The Gospel offers peace with God, but it also satisfies our minds, giving real answers to our questions about God, the spirit realm, human nature, and the world around us.
There are undoubtedly many things about the true and living God that are beyond our comprehension, aspects of His supernatural being that we who experience our existence through the grids of time and space can only try to imagine. The God of the bible is definitely presented as three distinct Persons, formally titled by no less than Jesus the Messiah and Son of God, as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each is described with all the characteristics of personhood (intellect, emotion, and will), and also with all of the attributes of deity (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, eternal, etc.). However, it is clearly and often repeated, too, that there is only One God. In what sense are we to understand this very important truth?
Without going into obscure academic, somewhat esoteric terms (essence, etc.), I am satisfied with the simple concept of RELATIONAL HARMONY AND ONENESS. These three divine Persons are now and eternally united in their love for each other, their perfect character, their intent and objectives, and their actions, so perfectly united that we can know them as One. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One."
This important theological truth has wonderful implications for us as God's people (true Israel), because as Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17, the Redemptive plan of God is that the people of God be brought into that amazing relational union with the Father, Son, and Spirit and with each other.
“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me. Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!
“O righteous Father, the world doesn’t know you, but I do; and these disciples know you sent me. I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them.”
The oneness of the Godhead may be more than this, something presently beyond our total understanding, but at the same time, it is not an absurdity. We understand the concept of relational harmony and oneness. In fact, we aspire to it in our marriages, our families, our workplaces - in all kinds and all levels of our human relationships, but do not attain the ideal because of the irrevocable, irresistible tendency to selfishness and sin in our nature. But of course, the salvation we have in Christ - Justified (delivered from the Penalty of our sin), being Sanctified (being day to day set free from the power of sin), and to be Glorified (one day delivered from the very Presence of sin) - gives us the confidence and Hope that we will ultimately be brought into that experience of perfect oneness with our God and with each other. Hallelujah!
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