Trinity and Humanity

…Is far more important than what you think, or what I think!

This would seem to go without saying considering that God, in most people’s minds, is supposed to be the best and greatest at everything, including thinking! But this is not where many of us necessarily start. On p.195 of his book The Secret Message of Jesus, author Brian McLaren points out how C.S. Lewis was struck one day about this subject. He quotes Lewis out of Lewis’ essay entitled “The Weight of Glory” on pp. 38-39:

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.

So how does God the Father, Son and Spirit think of us?What does the Triune God think of you? What does this One God in Three Persons think regarding your Neighbor? What does God the Trinity think of the World?

Here are three great quotes for your consideration.

One from scripture. One from a great 20^th century Christ-centered theologian. And one from another great Christ-centered theologian lay member who attends with my local Church and works at Golden Corral.

“Every person the Father gives me eventually comes running to me. And once that person is with me, I hold on and don’t let go. I came down from heaven not to follow my own whim but to accomplish the will of the One who sent me. “This, in a nutshell, is that will: that everything handed over to me by the Father be completed – not a single detail missed – and at the wrap-up of time I have everything and everyone put together, upright and whole.” – Jesus, the fullness of God in the flesh, John 6:37-39, The Message.

“On the basis of the eternal will of God we have to think of every human being, even the oddest, most villainous or miserable, as one to whom Jesus Christ is Brother and God is Father; and we have to deal with him on this assumption. If the other person knows that already, then we have to strengthen him in that knowledge. If he does not know it yet, or no longer knows it, our business is to transmit this knowledge to him. On the basis of the knowledge of the humanity of God no other attitude to any kind of fellow man is possible. It is identical with the practical acknowledgement of his human rights and his human dignity. To deny it to him would be for us to renounce having Jesus Christ as Brother and God as Father.” Karl Barth, The Humanity of God, p. 53. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982.

“I will believe in the one [Jesus] that believes in me.” – Calvin Simon (in an e-mail to me on 4.16.09.)

~ by Timothy Brassell