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May 21 - June 6, 2023
The eternal fellowship between Father and Son, or between God and His Word, thus finds a correspondence in the very different but not dissimilar fellowship between God and His creature.
The Father so delighted in his Son that his love for him overflowed, so that the Son might be the firstborn among many sons.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col 1:15).
“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb 1:3;
you loved me before the creation of the world.
that the love you have for me may be in them
The Father loved him before the creation of the world, and the reason the Father sends him is so that the Father’s love for him might be in others also.
He delights to echo his Father’s love back to him, and that is what it is to be beside God, to image him, to be his child.
We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons.
We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over.
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.
What they meant by this is vital: that there is nothing more
foundational in God than the Father, Son and Spirit. There is no “God” or “God-stuff” behind them or from which they emerge.
God’s love is creative. Love comes
His very nature is about going out and sharing of his own fullness, and so that is what he is all about.
God is simply bursting with warm and life-imparting nourishment, far more willing to give than we are to receive.
the Father so enjoyed his fellowship with his Son that he wanted to have the goodness of it spread out and communicated or shared with others. The creation was a free choice borne out of nothing but love.
It was his overflowing love for the Son that motivated the Father to create, and creation is his gift to his Son.
the Spirit perfects or completes the work of creation.
the Spirit garnishes and beautifies the heavens and the earth.
Small wonder, then, that creativity, the ability to craft, adorn and make beautiful, is a gift of the Spirit:
The Spirit makes his creation alive with beauty.
Belief in the Trinity works precisely against chauvinism and for delight in harmonious relationships.
In Christianity, women were valued.
Goodness and ultimate happiness are to be found with him, not apart from him.
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 Father, who delights to have a Son, chooses to create many children who will have real lives of their own, to share the love and freedom he has always enjoyed. The creatures of the triune God are not mere extensions of him; he gives them life and personal being.
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.
“The triunity of God is the secret of His beauty.”
“The triunity of God is the source of all beauty.”
So 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.
For in the Bible, sin is something that goes deeper than our behavior.
Nothing was wanting but love.
if sin is simply about acting and behaving aright, then the devil here is not sinning.
Made in the image of this God, we are created to delight in harmonious relationship, to love God, to love each other.
Thus Jesus taught that the first and greatest commandment in the law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:36-39). That is what we are created for.
Created to love God, we turn to love ourselves and anything but God.
Her act of sin was merely the manifestation of the turn in her heart: she now desired the fruit more than she desired God.
“Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (Jas 1:14-15).
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.
we perverted love and rejected him, the one who made us to love and be loved by him.
Without the cross, we could never have imagined the depth and seriousness of what it means to say that God is love.
Jesus’ self-giving love is entirely unconstrained and free.
Through the cross we see a God who delights to give himself.
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.
In other words, far from hoarding his glory, the Father gives it, freely and fully, to his Son. It is simply that he will give it to no other than his Son.
For 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.”
Instead, he pours all his blessing out on his Son, and then sends him that we might share his glorious fullness. The Father so loves that he desires to catch us up into that loving fellowship he enjoys with the Son.
For the fact that God the Father is happy and even delights to share his love for his Son and thus be known as our Father reveals just how unfathomably gracious and kind he is.
