In the previous reflection, we considered how the flesh of Jesus served as a veil to God’s glory. In this reflection, we will see how the very thing that separates us from God’s glory and presence is the very thing that unites us and grants us entrance.

This is why Jesus says that He is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to Father except through Him (John 14:6).

Paul puts it like this, “There is one God and one mediator, the man Jesus Christ” (Timothy 2:5).

Christ as our High Priest serves as our mediator, acting on our behalf and bringing us to God. For a mediator to function effectively, they must fully represent both parties in a conflict and then execute a solution.

Jesus does this impeccably for He is fully God and fully man. Thus He is able to bring two opposing parties together while fully representing both completely and accurately.

This is why the incarnation is not just so important, but indispensable to our redemption. Through uniting to us in His flesh, Jesus is able to unite us to God through His Divine nature. But notice, it is mandatory that we come through His flesh.

Therefore, it is as humans that we come through the humanity of Jesus into fellowship with the Triune God and share in His eternal life.

The Tearing of Jesus’ flesh grants us entrance into the presence of God.

As we noted, the author of Hebrews is underscoring the superiority and finality of the work of Christ our Great High Priest in bringing us into the presence of God.

You recall, that the theme of Jesus’ body being the temple means that He is the true dwelling place of God, wrapped in human flesh. When we make the connection to the veil of Jesus’ flesh and the veil in the temple, we discover that it is a simple connection to make.

For instance when Jesus died, Matthew informs us that the veil in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This signified that access to God has been established once and for all in a new and living way, and that the things that separate us from God have been dealt with. Namely, our otherness, and more so, our sin.

This also signified that it was the work of God in that the veil was torn from top to bottom. In other words, it is God Himself who accomplishes the work of redemption.

In making this connection, it is also clear that Jesus’ flesh served as the veil that was torn as it was ripped apart by Roman flails and whips. This is why when Jesus instituted the New Covenant, He said ‘this is my body broken for you… this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 22:19-21).

As a human High Priest, Jesus offered Himself as a sacrifice whose body was torn and whose blood is able to save us to the uttermost and sanctify our hearts forever.

It was as His body was abused, beaten, ripped and torn, and His blood spilled that the true veil was torn.

Through His perfect and sinless humanity, He was an adequate offering to die in our stead and based on that achievement, give us full and free access to God. As a Christian, this means that with Jesus and in Jesus we come to God as humans. Redeemed humans washed in His blood and made new in His life.

Therefore we cannot emphasize enough that we come through our shared humanity with Jesus into the triune life and fellowship that He has always enjoyed and now shares with us as one of us.

This is how God brings many sons to glory and remakes redeemed humanity in the image of His Son.

As humans, we have full access into the life of the triune God all because Jesus chose to share our human nature with us and became a temple that could never be destroyed by death, but that destroys death once and for all.

In closing, this Christmas, let us remember that Jesus who came for us came as one of us, and that apart from His humanity, we would have no access to God.

“…By a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh” (Hebrews 10:20).

As we celebrate Christmas, we ponder the wonder of the incarnation of Jesus. That the second member of the Godhead added humanity to Himself, thus forever uniting Himself to humanity.

The writers of the New Testament stress both the humanity and divinity of Jesus. So we affirm that Christ is one person with two distinct natures, not separated, not mixed but forever united.

Theologically, we refer to this as the hypostatic union. In this brief advent reflection, I want to look at the words “through the veil,” that is to say, “His flesh,” and examine the imagery the author provides.

Here the author is saying, that by the blood and through the flesh of Jesus, we enter the most holy place with the human Jesus as our high priest who leads us. But notice that it is His flesh that is the gate of entrance. This is an intriguing way to express the high priestly work of Jesus and how He brings us into the presence of God.

What I want to do now is take up what seems to be an invitation to explore the range of meaning that the imagery employed by the author evokes, focusing on the imagery of the veil.

The flesh of Jesus veils the glory of God

When Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, we read, “His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.”

What happened is that Jesus temporarily allowed His Divine nature to be expressed and let His glory radiate. This is why both John and Peter refer to that event and associate it with seeing the glory and majesty of God.

For instance, when John writes about this event, he says:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

He is here referring to seeing the glory of Jesus revealed on the mountain. What is important is that though this was a temporary event, it was a taste of what living in the New Jerusalem will be like.

