Tonight I want to look at the heart of the gospel, and what it means for our lives.  If we arent continuously reminded of what the gospel is, we can easily become forgetful hearers, forgetting our first love, and our gatherings/worship can become about everything but intimacy with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  

Our gatherings are meant to be about the remembrance of God.  St Isaac the Syrian says “Forgetfulness of God is the root of all evils, and remembrance of God is the source of all virtues”.  The gospel is the revelation of God.  The gospel reveals the divine family, and the union and communion thats always existed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that we were created to participate in their divine life.  

Rom 1:1  Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, 

Paul calls the gospel, the gospel “of God”.  The gospel isnt just good news.  Its the good news “of God”.  God Himself is the good news.  The gospel is God’s self revelation to the world, through the Godman, Christ Jesus.  The gospel is the revelation of God giving Himself to the world.  

Genesis says when God made man he blessed them.  The word blessed is barak in Hebrew.  One of the meanings of Barack is to get down on bended knee in adoration of another.  It’s the same kind of thing we see when a man gets down on one knee and proposes marriage to the woman He loves.  God got down on bended knee in Genesis, offering Himself to us.  He wanted to experience us.  He wanted to experience our humanity, so we could experience His divine nature.  That was His proposal.  The Gospel is Gods proposal to us.  He didnt promise us an abstraction.  He didnt offer us a thought.  He offered Himself.  He opened Himself up to us, so He could be fully known by us and we could be fully known by Him.  Thats God’s gospel.  It’s God wanting to partake of all that you are, so you can partake of all that He is.  

1st John 4 says God is love.  God has always been love.  There’s never a time when God wasn’t love.  Theres never a time when God won’t be love.  Love is not an innovation in God.  God was love before anything was made.  Love is the very essence of Gods nature.  The nature of God’s being is self giving, self sacrificial love.  It’s a pouring out of yourself for another.  You give yourself fully to the other, thinking of their well being.  When John says God is love he’s talking about the Trinity.  He’s talking about the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  Jesus praying to the Father in John 17:24 says the Father loved him from before the foundation of the world.  In the beginning God.  In the beginning love.  The love of God is the chief of all things.  Without the love of God nothing was made that was made …. We are Gods love child.  Creation is Gods love child.  All of creation is born from the everlasting intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

John 1:1 says in the beginning was the Word(Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The English word “with” doesnt really capture what John is conveying here.  John isnt telling us that Jesus was merely near or beside or in the same vicinity as the Father.  The word “with” denotes motion towards, or in the direction of one another.  It talks about a living union and communion between the Father and the Son, implying the active notion of intercourse.  

John's statement is that the divine Son not only abode with the Father from all eternity, but was in the living, active relation of communion with Him.  They were  knowing one another, mutually indwelling one another in the Light … partaking of one another in the Spirit.  Theres a communication of themselves to each other.  Communion is a form of communication.  It’s just that the communication is the communicating of yourself to someone else.  It’s a giving of yourself to someone else.  It’s the opening up of yourself to someone else so they can fully know you.  It’s the opening up of the deep places of your being to someone else so all that you are can be shared with them and they can experience you. 

Thats the everlasting communion and intimacy thats always existed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Father gives all of Himself to the Son, in the Spirit, holding nothing back.  And the Son gives all of Himself to the Father, holding nothing back, being fully known by the Father, and fully knowing the Father.  They have this self emptying; self giving communion going on where they’re giving themselves to one another.  Pouring themselves out for the other, opening themselves up to the other, being fully known by each other.  It's a beautiful, intimate thing where they’re mutually indwelling one another, eternally communicating themselves to each other.  Glorifying the other.  Each of them being an ornament decorating the other.  It’s a deeply personal and relational and intimate union and communion.  

