We are in a series on that strange and wonderful way of understanding God commonly called The Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Describing the trinity is a bit like trying to describe the smell of coffee; you just can’t do it justice, but we can share illustrations and experiences that help.
Many religions affirm that God is great, but above all else the bible affirms that ‘God is Good’, and that he is only great because he is good. The unique Christian claim is that God is not great because of his power but rather because of his love. The bible presents a relational God so unique to any other deity that it becomes increasingly evident that there is ‘non beside him… and non like him’ (1 Samuel 2:2)
Throughout the scriptures we see a profound longing in the heart of God for all of his creation. It’s a redemptive theme which in my view inspires the greatest love stories, the greatest myths, the greatest acts of love and sacrifice. Have you ever wondered why the best movies and stories all carry a redemption theme? I believe it’s because they are all echoes of the greatest love story of all; the love between a Father God and a lost humanity.
The God of the bible is wonderfully and uniquely presented to us in the form of an eternal trinity; the implication being that there is an eternal relationship within the Godhead. One that can best be represented to us in a dance! ‘Perichoresis’ is a Greek word that describes the ‘dance of the trinity’, and it’s the symbol of our church because our core value and theology is one of a relationship of love. An eternal Father, an eternal Son and an eternal Spirit who constantly create and recreate out of a profound flow of love for each other and for all creation. They break open the circle of this dance in order to invite us into that love, to join with the Father, the Son and the Spirit in an lifetime of redemptive love, sacrificial service and celebratory friendship. Our missional emphasis springs from this core value that God is love and that he invites all creation to join with him in this dance.
The best way we know of contextualising this love is in extended families that are committed to learning some of the dance steps of the trinity. So we want to open up this month looking first at the Father. Because there is a reason that God is first presented to us as a father. There is a reason that the first line of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is ‘Our Father’, because a truly good father is the nearest likeness of who God is; neither controlling nor indulgent, neither overbearing nor passive, but rather the very definition of love. (1John4:8)
There is a reason that the name ‘Father’ causes the enemy to choke. The devil cannot call God ‘Father’. In fact, according to Jesus, the devil has become his own kind of parody of father. (John 8:44) ‘You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me’. The core question at the heart of the universe is not ‘is there a God’ but ‘what sort of God is he?’ We can affirm that he’s a good, good father.