The Trinity in Creation and Redemption

Now for the second and third implication,

The Triune God and Creation: an overflow of free goodness

This means that God did not create because there was a need in Him. God did not have a deficit to fill.  He was not lonely or sad.  God is not bored, needing something to do. As a matter of fact, it is impossible to add to the perfection and fullness and happiness of God.

 

As Sanders notes, the Trinity is not useful, it is simply how God is God. 

 

One of the sweet sections of this chapter is the quotation from the journal of Susannah Wesley, a home school Mom is early 18^th century England (66-68).  Susannah understood that if God is infinitely sufficient and happy in Himself, then creation was an act of free grace.

 

I think Sanders, as well as a host of theologians of history, is dead on.  If God is utterly perfect and infinitely happy, then the only reason he created and redeemed is out of the overflow of his goodness.  The glad and holy dance of the Godhead (what theologians call the perichoresis) spills over into creation and redemption. 

 

The Triune God and Salvation: an expression of abundant grace

It also means that salvation is not God’s action to fill his lonely heart with the company of friends.   Sanders is apt with the extended metaphor.  He notes,

 

It is unworthy to think that God without us is lonely and bored.  God is not looking for something to do in the happy land of the Trinity.  God did not create the world in order to fill the drafty mansion of heaven with the pitter patter of little feet. (95)

 

God created and God saved to reveal his infinite goodness and grace.  That is exactly what Paul says in Ephesians.  He chose us to present us faultless before him (1:3-4) and so that in the ages to come he might show the riches of his grace through kindness toward us in Christ Jesus (2:7)

 

This is not very ego affirming to me.  But the Lord knows my ego needs little affirmation.  It is already bloated.

 

This is very assuring to me though. The “life of God in itself is the source of all the riches that find the economy of salvation.” (83)

 

God is bigger than you and your salvation.  There is a fullness to God’s Trinitarian life that infinite, boundless, and inconceivable. (74)  It means that God’s infinite fullness is the guarantee of the Gospel.