Connected Through the Trinity

Doris Day once had a hit called “Everybody loves a lover”. The point made by the song was that people in love become more loveable because the love they feel in having found someone to love them, is both contagious and uplifting. Finding a soul-mate is part of what completes and fulfils us as human beings.

God said it was not good for the man to be alone because we were not created to live in isolation. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have never been alone, the three eternal persons we call God have always been in a perfect, loving relationship. So when we say that God is love we don’t mean that he is made of a substance called love but that he has always existed as a loving relationship. The unitity expressed in this relationship is so perfect, that if you know one it’s the same as knowing all three.

Thus when Philip said to Jesus “Show us the Father, and that will be enough for us” Jesus replied by saying “If you have seen me you have seen the Father” (John 14:8-9). Hebrews explains this by saying “Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being”, so any one who has seen Jesus has seen the Father because the Son fully represents the Father. He can only do it if he is of the same nature and fully unified with the Father. Not being able to see the Son is no disadvantage because the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit who is sent by both the Father and the Son, resides in us and connects us to both the Father and the Son.

This is part of what it means to be born again. To be born again is to be supernaturally connected to the creator of the universe at a level of intimacy that makes one aware that he is a child of God. That is why Jesus instructs Christians to refer to God as ‘Father’. The Bible also refers to this process as Spiritual adoption, which is similar to human adoption except for two things: firstly, instead of being adopted by surrogate parents you are adopted by your real Father and secondly, your adoption can never be nullified by death or separation (Romans 8:35).

So one who is born again becomes a child of God the Father (John 1:12), a brother of Jesus his Son (Hebrew 2:11-12) and a future co-ruler of the redeemed universe (Romans 8:21)

We who are born again can be sure of this, not because we deserve it but because he has redeemed us through the death of his Son who became a man and died, taking the blame and punishment for all our sins.

Everyone is born once. The Bible calls that being born of the flesh (John 3:6) but flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:16) so we need to be reborn of something more suitable for the eternal, indestructible world God is preparing us for and that means being born of the Spirit.

Being born of the Spirit also means being transferred from the condemned kingdom of this world to the eternal Kingdom of God. Though we remain here to work for the Kingdom of God until we die, death means an immediate transfer into the eternal Kingdom where there is no death, crying, mourning or pain (Rev 21).

Jesus said that those who are born again will experience a real permanent change in their lives transcends human understanding. He describes this in John 3:8 as being like the mysterious wind that we can hear but know little about. Those that are born again not only know about God, they actually know him personally and what’s more they know that it is God that they know. This knowledge of God is not made possible by water baptism but by the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The experience of being born again comes to all who genuinely trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus – there is no other way one can be connected to God. The connection one has with his or her heavenly Father is far more important than any other connection a person may have. It is like falling in love with God and knowing for certain that he is deeply in love with you. This is the most contagious love of all because when a person is loved by God, he is loved indeed.