John shares his vision of of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:10,11, where we read:

“And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.”

He goes on to say in Revelation 22:5: “There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light.”

What is to be stressed here is that in the New Jerusalem, God’s glory will be present and expressed with all its fullness. Redeemed humanity will be able to stand it because they will be in their glorified state.

Until then, man cannot withstand being in the full presence of God’s glory.

Thus, as Jesus was on the earth, He had to restrain the full expression of His glory, and His flesh was the veil that covered His glory from man.

To further develop this idea, we can think of Moses who was also on a mountain where the glory of God was revealed. In Exodus 33, Moses asks God to show His glory. God’s response was that Moses could not see His face and live. We read:

“But He said, ‘You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.’ And the Lord said, “Here is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while My glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by. Then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back; but My face shall not be seen.’”

Notice that Moses was covered while God’s glory passed by. Moses eventually got his request not on Mount Sinai, but on the Mount of Transfiguration as he conversed with Jesus and Elijah. As Moses came down to the camp, his face shone from the encounter, which led to Moses putting a veil over his face as he conversed with the people.

Commenting on this, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3 that the children of Israel were not able to look at Moses’ face because he was reflecting the glory of God. Even though it was a mere reflection and a fading one at that. He then goes on to say in verse 18:

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

In Christ, the veil is removed, and we see God’s glory as it is revealed in and through Jesus, who is the brightness of His glory and express image of His person (Hebrews 1:3).

John also tells us that Jesus reveals God’s glory and the Father. In His introduction, he plays heavily on the theme of light. This is because He is seeking to draw our minds to the glorious light of God’s nature. This light he says, is Jesus. Then, in the span of five verses, he associates Jesus with the glory of God and manifestation of the Father.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18).

Moses was not allowed to see God and live.

Yet in Christ, we are allowed to see God and live.

All because Jesus clothed and united Himself to us in adding flesh to His person. Remember our verse in Hebrews tells us that the flesh of Jesus is a veil.

The immediate reference is to the temple veil. It is as this veil torn, that we are able to see what it hides, namely the glory of God in the holy place where God sits enthroned between the cherubim.

It is the tearing of this veil of His flesh that we will take up in our next reflection.

In closing, I invite you to reflect on the following statement. God who dwells in unapproachable light has come near to us in the humanity of His Son Jesus as one of us. Sharing in our flesh.

_{This article originally appeared on calvarychapel.flywheelsites.com on April 14, 2017.}

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

As we approach Easter Sunday and celebrate the death of death in the life of the Resurrection of Jesus, we come to this great day through the path of Good Friday. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection; on Friday we contemplate the meaning and implications of His death. It is good for us to slow down and journey with Jesus, as it were, in His work on our behalf so as to absorb the story and the verity therein as it pertains to His mission of rescuing us from our sin and reconciling us to God.

As we take time to reflect on Good Friday, we consider the cross, where the love of God towards sinners was expressed in the wrath bearing obedience of His Son. There are numerous ways we can go with such a massive topic. For instance, the cosmic plan of redemption, and how God brought it all to pass just as He intended (Acts 2:22-24; 4:27-8), the spectacle and injustice of how His trial was handled, and on and on and on.

In this post, I want to address the nakedness of Jesus and what can be theologically deduced from it.

Jesus was crucified naked

It seems most renderings of Jesus on the cross have His loins covered, but it seems that in all actuality He would have been naked on the cross. It has been pointed out that for Jewish sensitivities a cloth may be provided so as to reduce the sense of shame that was certainly intended in the act of crucifixion. Yet it hardly seems from the Gospels that this would have been a concern of the Jews who could have influenced such a thing, but rather that they did not want His Jewishness to be an issue (John 19:21). I am of the opinion that Jesus was absolutely naked as He hung on the cross as was the Roman custom.

All of the Gospels speak of Him being stripped and beaten (Matthew 27:28, 35; Mark 15:24; Luke 23:34; John 19:23). I admit there is no scholarly consensus as to whether Jesus retained an article of clothing or not. Yet upon reading John 19:23-4, the evidence seems to point to the absolute nakedness of Jesus.

“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, ‘Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.’” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.”

