And finally,
The Triune God and the End of Salvation: a seat in the circle
This also relates to the end of salvation.
Most of us hear the Gospel as an opportunity to be forgiven by God, to be loved by God, to be made God’s sons and daughters. All of those are wonderful. Along with propitiation, justification, adoption, regeneration, and all the blessings that flow from Christ the Savior’s work for us – there is more. Those are means to an end.
The good news is more wonderful than I can imagine. Let me explain.
For years I puzzled over these words at the end of Jesus prayer in John 17 where Jesus prays for all believers in history. He says,
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us . . . (21)
So, Jesus says that the end game is that we are brought into the unity of the Godhead. That is BIG! But then he adds,
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (22-23)
Not only brought into the unity, but perfectly brought into the inter-relationships of the Godhead, and there is more. He gives us glory, the same glory the Father gave him before there was time. And we are loved in the same degree as the Father loves the Son. This is unspeakable.
Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. (24)
We are to see the glory of the Son, eternally begotten of the Father, and to stand in the eternal love of the Father for the Son. Words are failing me here. Then he ends,
O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (25-26)
This sounds to me like we are brought into the circle of his love and immersed in it fully. To cite one of Sanders sources, the good news of the Gospel is that through Christ, created men sinners are “admitted into the inner life of God.” (81).
Did you hear that? Brought into the inner life of God. The happy land of the Trinity is the land into which we will be brought through the free grace of God showered on us through the redeeming work of God the Son and the calling of the Holy Spirit.
The circle of the Godhead will be opened up, and the bride of the God-man, redeemed by his blood, will be brought into that circle. We shall always be creatures, but we shall have the best seats in the cosmos to behold the glory of God in the happy land of the Trinity.
How much this calls me from my self-centered, self-pitying, self-absorbed manner of heart.
On the next post I want to reflect on how the Happy Land of the Trinity relates to worship.
Recent Comments