Holy Trinity: Relationship

When we place onto God ideas of Him that are not accurate, our perception of Him gets built upon those false ideas. For instance, if we’ve only ever been taught that God is ruthlessly angry and out to smite anyone who doesn’t follow all His rules, we build our whole life of faith on the idea that God doesn’t care about us. That God is out to punish us. 

This fear-based way of understanding God destroys any ability of building a relationship with Him – because we’re too scared of His wrath. Too afraid we’ll fail and disappoint Him. So we’ll either live with a constant eye on the perceived list of do’s and don’ts, striving to check every box and look like a good Christian. Or, we’ll give up. Walk away. 

Either way, we’ll end up on the perpetual hamster wheel, running this race called life within our own strength and by our own understanding. We’ll wear the banner of independence-of-self with great pride, running ourselves ragged, believing that we have to earn everything in life and with God. Putting all our hope in the illusion of control.¹ 

Fear. Anger. Anxiety. Depression. Aimlessness. Loneliness. Despair. These are the fruit of a life lived from such a view of God – a life lived outside of an actual relationship with Him, barren of actual spiritual fruit, such as love, peace, and joy.² 

And that’s just not what God longs for us. In fact, the reality that our three-in-one God dwells in an eternal and intimate relationship within Himself is what motivated Him to create us in the first place! God as Trinity is perfect fellowship, and He has made us for the same. When we begin to live from this truth, our lives of faith take on a new shape, strength, and hope. 

My friends, we have been created from relationship, for relationship.

In the Beginning

Genesis documents how things came to be in the beginning. The Word spoke everything into existence even as the Spirit hovered with His creative energy, bringing the world and all that live in it into being as planned by God (Genesis 1:1-2; John 1:1-4). And by day six, the Father comments within Himself, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and humanity was born. 

The phrase, “in the beginning,” denotes the start of the world as we know it. But God is eternal. The I AM has always been who He is. “In the beginning” we humans become aware of our Creator’s existence, as well as His hand in making us who we are. So, perhaps, the question we should be asking is why. Because if we walk through life misunderstanding God’s motives for bringing the world and all of humanity into existence, we’ll fail to see God and ourselves with clarity and truth.

For instance, if we believe God created us because He was lonely or bored or needed someone to boss around, we miss His truest nature. Yes, God is holy. God is love. But when we see God as three-in-one, we recognize that at His core God is relational. He is not a singular entity in the sense that He-who-has-always-been has always been alone. Rather, “in the deepest of His being, God is an intimate relationship, a fellowship, a community of love.”³ 

And this relationship is holy. It is love. And it is perfect. As such, God has been and always will be completely “fulfilled in His Triune perfection.”⁴ This truth now anchors our way of looking at God’s purposes for creating us. God didn’t need us. He wanted us!! Our inherently relational God desired to look beyond Himself to create beings, like Him, who could also benefit from relationships.

There are some great theological ideas tucked into all of this that I think will aid our understanding of God’s inherent connectedness. First, when we look at God’s internal life – how He operates within Himself – we get to see His primary mode of existence: relationship. 

Most scholars categorize this internal life of God as “imminent Trinity.”⁴ Remembering that the three Persons of the Trinity ‘subsist’ with each other, we witness the way they dwell with one another – the Father as the Begetter, the Son as the Begotten, and the Spirit as the One who proceeds from the Father through the Son.⁴ These three, internal relationships pertain to being. Their being is always corelational. It’s who they are.

First and foremost, their being is always love for themselves in the healthiest of ways. I liken it to the way parents are meant to put their oxygen masks on first before putting one on their children. I mean, if we pass out as the plane loses pressure, neither parents nor children survive. Or, as parents, we’re coached to focus on our marriage first because when our marriage is healthy, we are better parents. Of course, these are not perfect analogies, but they help us pull selfishness out of the equation when we say that the Trinity is primarily for Himself. 