Several important things here are to be noted. First of all His garments were divided and His tunic was attained by the casting of lots. Secondly, this was done in fulfillment of Scripture. The Scripture that is being fulfilled is Psalm 22:18. For a more detailed treatment of the grammar and literary issues involved in interpreting this fulfillment formula, I would point you to the work of Carson.¹

Nakedness in the Bible

The Roman reason that Jesus was crucified naked was to utterly humiliate Him, cause Him to feel shame and abandonment and warn the onlookers of the cost of crime and rebellion in Rome. That is the historic reason. Yet, I would also suggest that we can deduce a theological point from understanding how nakedness is treated in the Bible.

A Sign of innocence

In Genesis when God made the world, He made man and gave Him dominion over the world and commanded him to inhabit and fill it. There is an interesting phrase about Adam and Eve that is a shadow of the darkness to come after the fall. Before they fell into sin, it says of them in 2:25, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

The implication is that in the original innocent state of mankind, nakedness was normal and was a sign of innocence. There was no need to hide or avoid physical vulnerability because there was no sin in the world and thus no guilt and no sense of separation. To be naked and not ashamed was to be in a state of innocence. While it is not the nakedness that is the main issue, but the heart’s relation to God, it is clear that nakedness is equated with the original state of man, as was innocence and the two are used in harmony to describe man before sin came into the world.

A Sign of guilt and shame

The sign of purity very quickly becomes a sign of sin due to the fact that man becomes a sinner by virtue of disobeying the command of God. Now the natural constitution of man is no longer purity, but defilement, corruption and separation. Now man who once operated in his natural state with no sense of shame has a deep sense of shame in his natural state because his natural state is now sin. His nature has changed dramatically. Nakedness is what man is. It was innocence, but now it is guilt. Thus when we see man fall into sin, nakedness is now embarrassing, awkward, and a sense of separation and avoidance have replaced the purity of freedom and unhindered fellowship.

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself'” (Genesis 3:7-10).

Their sense of separation was immediate, and they sought to remedy the problem with urgency. Their connection to God has been broken, and now they fear Him and hide from Him. Their nakedness now represents their sinful state and separation from God. Nakedness is associated with guilt, which comes from sin. As Matthews points out how nakedness operated with a negative connotation in the Pentateuch and that the Hebrews associated it with guilt.²

There are also a few New Testament passages that may add to this theme as well (2 Corinthians 5:3; Revelation 3:17), although they are less obviously implicit than the ones noted above.

The Nakedness of Jesus

In view of what has been seen about nakedness, several valuable observations can be seen about the nakedness of Jesus:

His Humanity and Humiliation

When we picture Jesus hanging naked on the cross, there we seen Him in His true and raw humanity. As one of us, He died for us. There He experienced our shame and beyond that the agony of bearing our sin for us. He was gathering up our humanity in Himself and presenting it to God. His pain was real. His blood was real. His wounds were real. His thirst was real. There was nothing easy about what He endured. And as Paul said, it was His humility (Philippians 2:8) that caused Him to endure the cross. Rome wanted to humiliate Him in His nakedness, but it was His own humility there to be seen in the most raw and vulnerable conditions humans know… nakedness.

His Innocence and Identification

In seeing how nakedness both conveys innocence and sin, we can look at our naked Savior on the cross and see how He was both. His nakedness spoke of His innocence as the last Adam and simultaneously of the sin that was placed on Him from the people of the first Adam. Adam experienced shame in the garden and exchanged an innocent nakedness for a guilty nakedness. Jesus, the last Adam, despised the shame as He in our likeness suffered for our shame and nakedness. He was simultaneously innocent and bearing our sin. He, though innocent, identified with our fallen humanity and redeemed us.

Hanging naked in His innocence, He was clothed with our sin, that we in our guilty nakedness may be clothed with His righteousness.

Paul has this exchange in mind in several passages:

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13).

It was in being our substitute that He reconciled us back to God as a people constituted in Him as our federal head. This Good Friday, Behold your King there in your stead. Behold Him, our last Adam in all His innocence bearing our guilt and shame and giving us His life.

And the reason you came
Was to endure the pain

On the tree
On the tree

Bore my sin and my shame

Erased my guilt and my blame

Now I’m free
Now I’m free

Perfect liberty

Perfect freedom

For all those found in Christ

Perfect grace

Perfect love

God’s perfect sacrifice

– anonymous

Notes:

¹ D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 612.

