I never ever
pretend to understand the Trinitarian nature of my Master. There’s really no point because it would take
even my daughter a few well-placed questions to reveal that I really don’t
understand. I can’t. In fact, at the risk of being considered a
heretic, I have said before that I believe it’s possible that I might find my
Master to have more than three Persons when I arrive in Heaven. But I can say with complete confidence that
He has revealed Himself in Scripture, both Hebrew and Christian, as being Three
in One. That much I do know. How it’s possible or how to explain it, not a
chance.
So, when I
get to Jesus’ prayer in John 17, I may be unsettled with its references to
being one just as Jesus and the Father are One, but I just chalk it up to one
more thing I don’t understand about the Trinity. But I really want to understand this because I
suspect it’s really important. For
instance, in verse 22, which Chambers uses this morning, Jesus prays, “And I
have given the glory which You gave Me to them, so that they might be one just
as We are One;” Now, the problem I have
here is me being one with anyone in the same way as Jesus and the Father are
One. It sounds like one characteristic
of the Trinity I can share with another believer.
I think I have
an answer, but I will not pretend to have the answer. The clue I rely on here is the Person missing
from this prayer, but present in the previous 3 chapters, the Paraclete, the
Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. I
suspect that any possibility for “oneness” is tied completely to the presence
of the Spirit of my Master living in me, and in the other person I become one
with. I suspect this to be true from
things Paul has said in some letters of his:
having one Spirit, keep the unity of the Spirit, and so on. I infer from this chapter the key to divine
Oneness is the Third Person, the Holy Spirit.
The term Jesus uses is “glory”, hence my problem.
The odd
thing, or difficult thing, for me is considering me as having this potential
which my Master actually displays. While
I believe that there is an image of my Master imprinted on me as a human being,
I find it difficult to wrap my mind around being one with another person as
part of that image-stamp. I just find thinking
of the Trinitarian nature of my Master as being something accessible to people
like me really weird or somehow sacrilegious.
It feels like I make this unimaginable indescribable nature of my Master
more common or mundane. It just feels
wrong. But from the Gospel of John, it
seems it’s right, weird as it might feel.
So, I’m left
with some requirement to connect, if possible, the glory of my Master with His
Spirit. It doesn’t sound difficult on
the surface, both being God, they would naturally have the same glory. But I suppose part of my problem is that I
don’t know that I really know how to define the Glory of God. I would hazard to define it as something
which brings praise and honor to God without demeaning His character or nature in
any way. So, I suppose that He could be
His own glory in a sense, and therefore His Spirit would also be. But that sounds overly simple, and I am not confident
that’s what Jesus had in mind as He prayed.
Jesus says
that the glory given to Him by the Father He gave to them (not the disciples,
but the ones believing their testimony, so really, “us”) so that they might be
one just as He and the Father are One.
How did Jesus give the disciples and those following them His
glory? The only connection supports my interpretation
is that what has been given drives me to praise my Master. That would be my connection to my Master and
that would be the His Spirit. So, in
that sense at least, I believe I can connect the dots supporting this possible
interpretation. So when does this
happen? I believe the modern term we use
is “church”. Oddly and sadly, being one
is not a descriptor I would normally use for church in general. I suspect it depends on the church.
Even the
church I’m currently a part of has issues.
The issues don’t seem anywhere near as bad as the issues in other
churches I have been part of, but there are some. But one thing that seems to be the case is
that this church is one in worship. It
is just my sense of the experience, but it seems as if the congregation is one
in praise to our Master at that point in time.
A lot of that has to do with our great song leader and our pastor, but I
believe that even more it has to do with the freedom we give the Spirit of God
in our worship. It’s not forced, I don’t
feel uncomfortable nor do I feel bored (I can’t imagine anyone being
bored in our worship).
Today I will
attempt to keep in my day the glory of my Master I experienced in worship
yesterday. I will seek to apply the
wonderfully harsh scrubbing of my pastor to my day, hear again the beautiful
and powerful songs we sang together, and keep the conscious awareness of my
Master as I work the phones. I will try
to keep the unity of the Spirit of my Master experienced on Sunday throughout
the week. Even writing this, I miss
being with them already. That’s
different. I think I like it!
No comments:
Post a Comment