Thats why Jesus says I am in the Father and the Father is in me.  I and the Father are one.  If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.  It’s an inseparable communion; it’s an eternal communion.  They can never be alone.  The Son can never be without the Father, and the Father can never be without the Son.  John 1 says the Son comes forth from the Father’s bosom, but he is never not dwelling in the Fathers bosom.  There’s never a time when he is not in the Father and the Father is not in Him.  Even his incarnation; and passion at the cross couldnt remove him from the Fathers heart and their mutual indwelling.  Jesus speaking of the cross says in John 16:32 that everyone will be scattered from him leaving him alone, yet he is not alone, because the Father is with him.  2nd Cor 5 says God was in Christ.  Hebrews 9 says Jesus offered himself to the Father on the cross, through the eternal Spirit.  Even at the cross we see the communion of the Father to the Son in the Spirit, and the communion of the Son to the Father in the Spirit.  They were knowing one another.  Opening themselves up to each other, giving themselves fully to the other.  As it is written, Father into your hands I commit my spirit.  

Paul says in Romans 8 that we’re heirs of God.  He says we’ve inherited God.  We’re heirs of God is love.  We’ve inherited the everlasting communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit in our humanity.  We are the beneficiaries of the self giving; self sacrificial love thats always been in the Godhead.  Our humanity has been immersed in the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  Thats why Jesus says go into all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Baptism is oozing with intimacy.  It’s about immersion in the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit.  It’s us being fully immersed in the Trinity, and the Trinity fully immersing themselves in us.  Baptism is about God partaking of us in the depth of our humanity, and us partaking of him in the depth of His being.  It’s a full knowing where we are mutually indwelling one another. 

Thats what Jesus is talking about in John 14 when he says he and the Father will come to us through the Holy Spirit and make their home in us.  The communion of the Father and the Son have made a home in us through the Holy Spirit.  The communion of the Father to the Son and the Son to the Father is in us ….. this is the Spirit of adoption; this is why we cry abba Father.  Its no longer just the Son, that the divinity of the Father is being poured into.  It’s no longer just the Son who is being known by the Father.  The fullness of the Father is being poured into us.  We are being fully known by the Father, partaking of His divine nature, through the Son, in the Spirit.  

Jesus says in John 17 in that day he will be in us and we in him, as he is in the Father, and the Father in him.  The Father is eternally giving himself to us in the Son, and our humanity is given fully to the Father in the Son.  We are in the bosom of Jesus just as he is in the bosom of the Father.  We are in the Son and the Son is in us.  We are mutually indwelling the Father with the Son, in the Spirit.  We’ve inherited the divine communion, through the Son having communion with us.  We’ve been baptized in the everlasting communion, and knowing and sharing in, the ground of all being and lovely goodness.  

This is the river of living water Jesus said will flow out of our belly’s through the Holy Spirit in John 7.  The pouring out of the Divine nature by the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, is the river of living water that dwells in us.  Something about a river is it never stops flowing.  There’s a continuous flowing; there’s a continous pouring out, just like a waterfall.  We’re baptized into an eternal communion.  It’s an eternal generation … Its a timeless communication of Gods divine nature to our humanity.  If something’s outside of time it means it has no beginning and no end.  Its perpetual.  It’s a continous ongoing thing.  Theres a waterfall of the divine nature continuously pouring into us.  Thats why the scripture says and of his fullness have all we received and grace upon grace.  There’s an everlasting, perpetual ministration of grace to our humanity, through the Father, Son, and Spirit pouring themselves into us.  

Imagine the Father and his heart pumping His divine nature out of Himself towards you … this is the eternal generation of the Son, it’s the continuous pouring of the essence of the Father into your humanity, through the eternal Son.  Its like a pulse, like a heart beat, that never stops, continuously pumping the divinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit into our humanity.  

If we look at the mount of transfiguration we can see the eternal communion that has made a home in us.  

End xmen …

"In the incarnation God communicated himself to us in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, not something about himself, but his very SELF, and thereby made himself known to us according to his own divine nature as Father."
—T. F. Torrance