² K. A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11:26, vol. 1A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 225.

Christmas is often a time of reminiscing, rejoicing and reconnecting with family and friends. It is the occasion to celebrate with friends and family that make the Christmas experience so meaningful. In fact, it is often a time when we love to go home and be with family. There is something about being home that makes Christmas so enjoyable. In this short post I want to explore what it means to be at home from a Biblical perspective and suggest that to be at home in the Christian sense means to be in union with Christ.

Man was Made to Live on the Earth

When God made the world and mankind, He placed man on the earth, which He had suited with all that was necessary for life as humans. God’s intention was that man would live on the earth as stewards and ambassadors for God. Thus, they were to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28) and subdue the earth. Man was made to dwell on the earth and partner with God. Scholars often refer to this as the Cultural Mandate. Man was to be in harmony with God and work in the world to provide a comfortable and safe living space for God’s image bearers. In a very real sense man in his original state was at home in the world as God intended. He had harmony with God and as far as his God given mandate, with the earth he was to tend to and work with.

The Fall Turned Mankind Into Wanderers Longing for a True Home

It is very popular to hear phrases like “we were never meant for this world,” but I am not sure that is accurate. Such reasoning might make its starting point the fall of man, and not the initial creation of man and God’s purpose in that creation. Whatever ones view of the new heavens and the new earth, I think it is clear that there is a renewed (redeemed…whatever word you want to use is fine with me) physical world that enters into the redeemed order of God’s new humanity in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:18-25; Revelation 21,22) where man will dwell with God in eternal joy and bliss with no more traces or effects of the curse. But it is precisely this curse that complicates our relationship with this present world.

As man was expelled from the garden, he was in a sense vomited out of the paradisiacal eden and forced to reckon with a cruel world whose cooperation would come reluctantly in helping mankind fulfill their purposes. Sense the expulsion from the garden, man is depicted as a wanderer in the Bible. The theme of pilgrimage is seen over and over as man is a sojourner longing for the sense of true home (Hebrews 11:8-13).

For our culture, home provides a sense of belonging, security and identity, none of these things can be discovered in any temporal categories in the ultimate sense. Man is a wanderer looking for a home, a stranger who has no rest until he is safely at home. Such is the picture of man in the Bible.

Jesus is Our True Home

I think that this concept of home has relevance for the Christmas season because in this season we celebrate that fact that Christ left His home, to dwell with us that we may dwell with Him and be at home in Him. Jesus, in entering into the full experience of humanity lived as one who had no home. During His ministry, He often slept under the stars (Luke 9:58), and in the homes of friends, being the true pilgrim in his own world (John 1:10) in every sense of the word although He had absolute power and rights to do otherwise. Rather He chose to make His dwelling in us that our dwelling might be in HIm. On one occasion Jesus said these words:

“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23)

Here Jesus speaks of Him and the Father making their home in His people.

Previously he said:

“On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20).

Here He speaks of His people being in Him. Thus, there is some form of mutual indwelling. God is in us because we are in God. The “in Christ” and “in Him” language of the New Testament is strong and often. Moreover the language of God the Father adopting us as sons with Christ our elder brother also points to the living familial relations we have with God who calls us into ‘His’ Triune family, all of which hint at being in His home.

I mention this in terms of being at home in God because it is precisely when one enters into this vital union with Christ in God that they can say they are at home. This is when man finds his true identity, rest, safety, meaning and purpose.

What is also interesting is that Jesus said that for our eternal abode He was preparing our place in His Fathers house (John 14:1-3). Jesus is the ultimate host, given to hospitality and He welcomes us into His family, His house and prepares a place for us.

As we ponder the gospel this advent season, let us see Jesus as the one who came to bring us home to God. This babe who was turned away from the inn for lack of rooms is the Lord of all who is preparing for us a place in His Father’s house with many rooms. He who relied on the generosity and hospitality of others while He ministered on earth is preparing a palatial home for us.

This Christmas as we are preparing our home to celebrate we have been mindful that our home is to point to our true home in Christ and unless we are sinking down into that reality, our earthly home is missing the target. So I pray for all the saints that we find our home and rest in Christ and sink down deeply into His vital life and being in meaningful and lasting ways this Christmas.

