PCEA

God is a Fellowship

It dawned upon the Church quite gradually that God was really a Fellowship of Persons. This led to God being thought of as a Trinity, or a Tri-Unity. The word is an attempt to define God as One in Three Persons. It is true that “Persons” is not the ideal term to use, but we cannot think of a better. “Person” suggests to us an individual who thinks and acts independently of all other persons. But this is not what we mean by the Trinity. Though distinguished as three Persons, they are not three individuals with independent life and rights. They exist in such a unity of thought and will and life that they constitute one God. There is thus perfect equality between all the Persons, as well as perfect unity. But they operate differently, and it is only in their operation that we recognise them as distinct Persons, the Father plans or purposes, the Son executes the plan, and the Spirit applies it so as to make it effective.

Old Testament

There is good reason why a definition of the Trinity is not given in the Bible. When it comes to that, there is no definition of God either. But there is a recognisable reason why the fact of plurality in the Godhead has not been made known at once. The Bible’s primary function is to reveal the one God in distinction from the many gods of heathen religions. It would therefore not serve the Bible’s purpose to define God in three Persons. But the Bible shows God acting as three Persons, as early indeed as the first chapter of Genesis. There, in the story of Creation, God is revealed as the source of creation. God is there too as the Word that goes forth to operate the plan of creation, and God is there as the Spirit who applies at each stage the light, the energy, and the order that brings creation to life. This is indeed a Trinity in operation, each person having a distinctive function, the Father manifesting His will and purpose to create, the Son as the medium through whom His will comes into operation, and the Spirit as the agent that applies that will and makes it to operate in bringing energy to matter, and breath to living things.

New Testament

Again and again in the Old Testament, each of the three Persons is seen in operation, and when we pass over into the New Testament the light is so much clearer, not to give a new revelation of God, but to make the revelation already given so much fuller and clearer. For example, at the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, we discern each of the three Persons in action, the Father speaking from the cleft heavens, the Son coming up out of the waters, and the Spirit descending and resting upon Him like a dove. And as the New Testament proceeds, the revelation gets clearer, culminating in the death and resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, and with the development of the Church the Triune God is recognised, operating in Christian experience, and finding formal place in the Apostolic Benediction.

The Meaning

What is the meaning of this mysterious truth to us? It means that God really lives, and is in His life revealable and communicable. From all eternity God was revealing Himself and communicating Himself within the Blessed Trinity, before any creature came into existence. If God were not such a centre of fellowship within Himself, there would be eternal ages in which He existed alone and aloof in an empty universe, existing but scarcely living. But it was not so. When God created a rational universe, He willed to extend that fellowship to His rational creatures, and He so created man — in His image and after His likeness — that he could respond to that fellowship, And, now, that life of God is the true basis of all fellowship in this life, in the Home, in society and in the Church.

It is the doctrine of the Trinity that gives variety to the life of the universe, and provides scope for the research scholar in every branch of science. Since there is diversity in the life of God, and the creation is a manifestation of God, then there is diversity in the created universe. All the wonders of creation, all the forms of life, all the movement in the universe, are a reflection, a mirroring, of the manifold life of God.

It is only in Christian experience, however, that this mystery becomes a bright reality, when we become conscious of the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Spirit.