Spirit-Son-Father

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.
John 1:18

I’ve heard it asked, “Why do ‘those streams’ of the church focus so much on the Holy Spirit? Shouldn’t we be pointing people to Jesus? After all, the Holy Spirit’s main job was to glorify Jesus (John 16:14), right?”

It’s an interesting question. But would we also ask, “Why do ‘those streams’ of the church focus so much on Jesus?” Is that a question that makes sense? Because, after all, one of the main missions of the Son was to reveal the Father (see John 1:18; John 16:9-10; Colossians 1:15). The Holy Spirit points to Jesus and Jesus points to the Father, so should we only focus on, talk about, pray to the Father?

No, of course not.

There is another reality at play that flows in the other direction. The Son reveals the Father and the Holy Spirit reveals the Son. In other words, Jesus makes the Father more accessible, more tangible, more relatable and the Holy Spirit does the same for Jesus. And in this cycle of interdependence we see the beauty of the Trinity.

If you want someone to know the Father, have them get to know Jesus. If you want someone to know Jesus, have them experience the Spirit. This is why so often people encounter the Spirit and experience the love of the Father. Their interwoven connectedness and unity is impossible to separate.

So maybe some streams focus on the Holy Spirit because they want people to experience Jesus. And maybe other streams focus on Jesus because they want to reveal the Father. And still other streams focus on the Father because it glorifies the Son and the Spirit. The truth is that all streams should be focusing on Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are inseparable. They are God.

Holy-Light-Love

In ministry I often stress to people God’s love for them. Many Christians may know about God’s love cognitively but have never experienced the tangible love of the Father pouring down on them. It’s life-changing! It is so easy to forget not only that God loves us but that “God is love“(1 John 4:8).

Yet, God is not just love. Progressive Christians often stress “God is love” in a way that defines love as “permissiveness,” especially when it comes to sexual sin. For some reason, the progressive wing of the Church wants to hold a hard line on sin when it comes to economics and social justice yet advocates a kind of free-for-all when it comes to human sexuality. I heard one progressive writer say it like this, that when it comes to the LGBTQ issues, they are going to err on the side of love because God is love. Bu what is he really saying? He’s saying, when it comes to LGBTQ issues, he wants to err on the side of permissiveness because that is how he defines love. And God is love. This kind of thinking has led to all kinds of deception.

God is love, but He’s not “permissive” love (if we can even call that love), and He’s not only love. Before we read the phrase “God is love” in 1 John 4:8, we read “God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all” in 1 John 1:5. And before we even get to 1 John 1, we read in 1 Peter 1:15-16 that God is holy. Not only is God holy but, because of His holiness, we are called to holiness. Here’s what it says, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.'” (1 Peter 1:15-16)

God’s love is never in conflict with God’s light and holiness, just as the Father is never in conflict with the Son and the Spirit. We worship a trinitarian God. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We understand that when people start to stress that God is Father but not Son or Spirit, they wander into heresy. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. The Holy Spirit is God the Spirit. While it is a mystery as to how they are “three-in-one,” the tension of this truth must be held. This same thing is true for God being Love, Light, and Holy.

While the Father, Son, and Spirit each express all three of these realities (love, light, holiness), it does seem like each person of the Godhead has adopted one as their specialty. The Father is all about love. 1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”

Jesus, the Son, is all about Light. The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as Light a few different times. “In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it“(John 1:4-5). “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world“(John 1:9).

The Holy Spirit, God the Spirit, is our source of holiness. His name even starts with “holy.” The apostle Paul clearly contrasts the difference between living by the flesh and living by the Spirit. The Spirit is the One that fosters in us a holy life as we keep in step with the Spirit.

So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery…But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Galatians 5:16-19, 22-23

God’s love is never divorced from His light and holiness. The most loving thing God can do is to invite us out of the darkness and into His Light. The most loving thing God can do is call us to be like Him, be holy as He is holy. God is Love, yes. And, God is Light. And God is Holy. All three of these must be held together or our understanding of God (and love) gets warped.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Throughout the New Testament there are passages that involve the persons of the Trinity⏤The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Many passages connect the Father and the Son (John 1:14; 10:30), or the Son and the Spirit (Luke 1:35; 2 Corinthians 13:17), or even the Father and the Spirit (Romans 8:14-16). There are a few, however, that express all three in one passage.

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased'”(Matthew 3:16-17).

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”(Matthew 28:19).

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all”(2 Corinthians 13:14).

“God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father'”(Galatians 4:6).

“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come”(2 Corinthians 1:21-22).

Paul writes one of these passages in his letter to the Ephesians as he attempts to unite Jews and Gentiles within the church. And this one gives a glimpse of how the Trinity works together as One. Speaking of Jesus, he writes, “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit”(Ephesians 2:18). Through Jesus, the Son, we have access to the Father by the Spirit.

To make sense of this, imagine standing on the coast of France looking over at England on a clear day. The white cliffs of Dover are in the distance on the other side of the English Channel, but there is no way to get across. Your new life and new future await you in England, but you are stuck in France.

Then someone comes up to you and says, “Hey, I have good news! Someone has made a way. For through the tunnel we have access to England by train. That is what Paul is saying here.

The Father is our destination. He is the one we now have access to who was previously unreachable by our own efforts. He made a way for us to now have access to Him despite our sin. Yet, to access the Father we must go through Jesus. Jesus is a tunnel, not a bridge, because we must be in Him to gain access to the Father. And the gift given to us to utilize this tunnel is the Holy Spirit. Just as one would travel through the tunnel by train, we go through Jesus by the Spirit.

All three persons of the Trinity operate together to get us to the Father so that we are no longer distant and disconnected from Him. As Scripture attests, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”(2 Corinthians 5:19).