We are meditating on perhaps the most precious promise in all of Scripture, John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Today, our focus is on “God.” Who is “God”?
Many of us would describe God by his attributes, using words such as loving, holy, all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-knowing (omniscient). Others would describe God by his great acts such as creator, redeemer, and judge. Still others would look to his providential rule, preserving, upholding, and governing the universe.
I want to focus on God’s nature, specifically, that he is personal and relational.
In Genesis 1 we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (1:1–2). Later, we read, “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image’” (1:26). God the Father creates the universe; the Spirit hovers; and “us,” the eternal triune God, creates humankind.
Three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, eternally exist; each is fully God, and God is one in essence or being.
The implications are stunning: God is relational. Before the world, God existed in community; three persons loving and sharing and communing, perfectly. God invited us into this community, but tragically, we rejected him and keep on rejecting him today. Amazingly, through Jesus, God made a way to bring us back into the intra-Trinitarian dance so that we can share in this fellowship of love and joy. Moreover, God invites us to invite others that all may know of his great love for his Son.
The Church Fathers used the term “perichoresis” to describe the mutual indwelling or “cleaving together” of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Jesus describes perichoresis as, “You [Father] are in me and I am in you” (Jn 17:21).
Try and imagine the Father cleaving to the Son and the Spirit, the Son to the Father and Spirit, and the Spirit to the Son and Father. Unceasing love. Unimaginable intimacy. Unending joy. Unstoppable giving. Perfect community.
God the Father sent his Son into the world so that we may enter into this community, the Trinitarian dance. This is love, that we are invited into the eternal perichoretic community where we are in God and God is in us.
