Relationship, the Trinity’s Irreducible Truth
We are worthy of this Divine Love and valued above all else in creation, for we are uniquely like Them! They were, are, and forever will be devoted to us! Value is set by the price one is willing to pay. A diamond is just carbon formed by heat and pressure. Its value is in the eyes of the beholder. God set our worth by the giving of His Son’s Life upon the cross for us. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15: 13 NLT)
They knew and had decided to forgive us from the foundation of the world. (Revelation 13:8 KJV) Their forgiveness preceded our repentance! God has not, because of our sin, given up His Fatherhood and become our judge. Rather, the relationship shared by the Father with his Son, of Love through fellowship and communion is one that translates in and through creation to us as connection and belonging. The irreducible truth of the Trinity is relationship. We experience this love and acceptance within the Family of God with God as our Father, Jesus our Brother, and the Holy Spirit our Teacher and Guide!
Our Heavenly Father
They have placed within us The Way, the cry of our heart. “Abba, Father!” Jesus was the first to call God Father, and it is His Father He came to reveal. This longing for Home is found only in harmony with Their mind and heart. The clearest place in scripture we see this is in Luke chapter fifteen. The Story of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son or The Prodigal Son is not primarily about the wayward or the religious, but His Father! The Father dies as it were to give his sons their inheritance, “all that he has is theirs.”
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It is obvious in the parables that we were never separated from Them but merely lost! Distance placed between our lives and Theirs, and the loss of fellowship within our joys and sorrows. Whether our lostness is in self-righteousness or degeneration, the Father’s heart is for our relationship! It is he that is watching and waiting for our return, ready and willing without condition to restore us to fellowship and communion. We are the ones blinded by our sin and darkness from the Truth of who we are in Christ, the mystery revealed in Jesus!
God All Vulnerable
The Trinity, who They are, is the source and governing principle of the Universe. Whatever is True in Them would be true in us. They ask nothing of us that They have not placed the resources for within us. We are by nature good children of a good Father! Even when we do bad things in our darkness and sin, we never become bad, just “badly” lost! This governing principle is: the degree to which we are willing to be vulnerable is equal to the degree to which we are open to love. The barriers we raise to protect us from vulnerability block our way to participation in love and relationship! You cannot have one without the other! It is here that MacDonald gives us his gift of seeing. He redefines the Universe within the Father and child relationship. Creation is our nursery and provided for the education of His children.
Let’s look together as MacDonald reveals the Divine as “God All Vulnerable” and places it in contrast to our human projections of “God Almighty.” This passage in The Child in the Mist is perhaps one of the most beautiful ones in all of MacDonald’s sermons.
“Let us take this truth to yet an even greater revelation, that the devotion of God to His creatures is perfect! The truth is that They loved and were devoted to us first. And our devotion is but a mirroring of Theirs in return! They do not think of Themselves, but us! They want nothing for Themselves, for the Trinity lacks nothing and only lives to be a blessing! Their devotion and self-giving love are at the center of the Divine Childlikeness, the Universe’s Heart and Life! They are the source and ultimate expression of human relationships at their best as a friend, brother, sister, father and mother, expressed fully in our love perfect God! They are grand and strong beyond anything our imagination could conceive of heroic thinking and actions! Yet, delicate and tender surpassing human intimacy as husband and wife! They are comfortable and welcoming, exceeding all we could envision as the height of love and acceptance coming from fathers and mothers!
The question for us is will we receive as gift their other-centered and self-giving love trusting not in ourselves but in Their sacrifice for us? Will we respond in kind with thankfulness, giving our lives to others for whom They sacrificed, and loving others as They love us? God is pure and single-minded about His children, that we would be just like Them. Our thinking, feeling, meaning, and the possessing of Their Life is the plan to flow through us, to others.
It is so clear that anyone can see it, everyone should see it, and everyone will see it. It must be so! They are unconditionally good to us, and nothing will stand in Their way.
Have you met this other-centered and self-giving God? Or, is the one you’ve heard about the fabrication of human ideas of sovereign power?
How terribly have the theologians misrepresented God! “Nearly all of them represent Him as a great king on a grand throne; God thinking how great He is; making it the business of His being and the end of His universe the keeping up of His glory, wielding the lightning bolts of Jupiter against those that take His name in vain.” They would never agree that this is their vision of Him. But follow out what they say to its logical conclusion, and this is precisely what they believe!”
This Divine, other-centered, self-giving love is in us it is our destiny! “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” In another translation, it says, “. . predestined (us) to become conformed to the image of His Son.” (Romans 8:29 NLT & NAS ) This word “conformed” in Greek, metamorphose, means transforming something from what it is to what it will become. In our darkness and sin, we act as takers, giving place to our selfish-selves. However, in our true nature, our true selves, we are givers like our Father and Brother. It is not a transformation from a sinner, by nature, which we are not, to a saint, but from the Father’s child through “spiritual adoption” into sons and daughters after His own heart! Just as the caterpillar transforms to the butterfly, so it is with us. The taker becomes the giver, by the power of the Spirit releasing what is within!