My Theology of the Church class was recently asked to respond to the prompt, “In 2-3 pages, who is God (triune) and what is his purpose in Christ expressed through us? To what extent does this influence our understanding of ourselves?”
The following essay is my response. I use words purposefully and intentionally in an effort to be both concise and meaningful.
On The Nature Of God
God is not a human being. God is love. God is gracious. God is impossible to fully know. God is creator. God is not created. God is community. God is not separated from Himself. God is the creating Father. God is the manifested Savior. God is the empowering Spirit. God is perfect. God is holy. God is not sin. God has many names. God interacts with His creation. God wants to reconcile humanity to Himself. According to modern theology, God is in relationship with humanity embodied in 3 conceptions. These include: God as creating Father, God as manifested Savior, and God as empowering Holy Spirit. The triune conception of God is both confusing and freeing. The idea of Trinity is confusing because, in its very essence, it is describing a God who is impossible to fully know. The idea of Trinity is freeing because, in its very essence, it is describing a God who is impossible to fully know. The conception of the nature of God is made more difficult because humans have a need to fabricate certainty in situations where it is not only impossible but also inappropriate. Some scholars and preachers do not give credence to the phrase, “the nature of God is impossible to fully know.” They are willing to use it; they might even try to represent it as a statement of presupposition to their book on understanding the nature of God. But even in their admission of the inherent, impossible complexity of the idea involved, they continue to try to write bulleted paragraphs or 3-point sermons about the nature of God. Surely humans cannot imagine capturing the identity of God in clean, neat, definitive prose. Humans feel as if they have to seek the Creator’s definitive nature because the full knowledge of His identity would ensure their ability to please Him fully. Yet, making comprehensively authoritative statements about God besides the ones stated in the Biblical text is dangerous. It leads humanity down a path that ultimately seeks not to know God so as to please Him, but rather to know God so as to be Him. We must relinquish power over our own lives. Instead of using human logic to work out the nature of God to try to please Him, we should seek to be in relationship with Him so that we might be a part of His body (1 Corinthians 1). How often can humanity forsake God before He will offer forgiveness no longer? This question is wrongheaded. God is grace. Sin separates humanity from God. In the sin act, humanity consciously makes the decision to separate itself from the perfect creation. Because God is ontologically perfect, the sin act separates humanity from Him; because God is ontologically love, He desires to reconcile humanity to Him. God sent His Word, whom we know as Jesus, to be the Savior of the world and to redeem humanity from the death of sin. God manifested the Christ on Earth in sinless human form so that He might be a pure sacrifice. The purity of Christ’s sacrifice made it so that a sinful humanity could be redeemed from the separation of sin. The salvation act marked the reconciliation of imperfect humanity and God. God’s Kingdom is breaking into the world. God asks humanity to enter into community with Him and be His hands and feet. God asks humanity to enter into relationship with Him and be empowered by His Spirit. His Spirit knows that which is good for us and will lead us to the Kingdom. God asks humanity to enter into community with each other and be each other’s brothers and sisters. The perfect sacrifice is the head of the Body that is changing the world each day. In community with each other we must seek to purport love, the fruit of the Spirit, unity among believers, social justice, equality, and emotional and physical healing. God desires for humanity to live out a Kingdom lifestyle because it is better than the separation of sinfulness. The call of the Kingdom of God is at hand; we must shift our paradigm to see every action through the lens of the purposes of the Kingdom.
