Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15
Clues to a person’s identity
If we are given enough clues we can probably identify any person we know.
God has given us plenty of clues or indicators that show us something about himself. They are inevitably limited in what they reveal. For example, God can reveal himself to individual people through friendships, nature, experiences, verses of the Bible and much more. We have to think carefully about what each of God’s clues shows us about him.
Our understanding of God as Trinity has been pieced together from clues. I don’t claim to understand the Trinity and I wouldn’t trust anyone who did claim to understand it. “The Trinity is, at heart, our best if manifestly inadequate attempt to capture in words the mysterious nature of God. It has something to say about both the unity and diversity of God’s work and manifestation, and about the importance of community to God and all those whom God has created and loved.” -David Lose
What God tells us about himself
Jesus and the Holy Spirit can explain for us the meaning of the clues that God has given. In John 16:12-15 Jesus said the Spirit was going to:
• come to show what is true.
• tell what he has heard from Jesus.
• let you know what is going to happen.
• bring glory to Jesus by taking Jesus’ message and sharing it.
• Note too that the Father shares all he has with Jesus.
God is beyond our understanding and all attempts to explain God fall down at some point, yet we see Father, Son and Spirit at work in different ways, leading to the understanding of God being three beings yet one God.
Remember that Jesus said, “Those who have seen me have seen the Father.” At that time the disciples were gradually beginning to understand that when they looked at Jesus, they saw God himself. Indeed both our readings indicate something of how the three persons in the Trinity are all bound up together. In Romans 5:1-5. Paul mentioned three things in particular that Jesus has shown us about God’s character: peace, grace (undeserved kindness) and glory.
The Holy Spirit convicts of sin and also guides into all truth. In other words, the Spirit keeps us real, keeps us honest and keeps us accurate (truthful). In John 16:12-15, Jesus summarises something of the complexity of the Trinity – Father, Son and Spirit are separate beings and yet cooperate and serve one another; listening to each other and sharing from one another. “The doctrine we call Trinity matters because it tells us that even God does not dwell alone. The mystery at the heart of our one God, is that there is a communal in-dwelling together of three personas; Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. Love cannot live alone and it is always seeking more life to love. This must be why God seeks us. This is why we can hope. As Paul says in the conclusion of our Romans reading: And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” -Todd Weir
Paul seeks in Romans 5:1-5 to express something of the interaction of the Trinity in regard to our salvation. Because of faith in Jesus we are justified (made right with God) and therefore we can live at peace with God the Father. We are loved by the Father and the Son but we are able to experience that love because the Holy Spirit is within us, “poured into our hearts’. God’s work within us is a complex process that we don’t always immediately recognise. Paul challenges us to rejoice in our sufferings. Often, those who have learned to respond positively to God’s ways seem to have developed the most Christ-like character and the deepest hope.
The key understanding today is love. We see that God is three beings who love each other so intimately that they are one person. Because of this we can say that God is love. One alone cannot love. Love always requires a lover and one loved. If God were one alone God could love but God could not be love. But God, being three, is love. And the importance of this is that this is the love God desires for us and we seek for ourselves – a love which makes us one with God and with one another.
So we understand some things, but not everything, about God – he is incomprehensible. But as Jesus said in the reading from John, the Spirit will come and lead us into ‘all truth’ so we will gradually understand more and more of God and come to understand just how much more there is to know. We can ask the Spirit to show us more of God.