Saturday, November 21, 2015

Trinitarian Faith

November 21, 2015

The Apostles' Creed is built around a three-fold declaration of our faith in God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christianity is Trinitarian, which simply means that we believe in One God, manifested in three Persons. Beyond this simple declaration, things often get sticky. Some have tried to describe Trinitarian faith as God revealing himself in three different ways, but that makes God out to be merely one Person who wears different masks at different times. Trinitarian faith declares that God is Three in One, eternally Father, eternally Son, and eternally Holy Spirit. Yeah, I don't understand it either, but I believe it. We try to understand it with analogies: an egg is white, yolk, and shell; water can be liquid, solid, or vapor, but analogies ultimately break down before the reality that is revealed in Scripture. And it is from Scripture that we derive our understanding. We would never have thought this up on our own.

When we declare our belief "in Jesus Christ, [God's] only Son our Lord," the very least we are saying is that this person we believe to be on the same level as God, the Father Almighty. After all, it would look pretty ridiculous to insert my name or yours into the Creed at this point, but it doesn't strike us as odd to do the same with the name of Jesus Christ. That alone hints at what is to follow. I believe in Jesus Christ in a different way than if I were to say I believe in you. And the only reason I can say this at all is because of what we learn about this man in Holy Scripture. Despite what the cults, agnostics, and other religions say about Jesus, the only sure record we have of this man's life clearly indicate how unique he was, so much so that the same kind of language used of God is regularly applied to him. And by devout monotheistic Jews, no less! One can choose to disbelieve the record of the New Testament, but it is impossible to deny that its authors believed that this man was who he claimed to be: God himself, in the flesh.

I need this God in the flesh. It means that God has a human face. This One so different than me in my weakness and sinfulness is like me, has chosen to rub shoulders with me. This God is not some distant, detached deity; he is nearby, he understands, and he cares enough to become one of us. For this, I am grateful tonight.

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