New City Catechism Question 3
Q: How many persons are there in God?
A: There are three persons in the one true and living God:
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are the same in substance, equal
in power and glory.
2 Corinthians 13:14
“May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Pastor Kevin DeYoung rightly points out that the Doctrine of
the Trinity is “the most important Christian doctrine that most people never
think about.” And those who do think about the triune nature of God can get
confused very quickly. How is it that there is one true God, that is three
persons, where each person is fully God, and each person is not the other
person (in other words there is no Clark Kent to Superman transformation in
some divine phone booth!)? And yet even if we cannot wrap our mind around the
Trinity, the bible clearly affirms every part of this doctrine, from the
oneness of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), to the three persons of God (2 Corinthians
13:14, Matthew 3:16-17) to the divinity of all three persons (John 1:1-2, 8:58,
Acts 5:3-4). And each part of this truth is critical to the Christian faith.
For example, if Jesus Christ is not fully God, how can the atonement have any
power to save us from our sin? And so even if we cannot fully wrap our finite
minds around the triune nature of God, we must clearly affirm what the bible
clearly teaches, that there are three persons in the one true and living God.
But even when we accept that God is a triune God and accept
that this truth is critical to our Christian faith, there is still the problem
of applicability. What practical meaning does the Trinity have for us in our
day to day lives? DeYoung does a great job in the catechism material outlining
three areas where the Trinity practically applies to our lives. 1) We can have
unity within diversity, we don’t have to settle or push for one at the expense
of the other. 2) The Trinity teaches us about the role and importance of
community. And 3) we learn about what DeYoung calls the eternality of love;
that love is not some construct created by human beings, but it has always
existed in the perfect community of the triune God.
Each of these areas of application is worth further study
and reflection. However given the increasingly individualistic understandings
of spirituality in our culture today (both Christian and non-Christian), the area
of application that possibly requires the most immediate attention is the
nature of community found in the Trinity. God has always eternally existed in
community, and God’s creation reflects that community. Human beings were made
to be in community, not in isolation (Genesis 2:18-25). In the Old Testament
God calls a people (not individuals) to himself as his chosen covenant
community (Genesis 12:1-3). The early church existed as a tight knit community of
faith (Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-37). And the Scriptures refer to the Church as the
body of Christ, a community that is intertwined and interdependent on each
other for health and survival (Ephesians 4:1-16).
Therefore the Trinity teaches us that community is
foundational and critical for every aspect of the Christian life. The take home
message then is this: You cannot be a lone-ranger Christian. You cannot
experience any significant spiritual growth as a Christian outside of Christian
community. You cannot effectively develop and use the gifts that God has given
you outside of Christian community. You cannot be an effective witness for
Christ if you are cut off from Christ’s body. I will go so as to suggest that
you cannot even survive spiritually outside of Christian community, because without
the community of faith supporting you and speaking truth into your life, you
will be carried off to wherever the waves of our culture are heading. To be a
healthy Christian means to be in community.
So what is keeping us from experiencing this kind of community
and growing in this kind of community? Some will shy away from being invested in
community because of problems they see in their local church. Ironically, sinless
perfection in churches then becomes the standard by which sinful imperfect people
invest in community. But there are no perfect churches because every church is
full of sinners! Others will shy away from community because of sin in their
lives, either because they are afraid it will get exposed or because they know it will get exposed and they don’t
want to let go of that sinful part of their lives. But the reality of sin in
each of our lives means we actually need community more, not less! And others
will shy away from community because investment requires time, and time is too
precious of a commodity to spend in our already very busy over scheduled lives.
And the list of reasons goes on…
But none of these reasons even come close to justifying us
giving up on the community that we were created to be in, that flows out of the
community of the triune God. And since an intimate, loving, community is at the
heart of the triune God, then our hearts should be set to invest ourselves and
dive deeper into our local church community, and not to move away from it. Are
there difficulties about growing in community? Absolutely! But those difficulties
pale in comparison to the rich blessings we receive from growing in community.
And ultimately, growing in community prepares us for the perfect community we
will one day experience, when we are finally home with our Heavenly Father.
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