When you think of a worship service, what sort of things come to your mind? Some think of music styles, choirs, lighting, formality, informality, and the list goes on and on. The diversity of approaches to a worship service are so sharp at some points, it has spawned what has been termed the “worship wars” as complaints and criticisms are given back and forth between differing views of what a proper worship service looks like. I want to make it clear that I am not seeking to address the entire subject of worship here. Worship is what man is made for, and it involves the totality of his life, not just an hour and a half, one day a week. Yet since we are told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves, (Hebrews 10:25) it is clear that corporate worship is necessary for true Christianity.

My aim in this post is to simply ask about the essence of corporate worship, what is it in it’s essence, and then address how that should shape our view of what we are doing when we gather together for corporate worship. I firmly believe that understanding the nature of corporate worship will inform and influence the way in which we approach our services and may even speak to the structures that we employ.

Christian worship is participation in the life of the Trinity

It was around two years ago as several other people and I would gather to pray during the week for our service on Sunday that this was deeply impressed upon me. During this time we would ask God to move in our midst, bring a sense of freshness and joy, and meet us in meaningful ways. In one of those meetings, it dawned on me in a fresh way that if we cannot serve God in our own strength, we cannot worship in our own strength. We needed God’s Spirit to enable us, empower us and infuse us with His own passion for God. We were not simply coming to God or giving Him permission to enter our building for a few hours, but we were desperate people who needed God to help us.
I took to heart that when we worship, it is the Spirit moving in us, causing us to respond to God in His strength. The Spirit influences and informs our words and awakens our affections to the glory and beauty of God, filling us with gratitude for His extravagant love in Christ.

When we worship together, we are on a corporate level participating in the life of the Trinity through the redemptive work of the incarnate Son.

God accepts our worship in Jesus, and the Spirit applies His life to us and empowers us.

We are simply experiencing the life of the Trinity through Christ the God-Man. I will expand on this later, but let me say here that our worship is a participation in the Son’s worship of the Father. We join Jesus in His adoration and affection for His Father as brothers and sisters whom He is bringing to God.

The reason it is important to recover a Trinitarian view of worship is because worship takes the shape of its object.¹ If we worship the Trinity, this should inform and influence the way we conduct our services, so that our worship takes the form of the Trinity.² While we spin our wheels thinking of programmatic ways to make people feel comfortable (which is very important) and think of philosophies and methods and environment, we cannot neglect substance. We must understand the essence of what is happening and seek to apply that to how we approach our corporate worship services. I am not saying there is a silver bullet, but I wonder if we are beginning on the user end, treating the parishioner as a client to be pleased rather then starting from the foundational concepts of what is really going on.

In my next post, I will unpack the concept of Trinitarian worship further and offer what I hope to be helpful ideas about how we view and perhaps even structure our services.

¹Boswell, Matt (2013-12-01). Doxology and Theology: How the Gospel Forms the Worship Leader (p. 60). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
²Ibid, pp. 60-61

“…And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

In the last article, I spoke of how the Trinity makes the Christian view of God distinct and unique. The aim of this post is to explore the relationship of the Trinity to the Christian life. To begin, I ask you to consider the following statement: The Christian life is a life that participates in the life of the Trinity. That is, the Christian has been invited into the very life of the Trinity, and thus, experiences this life, being drawn into it. Thus, the Christian life is entirely Trinitarian and cannot be truly understood in any other way. Donald Fairbairn goes so far as to say, “The doctrine of the Trinity is the gateway to understanding Christian life” (Fairbairn, 2009, p. 243).

Union with Christ

In order to understand this, we must first understand the nature of our union with Christ, for this is at the very heart of Christianity. We are vitally connected to Christ in His life, death, resurrection and ascension. In the incarnation, God has forever united humanity to Divinity. Therefore, by the incarnation, we participate as humans in the Divine life by the Spirit through the humanity of Jesus Christ, our brother, great High Priest and Living Head. Because He participated in our life as a human, we participate in His life as humans, and His life is a life that is lived within the eternal relationship of the Triune God. Therefore, we are brought into the Trinitarian relationship.

