Kindle Notes & Highlights
Yet Christianity is not primarily about lifestyle change; it is about knowing God. To know and grow to enjoy him is what we are saved for – and that is what we are going to press into here.
The bedrock of our faith is nothing less than God himself, and every aspect of the gospel – creation, revelation, salvation – is only Christian in so far as it is the creation, revelation and salvation of this God,
if salvation simply means him letting me off and counting me as a law-abiding citizen, then gratitude (not love) is all I have. In other words, I can never really love the God who is essentially just The Ruler. And that, ironically, means I can never keep the greatest command: to love the Lord my God. Such is the cold and gloomy place to which the dark goat-path takes us.
That is who God has revealed himself to be: not first and foremost Creator or Ruler, but Father.
Jesus tells us explicitly in John 17:24. ‘Father,’ he says, ‘you loved me before the creation of the world.’ And that is the God revealed by Jesus Christ. Before he ever created, before he ever ruled the world, before anything else, this God was a Father loving his Son.
we should not even set out in our understanding of God by thinking of God primarily as Creator (naming him ‘from His works only’) – that, as we have seen, would make him dependent on his creation. Our definition of God must be built on the Son who reveals him. And when we do that, starting with the Son, we find that the first thing to say about God is, as it says in the creed, ‘We believe in one God, the Father.’
The most foundational thing in God is not some abstract quality, but the fact that he is Father.
For if, before all things, God was eternally a Father, then this God is an inherently outgoing, life-giving God. He did not give life for the first time when he decided to create; from eternity he has been life-giving.
The Father, then, is the Father of the eternal Son, and he finds his very identity, his Fatherhood, in loving and giving out his life and being to the Son.
as the light from the lamp is of the nature of that which sheds the brightness, and is united with it (for as soon as the lamp appears the light that comes from it shines out simultaneously), so in this place the Apostle would have us consider both that the Son is of the Father, and that the Father is never without the Son; for it is impossible that glory should be without radiance, as it is impossible that the lamp should be without brightness.5
And yet, while the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, there is a very definite shape to their relationship. Overall, the Father is the lover, the Son is the beloved. The Bible is awash with talk of the Father’s love for the Son, but while the Son clearly does love the Father, hardly anything is said about it. The Father’s love is primary. The Father is the loving head. That then means that in his love he will send and direct the Son, whereas the Son never sends or directs the Father.
Being perfectly loving, from all eternity the Father and the Son have delighted to share their love and joy with and through the Spirit.
He did not become Father at some point; rather, his very identity is to be the one who begets the Son.
Thus Jesus Christ, God the Son, is the Logic, the blueprint for creation. He is the one eternally loved by the Father; creation is about the extension of that love outwards so that it might be enjoyed by others.
The Father finds his very identity in giving his life and being to the Son; and the Son images his Father in sharing his life with us through the Spirit. All this is to say that the very
This God’s very self is found in giving, not taking. This God is like a fountain of goodness, and so, he said, ‘seeking himself’ means seeking ‘himself diffused and expressed’
the exuberant nature of this God means that his pleasure ‘is rather a pleasure in diffusing and communicating to the creature, than
him and for him’ (Colossians 1:15–16). ‘. . . and for him’. 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’ (Hebrews 1:2; but see also Deuteronomy 32:8–9; Psalm 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. Now here we come to something
‘Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ’ (Romans 8:17). It is a physical expression of the marvellous truth that the Father shares his love of the Son with us: the meek shall inherit the earth!
Belief in the Trinity works precisely against chauvinism and for delight in harmonious relationships.
Christianity should have been so especially attractive to women, who made up so many of the early converts: Christianity decried those life-threatening ancient abortion procedures; it refused to ignore the infidelity of husbands as paganism did; in Christianity, widows would be and were supported by the church; they were even welcomed as ‘fellow-workers’ in the gospel (Romans 16:3). In Christianity, women were valued.
By graciously giving his creatures the room to exist, the triune God allows them the freedom to turn away without himself being the author of evil.
We were made to find our rest and satisfaction in his all-satisfying fellowship.
I use the Spirit. And if I manage to use the Spirit more than other Christians, hurrah for spiritual me. How different to know that the Spirit is as real a person as Jesus Christ, and that he comes to live in me! R. A. Torrey put it (rather quaintly) like this:
Knowing him is life, and looking to him is what enlivens. Realizing this, said Charles Spurgeon, is the secret to Christian happiness:
The Father’s very identity consists in his love for the Son, and so when we love the Son we reflect what is most characteristic about the Father.
In our love and enjoyment of the Son we are like the Father; in our love and enjoyment of the Father we are like the Son. That is the happy life the Spirit calls us to.
The Spirit of the Father and the Son would never be interested in merely empowering us to ‘do good’. His desire (which is the desire of the Father and the Son) is to bring us to such a hearty enjoyment of God through Christ that we delight to know him, that we delight in all his ways, and that therefore we want to do as he wants and we hate the thought of ever grieving him.
And this is what the Spirit does in us: he makes us taste and see that the Lord is good, supremely good, and thus he causes us to desire him: ‘he, the God of love, so sets Himself
forth in characters of endearment, that nought but faith, and nought but understanding, are wanting, on your part, to call forth the love of your hearts back again.’18
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” ’ (John 20:21–2). The disciples should not have been at all surprised. Jesus had told them he would be resurrected,
and he had told them that ‘whatever the Father does the Son also does’ (John 5:19). The first thing the Father does, of course, is love the Son, breathing out his Spirit on him. Just so, doing as his Father does, Jesus breathes out the Spirit on his disciples. In fact, he had already said to them: ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you’ (John 15:9). But the Father also sends the Son; and doing as his Father does, Jesus thus sends his disciples. Like Father, like Son. That entirely changes what mission looks like. For it is not, then, that God lounges back in heaven, simply phoning in
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The Christian life is one of being where he is, of joining in how he has been sent.
In other words, the beautiful glory of the triune God is radiating, self-giving and loving.
The main lesson Edwards drew from it was that ‘That same spiritual Sun, whose beams are most comfortable and beneficial to believers, will burn and destroy unbelievers’.15 It is the same light, the same glory. But the very glory that is the fragrance of life to some is the smell
God’s purpose is unfathomably kind: he will at the last so spread his life, being and goodness that he will be all in all; he will at the last fill the universe with the light of his wonderful glory. He is all light – but that is terrible for those who love the darkness.