The Holy Three are not selfish in their love for they always look to glorify the other Persons of the Trinity (John 16:13-15, 17:4-5,24). They’re always about the good of each other, of the whole. So when we consider the Trinity’s motivation for creating humans, we can eliminate any idea that God needed our love or friendship (Acts 17:24-25). In fact, if we place on ourselves the weight of having to ‘keep God happy’, we’re not only setting ourselves up for failure, but placing on Him a false reality. He’s already happy!⁴ He’s complete as He is! And He is certainly not dependent on us for anything. 

Everything God does flows from who He is. It is out of the overflow of His happiness and love that God created humanity.⁴ 

And this leads us to the second category of God’s relationships, dubbed “economic Trinity,” which is all about the way God works outside of Himself with humanity.⁴ The internal love that binds the Trinity together is shared externally with the world, with us. While the internal relationship of God is based on being, the external relationship of God has everything to do with doing. For example, “the Father sent the Son. The Son is sent by and of the Father. The Spirit is sent by and of the Father and the Son.”⁴ They work together to share their love and unity and joy with humanity in order to save and shape us, to rescue and restore us. This is their collective heart for us – to love as they love (John 17:26). To dwell in relationship as they do – with them and with each other. 

The Holy Three are so perfect in loving union with each other that they sought to share all of this with humanity, which is why it’s so important not to miss how relational God is! If we see Him as an aloof, distant, uncaring ‘maker’, we end up seeing ourselves as unwanted, abandoned, and unloved. If we see God as alone, without the fullness of His Triune nature, we fall into the trap of seeing Him as the over-demanding Father – and ourselves as the ones who must get it all right in order to avoid His wrath.⁴ 

And that’s why we’re here – to get a truer picture of our God so that we can obtain a clearer idea of who we are and how we’re meant to relate to our Creator. When we see the holiness of His coeternal, coequal, corelational being, we see Him rightly – as perfect love. As a God who dwells in relationship and who has extended us the grace to step into relationship with Him.

This was always the plan. From the beginning. 

Righteousness and Right Relationship

For all the truths we just unpacked about who God is and how He dwells in and from His holy, three-fold union, we can still make our relationship with Him about us. So many of our earthly experiences work against God’s seemingly upside-down ways. For example: 

• The world tells us to earn our way; the Father says He’s already made our way available through His Son (John 3:16). 
• The world and our own broken desires push us to rely on no one but ourselves; the Son calls us to depend on the Father, surrendering ourselves to Him and trusting in His provision, protection, and perfect love (Luke 9:23; Matthew 6:31-33; John 15:9, 17:15). 
• The world expects money and power to generate happiness; the Son tells us all power comes from the Spirit and that all joy is from Him – a fruit of living in the Spirit (Acts 1:8; John 15:11; Galatians 5:22).
• Our own pride tells us how great we are at following all the rules or winning all the prizes; Jesus points out that we’re only ‘made right’ when we humbly come before God repentant (Luke 18:9-14).

So much of what Jesus accomplished while He walked the earth was to demonstrate how easily we get God wrong. Over and over, Jesus taught and healed, asked and answered questions in order to show how often our assumptions fall short of God’s actual desires and demeanor. Jesus came to show us what it takes to be made right, to be in ‘right relationship’ with God (Romans 5:1). 

“For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

2 Corinthians 5:21 NLT

This is righteousness. We’re ‘made right’ with God through our faith in Christ. In doing so, we step into ‘right relationship’ with our three-in-one God! Without faith in Jesus we cannot find redemption and rightness. If we only focus on doing ‘right’, we’ll miss the actual relationship we were created for. 

And that’s why Jesus left heaven, lived as a lowly human, died a sinner’s death, and defeated the grave! So that we – the lowly sinners – could overcome death and find life eternal in Christ. So that we – the lost and lonely – could discover perfect relationship in Him. 

Friends, our relationship with the Holy Three is righteous because of the work they accomplished through Christ’s cross. Our faith in Jesus opens the door for us to step into right relationship with Father, Son, and Spirit. Understanding God rightly gives us a foundation to build upon, and it will never be shaken (Isaiah 28:16; Psalm 16:8). So, when we grasp that it’s because of His righteousness that we can dwell in community with God, our relationship with Him thrives and grows.⁵ 

Let us not continue living from false assumptions about our God. He is relationship. And all He does flows from that holy reality – including creating us from love, for holy community.

