We’ve been looking at the Trinity, and talking about the triunity of God.  That just means the one true God is a real family.  The divine family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  A perfect family that is a communion of self sacrificial love.  They are eternally giving themselves wholly to one another.  There’s something called divine simplicity that helps describe the divine family.  It just means God’s not complex.  God doesnt exist in parts.  In other words Gods not a broken family.  God is wholly unified.  When we say the one true God is 3 distinct persons we arent fracturing God into different parts and components.  God has an undivided life, it’s just that the undivided life is the communion of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not 3 centers of consciousness negotiating with one another.  It’s one undivided divine life.  One divine willing.  One divine acting.  Yet this one life is irreducibly personal.  You cannot negate the Father or the Son or the Spirit, or their communion with one another because there’s one undivided life.  So the divine ones are one family unit, one undivided family, united in themselves, cleaving to one another, having their being in each other without any coalescence or commingling.  

We don’t look at the one shared divine nature and allow that to swallow up the divine persons.  We don’t look at Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit and say well because there is one being that is God, and these three persons are all equally divine, sharing the same nature, it means they are really the same person, its just they are manifest sometimes as Father; sometimes as Son; or sometimes as the Holy Spirit.   That destroys the divine family.  It makes God impersonal and void of self sacrificial love in His being.  When Jesus prayed to the Father he wasnt talking to himself.  When he said another would come even the Holy Spirit he wasn’t saying he and the Spirit are the same person.  

There’s distinction in the divine persons without separation or fragmentation.  The Godhead is inseparable in their distinctions.  Just as we say the sun, and the light, and the sunshine are distinct yet inseparable.  The Trinity is not 3 separate agents with 3 separate wills.  There’s 3 distinct persons but not three distinct personalities.  Meaning there’s one divine will; one power; one operation ; which is why God says let us in Genesis, and not let me. 

When we make distinctions between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we’re indicating the difference in their relationship to one another, not describing a difference in their nature.  It’s like with a husband and wife.  The scriptures says the two become one flesh.  There a distinction between the husband and the wife, but they share the same nature and are still one.  The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct, but they are indivisibly distinct.  They’re distinct in the properties of their personhood, not in nature.  Every operation which extends from God to the creation has its origin from the Father, is caused through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.  That doesnt mean it’s 3 separate acts.  The action of each concerning anything is not separate and peculiar.  Whatever comes to pass comes to pass by the action of the 3 but what comes to pass is not 3 different things.  We receive one life, but this one life is performed in us by the Father and prepared by the Son and depends on the will of the Holy Spirit.  That is the one God, and the way they accomplish the one will is from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.  Its one grace from all so we don’t fragment the 3 into different natures, and make 3 gods.  It’s not a different grace that comes from each of them.  It’s one grace.  One God.  One undivided communion of love.  One family with a united front.  If their works towards us were fragmented and separate and not always in unity and union with one another, working the same will, by the power of the same life, then it would fracture the eternal family and be more than one God.   By saying Jesus save then it would be Jesus who saves and not the Father ….

some of that can sound like technical, but it’s all pertaining to family dynamics.  It’s family logic we’re talking about …… the language we used there is the same way you would describe a healthy family dynamic.  

There’s an organization called Focus on the Family.  It’s a Christian organization so maybe you’ve heard of it.  The reason they established their organization is to help give support to the family unit.  They saw the family was under attack.  They saw the family unit being fractured and destroyed, and they saw that it led to bad outcomes for children.  Theres childhood development studies that show the negative effect a broken home can have on children.  When the family unit is fractured and fragmented.  When the family is separated and divided in will and operation, whether it be from the absence of the Father or the Mother.  When the mother and father or seen to be divided against one another.  Not being of one will, one mind, one motion and goal, that tells the child the family is fractured and fragmented.  It causes chaos and confusion and instability, and along with that fear and anxiety and uncertainty.  And that greatly hinders the development of the child in their personality(personhood) and also in their social and interpersonal skills.  It causes things like anti social behavior; personality disorders, emotional problems, self centeredness, selfish behavior; struggles with interpersonal skills.  

Children flourish because of healthy family dynamics.  The nutrients they need to flourish in their personalities and their humanity comes from the family unit.  If there’s a lack of intimacy, a lack of deep personal connection in the family.  If the children arent able to observe their parents relating to one another in a loving healthy way.  If there’s disunity in the family, and the family is fractured and fragmented the child will struggle to flourish.  That’s not to condemn anyone if that’s the situation you were left with because of the fracturing and destruction that’s manifested in the earthly family because of Adam.  I’m just using a natural example that points to the importance of the divine family that is the one true God.  The only reason we have earthly families is because God is eternally a family.  Our earthly families are a shadow of the true family.  The divine family of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  

When doctrines fragment the trinity, making it out as if they have differing wills and do things independent of one another its akin to fracturing the divine family.  It tears down the unity and communion in the eternal family.  If the three divine persons are collapsed into one person, if Jesus isn’t God, having communion with the Father and the Spirit from eternity past, or the word and the Holy Spirit are a depersonalized force, it destroys the divine family, and is akin to a child growing up in broken family.  If the divine family is destroyed in our doctrines there will be no union, no stability, no healthy relationship, no communal of love for the children in Gods being.  The effect will be stress and chaos and instability and lack of nurture and fear and anxiety for the children.  We are the children.  Jesus says unless you become as little children you can’t enter the kingdom of heaven.  Well how can we live as little children if our doctrine about God mimics all the things that describe a dysfunctional broken family?  If we are the children of God how can we expect to flourish in our humanity if we aren’t being raised in a perfect family. 

Our humanity is made whole through the divine persons, and the divine family.  Our humanity is meant to receive the nutrients of life from what we see about God.  God is the family we were created for.  We’re made in the image of God for the purpose of bearing about their likeness; the likeness we see in the Lord Jesus Christ, the express image of the invisible God … who reveals the Holy family to us; the divine family we’re meant to be shaped by; the persons we see in the Trinity, and the communion of love they share together.  We grow into the fullness of the stature of a perfect man, yes by beholding Christ, but not by just beholding the one person Christ.  It’s that through Christ we are able to see the communion of the divine family and that gives us the nutrients we need to flourish.  

The brokenness of our earthly families may have stung us, but our earthly families could never make us whole.  It’s not that we need our earthly family to be perfect in order to be whole.  Our earthly families are just a shadow pointing us to the divine family.  The divine family is the only thing that can make us whole.  We aren’t in need of our earthly families being right.  What we need is to partake with the divine family in their communion.  Through Christ Jesus, the Godman, adopting our humanity into his person we have been born of the divine family.  We see the goodness and the unity of the heavenly family … there is no separation in their motion towards us … theres no negotiation … theres only perfect divine unity …. There’s a united front that we see in them … as the apostle Paul says about the body of Christ, the very body of God, that is made after the image of the divine family, one spirit, one faith, one mind … we see the divine persons in the heavenly family … that they are of one mind, one spirit, one will, one motion, that they’re united in their goodness towards us ….. this is there communion to us; out of the abundance of their Triunity, they pour themselves wholly into us, in the likeness of how they commune with one another … and that catches us up into the eternal communion of love.  

The doctrine of the Trinity is family logic.  It’s the communion between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  It’s the communion of love thats eternal in the divine family.  It’s the revelation of the fellowship we’ve been included in, and are being drawn to through the Godman Christ Jesus.  Thats what John sees when he says what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the Sons of God.  He says through the eternal Son adopting our humanity in his person, we are one with him, him in us and us in him, and through our union with him we have communion with the divine family.  

Prayer