What is God?: a reflection for Trinity Sunday from 1 John

Today is Trinity Sunday.  It is the only Festival, or Feast Day, in the church year that doesn’t focus on an event in the life of Christ.  This special day for the Trinity was created by the Church as a direct response to the Arian heresy in the 4th Century.  Arius was a bishop who caused a great deal of trouble in the ancient Christian world by spreading the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but is not equal to God the Father.  Arius argued that Jesus is God’s offspring, so he is subordinate to God.  So there was this huge debate at the highest levels of the Church about the nature of the Trinity, which is referred to, but not explained in the Bible.

God is One and Three - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Each is equal to, yet separate from, the others.  What exactly does that mean?  We call it a holy mystery.  God in Three Persons.  Someday we can all ask Him, and He will explain it to us, but for now, it is beyond us.

So instead of putting you all to sleep each year with a lecture on what the Trinity is, I find it to be much more productive to talk about what the Trinity does.  To put it briefly, we could say that the Holy Spirit is the presence of God in all of us, calling us, renewing or regenerating us so that we are able to reach out to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, the mediator of the covenant (to be technical), between humanity and God the Father, who is the Creator and our Sovereign Lord.  But, as my own father pointed out to me several years ago, that makes God sound like a committee.  He’s really not Presbyterian!

So another point to consider is that if God is One in Three Persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that means He is in community with himself.  And, without trying to understand how that works, we need to look at it for what it means for us as His children, for those who, as the Book of Genesis states in the very beginning, were created “in the image of God.”

If you create something in your image, what would it look like?  What would its job be?  What would it say about you to others?  What aspects of you, of your character would you choose to reveal through your creation?

We can only really understand the nature of God by referring to our understanding of the world and of humanity.  Typically we look at the best aspects of human nature - love and compassion and things like that - and say, that’s what God like!  So our understanding of God is limited by our understanding of the world.

The Apostle John uses this to relate God’s nature to us, in words that are not complicated, and which evoke images and ideas that go far beyond even our need for explanation, because they are so basic to our understanding of the world.

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.”

Our world is a dark place.  John talks about those who walk in the darkness without knowing where they are going because the darkness has blinded their eyes.  Think about that.

The darkness of sin causes us to lose our way.  The darkness of ignorance causes others to stumble.  Jesus is the light, the one who opens our eyes to the truth of a better reality, a higher calling.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 

The Bible talks about many different kinds of love, but here is used only one kind of love: agape.  Agape is love that is self-giving, self-sacrificing.  Agape loves to love.  Agape needs to love.  It is this kind of selfless love that the love of God was made manifest among us, “that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”  So that we might love, agape, through him.

 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ. 

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” 

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”
 In only five short chapters, by using these two themes, the First Letter of John spells out 1)who God is, 2)what God is, 3)who we are in relation to God, and 4)what we have been called to become as disciples of Jesus Christ.

One of the verses I keep returning to lately is from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

What good works are those?  If we are created “in the image of God,” then our primary function, our basic job description is to reveal God.  It’s as simple as that.  And how do we do that?  By being light, and by loving.  Amen.