Download discussion questions: John 17
Download summary: John 17 – Relationships
Listen to Bruce Ware: “The Trinity of Persons”
Listen to Bruce Ware: “Jesus and the Father”
Listen to Bruce Ware: “Jesus and the Spirit”
Who is this God whom we are to worship passionately?
The first of Calvary Restoration’s Four Core Commitments is that we desire to worship God passionately. A reasonable question that follows is, “Why?” Who is this God, and what is there about Him that would draw us to worship Him? What might inspire passion in our worship for Him?
Instead of the more typical catalogue of God’s attributes, our group took a different approach. (The study of God’s omniscience, omnipotence, infinity, and a long list of other qualities is a valuable and important study. That is just not the study we undertook).
Relationships – One Essence, Three Persons
The characteristic of the Christian God that distinguishes Him from all other ideas of deity in the various religions around the world is His Triune nature. Phrases like “one essence, three Persons” can sound like theological gobbledygook or technical gibberish which we tend to avoid. We often dislike what we cannot understand or things we cannot fully explain. However, consider a phrase I recently found in science-fiction fantasy: “But if I knew everything, there would be no wonder, because what I believe in is far more than I know.”[1] Our desire to learn about God through the mystery of the Holy Trinity can be like that, expanding our faith and belief far beyond the borders of our reasoning mind.
Doing our best to understand the three-personal God (a term C. S. Lewis coined) immediately involves us in exploring relationships. All three Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are fully God, they share a single “essence” – the “godness” of God, what makes God be God. We can see something about the Threeness by learning about the relationships between the Persons of the Godhead, and the relationships They have with people:
Every essential attribute of God’s nature is possessed by the Father, Son, and Spirit equally and fully. We cannot look at aspects of the nature if God as that which distinguishes the Father from the Son or Spirit; rather we have to look at the roles and relationships that characterize the Father uniquely in relation to the Son and the Spirit.[2] … what distinguishes the Son is his particular role as Son in relation to the Father and to the Spirit and the relationships that he has with each of them.[3] … what distinguishes the Spirit is his particular role as the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and to the Son and the relationships that he has with each of them.[4]
Relationships in John 17
Our group looked at the prayer of Jesus just before His arrest. Because John 17 is such a rich passage, we focused on the relationships described in the passage. In our limited time together, we divided the observation into three parts, with different people concentrating on different relational connections:
- The relationship of the Father with the Son and with people
- The relationship of the Son with the Father and with people
- The relationship of people with the Father and the Son
“People” include both believers and unbelievers. We could have further subdivided the relationships along those lines, but only so much is possible in an hour together.
We listed several of the relationships that Jesus prayed about. An expanded summary of those relationships is found in the John 17 – Relationships page.
- The Father and the Son delight in reciprocal glory, giving and receiving praise and admiration between Themselves (v. 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 42, 48).
- The Father continually gives to the Son (v. 3, 5, 11, 14, 18, 22, 24, 48).
- The Son continually gives to people (v. 4, 14, 29, 42, 52).
- The Father gives a mission to the Son (v. 3, 6, 7, 35, 45).
- The Son joyfully fulfills the mission of the Father (v. 3, 7, 10, 19).
- The Father loves the Son (v. 48, 53), and the Son looks forward to returning to the Father (v. 21, 27).
- The Father and the Son share everything and indwell each other (v. 9, 19, 40, 43).
That partial list of the connections between the Father and the Son begins to give a picture of the joyful, dynamic, intimate relations among the Trinity. (Although the Holy Spirit is not explicitly mentioned in Jesus’ prayer, other parts of the New Testament clearly demonstrate similar relationships with Him. The usual role of the Holy Spirit is pointing to the Son so the Son can glorify the Father. Less attention drawn directly to Him is not surprising.)
Is it important to work through these relational connections in the Trinity? Isn’t just loving God all we need, without these unnecessary complications?
Worshiping God Accurately
Worshipping God passionately requires knowing God accurately. Relationships (human or otherwise) based on vague, nebulous ideas can never be deep relationships. Knowing all we can about God and what He is like will continually draw us more and more into His beauty, fueling our passion for Him.
