What is Most True about ourselves ?

This coming Sunday at churches in Western Christianity - minus some evangelicals and fundamentalists - Christian's attention could be especially concentrated upon the answer to that question, for this coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday.

What is most true about ourselvea is this declaration of faith: God is Three Persons in One Godhead. Mystery? Sure! But if we are made in God's image, then the only way to begin to comprehend our own existence is by at least realizing a few of the implications of this article of faith. So, some quick thoughts.

1. God is Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God does not simply manifest God's presence in three ways. That is an ancient heresy called modalism. If God is Three and yet one God, this means that there are distinctions that are made within the very essence of God. And the Father is not the Father without the Son or vice versa. Nor are the Father and the Son really the Father and the Son apart from the Holy Spirit. Persons, therefore, even divine persons are defined in relationship to and openness toward another. So, it should not surprise us that human beings are made for a human community. This is the great sadness of western individualism, especially in many churches, it denies a fundamental reality -- we are only truly ourselves in community.

2. God is Three Persons perfectly: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are completely self-defining and self-fulfilling. God needs nothing else beyond the Triune life for fulfillment. This would mean, thereby, that God is perfectly "glorified" in the fellowship of the Triune life. And the perfect completeness of the Triune One is the perfection of love. Hence I John 4 can declare that God IS love. This means more than that God is loving toward us. As Charles Wesley declares in a hymn "Thy nature and thy name are Love." All else that we predicate about God must be articulated in the light of this reality. Holy, Just, Righteous, you name it. We must begin to understand God in our lives in terms of God's being Love.

3. God is Three Persons in completeness: God "gets" nothing from making us. The purpose of the creation of the world was not so that God could be glorified, although the creation does bring glory to God. Even further, the purpose of our existence is not first and foremost to glorify God (sorry Westminister). No, if God IS love, then the purpose of our lives is to be loved by God, which we are. But further, the purpose of our lives is to open ourselves to the One who is Love and who wants us to know that Love. God made us, in other words, to love us. The grave tragedy of sin is that it denies this truth as we attempt to live in fear of the One who is the Holy Other who alone can fulfill the meaning of our lives, for we were made for him and his love. As ST. Augustine says, "Our hearts are made for Thee and we are restless until we rest in Thee."

4. God is Three Persons in utter openness: The Triune God made creation simply to love it. But in order to love it truly he had to create it with its own integrity and liberty of action. For loving, as defined by the Triune Life is always free chosen. The Gospel of John makes it clear that the love of the Son for the Father and the Father for the Son is not some metaphysical principle, but is freely given and received. So, the Triune One makes the universe and us humans as the crown of creation simply to be able to live for that which is not God's own self or essence. And to continually woo us to wholeness and holiness.

5. As those who bear God's image we are made not only to receive God's love, but to express this same love, through the power of the Holy Spirit -- God dwelling in us -- to others and to the creation. The word the New Testament develops for this kind of love is Agape. It is the love that does not seek a return -- that Eros. Neither is it a love that is limited to those we naturally like -- that could be phileo. Agape is an open, self-offering love that receives the other and offers the other life and hope and joy and peace. That is the life of holiness that we are meant for in the community of the Church. But not limited to the Church, for the Church, if it manifests the image of God at all must, as does the Triune One, live for the world's redemption.

Good worshipping this Sunday and good discovering your true self.