Today our prayer comes from the lyrics of Jason Upton’s song, “Father, Son, Spirit.”⁶ Please join me as we pray:

Father, You Father me
With Holy Love
With grace and peace
Your mercy, surprises me
It heals my heart
It helps me see

Jesus, Holy One
The darkest night
The brightest sun
Jesus, You never fail
You’re God with us
Emmanuel

Spirit, Abiding One
You are the Father
You are the Son
Your Presence has overcome
The new creation
It has begun

I am overwhelmed
The longer I’m aware
Aware that You love me
I am overwhelmed
The longer I’m aware
Aware that You’re near me
You’re the voice I hear calling my name
You’re the song inside my head
You’re the whisper in the wind and the rain
When I listen
Teach me to listen

We pray to know You as You really are so that we may more fully enter into this holy relationship with You! In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – James Bryan Smith wrote a most incredible book, The Good and Beautiful God^, that addresses various (and common) misconceptions about God and His nature. Chapter Two tackles God’s goodness and this ‘false narrative’ of God as an angry judge. This is a transformative book because it helps us identify the very false ideas of God that we’ve attempted to build our faith lives upon. So good. I go back to this book all the time. 
• 2 – I want to make a note of what I am not saying. I’m not saying these traits (anger, anxiety, depression…) only happen because of a wrong view of God. These traits can be in our lives for a variety of reasons. My point in this post, however, is that they are common in those who believe God to be an angry judge; and it’s from this perspective of God that they strive to do all their faith, all their work, all their life from their own strength.
• 3 – Darrell Johnson’s book, Experiencing the Trinity^ 
• 4 – Tara Leigh Cobble’s book, The Joy of the Trinity: One God, Three Persons^
• 5 – This website summarizes various ways of understanding righteousness.
• 6 – Here’s a link to the song we used as our prayer today, John Upton’s “Father, Son, Spirit.” It’s also on our Holy Trinity playlist on Spotify.
• Most Wednesdays I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here; however, for this series, I’ve taken a wee break. You can, though, find all my previous videos on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and YouTube.
• Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• For this series, our rhythm of focus will be seeking to know God better in the reading of His Word and with the help of His Spirit. It’s good and right to ask Him for His help each time we desire to read with His eyes, to understand with His mind — so we begin there. Then we invite Holy Spirit to lead and reveal as we open Scripture and read. Each week I’ll put a verse or passage before us to read, to contemplate, to wrestle with. But I invite you to do your own investigating of the Word, for it is in such pursuit that you’ll meet the Living God smack dab in the middle of His Word. I’d love to hear what you see and learn and wonder about!
  • This week, our passage is John 17:24-26 MSG. These words conclude Jesus’ prayer for His disciples on the night of His arrest. There is so much Trinity language and love packed into this passage — I know you’ll see it now! Jesus also talks about ‘knowing God’, and He means more than as a name or a divine being but intimately. All the words of this prayer point to relationship — a holy, love-soaked relationship in and with our three-in-one God! XOXO
    
    “Father, I want those you gave me
    To be with me, right where I am,
    So they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me,
    Having loved me
    Long before there ever was a world.
    Righteous Father, the world has never known you,
    But I have known you, and these disciples know
    That you sent me on this mission.
    I have made your very being known to them—
    Who you are and what you do—
    And continue to make it known,
    So that your love for me
    Might be in them
    Exactly as I am in them.” –John 17:24-26 MSG

• We’re all called to share the truth about who Jesus is. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. May we use our whole selves to tell others about our holy God!!

Featured Photo by Amy Vosters on Unsplash — a picture of the Church of the Holy Trinity, Trinity Square, Toronto, ON, Canada
“All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash.
^These are affiliate links, with which this ministry earns a wee little bit. XOXO