Remember that the Trinity was not an obscure idea made up by bored theologians. It is difficult to think of an environment less likely to produce such a difficult concept out of human imaginations. Remember the setting. Monotheistic Jews teaching the Trinity in polytheistic paganism would not be an easy choice. Monotheism would be difficult enough, but monotheism that describes three persons would be even more confusing that it can be today. And pagans (then and now) would certainly misunderstand. They were already comfortable with a multiplicity of gods. One (or three) more would be perfectly acceptable. The early Christians described God as Trinity because that is how they were coming to know Him:
When the Christians of the early centuries faced the task of saying who Jesus is in terms of the ‘lords many and gods many’ of the classical world, they could only do it by means of the Trinitarian model.[5]
Indeed, many of the heresies of the first centuries (continuing today) were attempts to simplify or rationalize the orthodox view of the Trinity which grew from following Jesus:
And when they [the first followers of Jesus] worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God. This definition is not something we have made up; Theology is, in a sense, an experimental science. It is simple religions that are the made-up ones.[6]
Theology came from the “experimental science” of knowing the Father through the Son by the Spirit. One writer offers a succinct summary: “Christianity was a trinitarian religion before it had a trinitarian theology.”[7]
In order to worship God passionately as we know Him accurately, we need the framework of the Trinity. A great benefit of studying and memorizing the Creed is to provide us with just such a proven framework. Our worship can “tilt toward Unitarianism of the Second Person”[8] when we neglect the full Trinitarian understanding of God. Or as C. S. Lewis puts it, a religion of “Jesus-worship” that Jesus didn’t teach.[9]
We have not been reading our Bibles-particularly our New Testaments-sufficiently through “trinitarian glasses,” and we have not devoted ourselves to the meditation and study required to understand better just what the revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit means.[10]
The Creed gives us a framework to focus our Trinitarian glasses. The clarity and accuracy of our understanding of God will continue to display His Triune glory. “Worship of the true and living God consciously acknowledges the relationship and roles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”[11]
Worshiping God Passionately
As we continually improve our perception of God as Triune, we can grow in our genuine passion in worship. Like David, we can “gaze on the delightfulness of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). Bruce Ware, a theologian at Southern Seminary, offers several powerful reasons for our growing passion for the three-personal God. The audio presentations linked at the beginning of this article will provide many more reasons.
Marveling
The triune relationships of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cause us to marvel at the unity of the triune God…. They are always sharing fully the delight in being the one God and accomplishing the unified purpose of God. Here is a unity of differentiation.[12]
The triune relationships of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cause us to marvel at the diversity within the triune God…. This diversity speaks of the richness of God, while never allowing the richness of differentiation to lead to discord. As we rightly marvel at the unity of God, we also rightly marvel at how the eternal relations among the triune Persons constitute an eternal yet harmonious differentiation within the one God. [13]
The triune relationships of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cause us to wonder at the social relationality of the triune God. God is never “alone” … He is by very nature both a unity of Being while also existing eternally as a society of Persons…. They are in need of nothing but each other throughout all eternity.[14]
Sanctification
Our sanctification is done by the triune God, with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each participating in different but complementary ways.[15]
- The Father ordains and secures our holiness (Ephesians 1:4).
- The Son lives the pattern after which we are to be remade, and then dies to pay for and defeat our sin (Ephesians 1:7-10).
- The Spirit directs us to the Son and his work in opening our eyes to see the glory of the Son (2 Corinthians 4:6) and in making us like Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Prayer
We pray as the Spirit prompts and urges us to pray. So prayer rightly understood-Christian prayer is prayer to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit. To pray aright, we need a deep appreciation for the doctrine of the Trinity.[16]
Who is God?
Our prayer and worship, the songs we sing, our growing holiness and sanctification all grow best when rooted in the knowledge of God as the Holy Trinity. Checking the “orthodox” box and verbally affirming the Trinity must expand into a practical and passionate joy in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This doctrine at the core of the Christian faith is too often minimized by inattention:
The doctrine of the Trinity-one God existing in three Persons in the ways we have described-provides one of the most important and neglected patterns for how human life and human relationships are to be conducted.[17]
Next week we will explore how the Triune nature of God should shape how we “connect with one another authentically,” the second of the Four Core Commitments.
[1] Madeleine L’Engle, An Acceptable Time (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Crosswicks, Ltd., 1989), 301.
[2] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 45.
[3] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 69.
[4] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 103.
[5] J. E. Leslie Newbigin, Christian Witness in a Plural Society (London: British Council of Churches, 1977), 7.
[6] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), 163; Kindle Edition location 2043.
[7] Leonard Hodgson, How Can God Be both One and Three? (London: SPCK, 1963), 17; quoted in Fisher Humphreys, “The Revelation of the Trinity,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, Fall 2006, Volume 33, Number 3: 291..
[8] Curtis W. Freeman, “God in Three Persons: Baptist Unitarianism and the Trinity,” Perspectives in Religious Studies, Fall 2006, Volume 33, Number 3: 324.
[9] C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964), 83; Kindle Edition, First Mariner Books, 2012, Location 939.
[10] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 156.
[11] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 17.
[12] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 19-20.
[13] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 20.
[14] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 20-21.
[15] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 19.
[16] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 18.
[17] Bruce A. Ware, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit; Relationships, Roles, & Relevance (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005), 22.