James Torrance puts it like this:

“The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God” (Torrance 1996, p. 32). Thus we participate ‘through the Holy Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father…'(ibid, p. 9). The point is that through our union with Jesus, we are invited and brought inside the circle of Trinitarian love (Seamands, 2005, p. 60). We participate in the unique love relationship of the Son and the Father in the Spirit.

This is what John has in mind in 1 John 1:3: “…That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” John is here saying that they have been included in the fellowship of the Son and the Father, a relationship that is extended to humans through the humanity of Jesus. Jesus Himself speaks to this in John 14. Notice the Trinitarian emphases of Jesus: “…The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:17).

Here Jesus makes reference to the indwelling of the Spirit, which is how He unites us to participate in His relationship with the Father. “At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John 14:20). Jesus speaks here of what is termed the mutual indwelling of the Son and Father. What is remarkable is that by the Spirit uniting us to Jesus, we are included in this relationship. It is not that we are absorbed into the Divine so that we become Divine, but rather that we are included in the Divine fellowship between the Father, Son and Spirit.

As our great High Priest, in His prayer in John 17, Jesus clearly describes eternal life in terms of Him bringing those whom the Father has given Him into their communion and fellowship. Notice these words in John 17: “As You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:2-3).

“I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me” (John 17:20-23).

Here it is stated that our union with Christ brings us into the unity of the Godhead, and by that participation, we receive the love of the Father for the Son and become partners with God in the mission of Jesus.

Lastly, Jesus says, “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).

Again, Jesus is saying that through our union with Him, the Father’s love for Him will be in us. This may mean that He loves us as He loves Jesus, or that we now love Jesus with the love that the Father has for Him. Perhaps both! One thing is certain; we are included in this unique relationship between the Father and the Son.

The Role of the Spirit

All of these benefits come to us by way of the operation of the Spirit. He is the one who unites us to Jesus by faith. You can recall John 14:17, the Spirit comes to dwell in us. He also unites us to Jesus by baptizing us into His body by uniting us to His life, death, resurrection and ascension (1 Cor.12:12; Romans 6:3-6).

He applies the life of Christ to us and bears witness with our spirits that we are God’s adopted children (Romans 8:15,16), as He is the agent who has brought about our adoption as sons of God. As He works the life of God in us, we bear fruit (Galatians 5:22-26) that show we have crucified our flesh by union with Jesus. Paul also says that He intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray (Romans 8:27). From this, it is intimated that even our prayer life is part of the Trinitarian fellowship.

Yet, you may be wondering how all of this is applicable to the Christian life. Good question. Let me offer a few ways in which this is relevant to how you go about your daily discipleship.

1. This is the Christian life.

This is the essence of what it means to be a Christian. This is why Paul would say in Galatians 2:20, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” He is not saying his personality is erased, or his personhood swallowed up, but rather that the Christian life is the life of Christ lived out by Christ in and through the people of Christ. And the life of Christ is at its very core a life of perfect communion with the Father in the relationship of the Trinity from all eternity. He allows us to participate in that communion with the Father.

2. This is the basis for the exhortations of Christian living.

For example, Paul would base his appeals to righteous living on these matters as he does in Romans 6 and Colossians 3. The reason it is in this order is that our life flows from the Godhead, by which we participate by the Spirit through the humanity of Jesus in His life, which is a life of communion with the Father.

3. This makes us focus our discipleship efforts on the work of God in us.

We are not people who simply live for God. We are people who God lives in and through. This makes us more aware of our need to rely on Him and find our life, meaning, significance and strength in Him. Discipleship is not something we do for God, it is primarily something He does in us.

4. This raises our awareness of the greatness of this gift of life we have been granted, to participate in God’s triune life.

To be swept up in the Divine dance between the Father, Son and Spirit. To see ourselves as living in this joyful, intimate relationship, to be in awe and wonder. To see the true significance of what it is to be a Christian, to raise our view of our lives in light of all this. To be ultimately at a loss for words and enter into a deep felt, overwhelming posture of worship as we contemplate these mighty truths.

Fairbairn, Donald. Life in the Trinity: An Introduction to Theology with the Help of the Church Fathers. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009. Kindle.

Seamands, Stephen A. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005.

Torrance, James. Worship, Community & the Triune God of Grace. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996.