.
in the triune God is the love behind all love, the life behind all life, the music behind all music, the beauty behind all beauty and the joy behind all joy.
Made in the image of this God, we are created to delight in harmonious relationship, to love God, to love each other.
Lovers we remain, but twisted, our love misdirected and perverted. Created to love God, we turn to love ourselves and anything but God. And this is just what we see in the original sin of Adam and Eve.
That is what went wrong in Eden, the garden of God: those who were made to enjoy the beauty of the Lord turned away to enjoy their own.
In his response to sin we see deeper than ever into the very being of God.
Without the cross, we could never have imagined the depth and seriousness of what it means to say that God is love.
the Father sent his Son to make himself known—meaning not that he wanted simply to download some information about himself, but that the love the Father eternally had for the Son might be in those who believe in him, and that we might enjoy the Son as the Father always has.
the Father so delights in his eternal love for the Son that he desires to share it with all who will believe.
the Father gives all his glory, his love, his blessing, his very self exclusively to his Son—and he then sends his Son to share with us his fullness. “I have given them the glory that you gave me.”
I can know the Father as my Father.
nobody but God contributes to the work of salvation: the Father, Son and Spirit accomplish it all.
Just so would Christ (“the Anointed One”) be anointed by the Spirit at his baptism. And as the oil ran down from Aaron’s head to his body, so the Spirit would run down from Christ our Head to his Body, the church. Thus we become “partakers of his anointing.”[3]
the more trinitarian the salvation, the sweeter it is. For it is not just that we are brought before the Father in the Son; we receive the Spirit with which he was anointed.
When the Spirit rested upon the Son at his baptism, Jesus heard the Father declare from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” But now that the same Spirit of sonship rests on me, the same words apply to me: in Christ my high priest I am an adopted, beloved, Spirit-anointed son.
“If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.
Indeed, for when a person deliberately and confidently calls the Almighty “Father,” it shows they have grasped something beautiful and fundamental about who God is and to what they have been saved.
It is God, first and foremost, who rejoices to lavish his love on those who have rejected him.
Clearly the salvation of this God is better even than forgiveness, and certainly more secure. Other gods might offer forgiveness, but this God welcomes and embraces us as his children, never to send us away.
when the triune God gives us his Word, he gives us his very self, for the Son is the Word of God, the perfect revelation of his Father.
If he were not truly God, of the very being of the Father, he could not truly reveal God and we would be left wondering if the God he represented is really as good as he.
in revealing himself, not only does the Father send his Son in the power of his Spirit; together the Father and the Son send the Spirit to make the Son known.
God the Spirit not only inspires Scripture, he also comes to us. Indeed, he comes into us. There could be no greater intimacy than with this God.
As the Son makes his Father known, so the Spirit-breathed Scriptures make the Son known.
when you see that Christ is the subject of all the Scriptures, that he is the Word, the Lord, the Son who reveals his Father, the promised Hope, the true Temple, the true Sacrifice, the great High Priest, the ultimate King, then you can read, not so much asking, “What does this mean for me, right now?” but “What do I learn here of Christ?”
the Spirit breathed out those words, not that we might merely alter our behavior, not that we might merely know about Christ, but that, as John Calvin wrote, we might have a “sincere affection” for him, that we might “cordially embrace him.”[6]
In the beginning, it was the Spirit who, like a mother dove, first vitalized creation and breathed life into it; likewise it is the Spirit who gives new life—first to Jesus in the tomb (Rom 8:11), and then to us.
the Spirit gives us new birth into a new life precisely by giving us new hearts
The life that the Spirit gives is not some abstract thing. In fact, it is not primarily some thing that he gives at all. The Spirit gives us his very self, that we might know and enjoy him and so enjoy his fellowship with the Father and the Son.
the word grace is really just a shorthand way of speaking about the personal and loving kindness out of which, ultimately, God gives himself.
the Spirit’s personal presence in us means we are brought to enjoy the Spirit’s own intimate communion with the Father and the Son.
How, though, does the Spirit enlighten us to know the love of God? Quite simply, by opening our eyes to see the glory of Christ. That is how he comforts believers.
man cannot look upon the love of God and of Christ in the gospel, but it will change him to be like God and Christ.
